Friday Favorite: Creating Passionate Users

I'm simply mad about Creating Passionate Users.

A teamblog effort by the the authors of O'Reilly's Head First Books, the authors describe themselves as

[P]assionate about the brain and metacognition, most especially—how the brain works and how to exploit it for better learning and memory. Oh yeah, and how to recognize when someone else (including one of us) is applying brain-based techniques to get you to do something.

Team captain, the fabulous Kathy Sierra, explains more about CPU in its first post:

Our passion is the brain, but we'll talk about the core elements we believe you need to inspire customers/users including lessons learned from cognitive science, psychology, video/computer game design, entertainment (Hollywood), and yes, even advertising still has something to say (although advertising no longer works well, it still holds the key to some of the things that DO work... more later).

I was hooked from the start—and if you're not yet, you will be. Just check some of these post titles:

• The importance of seduction and curiosity.
• One of us is smarter than all of us.
• The user's journey.
• F*** the rules!
• Users shouldn't think about YOU.

These aren't lightweight posts; most are lengthy and will surely get you cogitating (if not downright inspired) with practical advice. And it does it all with a spirit of fun, enthusiasm, energy and passion.

In short, Creating Passionate Users creates passionate users. I'm certainly one!

Why I Love Folksonomies

Because I am not my users.

I guess I've always known this, but it hit home today during a blue-sky planning meeting for a new project. I was subjecting the team to my usual exhausting exhaustive start-up questionnaire when we reached this question: "Do you use meta tags within the site to catalog content properties, etc.?" This is my entree to discussing thesauri, controlled vocabularies and the like.

The initial response was less than enthusiastic, citing workload, a lack of resources, the scope of the effort and so on—all from the team's perspective. So I made a fast U-turn.

"What concerns me is that your users don't have the same domain knowledge as you," I suggested. "They're coming to the site with imperfect information, modulated by transmission through media and other individuals. They're going to be searching for terms that you never imagined. I just want to be sure they can find what they're looking for."

That got the team rolling. And I said to myself, "What we need to do is let users create the tags for our content. Mix them with a good thesaurus and we're on Broadway!"

I don't know if it's practical, but here's something I'd love to try. User-centered design rightly emphasizes going to the source, to end-users. We typically do this with interviews, contextual observation, usability tests, surveys, card sorts and other user analysis tools. Can we add "folksonomy creation exercises" to the list—that is, invite representative users to assign tags/labels to our content? They wouldn't have to sort it or taxonomize it; we'd simply ask, "What would you call this? How would you label it? What words would you use to describe this?" We could then incorporate the results into the site thesaurus and metadata.

Has anyone done anything like this?

UX and "Design Thinking"

A March 8 article at BusinessWeekOnline shows that the suits may be starting to get the UXCentric message. Check this statement:

The truth is we're moving from a knowledge economy that was dominated by technology into an experience economy controlled by consumers and the corporations who empathize with them.

Not bad, huh? And it gets better with lots of quotes from generally-accepted authorities at B-schools and a nice plug for Dan Pink's new book, A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age (which is definitely on my reading list).

But I get a little uneasy at statements like these:

• [Y]ou can design your company to generate products and services that provide great consumer experiences, top-line revenue growth, and fat profit margins.


• It's time to embrace a new value proposition based on creating -- indeed, often co-creating -- new products and services with customers that fill their needs, make them happy, and make companies and shareholders rich.

Call me naive if you must, but in my book UXCentricity doesn't begin with the quest for profits.

Now, I love a good profit as much as anyone else (and know that generating a return for owners is the purpose of business), but great user experiences don't spring from those with dollar signs obscuring their vision. Outstanding user experiences are created by those who are primarily obsessed with delighting their end users.

If you see UX as a means to "top-line revenue growth and fat profit margins," you've taken your eye off of the ball—and, I submit, you won't provide a wonderful UX or enjoy those desired financial returns. User experience must first be about people, and people are experts at sniffing out companies who see them only as means to a financial end.

But make satisfying your customers and end-users your primary goal—indeed, to exceed their expectations and make their lives easier, more enjoyable and more meaningful (even if it might "hurt" potential profits)—and you'll end up with a first-class UX, madly loyal uers and a healthy bank account.

That's the kind of (UXCentric) thinking that will dominate the coming decades.

Via elearningpost.

Called Strike

News about bad UX travels fast.

Meet Irving Zeiger, age 86. He's had the same front row seats at Dodger Stadium for 43 years—the same seats since the stadium opened in 1962.

Not any more. Let the gifted Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times tell you about the phone call Irving recently received from the Dodgers:

The Dodgers had moved the dugout closer to the field and installed four new rows of seats behind it. But Zeiger need not worry, he could retain his four stadium-best seats directly above the new dugout.

It would cost him only $120,000.

You read that right.

It would cost him only $120,000.

Irv Zeiger has cheered for Koufax, screamed for Gibson, pumped his fist for Piazza.

But no Dodger has ever blown him away like that woman on the phone.

"I thought she was joking," he said. "She wanted $120,000 from me to keep those seats I've had for half my life?"

Zeiger was scheduled to pay $20,000 for his four seats, so the new figure constituted a 500% increase.

To move up four rows.

Here's a man who has spent untold tens of thousands of dollars on the Dodgers. He has eaten thousands of Dodger Dogs, shared his four seats with family and friends for more than four decades. His was the first check for the Los Angeles Dodgers that Brooklyn Dodger owner Walter O'Malley received. He has been an exemplary paying Dodger fan for half of his life.

You know what the Dodgers should have done, don't you? They should have given Irv those new front row seats for the same price as his originals—and kept that arrangement in place for life.

Yet the Dodgers (under the penny-pinching new ownership of Frank McCourt) reward him by "offering" the equivalent new seats at five times the cost of his old ones. Irv is going to keep his old seats—but he's going to protest by not attending opening day. He loves baseball, so what else can he do? Plaschke concludes:

To [Zeiger], it's not that his seats are no longer special, although they aren't, what with a wall and waitresses and four rich rows now separating him from the field his money helped build.
To him, it's the organization that is no longer special.

"I just don't feel like the Dodgers are my team anymore," Zeiger said. "I doubt that they are even L.A.'s team anymore. It's no longer about a relationship. It's about a business."

Under the O'Malley's, the Dodgers were UXCentric to the core—more accurately, they were fancentric and definitely ahead of their time. And the fans like Irving rewarded them with record-breaking attendance and diehard loyalty. That's the power of UXCentricity.

And apparently it's something the current Dodger owners think they can do without.

(Photo by Gary Friedman, LATimes.)

Cooking Up Some UX Stew

I love what I do. I mean, I love what I do.

But sometimes I hate it.

I've wondered if this was due to some kind of neurotic or masochistic streak in me, that I enjoyed beating myself up for a living. But thanks to a fascinating post by Jeffery Veen today, I'm feeling much better. I mean, misery loves company, right?

In thinking a bit about Malcolm Gladwell's best-selling Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Veen describes his design method in this way:

I build up a tremendous amount of background data, let it synthesize, then "blink" it out as a fully-formed solution.

Now that sounds so smooth and elegant, but it's not. Here's Veen's typical process:

1. Talk to everybody I possibly can about the problem.


2. Read everything that would even be remotely related to what I'm doing. Hang charts, graphs, diagrams, and screenshots all over my office.


3. Observe user research; recall past research.


4. Stew in it all, panic as deadline approaches, stop sleeping, stop eating.


5. Be struck with an epiphany. Instantly see the solution. Curse my tools for being too slow as I frantically get it all down in a document.


6. Sleep for three days.

Hey, me too!

I added bold type to step four because to me this is the crux of the process. And I picked that word "crux" with great care. Dictionary.com tells us that "crux" is "Probably short for Medieval Latin crux (interpretum), torment (of interpreters), from Latin crux, cross." Torment. Yep, that's right. This period of torment, of stewing is the cross that I (and apparently Veen) must bear as a UXCentrist.

The research phase of UX design is thrilling. Hitting the books. Mining the Web. Scouring the SIG archives. Endlessly interviewing Clients with exclamations of glee at key discoveries. Surveying users and poring over the stats. Designing and conducting card sorts and usability tests. Observing and talking with users. Writing summary reports and making presentations. Man, I love that stuff.

And when it's time to put this wealth of knowledge to work, I hit the wall. I pace, I fill up wastebaskets with false starts. I curse. I stare at my display for hours. I snap at the dogs. I read and reread my notes and reports, hoping for some kind of miracle. I question my abilities, my credentials as a UXCentrist. I expect my Clients to sack me and demand refunds. My blood runs cold. I despair.

Finally, after days of torment—blink!—it happens. The epiphany, as Veen describes it. Suddenly, I'm a genius! I crank out site maps, wireframes and other deliverables like a dervish. Multiple solutions (once so rare) leap to my mind so fast I can't get them down on paper. I'm obsessed, even manic about my work, chortling as it rapidly takes shape. Clients express their amazement at my pace.

Wow. What a ride. What a great way to make a living!

Friday Favorite: The Pew Internet and American Life Project

One of the things I miss most about the vainglorious dot-com heyday is access to premium research. At the long-gone Web consultancy where I worked, we had subscriptions to all of the big names—an embarrassment of riches. With some chicanery, I managed to keep access to some of the accounts for a year or so after our office closed. Going back to school gave me student access to some great stuff. But, alas, even that has passed.

That's why I love the Pew Internet and American Life Project so much. (I've written about it before, but not as a Friday Favorite.) It's mission:

The Pew Internet & American Life Project produces reports that explore the impact of the Internet on families, communities, work and home, daily life, education, health care, and civic and political life. The Project aims to be an authoritative source on the evolution of the Internet through collection of data and analysis of real-world developments as they affect the virtual world.

The PIP has published more than 200 reports thus far on topics ranging from demographics to "online activities and pursuits" to e-government to education. All are based upon the Project's own surveys and research, sometimes conducted with partners. Presentations on many topics are available and stats junkies can dig into the raw data. It's truly a treasure.

And here's the the best part: It's all free! Reports and presentations are easily downloaded in PDF/Acrobat format. You can sign up for e-mail notification of new reports. You can choose from a number of RSS feeds on various topics. There's even a blog-like commentary page that offers additional insights

My only difficulty with the Pew Internet Project? Keeping up with all of the great stuff they produce!

UX on the Cutting Room Floor

Maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised at The Scenario's poor UX.

Jeffrey Veen tells us of his experience on a panel judging interactive designs created by some of the world's top agencies and brands:

As I clicked through the hundreds of submissions, I started to get an uneasy feeling. Why was all of this so bad? I mean, it was really bad. Could it be that what I have always believed to be good interaction differs dramatically from what "professionals" believe?

Veen's list of observed trends in the entries (he dubs them "a summary of web design in 1997") is damning. His final one hits the bullseye:

User-centered design vs. marketing and image. Most sites had no sense whatsoever of how to engage a potential customer through the Web.

And his conclusion is chilling: "These are the experiences most people have on the web, and use to form their opinions of what this new medium can be."

Here's what really concerns me. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that these top agencies had UX specialists on their project teams. It's no stretch for me to imagine that excellent user discovery was part of the design process. Conscientious UXCentrists did their work, presented their findings, wrote their reports and perhaps even wireframed or otherwise participated in initial UX design.

Yet their efforts ended up on the cutting room floor.

I've been there. I'm there now. I pour my heart into my work and see it dribble away under the assault of timelines, budgets and "business as usual." They say old habits die hard—and that's especially true for old corporate, marketing and IT habits. Designers, branders and coders may read their Cluetrains, they may Re-Imagine, they may talk of Purple Cows, but you can't turn a battleship on a dime.

A few years ago, we had to make a strong case for sound UX design. Well, we've been heard (as Lou Rosenfeld points out so well). IA, UX and interaction design are now on the Web design table. Although picked last, we're finally part of the team. And now is when the real work begins—the work of changing minds and hearts. We need to show, demonstrate and prove (over and over again) that UX can't be part of the game, but is the game itself.

Truly amazing interactive designs and user experiences come from organizations wholly infected with UXCentricity. And we're not there yet.

Missing the Mark

Clickz reports today on the unveiling of a "Sprite-branded marketing campaign targeting teens today, showcasing the first fruits of its newly-expanded Branded Entertainment and Experiences Team."
The mini-site stars Sprite's mildly amusing/annoying Miles Thirst action figure, who hosts a basic media site featuring playlists from ten top DJs. Users can add Miles-styled emoticons while IMing on MSN Messenger and listen to new music on the Sprite-branded "Thirst" radio.

Gayle Troberman is the director of MSN's Branded Entertainment and Experiences Team which works, says Clickz, "to create new opportunities for marketers to talk 'to' people, not 'at' them." Troberman says,

There's nothing more interesting than a consumer inviting a brand into their world. As a marketer, you have to be creative about adding value, and make sure you give them something they don't have. Once you do that, it's magic.

Uh-huh. Talk is cheap. Can the MSN Team deliver?

Because I do a lot of work on sites for children and teens, I've been reading the Nielsen Norman Group's new report, Teenagers on the Web: Usability Guidelines for Creating Compelling Sites for Teens. Its list of 60 usability design guidelines strongly confirms what we already know: Creating sites for teens is one of the greatest challenges on the Web. Like adolesence itself, successful teen sites must walk a fine line between childhood and adulthood—all the while maintaining an ultra-cool attitude that doesn't pander.

Given that usability does not equal UX, how does The Scenario measure up? We'll apply a few of the NN Group's design guidelines:

• To attract attention, consider applying a few graphical techniques commonly associated with advertising. While the NN report affirms that teens appreciate "visually stylish" sites and are otherwise quick to wander, The Scenario's brushed metal visual design is remarkably prosaic and oh-so-90s. I was really surprised.



• Use standard-looking GUI components.Ouch! Take a look at the selection window at the left side. Its thumbwheel is not only non-standard, but is inoperative. Instead, you navigate the list itself with rollovers. Weird.



• Accommodate a low-tech audience. Design multimedia for your audience's connection speed. The NN Group found that teens are often relegated to school computers (which often share a narrow pipeline) or hand-me-down systems at home. Since it's based on streaming media, The Scenario is likely to be a letdown for many in its audience.



• Don't make users install any additional plug-ins; provide non-multimedia content alternatives instead.Thirst Radio requires Windows Media Player—and using the Miles emoticons requires MSN Messenger. Teens are reluctant to install plugins due to technical concerns and, in many cases, are not permitted to do so. School computers (because of their locations) often lack speakers. In short, multimedia is The Scenario's game—and if you don't have it, you don't play.
  
  
• Avoid overly distracting promotional elements. Use sound wisely and in reasonable amounts. Avoid repetitive audio loops. Hoo-boy. While The Scenario does permit users to quickly stop its background beats, there is no way to silence Mr. Thirst, who continually chimes in in his inimitable style. My Doberman barked at him.

On the other hand, The Scenario does some things well. Text is held to a useful minimum. Other than noted above, controls are intuitive. The Scenario promises to stay up-to-the-minute with the latest tunes (very important). There are smooth links to the MSN Music store.

Yet The Scenario is underwhelming. The visual design is sparse, the content merely adequate, the creativity thin. There's nothing compelling, captivating or unique here. Rather than "inviting" The Scenario into their world, I suspect teens will be quick to move along to other sites that show better understanding of their world.

Process and Story

I'm fond of quoting a motivational plaque I saw early in my career: "Process is the reward"—that is, that there are intrinsic payoffs in the application of a sound process that enhance the end result. Put more simply, how you go about doing something is at least as important as the final product. So I long sought the "ideal" process for whatever I was doing in my career, from polishing floors all the way to Web user experience.

The problem is that process is cruel and fickle. Oh, it's great in objective realms. The way you polish a floor, for example, absolutely determines its degree of sparkle. Science, technology and industry are wholly dependent on proven processes that are prerequisites to the desired results.

But when you turn to subjective arenas, watch out! No sooner than a process seems to prove itself, it can turn on you. That's especially true in a discipline like UX, where we deal with intangibles and the inner world—not to mention variations in budgets, timelines and resources. Even so, there's no question that how you go about creating a user experience does have a significant impact on its excellence. That's why I've developed (and teach) my own process—one that has enjoyed success.

And therein lies the danger of process. Because a process can be effective, we're tempted to institutionalize it, formalize it, make it sacrosanct. In so doing, we hinder the skepticism, free thinking and creativity from which the effective process sprung—and we defy reality, for no single process can adequately encompass the variables we encounter as UXCentrists. One size does not fit all.

To avoid the process temptation, I've been thinking about my projects as stories, stories shaped around the quest for the Holy Grail an excellent UX. Like classic human narratives, the stories have common movements but differ in setting, characterization, theme and specific details. This approach helps me see my process as a broad framework rather than a stultifying formula that limits imagination. I'm free to flex and bend, expand and contract in the service of the tale. And because story is so ingrained in the human psyche, I suspect this pays subtle dividends in the resulting UX. For what is UX if it is not the story of a user's adventure with our product or Web site?

The Usable Councilman

A tip of the UXCentric hat to Eric Garcetti, councilman for the 13th district here in Los Angeles.

Three hours after Matt posted a terrific and balanced photo essay on blogging.la that described some of the problems at L.A.'s beautiful but blighted Echo Park (not so far from UXCentric's world headquarters), Mr. Garcetti responded with a thoughtful and practical comment. And it's not the first time.

I wish my councilman was so tuned in and UXCentric. But he's too busy running for mayor.

Is UX Dead?

In 1897, Mark Twain wrote (in a widely-corrupted quotation), "This report of my death was an exaggeration." That's what I thought when I read this provocative post by Peter Merholz:

I am left with the thought that the phrase "user experience," as a meaningful term describing practice and concern, is dead.

Dead dead dead...

"User experience" feels like a term, and concept, whose meaningful time is over. I don't know what (if anything) will take its place. But there's clearly a lack of interest and effort in meaningful evolution. The energy seems to be behind the terms and concepts of "information architecture," "interaction design," and "usability engineering." Maybe we should take that as a sign.

Yeah, it's a sign, all right—a sign of nearsightedness and narcissism.

I don't disagree with Peter. It does seem like the term, "user experience," has languished. It lacks a champion to trumpet its value. As of yet, there's no Don't Make Me Think! or Polar Bear Book that ignites an audience, no Jakob-Nielsen-like proponent who passionately presses its cause. As Peter points out, the organizations that should be doing so "have only done an extreme disservice by rendering the term irrelevant."

But that doesn't mean that the term is dead. Information architecture, interaction design and usability engineering indeed have more energy behind them, powered by the voluble cognoscenti of these various disciplines. But they're missing the forest for the trees, the tools for the final product. It's OK, even commendable, to be enthusiastic about your discipline—but if that passion blinds you to the bigger picture, you're doing yourself a disservice.

And the bigger picture, the end product, the forest, is and must be superb user experiences.

No less an authority than Donald Norman recognized this when he coined the term. Peter quotes him in a long-ago post:

I invented the term because I thought Human Interface and usability were too narrow: I wanted to cover all aspects of the person's experience with a system, including industrial design, graphics, the interface, the physical interaction, and the manual.

In response, Peter surmised that UX is "so broad in the disciplines and people it requires, that it was inevitable for folks to reduce its meaning in order to get their arms around it." That scope is reflected in my own definition of UX: "User experience is the totality of an individual's interaction with and response to a business, product or service in any and every medium."

Sure, the scope is vast—but that's no reason to retire the term.

And, damn it, the very breadth of the discipline what is so cool about UX. It forces us to our knees. It makes us admit that creating outstanding user experiences is more than one person can handle. It pushes us out of our cloistered single disciplines—IA, IxD, HCI, human factors, usability, visual design, programming, et al—into the collaborative communities of creativity required for our mutual success and survival.

"UX" dead? It's just slumbering, awaiting those willing to grapple with its size and preach its gospel.

Wireframe UX

I love creating wireframes. They're my reward for doing all of the prerequisite grunt work of Client need analysis, user analysis, information architecture and mapping. While sometimes arduous, wireframing is the time when you first see all of your work come together.

Since they're also eagerly anticipated by Clients and stakeholders, it's important that wireframes provide a positive user experience. They're primarily communication tools that depict site layout, navigational elements, content priorities and the site interface. They also act as integrators, bringing content, engineering, visual design, information structure and UX together in a single document. Their most important function is to create a prototype, a "shared space" that facilitates collaboration and innovation. To that end, it's important that wireframes be as clear as possible.

Dan Brown helps us reach that goal with his outstanding poster, Representing Data in Wireframes (PDF). It's a huge (three by six feet) guide to "techniques for representing sample data and information in a wireframe, the risks associated with each technique, and best practices for applying them." Although you'd need a large format printer to actually produce the thing, it's perfectly readable at high magnification in Adobe Acrobat. Get it while it's hot.

Friday Favorite: Alertbox

Great usability alone doesn't make a great user experience. But a great user experience must have great usability. That's one reason why today's Friday Favorite is Jakob Nielsen's Alert Box: Current Issues in Web Usability.

Love him, hate him or grudgingly acknowledge his contributions, Nielsen is one of our most powerful advocates for Web usability. Sanctimonious and self-promoting at times, he never misses an opportunity to preach the gospel of great usability to anyone who will listen. And for this we owe him a great debt.

Alertbox is Nielsen's biweekly bully pulpit, the place where he shares his latest ideas, summarizes the findings of the Nielsen Norman Group's helpful and reasonably-priced research reports (thanks!) and offers practical guidance on all things usability.

It's must reading for UXCentrists.

Attention Corporate Bloggers!

Chris Locke—the Chief Blogging Officer—has a suggestion for companies that would like to co-opt blogging by making it about themselves, not end-users and customers:

I'd like to not-so-humbly hint to all the suits out there in CorporateLand who are wondering how they're going to "leverage" blogging in "their operations" that they should be paying close attention to what's going on just beneath the radar here on CBO. Those aren't Chinese subs, you fools! They're potential customers. But if you create blogs that don't tell stories, aren't the least bit funny or irreverent, but only read like thinly disguised advertising copy, then those potential customers are going to treat you like Chinese subs -- and send Tomahawk missiles straight up your RSS.

This is Locke at his Gonzo Marketing best. (You'll have to read the entire post to get the part about Chinese subs.)

Blog of the Month

While the blogosphere is all abuzz about the recent announcements of this year's Webby Award winners, UXCentric is honored by its selection as the March Blog of the Month in TechSmith's Morae Newsletter.

TechSmith is the maker of two software products I wouldn't be without as a UXCentrist—the classic screen capture tool SnagIt (that I've used for years) and Camtasia Studio, a tool for capturing video screen activity that I've used in budget usability testing. Morae builds on Camtasia's abilities and is an "all-digital, software-based solution that records and synchronizes user and system data for usability analysis of software, Web sites, Intranets and e-Business applications." I'll be trying Morae soon and will post a review here at UXCentric.

Thanks to Carla and everyone at TechSmith!

In Your Wildest Dreams...

Imagination is central to UXCentricity. Unfortunately, imaginative thinking is not a top priority in corporate America.

That's why one of the first questions I ask a project team is, "In your wildest dreams, with nothing to hold you back—budget, resources, time, even technology—what would you like this Web site to be?"

There is usually a moment or two of silence. I like to think that it's caused by a switch from left-brain to right-brain thinking, from biz-think to dream-think. Because Web teams consist of highly imaginative people, I know the pause isn't due to a lack of ability. It's due to the lack of on-the-job opportunities to dream big, to dream WOW! as Tom Peters might say.

The first response is usually pretty conservative, carefully couched to sound somewhat realistic. But that's all it takes to start the momentum. In minutes, wild-eyed proposals fly all over the room. People enthusiastically talk at the same time. New ideas spark more discussion. I type or write furiously, trying to get it all down while the fire is hot.

Before the flame flickers, I ask follow-ups that shift attention to the user: "In your users' wildest dreams, what would this site be like?" and "Tell me a story about how people will use this site." Both tap into the human need and ability to create narratives and spin tales—adding more fuel for the team's imagination.

This process begins with the team's dreams and ends with their perceptions of the users' dreams. By freeing the team's imagination, I help them "connect" with their users at the start of the project. More often than not, the conversation has profound impact on the future site. That's UXCentricity.

It takes only a simple question to remove the corporate cork from the imagination genie's bottle.

User-Friendly Typefaces

Anne Van Wagener reports in today's Design Desk at PoynterOnline that Microsoft will ship six new typefaces specifically designed for on-screen reading beginning in 2006.

Oddly, you can't yet view these typefaces at Microsoft's Web site. (Linking to the appropriate ClearType Font Collection page yields only a "coming to a screen near you" teaser.) They're only available thus far in a promotional booklet, "Now Read This."

Happily, Van Wagener's column includes scans (and discussions) of the two serif, three sans serif and one monospaced fonts—and I have to say they look great. While the jury will be out until we can get a chance to see copy set in the new faces, any improvement in on-screen readability is very welcome.

Ghost Town

Tumbleweeds roll down the avenues, dust devils swirl. Blogs remain quiet; the feeds are silent. There's nary a sound in UXCentric City except the creak of a sign as it swings back and forth above the empty saloon.

Where is everyone? At SXSW and ETech, it seems.

By the way, the picture above is part of Bodie, a remarkable California state park that preserves a once-booming town in a state of arrested decay. It's south of Bridgeport, off of Highway 395. Well worth a visit.

Cookie Monsters?

I'd like to know a lot more about JupiterResearch's March 9 report that claims:

• Ten percent of Web users delete cookies daily.


• 17 percent delete them weekly.


• And 12 percent delete them monthly.

Jupiter Research is trying to tell me that nearly 40 percent of users delete cookies monthly? Puh-leeze.

Seth Godin is already all over this, in an aptly-titled post, File under: stats that cannot be true. Asks Mr. Godin:

This is the same population that can't get rid of pop ups, repeatedly falls for phishing of their Paypal and eBay accounts, still uses Internet Explorer, buys stuff from spammers, doesn't know what RSS is and sends me notes every day that say, "what's a blog?"

Exactly. So what could explain these inexplicable findings?

My first thought was that maybe the results reflected corporate practices—that IT departments routinely sweep cookies off client systems on a regular basis. But the Jupiter findings came from a survey of 2,337 individual respondents who claimed they deleted cookies regularly.

Then I remembered that survey respondents can be notorious for answering questions not based upon actual behavior but upon what they think they should be doing. How many servings of vegetables do you eat daily? How many times a week do you exercise? How often do you go to church? Maybe that's what's going on here. People think they should be deleting cookies regularly, are embarrassed that they're not, so they report that they do. This idea gets credence from Erik Petersen, JupiterResearch's lead analyst for the report:

"For some reason, consumers have identified cookies incorrectly as spyware," [Petersen] added. "Consumers don't understand what cookies do."

I think this is closer to the truth. Run Spybot Search and Destroy or Ad-Aware SE. Both report "tracking cookies" as possible threats. Naive users could be easily misled into thinking that all cookies are evil and should be deleted. Maybe they even think that using anti-spyware tools to remove tracking cookies removes all cookies. All the talk about Internet scams could also unwittingly lead some to fear anything they don't understand. Who knows?

There are some users who routinely delete cookies or reject them altogether. But if JupiterResearch examined the hard drives of those 40 percent who claim to delete cookies at least monthly, I'm sure they'd find the number significantly lower.

Friday Favorite: UIE Articles

Ya gotta love Jared Spool and the team at User Interface Engineering (UIE) for their consistently interesting, occasionally provocative, always practical articles on all things UX.

Take a gander at the articles index, listed by date and by topic. There are the "numbered" items (examples: Seven Common Usability Testing Mistakes; Six Steps to Ensure a Successful Usability Test). There are interviews (examples: Rolf Molich; Ginny Redish). Topics range from branding, personas and search to user behavior and usability testing.

Of course, UIE isn't offering all this good stuff for purely intrinsic reasons. There's the marketing motive too (and I can't deny that's one reason behind UXCentric!). But the sales pitches—if any—are subtle and counter-balanced by good information. And it's easy to stay up to date by e-mail or RSS.

No matter how it's delivered, I'm always glad to see what's on UIE's mind.

The UX of Trader Joe's

For those of you unfortunate enough to lack a nearby Trader Joe's, my condolences. Follow along as best you can.

Trader Joe's is a unique grocery store. Started back in the 1960s with an emphasis on cheese, nuts and inexpensive wine, TJ's is now in 19 states, offering more than 2000 food products. In recent years, it has enjoyed a significant expansion and boasts more than 200 stores. Here in SoCal, it has something of a cult following that includes the high and mighty (Hollywood stars and politicians) and most everyone else.

What is Trader Joe's secret? Interesting, delicious and generally-natural products at reasonable prices certainly play a role. Yet I think it is the Trader Joe's experience that is the heart of its success—an experience that suggests lessons for Web UX. A few observations from my semi-weekly visit yesterday:

• There are always new discoveries at Trader Joe's. Despite a popular mailed circular (more on that in a minute), you never know what new items you'll find on the shelves. While there are a few dash-in-and-out shoppers, most linger in the aisles, scanning the shelves for newly-introduced treats. TJ's knows that people love the thrill of discovery and so they maximize the possibilities.



• Shoppers have instant access to TJ's people.They're always on the sales floor. There's usually a person (the "Helmsperson") solely dedicated to answering questions—but you can ask anyone anywhere for help. They'll drop everything and take you directly to what you're looking for, chatting all the way. (There are no curt "Aisle four" answers at Trader Joe's.) Checkers always ask if you found what you needed—and routinely encourage shoppers to add items at the last second. Managers (they're called "Captains" and "First Mates") aren't hidden away in an office; they're in an open booth that's the nerve center of the store. It's all about the personal touch at TJ's.



• Trader Joe's has mastered the skill of great communication. This is part of its mission: "to bring our customers the best food and beverage values and the information to make informed buying decisions."
  
  It begins with the monthly postal circular, The Fearless Flyer. Originally written by (now-retired) Joe himself, the Flyer is a folksy, even hokey, newsletter chockfull of information about products old and new. It still looks like it did 20 years ago—a hastily-assembled pastiche with bold hand-drawn circles and the ubiquitous Victorian illustrations enhanced with quippy speech balloons. (This carries over on the TJ's Web site.) Products get a paragraph or two explaining their origins, ingredients and suggested uses.
  
  This continues in the store with the famous blackboards—ornately done in colored chalks—that describe featured products. Most stores have small kitchens where chefs whip up samples and give away recipes. Every "Crew Member" is ready to tell you stories about new products, personal favorites and serving ideas. Indeed, TJ's describes itself as a "store of stories." How's that for understanding the importance of narrative?



• Then there's the Trader Joe's style. It's down-home and quirky. Employees wear Hawaiian shirts and T-shirts. Many (most?) are offbeat sorts and always personable. Each store employs a "sign artist" who creates shelf tags and those great blackboards. TJ's pokes fun at itself and enjoys a good pun. Old-fashioned neighborhood contests are common—best holiday pet photo, coloring contests for kids, treasure hunts in the store. In short, Trader Joe's is unpretentious and welcoming.

I won't belabor the point that TJ's success comes from understanding the needs and wishes of its shoppers—and using that knowledge to profoundly shape a UXCentric experience. It's something many Web sites need to learn.

Boost Your Brain

I just tried out Brainboost, which bills itself as an "answer engine" rather than a search engine. The site explains,

What that means is that Brainboost actually finds answers to your questions posed in plain English as opposed to directing you to pages that simply mention the questions. Brainboost, Using the AnswerRank^TM system, intelligently reads hundreds of web pages derived from search results and extracts just the short and concise answer to your question, saving you time.

Skeptical as I am about these things, I posed my usual test question, "Who is Thaddeus Lowe?" (Lowe was a 19th century American inventor and entrepreneur.) In just a few seconds, Brainboost listed a dozen answers/sites, each with the URL, link and excerpt. A "Read More" link opens an inline scrollable window of the corresponding site for a quick look at the answer in context. "Regular Search Results" (i.e., a list of links) appear at the bottom of the page

Brainboost answered other questions ("What is the melting point of iron?") with similar aplomb, although it stumbled when I asked it convert a Celsius temperature to Fahrenheit. And it seems to do best with cut-and-dried factual information—the kind typically found in an encyclopedia or almanac. For example, when I asked "What is user experience?" Brainboost failed to provide a definition, instead offering a disappointing list of numerous text excerpts from books and sites no more useful than typical search results. (To be fair, Google also failed with a "define:user experience" query.)

Even so, with its quick responses to natural language queries, Brainboost is a pleasant step in the direction of search engines that are more UXCentric.

Via ResearchBuzz

UXCentricity: A Matter of Life and Death

In many arenas, UXCentricity—while essential—is not an absolute requirement. Although not ideal, many sites and applications can (and do) skate by with user-centered design that ranges from minimal to good.

That just ain't true for medical systems, where poor UXCentricity can result in injury or death. Today's New York Times reports on research that questions whether information technology is ready to transform healthcare. (Registration required; read it before it disappears into the maw of the pay archive.) I added italics for emphasis.

One paper, based on a lengthy study at a large teaching hospital, found 22 ways that a computer system for physicians could increase the risk of medication errors. Most of these problems, the authors said, were created by poorly designed software that too often ignored how doctors and nurses actually work in a hospital setting.

The likelihood of errors was increased, the paper stated, because information on patients' medications was scattered in different places in the computer system. To find a single patient's medications, the researchers found, a doctor might have to browse through up to 20 screens of information.

Among the potential causes of errors they listed were patient names' being grouped together confusingly in tiny print, drug dosages that seem arbitrary and computer crashes.

"These systems force people to wrap themselves around the technology like a pretzel instead of making sure the technology is responsive to the people doing the work," said Ross J. Koppel, the principal author of the medical journal's article on the weaknesses of computerized systems for ordering drugs and tests... "These computer systems hold great promise, but they also introduce a stunning number of faults."

Even proponents of increased IT in medicine admitted that the studies raised good points, while contending that newer systems were more "in tune with the work."

To me, this suggests that the first developers to produce UXCentric medical systems specifically designed around the ways doctors and nurses actually work could dominate the market—and save lives in the process.

Users Kicking Ass

Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users hits the nail on the head with her brilliant post, Can you have too much ease-of-use? Kathy's answer—and I wholly agree—is yes, indeed, you can make things too easy. People find value in things that provide continuous challenge. Accomplishment and constant growth is the root of passion. Kathy sums it up like this:

[G]ive your users an "I kick ass" experience, and you'll greatly increase the chances that they'll become passionate.

Users kicking ass. I love it! A child jumping and dancing around the room after conquering a once-insurmountable challenge on your site's game. A technophobic adult basking in the success of posting the family's vacation photos online for the first time. An administrative assistant successfully arranging the boss' intricate travel plans at the last minute. They all kick ass. They all feel alive. They will all visit your site again. Enthusiastically.

It's more than just elation. We're hard-wired for continuous challenge. It's in our DNA. It accounts for our survival as a species. It may very well be our greatest asset but is easily forgotten in the cushy life of the developed world. No wonder Xtreme sports are the rage; we've got to go to the edges to satisfy our innate need for challenge.

Overcoming continuous challenge is the human condition. It's rooted in our souls and spirits. Look at the great myths and stories of our world. Joseph Campbell demonstrates that they take a similar form—the Hero's Journey, a constant struggle against ever-greater adversity that results in personal transformation. Or take George Leonard's invaluable Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fullfillment with its emphasis on journey, perseverance, surrender and transformation.

Usability, a readily-grasped information architecture, intuitive interaction design, attractive visual design—these are prerequisites to adequate user experiences, but on their own will never produce the passion arising from a great UX. Taken to an extreme, they can even diminish or destroy the experiences users seek.

We do our users (and ourselves) a disservice when we assume that a powerful UX is the result of technique, of the application of certain principles and practices. That's where we are today. Check out Amazon's listing of books on Web usability and Web user experience. Nearly 50 books (many of them outstanding), yet not one explores the inner world of UX—the psychological and spiritual, the depths of the heart where passion is born, where experience is fully felt.

We're still in the infancy of Web UX. Does that get your passion burning?

Googlecentric, not UXCentric

In his (righteously thumbs-down) review of the Google toolbar's Autolink, Doc Searls writes,

Google's consumers pay nothing. Google consumers are very much, in this respect, like commercial broadcasting's consumers: powerless. They can't say "I'll take my business elsewhere," because they have no business to take.

Usage, maybe. But not business.

Google is, no doubt, completely revolutionizing the advertising business. But they have a lot of work to do on the other side of the consumer/customer split. They need to start treating consumers as customers. They need to see that markets are not just conversations, but relationships as well.

Google began as a "power to the people," UXCentric tool. But as its financial juggernaut gains speed, Google seems to be losing its focus a bit. Let's hope it's just a momentary aberration.

Serendipity and Grace

Chris Locke—one of the Cluetrainers, the Gonzo Marketer, RageBoy and, not least of all, Chief Blogging Officer—is doing some amazing writing lately.

Consider this quote from his recent search, serendipity and bricolage:

So there's search. But there are various kinds of search, and some of these "kinds" are more unalike than they are similar. That's part of the challenge of searching. Figuring out what you're looking for, and whether the things you turn up are really things-of-a-kind. Or not. But you can't know until you find them, and you wouldn't be searching if you already knew where they were. Am I right, Dude? This is where serendipity comes into it. The happy accident, the stochastic glitch, the cybernetic analog of grace. That changes your direction. Sometimes changes your life. But let's not get too heavy too soon. We're talking about search.

Oh man, "the cybernetic analog of grace!" The CBO can really turn a phrase—and he's dead right on. It's exactly what I asked earlier about doing a Leonardo. By striving for the findable and usable Web are we squeezing the serendipity, the accident, the grace right out of the Internet?

While reflecting on the above, I began Locke's next post, how hypertext works, when a familiar name appeared: David E. Rogers. Whoa, I thought, struck by the serendipity of the CBO himself quoting me.

So what's the big deal? I'll tell you. I might not be writing this were it not for the "cybernetic analog of grace" that led me to the original Webbed Cluetrain Manifesto, a work that so fired my imagination that it launched me into UXCentrism. Would a purely findable and usable Web have done the same? I think not.

Swiss Army Knife Searching

Take a look at Nextaris, a new free (and subscription) tool that bills itself as "an all- in-one set of web-based tools for searching the Web, capturing content, saving/sharing files, publishing blogs, messaging and networking." Look here for more details.

At first glance, I was reminded a bit of Copernic Agent's ability to save searches in folders, but Nextaris buffs this up with a Web interface and the addition of buzzy tools like blogs, file- and photo-sharing. What is sadly lacking is the ability to tag Web pages and photos (although you can add comments). Even so, Nextaris is an interesting concept.

Via ResourceShelf.

Branding and UXCentricity

Although branding was officially declared dead some time ago (and by some folks I respect), I have to disagree.

Sort of.

If by "branding" you mean traditional, top-down, manipulative, disrespectful attempts to pound a perception of a company into the minds and hearts of "consumers," I wholly agree. The Brand is Dead. And none too soon.

Traditional branding is well-named. You chase down and lasso a baby cow and yank it off its feet with an exuberant Yee-haw! You drag it—squawling for its mother—to a firepit where irons are heating to red-hot extremes. While a couple of cowpoke colleagues hold the calf down, you forcefully apply an iron to its hide, blinking your eyes through the resulting smoke, aromatic of burned flesh. Once you're certain the calf is scarred for life, you restore its freedom.

That's broadcast branding. And if it's not dead yet, it's well on its way. The cattle have rebelled—not under a cry of "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité" but "Markets are conversations."

Listen up, traditional branders. We end-users can no longer be herded like cattle by the cowboys of commercials and print ads. Commercial sponsorship is just a bleached skull in the desert. We don't notice fancy logos and clever corporate names any more than cows notice the glories of the Painted Desert. Pay your millions to the agencies and broadcasters, but know (and despair) that we see through you. You have no clothes.

If you want our hearts, our minds, our loyalties, our enthusiasm, our dollars, you'd better treat us well in every encounter we have with you. Every one. No exceptions. Slack off for a moment and we're gone. We call the shots now. It's all about us.

We've inaugurated a UXCentric world, one based on the totality of our interactions with and responses to your business, product or service in any and every medium.

If branding is to survive in this new world, it has to become UXCentric. It has to begin and end from the perspective of end-users—not the fertile minds of the creative staff in an ivory tower. It must at least address the needs and wants of users—not just corporate goals for profitability and growth. And (the biggest challenge of all) it requires satisfying the intangible and even unconscious goals and aspirations of end-users.

I don't think traditional marketers are up to the task. But UXCentrists are.

Friday Favorite: ResourceShelf

I'm of the opinion that you can never have enough information about your users. Research to your best ability, but there's always more to discover—and much of it from unexpected sources.

Like ResourceShelf, a blog compiled and edited by Gary Price, a librarian, information research consultant, and writer based in suburban Washington D.C.

Each day, Gary posts links to outstanding online information in such categories as "Resources, Reports, Tools, Lists and Full Text Documents," "Professional Reading Shelf" (mainly of interest to librarians) and "Web Search Briefs." You never know what kind of resource Gary will find and post—and that's part of the magic of ResourceShelf. Selected UXCentric links from the last week include:

• The New York Times' guidelines for "Ethical Journalism" (a PDF). Food for thought if you're a journalistic blogger.


• A report on the credibility of major travel sites (another PDF).


• BlogBib, an annotated bibliography on Weblogs and blogging compiled by a librarian.

A report on Internet access in U.S. public schools, 1994-2003.

• A collection of facts about women, prepared by the U.S. Census.


• A free ebook by EDUCAUSE on educating the "Net Generation."

And that's just from this week! You can sign up for a weekly newsletter, but grab the feed instead for a daily fix.

The Question and Ducklings

Ah, "The Question." You UXCentrics know which one I mean. You're in a meeting with a Client talking about great UX and UCD and enthusiasm rises. And someone asks, "Could you give us a list of sites with great user experience?"

I don't like The Question. Not because there aren't any outstanding sites to mention, but because it can suck the creativity out of a team. Great examples of UXCentricity are not a panacea to what's ailing a design team. They're not even a good source for great ideas. The best ideas come from within—from a project team obsessed with their own users. Other sites are for other users. Why look there for answers?

The Question has a subtle undercurrent: If a site is successful (say an Amazon or Yahoo!), it's often assumed that the UI and UX is superb. I beg to differ. I'm a big Amazon customer and I'm reasonably pleased with SBC Yahoo!—but I don't see these as paragons of UXCentricity. Those sites are successful for other reasons than UX.

Which leads to another corollary of The Question: "If people are used to Amazon, Yahoo! and so on, shouldn't we adopt a similar UI and UX?" This raises the spectre of emerging de facto standards—"best" practices created not by interaction designers consumed with meeting the needs of their site's audience, but by popularity. This—in the immortal words of a wise end-user I once met—expects tool users to be tool makers. Choosing to design a site a certain way because users are "used" to it elsewhere is abrogating your responsibilities as a designer, your responsibilities to your specific audience. And it slams the door in the face of potentially groundbreaking innovation.

I was reminded of this today when reading Peter Seebach's latest Cranky User column at IBM developerWorks where he discusses the baby duck syndrome—"what happens when users judge new and upcoming systems by comparing them with the first system they learned. This means that users generally prefer systems similar to those they learned on and dislike unfamiliar systems." A choice quote:

This leaves vendors with a serious problem. If you preserve interface compatibility for a long time, users are comfortable, but you end up stuck with an interface which may not be quite as eye-catching as you'd like. (The question of actual usability, it seems, has been completely ignored by the major players in the field for some years.) On the other hand, if you change it significantly, you give all your users a chance to stop and think whether, now that they have to learn how to use the computer all over again, they'd rather learn to use yours or someone else's.

Yes, baby ducks must follow their mommy ducks in order to survive. But there comes a time in every duck's (and user's) life when it's time to grow up and discover the wonderful delights of the big world around them.

In No Particular Order

Sheesh. I'm out of the office for a few days and it takes hours to catch up with doings in the UXCentricverse. Remember the days when it was difficult to find much of anything on the subject?

I could post eloquent on each of these, but in the interest of time, we'll just bullet-list them:

• Luke Wroblewski offers a fine list of UX diagrams. Some (JJG) you've seen; others you haven't. Collect them all!


• Rashmi Sinha discusses "tag sorting"— the use of Flickr and del.ico.us tags as a method of freelisting. This got me thinking: How else can tags provide insight into internal user taxonomies?


• D. Keith Robinson discusses ways to uncomplicate the Web. How long will we keep repeating the same guidelines before we actually pay attention?


• Do you feel a draft? Does the UXCentric campus feel a bit empty? That's because everyone has gone to the IA Summit in Montreal.

Meanwhile, I had a great time doing some guerilla usability consulting with Karon Weber (now on her own, but toting cool hashmarks from Xerox PARC and Pixar) for a company with a very WOW! product. It was something of a daylong sprint and UXCentric to the extreme. Sweet.