Why Structure is the Secret Weapon of Great Design Teams

So you're sitting at your desk in the morning addressing some leftover emails from last night when a message pops up that you're needed in the main conference room. A major client opportunity has come up and the Design team has been asked to whip up some creative concepts. You head to the conference room, sit down with your fellow creatives and the brainstorm begins. After a couple hours of tossing ideas around, the whiteboard is full of ink, including a great sketch of a user journey and a list of a few potentially killer concepts. The meeting ends with you agreeing to document the ideas with the help of some rendered storyboards from one of the better artists in the group. The team will have the new concepts ready for review by the end of the week. Design has delivered. 

This is the model that exists in so many organizations, and it can work just fine. Creatives free of soul-dampening process, temporarily unhindered by reminders of budgetary and technical limits, creating wildly divergent solutions for their less creative counterparts to develop.  

The underlying wisdom is (1) unstructured creative "magic" generates ideas, and then (2) structured engineering process makes the idea of a reality. As far as creating great products, however, it is completely flawed.

The reality is that an unstructured creative process (I'm talking more idea generation than detailed UX design) bounces randomly around the problem and solution spaces, undoubtedly spending too much time on some aspects while accidentally ignoring others. This random approach MAY result in a great outcome, but it's not efficient or reliable as a process.

5 Reasons Why You Need More Creative Structure

1. Trust
If you're a designer, I'm sorry to tell you this but your co-workers don't trust you. They have process and structure. You have whiteboards and brainstorms. They're quantitatively-driven, and you're.... not. By cloaking the creative process and being exclusive, you're creating an unknown that will lead to an uneasiness from people who are not familiar with it. If you want to establish credibility with non-creatives in your organization, you need to have a transparent creative process with a level of rigor that is understood by roles which are traditionally more structured and process-oriented. Otherwise, your work is just "magic" and it will never really be trusted. Sure, you might maintain some of the mystique of being an exclusive design department, and you may generate some fantastic design concepts, but the influence of those concepts will never be fully realized without a considerable level of trust in how they were created. 


2. Ideas
An odd relationship exists between structure and creativity. Bad structure can create a negative environment where brainstorms become more about avoiding constraints than achieving optimal solutions. Good structure can provide a "creative scaffolding" where problems can be more fully understood and the full range of solutions can be explored more effectively. Good structure can also present people with a creative tension that spurs new ways of thinking about problems or generates unexpected solutions. I'm going to focus on the "how" much more in my next post, but an example would be the creation of User Journeys where designers must think through the entire time scale from the initial touchpoint through conclusion. This method promotes a more holistic and comprehensive perspective, which can often reveal unexpected needs or opportunities.
For methods of pure idea creation, check out Dave Gray's "Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers" for ideas for creativity-generating games:



3. Communication
A standalone idea is really just an opinion and it is at risk of misinterpretation  When you have a good process however, it is much easier to strengthen your ideas along with the thinking that led to them. For example, I like to define and share the intent behind every design decision. Something like "To make it easy for users to find what they're looking for by providing a Search box". User Journeys are also good at this with their "User Need State" phrases at each step. Verbal statements like these provide a good complement to any visual design, and the combination of the two provide a great talking point. It's the "why" behind the design decision that promotes understanding and acts as a catalyst for conversation.

Well communicated ideas also have a better chance of standing unscathed throughout the product development process. If communicated with intent and reasoning and explanation, design ideas will be more likely understood by the people who are responsible for implementing them. 



4. Product
In my thesis work last year, I discovered that one of the key factors in the success of a company's design strategy was in their ability to take a holistic approach. By this I mean that they clearly considered the entire continuum of their customer touchpoints and developed cohesive product ecocsystems to support them. Designing like this requires a different set of techniques from the earliest ideation stages. It requires a creative framework that is set up for generating ideas across a range of expected user states. The end result should be a series of complementary ideas that form together to create better products and services.

5. Repetition
I recently read the Lean Startup. It took me a while to get around to it becuase I made some incorrect assumptions. I assumed that it was basically "Design Thinking for Startups": rush quickly to a minimum viable product, learn from it, and then iterate. Then I read it and realized that it was much more structured than this. Eric Ries was espousing for scientific rigor in the product development process because it allows for learning and advancement. This is where it separates from Design Thinking. Instead of just being a Way of Thinking, it was a Way of Acting. That's a big distinction.
The benefit of a Way of Acting is that it can be learned, it can be refined, and it can be repeated. The design process should not be an exception to this. Systematic creativity is entirely possible.


Conclusion
To summarize, I believe that design teams would benefit from a more systematic approach to their creative process as it leads to better ideas and a greater chance of realizing those ideas. In the next post, I would like to get into some specific techniques for structured creativity. In the meantime, I would love to hear what has and hasn't worked for you in terms of structuring your creative process. Comment here or fire me an email at toddreily@gmail.com. 

Examining the Google Glass #ifihadglass Campaign

Google recently launched a brilliant user research campaign to coincide with their latest annoucements surrounding Google Glass. The campaign asked people to post what they would use Google Glass for if they had one, offering the incentive of the product for the producers of the best ideas. Participants are asked to tag posts on Twitter or Google+ with #ifihadglass.

Of course, the campaign's benefits are numerous, as it solicited ideas from potential customers, generated viral buzz for their product, and took a pulse of their customer perceptions. This final point is what I found to be most interesting. What I was curious about is how people perceive Google Glass, and smart glasses in general. Are they perceived primarily to be an assistance tool that will help you be smarter in your daily life or are they really a recording device for sharing or revisiting your experiences? Of course, smart glasses can and will do all of the above, but what jumps out off as the "I gotta have that!" feature for people?

I decided to leverage Google's #ifihadglass" campaign to attempt to answer this question (Full disclosure: I design user experiences for APX Labs, creators of a smart glasses software platform - check out our latest product video here).  We certainly could have run this study on our own but there is no way to match Google's exposure at this moment, and frankly, this is a faster route to the same answers. After all, we are just talking about perceptions of the tool from people who have not only never used the product, but never used anything like it. Nonetheless, first impressions of what a product IS and what it's FOR can be an interesting data point.

My research plan wasn't particularly rigorous as I don't believe in being overly quantitative when evaluating highly speculative and qualitative feedback. I decided to find and capture 100 #ifihadglass tweets at random that were posted from Feb 22-25 and mark them across a handful of categories. I ignored posts that were clearly jokes or self-promotional. I put the selected posts into a spreadsheet and marked a "1" in each of the relevant categories. The categories were as follows: "Tool" (Input Device), "Capture" (Output/Documentation), and "Share" (Output/Broadcast). If the tweet was about someone wanting to use Glass to help them do their job, for instance, they would get a 1 in the Tool category. If they wanted to use it to document thier kid's life, they would get a mark in the Capture category. If they wanted share their travel experiences, they would get a 1 in the Share category. (Spoiler alert: This final example was by far the most common response.)

Before evaluating the tweets, I also checked the "How It Feels" product video for Glass to see how people may have been influenced in their thinking before submitting thier response. Turns out that Google was pretty balanced, demonstrating 8 scenes where Glass is shown as an Input device, 4 scenes where it is a Capturing device, and 7 scenes where it is a Sharing device. They also feature 7 scenes where there is no UI whatsoever (which was a clever decision by their video designers in my opinion)
So what are the results? Of the 100 #ifihadglass responses that I captured, there were 50 instances of it being percieved as a Sharing device, 39 as an Input device and 15 of it as a Capturing Device (remember that posts could register in multiple categories).

So Glass was primarily perceived as a Sharing device, a theme that appeared in exactly half of the responses. The "share my life/travels/city/job/experiences theme was without a doubt, the most common pattern seen. Again, this is just a perception of how someone would use these, but it's worth noting that the initial response was along the lines of "I want this product so I can share what I do". The self-promotion theme certainly aligns with prevalent trends of today's social tools, where Likes and Follows equate to people feeling self-worth and "mini-fame".

The "Input" responses were not too far behind at 39. Common themes here revolved around the ability to have information readily searchable (e.g. recipes, directions) or have information pro-actively presented in the field of view (e.g. people's names). Finally the "Capture" category got the least hits at only 15. This primarily revolved around people wanting to capture their life/travels/kids for their own purposes.

These results led me to measure an additional comparison, which was people's perception of whether or not this was a device for leisure and entertainment or something much more practical. Of course, people are going to gravitate towards the fun aspect of a product more than mundane one when describing what they would do with it, especially when the Glass promotional video was all about jumping out of planes and flying on trampezes. Nonetheless, it was worth taking this pulse as well. It turns out that 72% of the participants responded that they would use the device for enjoyment purposes while 27% wanted to use it for practical reasons.

The takeaway? Based on Google's communication of their Google Glass product, and based on the current context of the technology world, people are likely perceiving Google Glass as a device for sharing life's moments.... but the question remains, will anyone want to watch those moments?  It will be very interesting to see how actual behavior patterns match up against this predicted behavior.

Is this what you expected? write me with your input! More to come..

10 Important Reminders When Creating Products for People

Every company that makes things or does things for people has the same goal. To get as much money as possible from the people in return for those things. It's amazing how much we over-complicate this some times. But what do what do the people actually want? Even more amazing than our tendancy to over-complicate the formula is to forget that the people have a choice. Throughout my years as a consultant (I'm now back at a product company), I was amazed by the amount of consumer-facing companies that failed to understand their customers and what they actually wanted. They just went about their business, producing thier things, and trying to convince the world of why they should turn over their hard-earned money to get them.

I shouldn't complain or point fingers, because frankly, figuring out what people want is really hard to do. I have a background in Engineering Pscychology, over a decade of experience as a human-centered designer/consultant/director, practically obsess over this goal, and I still find it extremely challenging. Yet, here's the deal.. it's not magic. ANYONE can learn how to better understand thier customers and their needs. ANYONE can get inside the head of a customer to get a better sense of their motivations, frustrations, and biases. This is not just a job for creatives and designers. Everyone on a product team can make better decisions in their job, from business-minded leadership to entry level product engineers, if they have a richer understanding of their customer.

Making the effort to truly understand your customers is worth it. Without a doubt. Competitive analysis might tell you what core features you need to have, but how will you ever separate from the pack doing that? Making the effort to understand the underlying mindset and the behavioral tendencies of your customers will give you some ability to predict what they will and won't want. For instance, good research could tell you that your customers value simplicity over extra features (which they probably do) and high performance over reliability (which they probably don't). Having insights like this can lead to market-changing product ideas, sure, but also just leads to better decision-making throughout the entire product development process.


1. Someone else solved this problem.
Believe your challenge is unique? It's probably not. Abstract the technology or specific domain out of your challenge. Write a simple statement that describes what you're trying to do for people (e.g. "Help people make better purchase decisions"). Then, go find other products or industries that have done this successfully. Learn from them and adapt the best insights.


2. Stop predicting. Start learning.
As much as you research, plan, and discuss your product, you can't predict the future and you have very little idea of how customers are going to react to your product. You're better off getting something in front of users quickly, learn from it, and improve. This is the Lean movement makes sense in the uncertainty of the startup world. It's why IDEO is so bullish on prototyping.

3. Be like Michelangelo.
When asked about how he created his masterpiece, Michelangelo said that all he had to do was "remove all that was not David from the stone". The takeaway? Learning how to subtract unnecessary or unwanted features (and avoiding the temptations of addition) is one of the best paths towards creating a great user experience.

4. Walk in their shoes.
The best insights about users often comes from first-hand experience. If you don't have experience that relates to your user, find a way to come as close as possible. Recreate their environment in an empty lab. If you can, do a bit of ethnographic research by going onsite and just observing them for a whole day with no interruption. You'll be amazed what kind of insights you come away with when you see what their life is really like.

5. Beware the Curse of Knowledge.
You're living this product every day. You have insider knowledge of the technology, awareness of its faults, and you understand the intention behind its design. Because of this, it will be easy to forget what it's like to look at your product with fresh eyes and no preconceptions. Keep yourself honest by constantly showing your ideas to outsiders and seeing how they react. Read the early chapters of Chip and Dan Heath's Made to Stick for more information on The Curse of Knowledge. http://www.amazon.com/Made-Stick-Ideas-Survive-Others/dp/1400064287

6. Ask why... then ask why again.
Intention is the single most important aspect of the design process (to the point where I'm likely writing a book about it). Every feature, every decision, every step should have a "why" behind it that draws back to some human-oriented purpose. If you're questioning the existence of a feature, just keep asking why until you get to the core purpose. If you don't have one, you have more learning to do or you need to cross the feature off the list.

7. You have no clue.
The design process walks a fine line between humility and pride. You need to remember that your ideas or your design can always be better. Feedback, both positive and negative, will help you on the path to a better product. Always question the quality of your design, but have the confidence that you'll get it right. It's a tricky balance but its the only way.

8. Remember the time
It's easy to get tricked into focusing only on the time when someone is using your product. Thinking about your users across a timeline can be an incredibly valuable exercise as it will reveal insights and opportunities. What are your users doing before using your product? What about immediately after? What are they doing most frequently? This last one is particularly important as frequent actions and critical actions are almost never the same, and products should be designed for frequency.

9. Know your surroundings
Your user is not interacting with your product in isolation. Be aware of other products or services or environmental conditions are likely affecting them. Whoever designed my cable box clearly forgot that people have TV's in their bedroom as they decided that bright white LED lights were acceptable, even when the unit is turned off. I had to hack a cover out of a matchbox and I walk across the room and put it on the cable box every night in order for my wife and I to sleep. Not exactly a hardship, but does that sound like something a person does in 2013?

10. People are people
There's a trap that companies often into when it comes to creating products. If they're developing for a specific class of people, they talk of them as if they're some strange foreign species. For instance, they'll talk of military personnel as order-following, extremely-efficient robots or assume that enterprise users care only about productivity and action items. This is wrong and should be stopped. People are people. I'm all for the creation of personas, defining preferences and tendencies, but people are largely the same - they have preferences, they have flaws, and they just want to get their job done and get back to being regular people.


So what's missing from this list? Please comment or write me at toddreily@gmail.com

5 Reasons Why Augmented Reality is the Future of Social

Social media is getting stale. While its true that Facebook, Twitter, and the also-rans keep us increasingly interconnected, they all follow the same paradigm and the novelty has worn off. The problem is that they provide a user experience that, while constantly connected and updating, is strangely disconnected from how we interact with the real world. The idea of scrolling through a chronological list of pictures and status updates representing real-world activity of our friends while we stare at a monitor or mobile device is frankly disjointed from reality and due for disruption. A more suitable approach would be an environment that is more naturally mapped to the real world and our experience in it. In other words, social media's probable disruption (or evolution) might very well be a collision with augmented reality (AR), a technology paradigm is that is specifically designed for seamless integration of the virtual and natural. If you're not convinced, here are a handful of specific reasons why AR may be the future of social media…

(Quick note #1: If you cringe at the idea of Facebook status messages popping up on your nerdy AR glasses while you're trying to walk down the street, don't worry, because I do too. That's not what this post is about. There are better design solutions, but that's a topic for another time.)

1. AR provides better context 

While today's social tools provide content in a flat list, tomorrow's augmented reality tools will take that list and disperse it across the real world. This will mean that pictures will be discoverable where they were taken and messages will appear with those that sent them or aligned with their subject. The result will be a bridged gap between today's isolated virtual world of social networking and the current physical world. The significance is that context enables completely new meaning and significance. Viewing a friend's photos of their trip to the Italian coast while you sit in your cubicle at work is fine, but discovering those photos while you walk the trails of Cinque Terre would be wild. 

2. AR is immediate 

The level of immediacy of Facebook and Twitter today depend upon how often you reach into your pocket and pull out your mobile device. With AR, the information is simply presented in real time. You can look across your college campus, city block, or office building and literally see the conversation taking place. The experience of sitting in a stadium or walking through a park will completely change as you see friend's messages simply appear as they are shared. 

3. AR enhances your memory

The way that AR would present information would be much closer to how we function naturally in the real world already. As you run into old friends or visit places you've been before, you likely recall the memories associated with them. Memory is contextual and spatial like this - it's distributed throughout the world, full of personal triggers that cue up times from the past. For instance, you may not remember the huge pickup football game you played at the park behind the school until you actually pass by the park behind the school. Of course, our memories are completely flawed, forgetting details or associating events with wrong times or places. AR will facilitate and enhance this natural behavior by automatically distributing cues to information and memories throughout the world. 

4. AR draws from the memories of others

In the early days of Facebook, the immediate present is all that mattered. Anything older was dumped into photo albums or buried behind page links. As the archive built up, so did the need for a better historical view - enter Facebook Timeline. As we continue to provide social content, our collective archives will not only grow in size but quality as well, containing as much high definition video and imagery as Likes and status updates. This rich collective archive of memories will become increasingly interesting, especially as the novelty of mundane status updates wears off (e.g. "I have a cold today…cough cough"). The social AR tool will ditch the idea of burying memories in the timelines of your friends' pages and instead bring the past forward into your current world. Ideas, thoughts, and memories will be scattered about, thus enhancing your present by drawing from the the past others. 

(Quick note #2: As this collective archive builds, expect the emergence of tools (both AR and non-AR) that will help us make better use of if, such as storytelling tools that weave experiences across people, communities, and events or visualization tools that enhance the understanding of the aggregate.)

5. AR encourages real-world social behavior 

The irony of today's social tools is that they promote anti-social behavior. The more we use them, we're interacting more in the virtual world and less in the actual world. AR encourages much different and integrated behavior. By integrating the virtual and the physical, today's walls break down and we're left with an enhanced version of real-world interaction. In the long term, this is better for us on the whole, encourages a world of real human interaction that is simply enhanced by technology, which is the way it is supposed to be. 

11 Design Principles For Augmented Reality

Google officially revealed its "Glass" project to the world at their developer's conference this past week. Glass is a wearable computing product that intends to liberate people from their smartphone and other device obsessions by interacting with digital information through a pair of Google-enabled glasses. Their demo focused on the ability to capture and broadcast what's being seen through the glasses, which is a slight departure from past Glass concept work that showed a more traditional augmented reality display (think: navigation and messages projected on your glasses). No matter the direction that Google eventually goes, wearable computing and augmented reality are clearly back on the public stage. 

Like Google, I've also gone the way of augmented reality. I recently joined the Creative team at APX Labs, an MIT Media Lab sponsor that produces advanced technology solutions in the public and private sector. A/R and wearable computing is a space that APX has established itself in and I hope to make a significant impact in creating a meaningful product experience around it. So, like any disciplined designer, I've created a set of augmented reality design principles to be used for a solid foundation. I've included those principles here and hope you gain value from them if you're working with A/R technologies. 

I'm always open to collaborating or getting feedback, so contact me at todd.reily@apx-labs.com if you're interested. I'm located in the Cambridge Innovation Center as of July 5. 

1. Improve reality, don't just add to it  

No one uses a system because of what it does. They use it because of what it does for them. If someone is going to use an augmented reality system, it must be obvious that it will improve their understanding, their ability to complete a task, or their overall enjoyment in the world. All the bells and whistles of technology are pointless if the personal benefit is not clear. A little trick for getting this right is to simply ask "what am I augmenting?". If you're not directly enhancing memory, perception, or another critical human attribute, then you may be headed down the wrong path. 

2. Be clear and simple 

An effective user interface clearly conveys what you are looking at, what you can do, and how to get back to where you were. Failing to deliver on any of these promises will only lead to feeling of frustration or confusion. You must accept the fact that people will not use your product if it is frustrating, no matter what its technical capabilities and specifications are. Simplicity must be a dominant priority.

3. Be predictable  

More than just simplicity, interfaces must also be highly predictable. What this means is that the interface gives users confidence of what will happen when they interact with it. Achieving this goal requires the consistent adherence to simple yet scalable rules and patterns throughout the interface. Use consistent strategies for organizing, aligning, and ordering interface elements. The end result is a system that is quicker to learn, easier to master, and results in less mistakes. 

4. Protect the field of view at all costs 

Augmented reality systems deal with sacred ground: a person's field of view. Anything that we add to the interface must provide significant benefit to offset the cost of the space that it is taking up. Unlike a standard mobile or web interface where excess clutter can sometimes be ignored, we run the risk of unnecessarily obscuring the line of sight of a user. For this reason, we must maintain strict discipline in avoiding excessive graphics in the field of view of the user. This requires the keen understanding of the priorities of our users, and more importantly, the discipline to remove or demote what is not. 

5. Be natural 

There are de facto standards and common patterns for interacting with objects in this world, whether they are natural or man-made. These standards drive our expectations and give us a foundation for interacting with new objects. Understand the patterns and carefully select the ones that best map to the expectations or mental models of your users. This is particularly critical with augmented reality systems that are introducing completely new paradigms while existing in the context of the natural world. With these systems, the understanding of and adherence to natural human gestures will be critical. 

6. Be invisible 

An effective augmented reality interface should appear to integrate naturally over the reality that it is displayed upon. Doing so will make the interface simply an enhancement upon the real world, instead of an artificial layer. It should be almost invisible. This is a difficult challenge but it requires an understanding of minimization of design elements, usage of proper visual perspective, and perhaps new visual techniques for mapping digital imagery onto the real world. For this reason, static interface elements (i.e. those that are in a fixed position in the user's field of view) should be minimized as they enforce the presence of an artificial layer in front of the user's face. 

7. Speak clearly 

Nothing is more confusing to a user than the failure to understand what is happening with a system that they are interacting with. A lack of feedback related to status, progress, or an error will only lead to frustrated users. Provide simple feedback, either in graphical or textual form (or both), that clearly conveys what has happened or what needs to be done. Remember that users are not engineers, so accurate technical description is less important than describing the simple "bottom line" implications of the status. 

8. Think about the big picture

Most cutting-edge user interface demonstrations provide excessive emphasis on what makes the interface unique and fail to demonstrate how their system integrates into the life of the user. They show off flashy headsets, glasses, and gloves without demonstrating how the user will transition into and out of these peripheral interfaces. Without design of these transitions, these products will never amount to anything more than cool demos. Avoid this trap by thinking holistically your system. In other words, design the ecosystem that surrounds you product and the chances for adoption will dramatically increase. Think through the workflows that will likely occur across interface menus and features and ensure that they are as efficient as possible. More on this topic here.

9. Don't waste color 

Colors in an interface can convey a great deal of meaning. They can highlight, draw attention to an alert, or convey that a feature is disabled. Used correctly, colors can make an interface more effective in its ability to help users complete their task. Conversely, over-abundance of color throughout the interface will only lead to confusion or obscurity of built-in meanings of colors. Sparse usage of color is particularly important in an augmented reality system where the field of view is saturated with an abundance of ever-changing colors. Use color only to draw the attention of the user, not to satisfy a pleasing color palette. 

10. Be social 

Today's technologies are increasingly focused in connecting people, and augmented reality should be no exception. Seek out opportunities to integrate communication, collaboration, and information sharing directly into the product experience. This approach will result in a more valued and seamless user experience and also open up the door for increased user adoption through network effects. 

11. Be flexible

With screen space at a premium, creators of augmented reality systems run the risk of providing an overwhelming product every experience. Forget trying to please everyone. Provide only the core features that you know are critical to the user base, and then enable an appropriate level of flexibility on top of it. Everyone will end up satisfied with their own tailored experience. 

Death of the Digital Document

Question: What does docx stand for?

Answer: I have no idea. I figure that “doc” is short for “document” and I can only assume that the “x” is for “extra”, as in “extra meaningless letters tacked on to my file name for no particular reason that a normal person would actually care about.”

Someday sooner than you think, people are going to laugh at the idea that we used to type strings of letters at the end of document names. I’m not sure why Windows even puts these things into the names of files, let alone allowing you to edit them by default when you’re changing a file name. By building this behavior in, it’s sending the message that “you probably want to change the file extension when you change the name”.  I don’t think I’ve done this more than a couple times in 12 years of professional work. Looking past the extensions, consider how we manage document names. We append endless methods for differentiation, including version numbers, dates, authors, or foolish notes like “latest” or “new” (only to then create a updated version). I’m confident this idea is going away very soon.

Digital documents like those described above are products of an old era. The analogy of individual paper documents filed in paper folders just isn’t necessary anymore. We spend endless hours composing messages and creating graphics that may never be seen or used again outside of their original document. In these documents, we often make points that others have already made and waste time building graphics when others have done it better. Most importantly, potentially meaningful ideas sit dormant, preventing us from making the critical connections that are essential for new idea development. So what’s the better model? Shared documents like Google Docs or Open Office? That’s a step in the right direction, but it’s still just an improved version of an old model.

When everything becomes interconnected, the concept of isolated documents fades away. What takes its place is something more dynamic and evolutionary. Hundreds of millions of us are constantly immersed in a paradigm where pages subscribe to other pages, where views are managed for others to see in real-time as they are updated. It’s an interconnected, user-customized experience and it makes sense. If it didn’t make sense, hundreds of millions of us wouldn’t rely on Facebook for managing our social interactions, look to Twitter for managing our news and happenings, and Pinterest wouldn’t be one of the hottest apps on the market.

This model of dynamic pages and subscriptions has emerged naturally in a human environment where people are free to take technology in any direction they choose. College students, mid-career engineers, and grandmothers all quickly grasp this same model. Sure, some people are more inclined to share personal information than others using the tools, but isn’t that just normal human nature to have varying levels of privacy concerns?

One benefit of this approach is value of controlling your own “broadcast” out to the world. Much has been said about the importance that people feel from sharing their thoughts (or party pictures) with the world. People act as mini-celebrities in a tiny world of followers, curating interesting quotes and movie clips for their adoring fans to enjoy. What is more egotistical than a constant live personal broadcast to the world?

Meanwhile, the consumer is equally enthralled. In today’s environment, where we’re completed flooded with a constant stream of information, nothing is better than a tailored news feed of relevant information. We rely on our friends to curate the world for us, assuming that our trust in them with translate into trust in their interests. It’s a mutually beneficial experience between producer and consumer, or curator and observer.

One reason this model has emerged is that it’s simple. People are selfish and lazy (no offense, people). It’s how we’ve survived. Look out for yourself, find the easiest way to do things, and you’ll sustain. Sure, the 220 people I follow on Twitter are going to miss some stuff that I might want to know about, but I’m willing to take that chance consider that seeking my own information from the raw, disorganized web would be a full-time job.

So this brings us to the office – isn’t it just a matter of time before this new model spills over into the working world? Why are we still creating and sharing isolated files? I’ve worked in a handful of companies over the past 12 years, and everyone of them rely on the constant building and sharing of digital documents (primarily Microsoft Office). Think of the amount of time spent searching for documents, getting lost in file structures, recreating PowerPoint slides, emailing documents, requesting others to email documents, managing file versions, and other “mechanical-digital” tasks.

Let’s shift to a better model. Let’s develop better means to communicate. Let’s stop wasting time on these redundant and time-consuming activities. Better yet, let’s stop recreating each other’s work and instead evolve from it. If I have a message to convey in a presentation slide, why can’t I search for that message and get results from other slides that have been shared by my co-workers, friends, or business leaders? A quick search on a “new slide” page could reveal the most popular, highest rated, or most relevant slides based not only on my search query but my role and context as well. After all, if others have communicated the message better than me, shouldn’t I save everyone’s time and frustration and just point to their slide and give them credit?

When it comes time for me to give my presentation, the referenced slide appears right in context, and full credit is given to the source. After all, if the CEO of my company or a designer at a local startup have made the point better than me, why should I put in more effort to deliver less to my audience? We can provide better solutions that lead to better results with less effort. This combination usually wins out, doesn’t it?

Consider if the “news feed” concept from Facebook or Twitter were introduced to your workplace. People could subscribe to each other, specific activities, or deliverables. Files aren’t being passed around, but information is instead organized by interconnected pages and dynamic clusters. Worried about version management? Simply roll back the timeline to access old work. Worried about overwhelming people with adding more streaming information? The feed would be completely customizable. This model could make the current email paradigm seem overly forceful and annoying. Think about it, which of these options sound more appealing to you?

1.  I decide the types of things that I receive
2. I would like others to decide for me

Of course, I realize the flaw in this model as you simply can’t choose to not receive assignment from your boss, but would people actually make this choice? Shouldn’t we be trusted to subscribe the right sources of information and also provide meaningful information to those subscribing to us?

Of course, this writing isn’t about bashing email. It’s about pushing our expectations forward. It’s about rethinking how we think about information and knowledge working. In an interconnected world where we all use a dynamic, subscription-based, user-defined model for sharing social information, isn’t it only a matter of time before do the same for our more serious pursuits? I do, and I think it will change sooner than expected.

3 Lessons for Designing iPad Apps (When Your Engineers are Overseas)

I recently completed the user experience design of an educational iPad app for Appluza, a mobile app development firm started by a few friends and classmates in the MIT System Design & Management program. The app, entitled ZooType, provides toddlers with an interactive learning experience as they develop skills in letter recognition, typing, and spelling. The project required that I design the entire user experience for the game, from the user workflows and menu structure, to interaction design and interface design, through character development, animation, and even audio recordings! This was an excellent opportunity to "own" the entire design process - something that was challenging but absolutely rewarding. Of course, it wasn't all on easy street as our dedicated development team was outsourced and located in India and I managed them for the final stages of the project as well. The following is a set of five lessons that I pass on from my experience designing ZooType.

1. Lock Down the Structure Earlier Than Normal
I personally like to learn by doing, so I want to explore as many concepts as possible during the design process to seek out the right one. This may drive engineers crazy at times, and I realize this, but the right answer is often impossible to arrive upon without first trudging through a sea of wrong ones. I've been fortunate enough to establish good working relationships with engineers over the years so we're clear on how long I can experiment before locking in on a final product. However, this approach is significantly more difficult when outsourcing to engineers who you don't share a personal history and familiarity with.

Constant changes will quickly lead to frustration from the hardworking engineers on your project, especially when the time differences between US and Asia result in entire days of development lost because of design iterations. My advice is to define and lock down the prominent user workflows, screen architecture, and core functionalities before beginning the development process and only deviate from it when completely necessary. Set expectations with engineers that some secondary screens and additional functionality may be added, but only when necessary and not a major impediment to the development process.

On ZooType, we had a detailed set of storyboards that included specific (and minimal) functionality and detailed interaction design. Having a structured and defined focal point reduced the early stage deviation which is common in software development.

2. Set Expectations About Design Exploration

I believe that User Experience Design requires a great deal of experimentation as a right or wrong design decision is often not clear until it has been sketched, prototyped, implemented, or shared.

In the case of ZooType, we weren't quite sure exactly how the characters should interact with the toddler and this required significant design experimentation. For example, we had to determine how each letter should be introduced, whether it should be spoken first and then shown (or vice versa), and how the app should react when the right or wrong answer is given. This took many tries before getting it right.

We could have made decisions such as this before beginning the development of the application and it would have resulted in an adequate design. I firmly believe, however, that these types of decisions need to be pushed off until the designers and developers could work together to reach the choices that are both technical feasible and still highly engaging to the user. Because of this necessary iteration, I highly recommend setting expectations with your development team from the beginning that design-related decisions may take occur throughout the process. Because of the locked-in structure recommended in the previous tip, there should be some slack for this.

3. Be a Storyteller, Not a Painter
I think the most difficult challenge I faced was communicating to the engineers how I wanted the characters to come alive and interact. I've worked with international teams extensively in the past but it was on more functional projects, such as the development of financial services web applications. For  more creative projects, particularly with characters, it is much more challenging to convey qualitative aspects, like the way in which you want the character to "feel" to the toddler. Had I been able to work face-to-face with these guys, this would have been fine. However, oceans, time zones, and Skype can create some pretty significant barriers.

Attempt #1... My first attempt was to create a series of frames for each character in the game, about 30 each. Early frames conveyed positive expressions and the second half contained neutral or sad ones (used when the toddler gives a wrong answer). I then provided the engineers with audio and the art and gave instructions to randomly cycle through art frames for a character for the duration of a clip. The result? A complete disaster! I had no idea what speed the characters would move at, and the result was a bouncy, jerky mess where characters moved way too much and the voices weren't even closely aligned.

Attempt #2.. With the threat of terrible animation looming (I used to animate professionally so this really bothered me), I created a detailed phoneme (i.e. mouth shapes that map to sounds) chart for each character and painstakingly built an art-to-audio spreadsheet of instructions for each of the four main characters. The instructions would tell the engineers where, when, and how long to display each art object, thus minimizing any variation that could occur.

This second attempt was much closer to the right choice, but it wasn't the only solution.. and this is where my recommendation for storytelling comes in! Since I wasn't able to do the animation myself, I decided the next best thing would be to show how I think the animation should appear. Giving qualitative commands like "make him less bouncy" over Skype would never work and likely need to frustration on both sides and lost work hours. Static screenshots also fall short when trying to convey something more kinetic, like the movement of characters or the interaction of users. Instead, I continually created short movies to communicate how I wanted the character to move. It was a good deal of extra work up front, but it ensured that my message was clear and my words would not be misinterpreted. At the end of the day, I'm not completely satisfied with the animation and art-to-audio mapping, but I think it was as good as expected considering the nature in which it was developed.

Early concept animation of Ronzi the Bear (Pre-Audio)

Mid-stage concept animation of Ronzi the Bear (with audio)

Summary
I have additional takeaways from this project, but I wanted to focus on these three as they clearly are the most significant. To wrap up: lock down structure early, explore design until late, and never "tell" when you can "show". If you would like to see the final product, please check out ZooType in the iPad app store. I would love to get your feedback on the end results of this rewarding effort.

Product page is here: http://itunes.apple.com/app/id507987104

If you don't have an iPad, here's a video of the app...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0Dqu_svEOI&list=UUF3B3HGWgCuzjZDxVBTaDXQ&index=1&feature=plcp