Uncategorized — No comments
29
Jun 11

the latest #uxbrawl

I originally started writing this blog post in 2010 a couple of weeks after I got home from IA Summit. I remember being quite a bit angry. Well, maybe not angry, but annoyed. But then I got busy at work and put it aside, like most of my blog posts, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it.) Since then some people have spoken out a few times about the person who inspired this blog post originally and whether or not her contributions help or hurt the UX community and controversy erupted each time following the exact same pattern only more intensely:

Someone writes a blog post that says:
1. she said x and y and did z
2. she is wrong because of a, b and c
3. people keep supporting her and giving her credibility because of….well no one really knows why
4. this is making the UX community look weird to both insiders and outsiders because in the real world d, e and f happen
5. pay attention and think critically!

And then some people respond with
6. how dare you attack her personally!
7. she’s done a tremendous amount to advance the community (noting no examples)
8. and my favorite: you’re just saying that because she’s a woman!

And then others respond with
9. you know what, i don’t know who any of these people are, but you’re right! I’m jumping on this bandwagon!
10. or can’t we all just get along? I’m jumping on that bandwagon!

And then finally it kind of all goes away for a few months…until it all flares up again probably mostly because of #3

So being that it’s a short week at my office and things are slow enough to take a few minutes to think about this, I am revisiting this original blog post because in the end, nothing has changed. I still feel the same way. So here it is, with the intent of talking about what I think we really should be focusing on…

[And just a quick note, I make references to icebergs, which is a metaphor that we see all the time, but it's been so long since I started this that I don't remember where I was going with it. Also please forgive the poor grammar and erratic capitalizations. It's a sickness...)

My Closing Plenary

iceberg

The choice of the closing plenary speaker at the IA Summit was apparently controversial. I'm not sure where any of this controversy took place so all I can do is shrug my shoulders. It wouldn't have been my choice and wasn't up to me so ultimately it was a non-issue for me. a lot of people thought it was a perfectly fine and inspiring speech, and to them I say "whatever floats your boat". For me, however, there was little there. It just sounded like last year's talk which to me sounded like HR stuff which i generally tune out because it's annoying.

Am I an oldtimer? I guess. I mean this is my second career. But it's not about that. My immediate concern is that the talk was not something that I would feel comfortable sharing with a colleague, client or mentee to help them understand the state of the union when it comes to information architecture and user experience. I'm not saying that's what it had to be. That's just what I would have preferred. I could share it with my mom as a story of a young woman who talks about her feelings or my sister who hasn't quite figured out what she want to be when she grows up. I guess I could share it with my hr dept. They like that kind of stuff. But when it comes to the how and why of what we do, where we're going, where we've been, etc., it was irrelevant to me. It was like watching Oprah when I was expecting This American Life. Maybe I missed something (and I'm sure someone will clue me in). I've been reading everyone's blog posts hoping to figure it out, but so far, nothing.

As a result, I've written my own plenary and for once, as I return to blogging after about 5 years (well, not quite), I'm going to share it with you.

As user experience practitioners, interaction designers, researchers, usability specialists, UI, engineers, interface designers and dare I say, information architects, we have the ability to make ourselves crazy very easily. With each interaction in life, we look for the shape, the pattern, the connections and meanings within. How many of you took pictures of the thermostats in your hotel rooms? How many of you spent a little too much time thinking about the way the shower knob worked only to realize it turns in the same direction as your shower knob at home? How many of you linger in the doorways with a raging inner debate about how that door should work? The way these things are triggered in our brains is what enables us to do our jobs so well. It is also the reason the community keeps getting caught up in the repeated debates over definiing ourselves, wireframes, rockstar-ism, service design or whatever flavor of the day is. It's in our DNA as information designers and knowledge workers.

We are designers.
We consider.
We reconsider.
We redesign in our heads.
Every thought, every moment, every thing.

The question is where has it gotten you? How much have you moved that iceberg in the past year? We need have the ability to turn the volume down on some of out obsessions in order to progress.

[insert interesting meaningful things plenary speakers have said over the years, but i'm not going to 'cause it takes more time than I have right now]

And what are you getting from this conference and this community that will help you with your challenges? What are you giving to this conference and community? And isn’t it interesting that late in the day the seats that go first in any given session are the ones nearest to electrical outlets? Why haven’t conference spaces changed much to meet the needs of conference attendees? Where are we changing the world beyond the web?

Change is hard and constant and variable. It’s the only thing we really truly know is going to happen, but we don’t always know when and how. Writing your history at the moment of creation is a speculative effort at best. Slow down and watch how we all change. Now do you see the pattern? How about now?

inspiration gets you only so far. perspiration gets it done.

inspiration is for amateurs

I am bothered by this oft repeated notion that we aren’t really designing anything. If that were true, someone is wasting a heck of a lot of money on me. Just because something is not atomic, physical or tangible doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. If that were true, then abstract painting and conceptual art wouldn’t exist. All those naked folks standing around MoMA for nothing!

The experiences that we design are tangible, moving, inspiring, motivating, annoying, deceitful, illusory and everchanging. These are potentially living things. Potentially.

So my daily challenge is not getting people to give me a place at the table ’cause i’m already there. My table is the whiteboard where I struggle with new ideas or the conference room where I convince people to understand my vision. I can stand on my own two feet. My daily challenge is moving a mountain. it’s an iceberg, actually. and there’s a direction i’d like to see it go in not just to survive, but to prosper and grow. if it prospers, then i prosper. moving the iceberg seems easy enough when you look at it from up high. but a lot of it is under water and you just can’t see what the heck it’s stuck on. HR can’t help with that.

The problem with ux people is we hang out with each other a little too much. We’re like Hollywood when we should be a little more New York. (Or Woodstock when we should be CBGB) We should be fiercely independent. Guerilla. When I was in film school way back when, one thing I heard over and over that what made living in NYC so great was that the people you knew came from all different backgrounds, all different businesses whether it was finance, science, fashion or politics. In Hollywood, everyone is in movies or tv.

So ultimately, it’s about the work. Keep tabs of what we’re doing, of course, but be sure to stick your head out every so often and understand what’s going on in the world ’cause you never know what your next assignment is going to be or where it is going to come from. But you will have to learn it, understand it, design it and share its story with others.

Finally, don’t just go to ux conferences. be cross disciplinary. Read everything. Keep a journal or sketchbook. Go to conferences and events about topics you know nothing about. Or organize your own.

just go and listen.
listen hard.
be visual.
don’t just look, learn to see.
you learn to see by drawing.
and when you’re drawing, you’re thinking.
and when you’re thinking, you’re doing.
what do we do?
we create.
what do we create?
we create understanding.

thanks, you can direct comments, criticisms and abuse to @ursonate on twitter

Travel / User Experience — No comments
04
Jun 11

Portland Finally!

Earlier this week I returned from my first trip to Portland, OR. I’d been wanting to go there for years and had even considered moving there back when I was starting to figure out where to move after NYC. I ultimately chose Austin, TX because I had friends who already lived there.

Portland and Austin have a lot in common and so it was no surprise that I took to the city immediately. I liked the way the air felt in my lungs and the rain on my skin, though I did buy an umbrella eventually. I like a little rain, but I didn’t want to be constantly soaked. For my next trip there, I will invest in a proper rain coat. Most of the people were nice. The exception was the woman at New Rose City cab who hung up on me when I was inquiring about my lost phone (more about that later).

I went to Portland to attend the Webvisions conference and to get to know the city. I can’t remember how it first got on my radar. I’m sure it was something about the local food and wine, and the amazing progressiveness of the city. It probably popped up on a couple of Best Places to Live lists. It’s been tough for me to commit to it since, much like Austin, the breadth career opportunities aren’t as good as in NYC, SF or Boston. It’s just a totally different scale. Portland also seems to have a bit of a diversity problem, granted it does have a sizeable Asian population, but black folks like me are few and far between. I can live with that. I’m just a little bit conscious of it sometimes. Every time I catch an episode of Portlandia though, I find myself in this mindspace trying to figure out how I could make it work. Place does matter when you’re in the right place.

I enjoyed walking around and taking pictures. There actually is a grid so when I did veer off course, it was pretty easy to get back to where I was actually going. I found myself complementing people working on their amazing gardens Saturday morning and I *never* talk to people randomly like that. I just really felt at ease for once in my life (or as at ease as I can be). I wanted to be in the studio painting, but there. Maybe Portland is where I’ll go to retire.

Friday night I lost my phone in a taxi. I’m not necessarily emotionally attached to it, but it was a very important part of my routine. Also I just liked the way it looked and felt in my hand. I am hoping to find it, but no signs of it so far.
IMG034.jpg
The other disappointment of the trip was the Jupiter Hotel. I chose it because it was reasonably close to the convention center where the conference was taking place and it wasn’t terribly expensive.

The Jupiter is poorly lit at night so fumbling with the key card in dim blue lighting was basically my first impression. The next problem in the morning was trying to figure out how to turn on the shower. I finally called the front desk after 10 minutes of head scratching, suddenly understanding that helpless feeling of not being able to figure something out that really should be simple. Apparently there were 3 rooms in the hotel that had a certain kind of faucet that worked in this odd way, but no one could be bothered to make a sign explaining it. There was the same oddness with the internet service. It no longer required a password, but no one could be bothered to update the guidebook so once again I was forced to call to find out how to connect to the wifi. These might seem like minor things, but they totally add up. When I was ready to go out I asked to borrow an umbrella since it was totally raining, but unlike every other hotel in the world, not to mention many office buildings, they do not loan umbrellas to guests. She might have had some for sale, but didn’t offer them. She made a vague reference to a convenience store nearby which I never found. I eventually bought one downtown.
IMG_20110525_095243.jpg
The biggest problem I didn’t anticipate was when I returned from dinner Saturday night to find a full scale birthday party going on in the event space directly below my room. It was so incredibly loud. The floor and walls not only vibrated, but the thump of the bass made it feel as if someone was hitting the floor repeatedly with a sledge hammer. The wine bottles on the desk were rattling against each other. I immediately called the front desk to see what was up and I was told it was supposed to end at midnight. I had plans to meet up with someone at 7am the next morning and I was dying to get some sleep so I found this response less than satisfactory. A few minutes later I called back to see if perhaps, I could switch to another room. And of course, the hotel was completely sold out. Again, no satisfaction. The irony is I paid more to be on the supposedly quiet side of the hotel.

I actually considered briefly cutting my losses and checking into another hotel for the rest of my time in Portland. I hopped into the shower, where I could still hear the noise above the water and prayed that it would be over by the time I got out. The “music” did eventually end, but then I had the distinct pleasure of listening to loud, drunk people slowly leaving as well as equipment (I presume) being loaded out for a good 30-45 minutes. Awesome. I guess what I should have done was ask for the price difference back since clearly there was no such thing as a quiet room in the hotel. I just want to know who is ok with this level of noise? I think even a deaf person would have a problem with this.

The next annoying thing that happened was the guy at the front desk the next day who told me that doing an extra-late checkout (I wasn’t flying out ‘til 11:30 that night and didn’t want to have to lug my bags around) would be no problem for a half-day fee only to be called by some other lady who wanted to charge a full-day fee because otherwise there was no housekeeping to make up the room. I returned to the hotel (I was way down the street somewhere), finished packing up my stuff and checked out storing my suitcase at the front desk. So then it just made me less mobile because I had to carry my laptop around since at this point I had little trust in the folks running the place. They store bags just behind the counter rather than in a locked room. To add insult to injury, they charged me for parking even though I obviously checked in without a car. The charges were supposedly reversed and so far haven’t shown up on my account, but I’m just going to keep checking just in case. The woman who checked me out said I would get a final invoice via email since I booked through a 3rd party service. That supposed 3rd party service was their own website and I still haven’t received that invoice.

These experiences got me thinking about how whoever designed the JetBlue terminal at JFK totally got me and The Jupiter totally didn’t. I had a really good time at the JetBlue terminal. I liked that there were these nicely designed bars out there in the open near the gates rather than tucked into dark corners. The Japanese restaurant, Deep.Blue was really good (except the ginger mysteriously tasted like wet paper towel). I was super happy at the Muji store even though they didn’t have the ink cartridges I was looking for. So 3 hours weren’t badly spent.
IMG_20110524_182112.jpg
The Jupiter, while visually having a design that I like, was an inferior experience because of the lack of customer service (though housekeeping did a good job), the thin walls, and the design that put an event area directly below guest rooms.

(Oh and how could I have forgotten about the airport shuttle that left for its last run to the hotel 6 minutes early!)

The Jet Blue terminal in many ways is almost a cross between a high-end mall and a cocktail lounge that happens to serve travel captives. It works for the JetBlue terminal because these paradigms are congruent enough with the expectations of travelers that the experience is enhanced.

When I spotted a tour bus parked in front my last night there, I realized that the Jupiter is a night club/concert venue posing as a hotel. However, it backfires for the Jupiter when hotel guests are actually expecting to be able to sleep which many other hotels have figured out is absolutely critical to the experience.

It is highly unlikely that I will stay at the Jupiter again and I can’t recommend it to friends.

So who’s the sucker?

The sucker this time is me for not insisting on a partial refund and The Jupiter for forgetting that they’re in the hotel business too.

shopping — No comments
09
Jan 11

Shaw’s Card?

As I think about what I might need from the grocery store for the week, I find my level of anxiety already rising in anticipation of the check out experience. It’s not the lines, though it is true that I do hate waiting in line. It’s not the annoying routine around bagging (which I’m saving for another blog post in the future).  It’s  the cashiers’ overwhelming enthusiasm for the Shaw’s Card.

This is a loyalty program just like what can be found at any chain of grocery stores where a card is scanned at the register to get nominal discounts on merchandise and to generate coupons for future purchases. Of course, I make the blanket assumption that data about the purchase is collected and used by the store and its advertisers. Under normal circumstances I would choose to participate in this program, but something I noticed in the behavior of the cashiers and managers has held me back.

So here’s what usually happens when I approach the checkout aisle:

I approach and put all my groceries on the conveyor belt. She begins scanning and asks if I have a Shaw’s Card. I say “No, thank you.” I used to just say “No.” and the following would happen: She scans her own card or the next customer’s card or if she’s bold she calls over a manager and scans her card. “No, thank you” sometimes gives her pause and then she does one of 3 things: continues as above, doesn’t scan any card or asks very confused “You don’t want me to scan the card?” (And then I get into the struggle of convincing them to back down with the plastic bags and let me use my own bags – again, another post).

It’s been very difficult to intervene in time to prevent them from scanning a card. It’s absolutely unfathomable to them that someone would not want the discount. In their view it’s about getting cards scanned for purchases and I’m assuming that there is some kind of goal or quota involved. My problem with this is I believe it’s fraud to scan someone else’s card. If I don’t have the card, then too bad for me. I simply don’t get the discount. It seems to me that the data that is being collected should be able to clearly be attributed to a single purchaser. I bet if Shaw’s looked at their data, they would find lots of managers and assistant managers that do an awful lot of grocery shopping. So much that they can interpret absolutely nothing from the data because they seem to buy everything constantly. Also, without knowing how many purchases are completed by shoppers without the card, it’s impossible for Shaw’s to effectively know who to market to in the future. How can you grow a program without knowing who your customers are and can be?

I could be wring though. Maybe Shaw’s doesn’t look at their data that way at all. But still If I don’t want my purchase scanned, shouldn’t I be able to opt out?

So I am planning a new strategy and it’s very, very annoying. If the cashier scans a card against my wishes, I will ask her to stop, void the order and start over. I don’t know what the impact would be on the Shaw’s Card data, but it will be really interesting to see what happens. It will annoy the cashier. It will annoy the manager. It will annoy any customers behind me. But mostly I’m hoping it will get them to pay attention and think about what they’re doing.

Who’s the sucker?

1. Customers who blindly join these programs without understanding what is being done with the data

2. Employees who flagrantly violate the rules and undermine the program by corrupting the data

What about you?

Do you participate in loyalty programs? Do you see cashiers and managers loosening the rules around the programs? Tell me in the comments.

selling — No comments
06
Jan 11

know thy customer

This afternoon, I received a phone call from a Comcast salesperson looking to sell me their phone service. She went into her spiel about how their service had unlimited long distance, call-waiting, etc. I said I already had that on my mobile. She countered that my phone could get lost or broken. It could, I guess, but that’s not worth $20 per month to me. I have insurance for that. No one calls me anyway. I mean if something did happen to my mobile, there are lots of workarounds between using my computer or picking up a temporary phone. Not a big deal.

So ultimately, there is absolutely no compelling reason to buy their service. What bugs me even more is Comcast has been trying to sell me telephone service ever since I started getting cable from them 2.5 years ago (Verizon too, but they seem to have backed off of late). You’d think they’d figured out by now that I wasn’t interested. Or at least come up with a compelling reason to get it. Everything their service can do I already have on my mobile. Plus my mobile IS MOBILE.

Maybe Comcast should spend a little less on trying to sell stuff to people who will never buy. The could save up to buy another Plaxo. Wait, why did they buy them again?

Uncategorized — No comments
30
Dec 10

cabin fever

This morning I was listening to wnyc and they kept running a clip from a woman complaining that because her street wasn’t yet plowed and the trains weren’t quite running, she couldn’t go to the museum and was getting cabin fever. The snow storm hit Sunday. Today is Wednesday (well now, Thursday). Why do people spend so much money on their homes only to complain of cabin fever when they stay home for a few days? When my neighbors are being quiet, I love being at home. I don’t mind being snowed in at all.

complexity / obesity / overlap / scalable actions / thinking — No comments
27
Jul 10

The Overlap (part 1)

This will be one of many blog posts exploring the compelling ideas that came out of The Overlap which is an annual peer-to-peer gathering of designers, artists, educators, business people, etc. (well, that’s the short explanation)

I think it’s no coincidence that my “Question of the year” is about designing systems and that was clearly one of the themes that evolved out of this year’s gathering.

So what I’ve walked away with is a definition of a scaleable action as a way of effecting change on a system through a behavior or many behaviors. The action can be simple or it can be very complex.

Childhood obesity was introduced as a “wicked problem” and it is indeed gnarly. It is a problem in which there is no single cause and no single solution. Early in the process as groups illustrated the problem and some of the issues around the problem there was no single approach, but a series of compelling possibilities.  At the end of the process as one of the groups explored the problem basically from the uncomfortable position of “a company in the beverage industry trying to take actions that would contribute to the reduction of childhood obesity and hopefully discourage possible government regulation”, they got very hung up.

After thinking about it for quite some time, I realized they got hung up because of a contradiction that exists between the desired solution (painting the right face on fast-food companies) and the solution that helps solve the problem of childhood obesity (feeding kids real food and getting them plenty of activity).

The problem is, everyone knows that companies in the business of marketing and selling these non-food foods, for the sake of society, should reduce the manufacture and sale of these products. Because the truth is a calorie from a carrot is not the same as a calorie from a carrot even though “Science” tells us they are. No one is getting obese from eating too many carrots.

But you could never tell that to Big Soda as an agency or employee in response to a brief and stay in business. You could inform parents with the facts and tell them to stop feeding this crap to their children, but no one wants to be told what to do (except when they do, hence the Diet Industry).

The issue is complex and taking the step to acknowledge the complexity is huge.

Uncategorized — No comments
29
May 10

clothes shopping

Shopping for clothing has become a futile activity for me. At this point I mostly avoid it. My taste run on the avant garde couture side (think Rick Owens or Gareth Pugh). Sadly neither my body nor my bank account can support such silliness. My wardrobe consists mainly of items found on sale and in black at Old Navy or the Gap. I’ve never been particularly happy with the quality or the fit of these items, but there comes a time when you say “enough already” and move on. You just give in and make the purchase of low-rise pants because there just aren’t any alternatives at this price point and you’d rather draw customers than be one. I wonder how much of the cheap clothing business depends on people just giving up?

I recently started looking at more expensive clothing options, but I’m not finding much success. First there’s the trend problem. I hate trendy clothes. There hasn’t been a trend that I’ve liked since the early 90′s when designers were supposedly reacting to the recession or something. But over the past 15 years the colors are all wrong, the quality questionable, the fit disastrous and the price…ugh.

So the thing that set me off this morning? This site, Nau. I remembered this company because it nearly failed a couple of years ago and there was a huge outcry to save it because it produced sustainable clothing. The design isn’t terrible, so I considered making a purchase. Strangely, even though the explanation of their sizes says there is a size XL that may or may not fit me (always so hard to tell), they don’t actually sell anything in XL. I guess they don’t want my money. I wonder if this is why their business was failing in the first place. I presume that most businesses do actually want money in return for goods. Let me know if I’m wrong about that.

It’s bad enough that plus sized women are ostracized to the basement of Macy’s or online in the case of Ann Taylor which in theory makes absolutely no sense if 70% of Americans are overweight. There’s also the option of shopping at retailers that specialize in plus sized clothing like Lane Bryant and Torrid. Upon walking into these stores, I’ve found the the trendiness, quality and choice of colors depressing. I just wonder what would happen to these businesses if they chilled out a little, focused on good structured design, stepped away from the synthetic fibers. It probably wouldn’t be a home run, but they would get my business, maybe.

In the mean time, I am thinking about returning to making my own clothes. It’s a little time consuming and I’m an unfortunate fan of knits. But it is fun, at least. And hopefully, I can finally have what I want. Of course, sourcing fabrics is a chore…

Uncategorized — No comments
18
Mar 10

demonstrably irrational

There are two subjects that tend to grab my attention on television: real estate and weddings.  They are both subjects where the behavior of most of the folks involved is demonstrably irrational. I always chuckle when on one of those house hunting shows on HGTV, the woman/wife/girlfriend/fiancé (always a woman!) looks in the kitchen and exclaims “Granite countertops, Good!” Like Phew! The house would have been no good without granite countertops and stainless steel appliances. Crown moulding is another one. Why do people like it so much? Apparently a home is completely unsellable without it, no matter how hideous it looks.

I happen to have extremely modern/contemporary/experimental/industrial taste so what I like to see is severely underrepresented on HGTV. But I guess the “safe” suburban mini-mcmansion with ginormous yard, granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, crown moulding, his-and-hers sinks, and bonus room is what the people want whether they actually really like it or not. Crappy economy or not.

Weddings are another place where the will of the people seems controlled by the strangest of desires. The goal of most brides (at least those who end up on these tv shows) seems to be uniqueness. They want their guests to experience things they’ve never experienced before. Yet every one of these weddings has a white dress, assorted food “stations” and the same rituals that can be seen at any wedding. It’s the strangest thing. One of my favorite moments on one show was when a bride was having a rehearsal at an outdoor location and was dismayed to see another wedding party taking photos. “I thought I was being original” she whined. It’s like the brides who talk about how modern their weddings are, but then wear a white dress and get married in a church. Ahem.

It’s funny how the costs seem to go hand in hand. A couple gets married and then they just *have* to buy a house, see above. Apparently renting is for suckers. Parents have to have a 4 bedroom home ’cause god forbid if the kids should have to share a bedroom. And if you don’t have the $100,000 wedding and the 3 bedroom, 2 bath home with granite countertops, then your life must just suck.