Event notes: Obsession - Finding the sympathetic heart of design

Obsession: Finding the sympathetic heart of design - Tom Brinck Creative Director, A9.com
08/09/06: Presentation (16 MB)

**photos for the event can be found in this flickr set**

This event was co-sponsored by the Michigan UPA.

Jack highlighted upcoming events for MOCHI:
- Joyce Chai, from MSU (probably September 14th - a Thursday)
- Peter Weinstein, from Altarum

Dave M-R highlighted the next events for UPA:
- Wed. August 16th: A survey of UI prototyping tools (Brian Phelps, 6 - 8pm, Quicken Loans, Livonia, MI
- World usability day, on Nov. 14th, in Lansing at MSU. Students are highly encouraged to participate in the student poster session being held this year.

Tim Kiernan gave a nice introduction to Tom:

Tom's presentation:
- talk's about a chapter in the 2nd Ed of usability for the web book
- user experience = difficulty in tying down the definition
- Starting off with example of Google:
-- extremely simple UI that accounts for its success
-- it actually works and does what people need
-- there's an aesthetic towards google
-- Tom launches into a design walkthrough of the google UI
-- little nuances to the UI of the google search engine

Why do people love some really ugly websites?
- parallel with why do ugly men have really pretty girlfriends
-- answer = personality
-- this is actually what the talk's about

e.g.. 2 Slashdot
- another example of a really ugly website
- but figured out who their audience was and catered to them by letting them "geek out"
-- letting people geek out about what their "obsession" is

e.g.. 3 craigslist
- didn't dwell on this eg too much

Bigger moral problem:
Why do people love sites and software that are really confusing and hard to use?
e.g.. 4 ebay
- usability problem = search for ipod nano but doesn't get what he's looking for
- as usability specialists: what good are we when we create hard to use sites that are still nonetheless popular
- serving a need and being really popular = question of how you are defining usability
-- tom defines usability in the broadest sense before
--

Usefulness & user experience
- people love what is useful, engaging and desirable
- people love what they love

e.g.. 5 iPhoto
- v1.0 was incredibly frustrating
- product has evolved since but tom is still using v1.0

Sympathetic heart of design
concept
connects:
- business needs
- brand and marketing
- user needs

Best word to describe this is "fit"
- matching what your audience wants and needs
- other synonyms: relevance, trust, culture

e.g.. 6 Michigan Ross Campaign site
- nice design
- doesn't answer questions about who it's targeted at and what do the labels mean
- e.g. of well-designed site that doesn't do what it needs to

e.g.. 7 vehix.com
- commercials really are not compelling. No one present in the audience has been to the site

e.g.. 8 1st national back weather cam
- banks used to ask diamond bullet to turn them into portals
- nobody goes to bank websites to find the weather
- banks have a problem of not having a login on the home-page
-- because login on a separate secure server
-- something that the banks needed to solve

e.g..9 answering service
- capture the problem
-- young designer at diamond bullet hit on the idea of capturing the problem visually

avoid boilerplate design
- don't have to have all pages in the site that look the same
- no inconsistent but what to have a clear message communicated in each page

e.g.. 10 PD trials
- site succeeded
- not the most beautiful design
- every element speaks out to the audience for i
- repeat users really want to see new additions to the site

e.g.. 11 coke.com
- tom never liked coke sites
- but they have very beautifully laid out pages
- however what was delivered i the site were cartoons and short films
question from jack = is it for user experience for geeks or for generating advertising to create new geeks

Rod Lowe: "usability is like safe sex it's codes of law rather than a focus on enhancement of experience."
- desirability has always been an important part of design
- some people may talk about usability as abstinence
-- usability as about rules rather then about excitement/

good concepts don't have to be ugly
e.g.. 12 world of warcraft
- 6m active users
- tuned for addictive play
- put in so much effort to make every refinement possible
- personalization and choice
- user ownership

e.g.. 13 neopets

e.g.. 14 comic life
- the coolest thing since sliced bread
- the interface is really fun

brands about user experience
e.g.. 15 ipod
- all about the user experience
- apple has built a user experience in the sense that they have a unified an easy to use system that surrounds the ipod
- Tom thinks that it's because people love to geek out on their music
- focus on "playing with my music"
- people can ignore everything but their music
- hitting on psychology of people = obsessive compulsive behavior
- most of these sites are about capturing obsessive compulsiveness in human nature
- e.g.. of blogs = people ill get obsessed about whether people have replied to their comments

e.g.. 16 starbucks
- starbuck's 3rd place
- strategy to create this third place
- there because there's comfy chairs and mood lighting
- about you having your own coffee

eg. 17 levis
- consistent effect of fit and wash
- built into giving consistency

tying this into web 2.0
- intro to what web 2.0 is by highlighting some of the buzzwords associated with web 2.0

e.g.. 18 friendster
- things that are really succeeding
- let's you connect to friends
- type of people who get on these sites = friend collectors!!!
- collectors are really a focus of this talk
- have tools that encourage this sort of behavior

obsessive properties of web 2.0
- social
-- connect to friends
-- share your data
-- find people like you
- collecting and organizing

e.g.. 19 wikipedia

design in this context is about having a social/cultural dialogue with your end-user community = creating, refining and evolving ideas

e.g.. 20 library thing
- tom's fave thing
- caters to book geeks, allows them to catalogue their libraries
- get to play with collection = rate them, sort theme, have graphs that display trends and allows visualizations of other and like-minded people
- fits all ideas of personalization, socialization and simplicity
- library thing = extremely usable
-- things respond very quickly
-- facilitates people's obsessive behavior

e.g.. 21 del.icio.us

e.g.. 22 flickr

e.g.. 23 youtube

Values and meanings at a deeper level
- "fit" and taoism
- virtue of being like "uncut wood"
-- true to himself, unpresumptious
- web 2.0 things are like that = open to experience and adapts to what happens
- designs that have no pretensions
reflecting passion for the topic and the user
- socially constructed knowledge
-- empty vessel and letting knowledge come to you = wiki
- perpetual beta
-- idea that things are not final and work
-- everything's beta
-- never call it done = always evaluating and asking user feedback

wabi sabi
- quiet or understated elegance
- pottery that sense the making = shows wear and tear and becomes a part of its environment
- inevitability = core to today's topic
-- when look at the pottery = thing is beautiful
-- imperfection has to be natural and has to come from the construction itself
-- the final design has to be = "i could not imagine that in any other way"
-- this inevitability is what tom is looking for in all design

Peter Boersma diagram for wabi sabi in user experience design

User experience is misused
- creating values in the design that are deceitful and encouraging the wrong values

How do we get a good concept with a good fit?
- by demanding high design standards
- renaissance and enlightenment values in design
- artisanship
- rational approach = metric
- focus on building a better world

PC boards esthetics:
- steve jobs " a great carpenter is not going to use lousy wood, even if its for the back of the cabinet"

how to uncover a concept:
- business needs
-- have a focussed idea of what you're trying to say
- background research
-- competitive analysis
-- user interviews
-- read books
- field research, contextual inquiry
-- know everything about your audience
-- e.g. of 30 days
-- go out and learn about the people in a way that you just cannot get information in any other way
- creativity
-- how do people come up with great ideas
-- book: how to get ideas
--- skill
--- productivity
--- risk-taking
- to find the idea that really hits the nail on the head:
-- work really hard and think!
-- not reflected in the design process
- when you have the idea down:
-- optimize
-- every element should be designed
- how do you know you've got it:
-- some group of people has to totally dig it
-- final design should feel inevitable
-- users should not imagine that it could have been other way

MOCHi & UPA presented a token of appreciation for Tom's talk

Q&A:
- recurring theme: sharing books on library thing
-- not entirely about sharing
-- some people are geeking out without having been contributors
-- various people can play different social roles

- perplexed about the tension between usability and utility
-- was there something new in what tom has been saying
-- summary = utility is crucial without it usability won't matter
-- best designs have utility and usability
-- much like chris alexander's pattern language = the quality without a name
-- ugly websites give you trust = true to their core values and not trying to be everything

- comment on renaissance and enlightenment
-- tie in with web 2.0 = not deterministic
-- balance between form and ongoing creation