AbleBrains

Don't Focus Solely on Design

The passing of Steve Jobs, his subseqent biography and the recent HBR article on his management

Photo credit: courtesy of Catapult Global

principles has stoked tremendous interest in the importance of design in building great products and companies.  Designing great products is a brilliant notion... hard to do but easy to see how effective it is when it comes to delivering a compelling customer experience.

But don't make the mistake that great design is a substitue for great engineering.  You need both.   Jony Ive,  Apple's lead industrial designer is constantly pushing development to deliver great products within the framework of great design. In fact, one could argue that great engineering in and of itself is a feat of great design. 

So when it comes to engineering software for instance, what is the proper place for design and design thinking --   a process which emphasizes empathy with user needs and reflecting those user needs back in the design of the products which are produced?   

According to Michael Krigsman (@mkrigsman), who writes the IT Projects Failures blog for ZDNet, design thinking can be used to ameliorate the risks of IT project failures (Chirag Mehta's guest post on the matter goes deeper on the topic).  But Michael notes:

During the last few years, the practice of "design thinking" has become popular among some enterprise practitioners and observers. Design thinking helps structure team interactions to cultivate greater inclusiveness, foster creativity, and align participants around specific goals and results.

Chirag goes on to make the point that design thinking can leveraged by teams to avoid many of the common issues which drive IT projects into the pit of despair:

Having followed Michael Krigsman's analysis of IT project failures, it became evident that design thinking can play an important role in improving enterprise software development and implementation. The design thinking approach offers a means to address the underlying causes of many project failures -- poor communication, rigid thinking, propensity toward tunnel vision, and information silos.

Clearly, infusing design thinking into the traditional software engineering realm can have a substantial impact on the success of development projects.  

While design and design thinking have become popular (I've read numerous posts on how startups are looking for founders with deep design experience), and that organizations are trying to implement design thinking in to mainstream businesss, its also important to recognize that design cannot only be used to improve products and services but to invent or re-invent new markets.  Need an example? Well again, looking back to how Apple with their insane focus on design ended up transforming or creating new markets, including the personal computing industry, animated movies, the music industry, phones, tablet computing, brick and mortar retailing... not to mention digital publishing.

Design on!

 

 

The Intersection of Marketing and User Experience

The pace of change in the online world is causing organizations to struggle to keep up with their online interactions with their customers. More and more of these interactions happen nowadays via the Interweb.  While these digital interfaces serve consumers everywhere, the user experience these consumers have shapes how they view the brands in their lives.  These visual interfaces and the user experiences they convey represent the the digital persona of a given brand. This means that the role of a Marketing Executive is more difficult and their influence must reach further into the organization than ever before.

First off, consumer expectations are much higher.  Many folks have lost patience with technology… they don’t want to learn, they want to do! To use technology that performs to expectations whether it’s a TiVo, a Mac Book Pro, iPad or TouchPad (whoops no worries about that device any more).  This impatience with user experiences has extended well beyond the consumer sphere and into enterprise applications as well.

Why is this happening??? Its because we have made great gains in user experience in the consumer space that individuals have expectations that those experiences be as engaging and intuitive in their work environments and why not?  It’s an entirely reasonable expectation.  The question you have to ask and answer is:  How can I as a marketer connect customers to my brand and by influencing product developments inspire lasting engagement?

Digital Interfaces live on and on

While marketing campaigns can change at a rapid pace, digital interfaces can live for years, sometimes decades, before undergoing major identity changes. SaaS solutions can change much more rapidly but do you want that?  If you change an interface too quickly, the user will never master the interface and guess what… they’ll be just as frustrated with a continually evolving interface as one that’s just plain awful to use.  Visual interfaces need to express and utilize what I like to call Iconic Implicature – a sense of intuitiveness that occurs just by looking at the graphical representations in that interface as well as  timelessness – a consistency that the user can count on so that the digital persona of the brand isn’t constantly changing.

Because both on-premise and Web-based applications have become more complex, we must balance style with usability in interface design. A good interface is a humble servant of functionality, but this means we have less opportunity to show a strong visual identity. Instead, the identity must live in the visual details, and the interactivity and usability become the memorable experience that the end user is seeking. But what about the brand?  Well, the brand's identity can still be expressed through the consistency of that interface.  Therefore, as Marketing Execs its incumbent upon you to extend your brand guidelines to those things well beyond creation of  Direct Marketing or Email Marketing pieces but to the product themselves.  As the true digital persona of the brand, these guidelines should guide interface designers to develop a consistent look and feel to your solution that is consistent, reliable and fun!

If your marketing organization is NOT involved in the look and feel of the solution, then get a SEAT AT THE TABLE.

The Marketeers Takeaway

Good design drives users to be more engaged with brands but don’t forget that how a product behaves irrespective of design also influences users to either be engaged or not. If you don’t focus on simplifying the complexities of a given solution and you are totally focused on the design then its just lipstick on a bulldog. If you think about it, a product’s design sets expectations as to the functional capability and usability of a product – if the interface is kludgy and complicated, then folks think the behavior of the product will be kludgy and complicated. If its easy to use then users expect the behavior of the product to be easy as well.  To understand where on this ease of use continuum your product should reside means having a thorough understanding of your customer (more on this in another post).

As product marketers, if you were to recommend a completely simplistic and consistent experience you may miss entire segments of your market – that is to have your product speak to many different groups of users – each with unique goals and usage contexts. At the end of the day you will need to implement some sort of Experience strategy, which will enable you to define an interface for multiple market segments and multiple user types, yet still, using a standards-based guidelines approach to developing user experiences.  

 

AbleAdvisory: Finally, A Tech Mashup With Transportation Policy That Doesn't Suck!

Stewart Mader blogs about 4-id creative network, a Barcelona-based transportation design firm. They've created a system that helps you figure out where the best place to board a subway is in order to find a seat. He picked it up from 2nd Avenue Sagas a blog devoted to, yes you guessed it, the NYC Subway system (with an homage to the painful construction of the 2nd Avenue Subway here in NYC).  I digress. Anyway, the system they have proposed, scans subway cars using imaging sensors placed inside train cars or “artificial vision software applied to existing security cameras” to highlight which areas of the train are emptiest and which still have seats. Holy Fare Increase Batman!!! I wonder if NYC's Metropolitan Transportation Authority could see it's way clear to actually applying technology to some of the most painful problems its ridership faces. 

Apple's Unique Place in the Market

Charlie Wood writes a thoughtful piece on why Apple (AAPL) doesn't face the classic Innovator's Dilemma posed by Clay Christenson in which:

Incumbent vendors typically compete by continually adding performance (typically in the form of new features) eventually overshooting the requirements of their target market and providing an opportunity for upstart competitors to provide a lower-cost "good enough" solution

Charlie posits that Apple has found a loop hole in the Innovator's Dilemma by competing on Design rather than functionality alone.

Their products feel right. And to their customers, "good enough" design will never be compelling, regardless of how high Apple sets the bar.

Yes, Apple leverages design.  But I believe Apple is placing a premium on something else, not Design.  To my way of thinking the that factor is the Apple Customer Experience. The company has truly put the customer at the center of everything that they do, from product development -- yes using design to create compelling, cool, and fun products that make the customer feel good - to customer support -- how much fun is it to go to a "Genius Bar" and oh by the way, continuing to immerse customers in Apple lore, culture and products throughout the experience, to the overall experience of visiting an Apple Store - either brick and mortar or online.

Design only gets you part of the way there.  Enterprises can create compelling hardware and software designs and can leverage design thinking to create novel solutions to big problems.  But if you leverage design with the ultimate goal of creating an innovative customer experience, that's the holy grail for building sustainable, innovative enterprises. Because when you put your customers at the center of everything you do, even things like product innovation which pleases your market, comes easier.

Orion: Intersection of Design, Innovation and Manned Spaceflight

Love this Fast Company article on the evolution in manned spaceflight by NASA and Lockheed Martin. Thanx to Vinnie for referencing it.  Click the link below for the entire article. 

clipped from www.fastcompany.com Designing any new spacecraft requires relentless innovation. But sometimes the better part of innovation is not invention, but effectiveness. And therein lies the challenge for Orion, and for the engineers designing it. NASA and Lockheed Martin must find the discipline to produce a straightforward spaceship, with a clear mission and mature technology. And they must do it by 2015, with a total budget of only $8 billion--the equivalent of six weeks' expenses in Iraq.

Chillin With Chumby

We are so inundated with information on our desktops, that useful information is many times buried or lost, especially as our apps vie for prime real estate above the fold.   You can ease your screen Real Estate issue with a little Gadget called a Chumby.   Some have described Chumby as an "Internet-enabled Alarm Clock"...true, it is but I think its so much more.   Its a playful  portable iPortal - where the "i" means Internet, Individualized, & Information.

Chumbys are based on Linux, have great Wi-Fi connectivity and a super touch screen interface. Once connected, you can then select Widgets from www.chumby.com to run on your Chumby. From a consumer perspective, the obvious widgets allow you to play music, search the web, set alarms, get your weather and your news and check on your stock performance. If you get your hands on one of these babies  - check out the "Squeeze Sensor"... it totally changes the dynamic of using an information device when you can squeeze it to interact with it!

According to Steve Adler, VP of Business Development (disclaimer: Steve and I worked together in a prior life) there are about 50 widgets currently available with more to come.  Update: Steve shot me a quick note yesterday to tell me they now have over 250 Widgets!  Especially seeing as the whole thing is built on an open source stack, it should be relatively easy for folks and firms to build Chumby widgets...

I also also see a significant enterprise play for this device.  Steve and talked about this months ago.  If you think about it, with the information overload we face every day and competition for screen real estate, a smaller "dedicated device" that say could report on manufacturing line events,  or supply chain red flags or customer escalations ONLY, for instance, would make a valuable contribution to any enterprise reliant on real-time information (and which one's aren't these days) . Steve tells me that Chumby is in talks with Salesforce.com.  I'd love to see SAP engage with Chumby as well.

Other coverage of Chumby here, here and Engadget's here

Extending Social Media with Video Mashups: Searchles

I haven't looked alot at Web 2.0 Video other than what I see at the NY Web Video Meetups and what I myself play with, so I was surprised to see this email in my Inbox yesterday.:

My name’s Kimberley McKee and I work for social search/social networking start-up Searchles.com.  I've been keeping tabs on AbleBrains to stay up-to-date on social media innovations.  Recently, Searchles has been focusing on online video tools to make video-sharing and customizing as easy as possible for our users.  We just launched in beta a video editing tool - Searchles TV Remash - which lets anyone edit any youtube video and subsequently mash the video clips up into one, embeddable player – no downloads or plug-ins.

We're aware there are other video editors out there - Cuts, Jumpcuts, etc. - but we like to think of Remash as the most functional and easy-to-use for the casual web-user.  Having created Remash, we obviously think the interface and process is pretty clear - but, you know...we've been looking at it too long.  Given the focus of Ablebrains’ posts on social media and the user-experience, we were wondering if you could have a look at Remash and provide us with some feedback if possible.  Here is the link: http://www.searchles.com/misc/remash

The request seemed tailored enough for me to pay attention to it so I asked them a few questions which got forwarded on the founder, Chris Seline. He told me...Write a brutally honest blog entry, edit our wikipedia page, create a Searchles TV channel about Searchles TV.. We just need input

Ok Searchles team here goes... first off, I had my brand hat on when I first visited the site, wondering   why a Video Mashup company would name themselves "SearchLess" - oh drop one L... you still have Searchles. Chris tells me he came up with the name. And it combines Search with Circles.  When a company or product name induces confusion or has to be explained, its a poor choice of a name.   I do like the name Remash though and conveyed to Chris that I think he should make a small investment in trademarking and legal to get control of his IP, including the names of that IP.

Regarding the Experience

The experience is basic, simple and clean which I like but there is so much more to that can be added to the experience to enrich it without complicating it. To name a few:

1. Registration: a simple 3 step registration process that eventually let me down because the email confirmation to allow me to actually use the site took too long by my count - 45 minutes
2. As part of the reg process one is asked to add a Searchles Bookmarklet extension - which was a completely manual process and there was no overt opportunity to OPT OUT.  I just wanted to get to the Remash editor.   That's a poor experiential piece that I'd recommend fixing immediately. By the way, I'd add Flock as one of the browser options.
3. Also on the bottom of the Bookmarklet add page there is "back to top" link, but this particular page doesn't go below the fold so the link is not necessary, its clutter on the screen, get rid of it.
   
4. What you see in the screen shot above is the Remash editor which allows you to search for youtube videos, select the ones you are interested in and then clip  each individual video as well as  sequence them.  You can then name them, tag them and share them.  BUT and this is a big but, the video's wouldnt load for me to allow me to see them as part of the editing process until I saved the mashup, viewed it and then I had to move back into the editor to actually see the mashup... so I'd have to say there was some sort of  glitch, something was funky and in that regard Performance SUCKED.
5. Trial Edit function - was completely missing. A way to preview just the section of the mashup you are editting would nice... to preview your edits before you commit to them. Further that should be an option to preview, not a prereq.
6. Give the user feedback on Total Mashup time!  As I clipped the individual videos' I kept looking for feedback on total mashup length change the selected clip properties, why don’t I see it being reflected in the total time line of the video mashup I am creating? Speaking of feedback, nice work on the ratings but you might want to extend to full-fledged reputation management, so that top mashup artists are recognized and sought after, thereby bringing more intinsic value to your users and hence more traffic to the site.
7. Effects - I wanted to build in transition effects between the elements in my mashup to make the mashup cooler. They should also support building "Starting Scenes" for a mashup to either introduce it or again to enhance the entertainment experience.
8. Video Segments - I really like the fact that when I want to skip to a particular segment in a movie on my iPod, it displays scene segments.  I suggest some sort of algorithm that can do the same with these videos so you can jump to specific sections of the video.
9. No cropping.  If I want the beginning and ending of a video and I want  to crop out the middle, can I do that? Not really I can shorten from the beginning or end but not take out the middle.. so a cropping function is necessary.
10. Delete function -- when I saved and then deleted on component of my mashup the video wasn't deleted. I had to go into edit mode and delete it from there.
11. Its still a bit buggy... for instance I tried sliding the clip bar back to a point in the video that had already been played to see if the editor would stop and revert to that point but it doesn’t and it should.
12. On re-edit, of a mashup, the system didn't remember the re-ordering I had done from Play mode and I had to perform that edit again.

From a Design Perspective

Just a couple of points: (1) Think about duplicating critical  functions at the top and bottom of pages to make it easier for a user to access them.  Also you should review what content and functions should remain above and below the fold.  Currently there is not a lot of  content, and it would be a better experience if everything was above the fold - as long as you dont sacrifice simpicity for that goal.

Finally, while I always love to do this kind of stuff and I think my feedback can help,  Searchles... why are you talking to me????  Get out there and watch, really watch, your key demographic, work with Remash.  Basic user ethnography is easy to do and provides so much value. To that end, you should be talking to late and early stage Millenials.  I'd be happy to hook you up with my son (and with ethnographers)

That'll be $5ooo.

 

 

Seth Godin: On Creating A Good Enough Website

Seth wrote a post on designing web sites in which he says,

I'm going to go out on a limb and beg you not to create an original design. There are more than a billion pages on the web. Surely there's one that you can start with? If your organization can't find a website that you all agree can serve as a model, you need to stop right now and find a new job.

I agree.  There is so much innovation happening out on the Web, why be an island unto yourself?  Leverage what others have done but don't lift what others have done.  Seth goes on to say,

Not a site to rip-off, but an inspiration. Fonts and colors and layout. The line spacing. The interactions. Why not? Your car isn't unique, and your house might not be either. If you've got a site that sells 42 kinds of wrapping paper, why not start by finding a successful site that sells... I don't know, shoes or yo-yo's... something that both appeals to your target audience and has been tested and tweaked and works. No, don't pick a competitor. That will get you busted. Pick a reasonably small but successful site in a totally different line of work. Say to your designer: "That's our starting point. Don't change any important design element without asking me first. Now, pull in our products, our logo and our company color scheme and let's take a look at it."

Here I agree that finding a functionally similar site, is a good way to find out which practices you should be embedding in your site design but disagree on things like utilizing fonts and colors.  If you want to manage your brand, and ensure that every interaction that a customer or prospect has is with your companies' branded experience, then DON'T borrow from someone else's fonts and colors. Use what your team should be developing in terms of brand standards - fonts, color palette, imagery, layouts etc...

Seth made one more point which I picked up on...

The process of design and user interaction is best done separately from the process of server speed, database structure and uptime.

Hallelujah!  One must separate out design from infrastructure. Infrastructure requirements should be developed based on the customer experience a company is trying to deploy NOT the other way around.  I'd add one more point.  User c0-creation!  Do it!  At the beginning of the design process and at every logical iteration of the design even post launch. Make your users an intrinsic part of the design process and team.  You'll create a superior design in that way.

UI Design @ SAP

Vinnie commented on SAP's UI design proficiency or purported lack thereof:

Ok, so this will make me even less popular with SAP...

...but I could not believe Thomas Otter at SAP questioned Dennis Howlett "Since when were you a UI expert too?"

Dennis admits he is not, but it would be one thing if Thomas worked at Apple...but someone from SAP questioning anybody about UI?

Vinnie, what are you referring to?  Our R/3 days? At least that's the only reason I can think of for folks being so in the dark about the user-centered design initiatives @ SAP... about bringing the customer experience to life not only on the Web but also in the product. 

Oh, by the way, y'all are right. You  don't need to be  UI expert, as a customer and end user, you just have to know what you like.  But why be so 1990's about it?

Ok, so this will make me even less popular with SAP...

...but I could not believe Thomas Otter at SAP questioned Dennis Howlett "Since when were you a UI expert too?"

Dennis admits he is not, but it would be one thing if Thomas worked at Apple...but someone from SAP questioning anybody about UI?

Vinnie, what are you referring to?  Our R/3 days? At least that's the only reason I can think of for folks being so in the dark about the user-centered design initiatives @ SAP... about bringing the customer experience to life not only on the Web but also in the product. 

Oh, by the way, y'all are right. You  don't need to be  UI expert, as a customer and end user, you just have to know what you like.  But why be so 1990's about it?

Can SAP Drive Institutional Innovation with Social Networking?

Aachh... Thomas beat me to the punch with his piece on John Hagel's Institutional Innovation post.  The thesis of which  is...

In thinking about innovation, executives would be well served not to focus exclusively on finding talented product design maestros or even process design experts, but rather creative institutional designers who can challenge and re-think their existing institutional arrangements from the ground up....

...In a world where profitable growth is the key to value creation, companies need to find ways to sustain and amplify the rewards of innovation. To do this, executives will need to expand the scope of innovation well beyond product and process to a much broader terrain – institutional innovation.

What do I mean by institutional innovation?  It redefines roles and relationships across independent entities to accelerate and amplify learning and reduce risks. The next generation of institutional innovation will seek more productive ways to connect with talent wherever it resides and build relationships that foster and focus learning rather than taking the walls of the enterprise as a given.

Institutional innovation in the twentieth century focused on creating scalable institutions through standardized product design and design of business processes to cost-effectively serve mass markets. In the twenty first century, the focus of institutional innovation will shift to foster scalable learning across institutions.

And Thomas is right, you really do need to read the whole post. If institutional innovation in the 21st Century drives scalable learning, then one of the foundations of scalable learning will be social networking.  Why social networking?  Well, lets take a look at the Design principles Hagel lays out for institutional innovation.  These include:

Diversity.  As Scott Page and others have persuasively suggested, new insight and learning tends to increase with cognitive diversity.

Relationships.  It is not enough to have cognitive diversity.  By itself, cognitive diversity often breeds misunderstanding and mistrust, seriously limiting the opportunity for people and institutions to learn from each other.  Long-term trust based relationships, on the other hand, make it easier to engage in productive friction

Modularity.  When activities are tightly specified and hard-wired together, the opportunities for experimentation and tinkering are very limited.  Segmenting people and activities into discrete modules with well-defined interfaces can help to create much more space and opportunity for distributed innovation and learning.

Federated decision-making.  To encourage distributed innovation and learning, it is helpful to distribute decision-making into self-governing units while at the same clarifying dispute resolution and escalation protocols to ensure that prompt action can be taken across business units when required.  If structured appropriately, these dispute resolution mechanisms can become fertile grounds for productive friction that in itself drives learning.

Reputation mechanisms.  As relationships scale, it becomes harder to develop a clear view of the full range of experience and expertise available to address challenging problems. Reputation mechanisms can play a vital role in enhancing findability but also help to reinforce incentives to participate and contribute.

Feedback loops.  More broadly, there is enormous value to investing in performance measurement systems and structuring performance feedback loops so that participants can reflect on their practices and focus their efforts to improve performance. 

Incentive structures.  Focusing narrowly on near-term cash incentives undermines the ability to build trust and foster learning. By expanding incentives to include talent development and capability building, institutional innovators have the potential to turn zero sum games into positive sum games

Now social networking alone obviously cannot instantiate these design principles into the heart and soul of an organization but it sure can help foster viral  spread of these principles in an enterprise. Especially the principles of Relationships, Federated Decision-making, Reputation mechanisms and Feedback. These design cornerstones are today actively supported by social networking solutions and can be comprehensively supported in the enterprise Social Network implementations.

SAP for instance uses social networking and other systems internally for Reputation mechanics and Feedback.  Other "20th century" systems are in place for incentives and federated decision making but here we need pure institutional design work to radically enhance the state of these institutional cornerstones.  The Business ByDesign launch is a perfect opportunity for SAP teams to introduce Federated Decision Making for instance and we as a team have been discussing it.  But we'd love to get some of these other large change issues on the table.