Business is the Future of Design. And Other Takeaways from UX Strat.

I recently attended the inaugural UX Strat conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Yes, it was hot. Damn hot. And yes, several streets there are named Peachtree something or other.

THE INTERSECTION OF PEACHTREE PLACE AND PEACHTREE STREET. SERIOUSLY. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MARC SASINSKI)

The conference itself was enjoyable. Some of the broader themes that emerged dealt with the more strategic issues that UXers are facing at a time when we’re getting out of the deliverables business and beginning to shape business strategy 4 realz.

Things like changing organizational structure and culture to meet the needs of a more holistic end user experience, as well as telling a more complete story using BOTH qualitative insight (which UX is good at) AND quantitative data (not so much). 

Customer Experience (CX) was also a hot topic. Not necessarily within presentation content, more so in-between sessions and at the pubs. Attendees tended to see it as either A) an ally; or B), a threat to our discipline and a land grab. Oddly enough, the conference didn’t address it square on, which I found a bit odd, frankly. Seems like a missed opportunity.  

Overall, the presentations were solid. Nathan Shedroff from the California College of the Arts really stood out for me. His workshop was inspiring and there were lots of wonderful takeaways, including: 

• The frontlines of dealing with customers IS the brand and UXers understand them about as well as anyone in a company outside of maybe Customer Support.

• He questioned what the hell traditional MBA programs are teaching if they aren’t bringing design thinking into the core curriculum?! Gotta love that one.

• MVP candidates have been bastardized. The concept of an MVP comes from a culture of investment-optimizers, where it was more about funding the least amount possible to get a product out the door. However, “we don’t live in a Minimum Viable World anymore.” 

• Business strategy (e.g., Intent, mission, and culture) and tactics (e.g., Usability, price, and features) are very different. And by the way, MBAs get this wrong all the time, too.

• “Design is a plan for action.” - Charles Eames

• Apple clearly understood the experiential mandate that people like to carry no more than three things in their pocket prior to their iPod introduction. Yup, you guessed it: keys, wallet, and [insert digital device here]. They also made a fundamental shift to become a phone company after their initial engagement with Motorola created a sucky product. Does anyone remember that first attempt at a phone?! Shudder.

• A typical SWOT analysis is a pretty lazy approach to strategy overall because it lacks rigor and tends to be rooted in individual assumptions. Businesses sometimes treat it like Mad Libs when they should actually be inserting empirically-derived research within each category. 

• UX Strategists need to be looking at what’s happening with tangential competitors and markets to see opportunities and threats. This type of analysis is essential for continued innovation. 

• A great example cited of how demographical data can be rubbish and how behavior matters is what’s known in the travel industry as hybrid travelers. These folks tend to want to mix up their experiences when visiting a destination. So, they may be well-heeled and go to the best restaurant in town; but, they’ll also hit the local foodtruck scene and check out a sketchier part of town if it’s an authentic experience, etc. This drives marketers crazy because they can’t box them in.

• The point where business strategy meets experience is meaning. Values are derived from core meaning. And, relationships and value are built through experiences.

• Lastly, I loved Nathan's take on how business is the future of design and that everyone is pretty much in the experience business. Well put!

Some other nuggets of wisdom from various speakers included:

• It’s time for UX to start thinking about managing outcomes and impact; not just tracking design deliverables. For example, instead of agreeing to give stakeholders a new sign-up screen, we should reframe it as "well, we’ll gladly work on increasing the sign-up rate.”

• Karen Pascoe from PayPal talked about how Lean UX is actually the process of defining the experience. Agile is then more about building it into the stack.

• Intuit is doing some rad stuff. They apparently spend about 60% of their time on mature products; 30% on repeatable business; and, about 10% on trying to create products people truly love.

• Aarron Walter from MailChimp discussed how UX is great at research, but what we really need to get better at is connecting all of the data(s) in order to see a broader strategy. It's also our responsibility to share and educate.  

• The story of Tony Shea's Wizard of Oz approach was told in how he pretty much piloted the existing Zappos business model early on. He wanted to know whether or not users would buy shoes online. So, he went and photographed inventory at local shoe stores and then began posting online (based on that inventory) to see if there was demand. He also wanted to see whether the value prop of free shipping might work. The rest is kinda history.

All in all, since UX has finally gotten a seat at the proverbial table, it's time for us to start delivering on the promise. Let's lead with an experience vision that's aggressively tested in the wild - and communicate it in increasingly creative and compelling ways! 

Onwards.  

Marc

The Art + Science of Games at Silicon Beach Fest LA

I was fortunate enough recently to be invited to speak as a panelist at Silicon Beach Fest LA. The name of the panel was The Art of Games and it centered around creating immersive and meaningful experiences for increasingly sophisticated audiences. 

The panel included some incredibly talented folks: 

• Daniel Romano, Head of UX at Disney Interactive (@dromano)

• David Collins, Sound Design Manager at Sony Entertainment (@DavidWCollins)

• And Austin Wintory, Grammy-nominated Composer (@awintory). Love the Journey game soundtrack!

SILICON BEACH AT SUNSET (PHOTOGRAPH BY MARC SASINSKI)

We discussed everything from the meaning of art and design, to player engagement and the science behind actually being able to quantify it through applied psychological models. Measuring stuff like mastery, autonomy, and relatedness is a real thing. And, one could even argue that the gaming industry is coming around to it as player-focused experience strategies begin to influence product roadmap priorities.

The creative aspect of scoring a game's soundtrack and functional sound design was also discussed. Sonification is a critical component of the holistic experience and it was great to get some insight from passionate speakers that just totally get it.   

Audience questions ranged from considerations around personalization and customization options, to how to strike a balance between the display of vital information and content overload vs. core gameplay loops. (Um, yeah; it’s not easy). 

Thanks to everyone that attended! And a special shout out to Deborah Beckman (@Debblues) for moderating the panel! 

By the way, the so-called "Silicon Beach" area here in Los Angeles was ranked the #3 startup ecosystem (behind Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv, respectively) in a recent Startup Genome report. Some major props to the tech scene here in LA!

Marc

Fitter, happier, and LEANer UX?

I crashed the UX Book Club here in LA this past week. Actually, I did technically join the group right before attending, but I didn't get a chance to read the book. 

The title was Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf. I had heard a bit about it and wanted to get some perspective from the author first. Kind of backwards, I know. 

The discussion was great and Jeff had some really solid insights! Here are my notes from the conversation: 

• It became apparent that if UX and Agile were going to coexist, the whole notion of creating products needed to change.

• We should always focus on outcomes, not things like features. 

• Small, self-reliant, and cross-functional teams get stuff done. Preferably ones that are co-located; or, at the very least, in the same time zone. (And what’s the optimal team size? Well, Jeff Bezos likes to say one that can be fed by two pizzas). 

• Consider product design as a series of rapid experiments rather than hard and fast 'requirements.' 

• The overall goal of Lean ‘anything’ is to reduce waste. Here, we’re especially concerned with the UX wasted on creating deliverables for stuff that never gets built. 

• Our job as design leaders should be to extract ideas out of people’s heads around the problem statement (i.e., “We believe that doing [this] will achieve [this] outcome.”) You then have something of a hypothesis and a starting point. UX then essentially runs a series of experiments against that hypothesis.

• A backlog of user stories is basically a backlog of (ahem) assumptions (i.e., Do the users that you are targeting have this particular pain point? Let's find out...) 

• During estimation exercises, have the entire team sketch their understanding of what they’re going to be building. This uncovers lots of issues and gets at a shared understanding. That’s huge and ties into the author’s notion of “continuously deploying sketches.” Good stuff! 

• Consider introducing the concept of UX Debt to your teams and organization. This basically borrows from traditional technical debt, which engineering teams surely understand and Product Managers rarely question. By calling attention to experience shortcuts taken in this fashion, you can then allot a percentage of time in the next sprint to address some of the issues.

• Lastly, setting the expectations associated with a Lean UX process is key. UXers should communicate what services they will provide, but more importantly, they should outline what they expect from their teams in return, as well. The entire product team needs to be committed and involved from the very beginning and throughout. You can’t do things like prioritize a backlog without their input. (I’ve seen that happen way too often and it amounts to frustation within teams and a sub-par product.) 

I really like this last point because it gets at UXers delivering more in the way of experience strategy and facilitating the type of thinking needed to create truly exceptional things.

Jeff also brought up a fun anecdote about having previously pitched the process to a prospective client... He and his firm were going up against a more traditional agency - one that asks some initial questions and then goes off for a few months to then come back with a grand "solution." 

After having described his approach, the client paused for a bit and then said something like: “So, with your process, we actually have to contribute and do stuff?” 

Bingo. 

That was pretty funny and nicely illustrated how the collaborative process should work in practice with Lean UX. 

A big thank you to Jeff for chatting with us! 

And yes, I just picked up the book. Look for some more thoughts on it soon. 

Marc

Conveying the Future of UX in Seattle

Just catching-up after attending the Convey UX conference in Seattle a little over a week ago. Some of my key takeaways are listed below. Food for future thought, as well as some tried-and-true reminders.

More human-to-human instead of human-to-computer, please. One user, one computer, and one task just doesn’t work anymore. Usability testing needs to embrace an ever-increasingly inter-connected and social world. Dana Chisnell gave a nice presentation about how traditional testing isn’t necessarily equipped to handle everything that we need to learn around social (e.g., Privacy and ethics). It’s a bit too one-dimensional. 

She cited the Google Buzz disaster (I know! Remember that thing?!) and how lab testing didn’t uncover any of the underlying privacy concerns people had upon launch because exposure to real relationships was never tested. We need to start thinking about tasks more as activities such as sharing and interacting with others, as well as goals that change over time. Satisfaction and engagement aren't just about task completion. 

Moving forward, user research will need to embrace more of a mash-up approach and borrow more from areas like linguistics and the social sciences. Context matters and relationships evolve over time. We can't continue to ask users to play make-believe about that stuff anymore. 

Hypertext is dead. OK, that’s me projecting, but the future of HTML5 and browser-based experience possibilities is fascinating. Couple that with things like WebGL and you’ve got some wonderfully immersive opportunities on the horizon. 

Peter Lubbers from Google gave a solid talk and demoed some of the rich animation capabilities and input mechanisms (e.g., Touch for general navigation coupled with a mouse for precision; using a laptop's camera to capture motion gestures a la Kinect). Definitely check out Webplatform.org to learn more - and to contribute to the movement!

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THE SPACE NEEDLE. A SEATTLE LANDMARK. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MARC SASINSKI)

Big screens invite big gestures. Luke Wroblewski presented some insights from his work on mobile. In short, touch-enabled does not equal touch-optimized. The majority of sites out there now are swell if you have a baby-sized finger, let alone that of an actual fully-grown adult! 

Using people’s gestures as a sign of intent and then designing accordingly was really interesting. Gesture discoverability was also discussed. One way that tribal interaction knowledge - like pull to refresh - is passed around is through what Jared Spool calls “socially transmitted functionality.” Good stuff, but I suddenly had this urge to wash my hands. 

Content is not like the stuff you make sausages with. It’s much, much more. Erika Hall gave a great talk on how content strategy should be more about ‘composing’ content rather than simply 'creating' it. Writers and designers need to embrace cross-functional teams so as to answer things like what is valuable to whom and in what circumstance? Don't let the "content" be something that you don't question. Writing is interface design!  

And definitely avoid testing with lorem ipsum placeholder text. That’s a huge fail in terms of getting the most bang for your user testing buck. I think we all sometimes fall into that 'we'll just add the final copy later' trap. Good reminder.  

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INTERIOR OF THE CHIHULY GARDEN AND GLASS MUSEUM. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MARC SASINSKI)

Embrace uncontrolled environments. John Dirks talked about how Blink tested the unboxing of the Xbox Kinect internationally. Because Microsoft was introducing a whole new interaction language, the initial set-up was crucial. 

He provided great insights on how the relationships between kids and parents, spouses - and even pets! - contributed to the findings around configuration. Of course, cultural differences and context totally matter. For example, there tends to be a fair amount of space in homes and apartments here in the United States, but not so much in places like Japan, where jumping up and down to set-up your Kinect means potentially pissing off your downstairs, high-rise neighbors. Also, ceiling fans can be problematic. Ouch. 

Lastly, Jared Spool prolly summed it all up best: Intuitive design is invisible. It's like good room temperature; you don't notice it unless you're hot or cold. That segued nicely into his advice on making incremental improvements, iterating, and measuring (like amazon does) instead of large-scale redesigns where users' acquired knowledge can sometimes get lost. When users have to relearn how to accomplish their goals and go from working knowledge to target knowledge, that sucks. 

And majority of real innovation out there happens by applying something that already exists to a new context. In other words, innovation basically means adding value to where there was none before. Pretty simple, eh?! (Kidding, of course). 

Lastly, yes; Rem Koolhaas’ Seattle Public Library is extraordinary. Given the cold materials used (i.e., lots of steel, glass, and the exposed imperfections in concrete), it was somehow inviting. It made me want to curl up and read in one of its many, naturally-lit nooks.

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SEATTLE PUBLIC LIBRARY'S "LIVING ROOM." (PHOTOGRAPH BY MARC SASINSKI)

I also recommend the library tour, which highlights several of the project’s design challenges. No building is perfect and it was interesting to hear about some of the issues faced and the areas where the architect stood his ground. Overall, a pretty Coolhouse. (You see what I just did there? ;)

Marc

Product Management Should Be a Little Like Changing Diapers

I recently reread Marty Cagan’s Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love. It was my second go-around. I found myself nodding. Again. 

What continues to resonate is this idea of spending quality time with users, understanding their very real pain points, and validating product design assumptions. Yes, assumptions. 

The way I see it, anything we design or build is basically an assumption until it has been validated in some way, shape, or form. (And don’t even get me started about how the term “requirements” gets tossed around like gospel from on high that is never to be questioned. Alas, that’s a blog post for another time). 

Cagan writes that “Testing your ideas with users is probably the single most important activity in your job as a product manager.” 

“Single most important activity.” 

Wow, that really gets right down to it, doesn’t it? As a UXer, that’s pretty much second nature. Validating is just what we do. But for other folks, maybe not so much. I’ve seen first-hand how this type of activity can somehow be interpreted as being beneath them; and even secondary to marketing the thing. 

Given the above, I couldn’t help but think of changing diapers. Let me explain.

Do you know how some people - ahem, of a certain stature - tend to sometimes outsource their menial activities and chores? That makes perfect sense on a lot of fronts, frankly. However, there are still things worth doing that are super-important and immensely rewarding. 

Things like, oh, I don’t know, playing a key role in raising your kids and spending quality time with them perhaps? Hiring nannies to handle everything during their formative years means that you’re kind of missing out on some pretty important stuff; stuff that can potentially shape the both of you. (Translation: Outside agencies and consultancies doing all your key research, for example.) 

Well, I think that same type of distance from the good stuff can affect product managers who rely solely on things like market forecasts, projections from so-called industry experts, as well as high-level Forrester reports for crucial product decisions and priority calls. This is also especially true during the formative years of a product. 

As a quick example, when Airbnb was working out their strategy and value propositions early on, the founders flew to New York to spend time with their core user base. It was there, in the very apartments that would be listed on the site, that they got to see what interacting with their service was like. 

In the flesh. Down and dirty. 

They did things like take photographs of the spaces because those were areas that hosts needed help with in terms of quality and uploading capabilities. 

They witnessed scenarios around exchanging money, including what happens when a traveler doesn’t have the correct change upon arrival; or, their currency happens to be foreign because New York is a popular international destination. Hint: It amounts to awkwardness in any culture. (By the way, great Soapbox podcast about Airbnb from the fine folks at Zurb: zurb.com/soapbox). 

Of course, designing great products and services means having a big-picture strategy. However, success also means reducing even the tiniest points of friction, which amount to very big wins at the end of the day, especially with digital goods. And it’s hard to know what those pain points are unless you experience them first-hand. 

So, get in there and get to know what that friction feels like. Getting your hands dirty with the pain point poop that is your users’ frustration is critical - and maybe even a little like changing diapers. How else can you get that much-needed sense of empathy to help influence key product design decisions? 

And yeah, agreed. I took that poop metaphor a little too far.

Just Happy to be Nominated.

I was pretty excited to learn that my article on Experience Models made the list of Johnny Holland's Top 10 UX Articles of 2011. Go ahead and check it out... if only to see all the other ones that really rock.   

The piece also got a nice mention by the fine folks over at The Leo Burnett Blog. 

Nothing like kicking off my 2012 posts with a little, shameless self-promotion! ;)

Looking forward to 2012!