Your Next Experience

2011-01-21T14:56:00.000-08:00

The following is a lengthy email I wrote to an intern here at HP, who asked about how to become a senior interaction designer. My response:

Hi Justin,

It sounds like you're heading the right direction. Since you're interested in what it takes to become a senior interaction designer, here's my brief career roadmap for you.

The basic break down of categories of skills include: Information architecture, visual design, interaction design, user research, prototyping and usability testing. Most designers focus their core strengths on one or two of these, but you should have a basic level of competency in all of them. Learn the basics of each, but be an expert in at least one. Then grow another. And repeat.

Having a good foundational understanding of an iterative design process, like user centered design, or design thinking is critical. You mention user evaluation – this is both a vital skill in user centered design, but also a role in itself. I'm assuming due to your interest in this position that you're less interested in user research as a full time career, but as a skill for understanding user needs. The design position is more focused on the creation of new designs to fulfill customer needs, while user research more on evaluation of needs and measuring the solutions to meet those needs.

Most importantly though, If I summed up what a designer needed in 3 words, it would be: portfolio, portfolio, portfolio.

While I'm kidding, I can't stress it enough. Until I was a manager, every job and project I got as a designer was directly due to my portfolio. It is the easiest way to measure your qualifications for people haven't worked with you, or had you referred to the them. You can talk your way into a lot things (especially those you may not really be qualified for), but a portfolio trumps talk every time. Secondary to the portfolio was the type of experience I had and level of clients, but those are truly not as good a predictor of success as the work itself. So to begin with, build a student portfolio on your own time and find freelance projects you can do or give yourself projects.

How much does a portfolio matter? A young, very talented designer literally put himself on the map with his critique of American Airlines' website, and his insightful redesign (and the uproaring response that ensued) http://dustincurtis.com/dear_american_airlines.html And don't be intimidated. Not everyone is Dustin.

To succeed long term it is important to understand an even broader context. The key to success in corporate consumer design is understanding the business objectives, the customer needs and the technical capabilities needed to carry out the design. On every product design team there are representatives for each – the product manager's primary responsibility is to the business, engineering of course to build it, and the designer is the advocate for customer's experience. Having basic knowledge of the other two aids in communication and helps generate more optimal designs.

Many of the best senior designers learn programming so they can gain a deeper understanding of what they're designing, or go on to get their MBAs to broaden their business expertise as they go into design management. Be warned though, the value and importance of expanding like this into other fields is still hotly debated in professional design circles.

In the short term, read and do. Check out my twitter feed, which is almost all about design and innovation. Look up the people I'm following and read what they have to say. Many business journals have extended their focus to include Design – take Business Week and Fast Company for example. Also join professional design organizations like CHI and IXDA. They provide professional connections and a strong understanding quickly. Similarly, you can also join LinkedIn and many of the professional groups within it. Some of the best debates are within their discussion forums.

And good luck, …it's a great time to be a designer.

What Makes Design Succeed?

2009-05-06T11:21:00.000-07:00

We (as a design community) want to talk about what makes design succeed and how design can gain more credibility within the enterprise and the boardroom – critical goals for moving our discipline forward. But in my opinion we don’t yet have the framework or semantics do so. We say we do, but the models we’re building aren’t scalable or measurable for the most part.

It’s very similar to the conundrum with the basic laws of physics not applying at a quantum level, or again at the astrophysics level. We live in one universe, but our models haven’t extrapolated well. But it's really more like the model we use for apples falling can't be used for feathers or bricks.

So I’ve been working on a large side project. In essence I want to compare and to some degree measure design practices as diverse as those practiced at Apple, Google, and Stanford’s d.school; to be able to compare firms using an agile methodology to those using waterfall.

It’s a simple goal, but we’re a long way from being able to do so. When one of these successful entities is discussed, it’s invariably in isolation, and in terms and using metrics that generally don’t travel to the other entities. And in fact that is the point. The parts that distinguish them and help them be outliers within their respective industries are unique.

Different firms have an incredibly wide range of goals they want to achieve, metrics to measure success by (in fact these are largely implicit but are there), team skills, roles and responsibilities to carry out projects, with hugely varying methods, structures and processes, often with completely unique interim deliverables, resulting in not surprisingly in vastly differing outcomes.

At a minimum, we need to be able to clearly understand methods for helping design teams bring solid, stable, consistently innovative designs to market.

This is about increased productivity in global marketplace; it’s about quantifying the subjective, and bringing qualifiers to the creative process; this is about raising the bar for our discipline.

I’m working to normalize several disparate design methodologies into a common set of metrics that allows us to compare and contrast design processes on several levels. A large part of the reason why this task has been so difficult is because there are in fact so many variables with so little standardization.

Where and how do you draw a baseline?

Trying to do this has forced me step back even further, to look at the design process in broader terms, even across industries and disciplines and ask, How do designers think?

This has been a daunting and exciting project and I’ve recently made some big breakthroughs that are starting to put the right pieces in place.

I plan to start reporting on more of it soon. …stay tuned…

A UX view of Obama’s first 100 days

2009-05-01T17:06:00.000-07:00

Getting Alignment

In listening to NPR’s analysis this past week of President Obama’s foreign policy in his first 100 days in office, I was struck by how eerily similar it seemed to a strategy I wrote last year for UX managers entitled, Crossing the Bridge. Its purpose was very different - specifically Crossing the Bridge is designed to cope with key stakeholders undoing what are sometimes months of work midstream at design reviews. More broadly though, it is a methodology for stakeholder alignment – something Obama clearly believes in, and appears to be the strategy Obama is using to set part of the foundation for his foreign policy.

Just so you know, Alignment is on of the dozen factors I’m outlining in Design Factors for Managing UX. It’s a work in progress that I’ll be publishing more on soon.

In terms of our new president, simply put, before making demands of our now weary allies (that would be more demands, if you look at a timeline longer than 4 months) the President has sent state department representatives on “listening tours”.

Taken at the simplest level many might make the somewhat obvious point that given his background, President Obama is simply community building. I would counter that those who think this is just some form of Kum-bah-yah are short sighted. There are real strategic benefits to this approach.

First, they provide a level of familiarity with this new administration. After the changing of the guard, it’s a good thing to let our foreign diplomats get know each other – it’s the first rule of networking. When you network, the first time out, you don’t ask for anything. It’s much easier to ask (or be asked by) someone you know and trust rather than a complete stranger.

Second, our “partners” (using the term loosely) feel like, “their voice is heard”. Being able to take their priorities into account, even at somewhat superficial level and hopefully more, opens dialog begins creating stronger bonds. This is one of the key first steps in changing our global public image. Simply imagine what happens if instead of being burned in effigy in the streets, foreign newspapers print positive things about US intentions. How does that start to affect future negotiations?

Next, they give the new administration an updated map of where our allies stand on important issues. If you’re going to play chess, you need to know where all of the players stand on the board. This was a critical error and I would argue an example of the Bush administration’s hubris in that they charged almost blindly into major confrontations, without much regard for aligning our ‘partners’ in supporting major upheavals in global stability.

Instead of our making unilateral demands, these early meetings provide the opportunity for us to know in advance how much leverage will be needed for support on key initiatives, which ones may require little political capital to enable, which may require aligning other supporters for added pressure and which of those could be non-starters or very expensive to push through politically.

This last point is the most critical in that it allows us to more carefully align which tools we’ll need to use to get the job done most efficiently, and avoid unnecessary and costly embattlements later on.

I’ve already heard criticism from foreign policy hawks, decrying that we’re the strongest nation on earth and we can’t appear weak, but good strategists know the value in knowledge of the playing field – learning as much as possible about the cards each player holds (what they value and find important), what bargaining chips each holds, seeing patterns ahead of the game to come, and gaining strategic alignments are all a part of setting useful structures in place on the playing board.

Let’s see how this “player” plays “chess” differently than the last.

d.school CIA Mini Conference

2009-04-30T15:13:00.000-07:00

Attended the d.school's Creating Infectious Action Mini Conference today. Here's what you missed:

Iterative Reinvention

2009-04-29T10:22:00.000-07:00

I subscribe to Jason Calacanis’ Team Jason List, which replaced his blog. Yesterday he wrote,

Team Jason,

I'm working on an email for you guys (and Business Week) on "How to come up with great ideas." Was wondering if you guys had any feedback on the following:

Do you have a specific methods for coming up with ideas?
Do you have an specific methods for evaluating an idea and its chances for success in the market?
Do you know of any great stories surrounding ideas that turned into businesses?

Ground Rules: If you reply to this I'm assuming you're OK with it being included with or without your name. If you specifically don't want credit in the email please say so at the top of the email.

Here’s my response:

OK Jason, now you’re in my territory. When an idea for a business first strikes, I first look at from a few perspectives:

Is it a game changer?
- I ask this first, and last. The first time to see if I’m excited enough to ask the following questions, and I come back frequently to see if it still holds true.
Can it be a great customer experience?
- I’ve seen ideas that seem great, but just aren’t going to move consumers emotionally. Note I first do a gut check on Customer Experience and the analyze it further placing it in the quadrant. (and trying to assess, if it doesn’t fall into the well or ocean categories, would something help it?)
- This falls into the Pain Threshold Quadrant
  - Deep and narrow - well
  - Deep and wide – ocean
  - Shallow and wide - lake
  - Shallow and narrow – puddle
What’s the revenue stream?
Is it something new, unique and protectable?
- What’s the competitive landscape? Who’s nearby, who might jump in as things get interesting?
What are the obvious difficulties?
- Do the base technologies exist to bring to market?
- Are there huge hurdles that may be unpredictable (like needing a cost effective flexible LCD screen)
What interest and expertise do I have in this field?
- Conversely, who would have to be on board to make the needle move?
- What would the team look like?
- Who can I use as a sounding board for the idea?

On the ideation side, being a user experience designer, consultant and entrepreneur, my take on ideation is a little too broad and deep to give a 50-word outline. Instead I’ll share one of my favorite techniques for early modeling and vetting new concepts, which I call Iterative Reinvention.

Iterative Reinvention is basically longitudinal brainstorming and refactoring. Instead of doing it once and quitting, I do it again and again, each time the result turning out slightly differently. I write up the key customer experience, and/or features, and/or business model, without referencing what I did before. I try to do it differently, I look at different aspects, walkthrough what the VC would say, or what competitors might do, or most times simply what is going to work for the customer. Invariably there’s crossover, but there is also something new that comes out. Then I do it again in a couple hours or a couple days. Then I look at past write-ups, taking the good stuff from several and merge and refactor the concept/design into the improved version.

This takes more time than a brainstorming session with 3-20 people, but it only takes 1 – you, and it is very effective at generating more ideas and improving on a concept.

The problem is that too many people don’t simply continue to rethink and improve the initial idea. They think they’re done. This is how Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. …and frankly, I do this throughout development, even after shipping a product – that’s how I get to v2.

Renewed Vigor

2009-04-29T10:08:00.000-07:00

Alright, I'm going to finally start publishing some of my thoughts and writings. Frankly, this is thanks to Twitter, which finally got me to overcome wanting to polish everything until it was ready for publishing. So, let's see how this goes.

btw, you can find me on twitter at:

It's Alivvve!!

2009-04-14T09:50:00.000-07:00

A year to the day after I joined WideOrbit, we're launching WO Sales. It's been a fun year. Here's the WideOrbit press release

hmmm...so what's next?...

Is it Greenwash?

2008-11-05T13:54:00.000-08:00

Here's a link to a very interesting video commercial for HSBC, with my response:

On October 28th, Marketplace columnist Janne K. Flisrand was raising the question: Bizarre ad: greenwash, or just a guy in a bear suit?

Wow, this was a tough one.

They are displaying an incredibly complex issue that doesn't have clear winners and to some extent you could argue that all of us lose something in the bargain. Balancing issues and making choices isn't easy, and I would argue that the piece's neutrality echoes the bank's viewpoint that it is not their business to take sides, especially when the 'right' choice isn't clear, and their customers are on all sides. I can value their remaining neutral where it isn't clear which position to take.

While it certainly is a moving piece of micro-documentary on a complex issue, is it greenwash?

They end the piece with:
We recognize customers value things differently.

So what we learn from one customer helps us better serve another.

I can see truth and value in their first statement. What does concern me is that while I believe the innate potential of truth in the second, they haven't shown it. How is this issue helping them better serve their customers? Or said another way, how are they changing their services because of it, and their customers' involvement, beliefs and interactions with it? At first I was going to argue for them not to simply be taking advantage of its emotional pull, they either had to prove their case or at a minimum be doing a public good. Now, I have a different take:

In the opening scene, many of us could take sides with whomever we more closely identified with, but by the end we see that, _we_, not just the couple, can come and work together. The real value was in their raising difficult issues for us to wrestle with showing they're not simply paint black and white. All of the participants in the video are valued and welcome at HSBC. Better understanding yields better appreciation, and they're arguing better service.

Is it greenwash? No. While I still might argue they didn't prove point 2, they didn't need to.

The Treo Pro is Free at Last! Free at Last!

2008-08-24T23:37:00.000-07:00

Finally! one of the projects I worked on at Palm is out. (sorry if anyone thought I meant they were giving them away - some of the earlier models they almost had to) The Treo Pro is here and it's thin, sleek and beautiful! Feast your eyes on it as it's unboxed via Youtube. And, here's some propaganda from the Palm blog and some of the core marketing team, including Peter Skillman, my former boss talking about how this is the tip of the iceberg of things to come... ...just holding my breath now. ...just waiting a little more...

First Impressions versus Beta

2008-02-01T16:12:00.000-08:00

Here's the kick off for my new blog, and it's apropos. I don't know how many posts I've held because they were a rough first draft that needed polish. Need to look up a fact here, polish a sentence or phrase there, or want to reflect over it overnight for more insight. So why all this delaying instead of getting things done?

Here’s the rub – you can only make one first impression. How many times have we heard this line? Now it’s run into the Perpetual Beta. And as Google and so many others are showing, "Layering", as Seth Godin calls it may not start out of the shoot as fast, but it will have more momentum after the fourth lap heading into the finish. Take a look:

Layering
Posted by Seth Godin on January 22, 2008 |

Here's what we used to do:
Create ---> Edit ---> Launch

Here's what happens now:
Create ---> Launch ---> Edit ---> Launch ---> repeat

Someone asked me which post on this blog represented the turning point of its growth. The 'breakthrough' post. It turns out that there wasn't one. Instead, there were 2,500 posts, one after the other, each building (and I was learning from each) as we went.

Wikipedia is built on a bold idea: launch with a few hundred mediocre articles. Challenge people to add a few more. And then, day after day, layer on top of that, improving each one, improving a hundred thousand of them, improving a million of them. One after another, layer after layer.

Squidoo is a bit different. Let each person layer their own page, instead of a crowd. And then, as time goes by and the crowd gets bigger, the new folks are smarter (and building better pages) because they've watched the results that others have layered up.

Organizations that make the same mistakes every day (hidebound ones, rulebook based ones, airlines) rarely get to layer. They don't grow and improve, because they're not organized to do so.

And thus the challenge. We live in a layered world now. Those that plan and plan and then launch are always going to be at a disadvantage to the layerers.