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The Invisible Designer
design, society & sociology, usability
August 06, 2003, 08:24 PM
Since I first became interested in interface design, one of my favorite sayings has been "The most irritating thing about being an aspiring usability professional is that there is so much need for us out there in the world and so little demand!" Today I found out that Alan Cooper elaborated on this thought better than I have been:
Sometimes being an interaction designer can be so frustrating! If, as a designer, you do something really, fundamentally, blockbuster correct, everybody looks at it and says "Of course! What other way would there be?" This is true even if the client has been staring, empty-handed and idea-free, at the problem for months or even years without a clue about solving the problem. It's also true even if our solution generates millions of dollars for the company. Most really breakthrough conceptual advances are opaque in foresight and transparent in hindsight. It is incredibly hard to see breakthroughs in design. You can be trained and prepared, spend hours studying the problem, and still not see the answer. Then someone else comes along and points out a key insight, and the vision clicks into place with the natural obviousness of the wheel. If you shout the solution from the rooftops, others will say "Of course the wheel is round, what other shape could it possibly be?" This makes it frustratingly hard to show off good design work.
Cooper attributes the problem to this inherent property of design: the "right" design seems obvious once you've arrived at it, but boy is it hell to get there. And I think this is a large part of the problem. Our brains are funny things; neural impulse patterns have to click just right with other neural impulse patterns to produce those breakthrough design ideas, and sometimes it requires intense immersion in data or research, high-energy brainstorming sessions, mapping mental associations to physical objects using a process like affinity diagramming, or a host of other mental exercises to arrive at this "click". But once you have the idea and can describe it to others, they don't have to go through all this strenuous mental activity and thus have the "Duh; it took you that long to come up with this?!" reaction.
But I think this isn't the only barrier. Another big problem usability professionals seem to face is the "everyone's an expert" symptom when it comes to interface design, so it's hard for the designer to sell his skills when non-designers are convinced you don't need special skills to create great results. Interface design is one of those fields that is easy to do badly but hard to do well, and unlike programming, it isn't immediately obvious when a design is bad to those who designed it. This is especially if you don't run user tests, and since this problem crops up most in organizations that are fairly immature with respect to usability, this is likely the case.
But even if the organization is fairly mature, usability still often falls by the wayside because, as Cooper argues, its benefits are often invisible. A well-designed interface may not have immediate, measurable impacts on product sales, may not be demanded by clients (well, they may want the software to be "easy to use", but most don't understand what this entails), and thus may not hit the company in its pocket book. And even if it is impacting sales, this effect is likely to occur only after some delay, as users get frustrated with the product and switch to competitor's offerings. And as we know from systems thinking, we humans are bad at connecting effects to causes when there is a significant delay between them.
So, what's an enterprising young designer to do if he wants to help tackle this problem?
Email Rob:
My New Friend Socrates
life & times, people
August 05, 2003, 08:54 PM
At my new apartment, there's a cat that often hangs around outside and sometimes comes in to visit me. Here's a couple pictures:
I've named him (her?) Socrates. I'm not sure if he has an owner or not; he has no collar or identification tags but he seems too well fed to be completely on his own. Either way, he's a personable fellow; he always comes out to greet me if he's around just like Rifken, my mother's cat, always does. The similarities end there, however, Socrates is more affectionate and less inquisitive than Rifken as well as more energetic (probably because he's younger). It's funny how different cats have such distinct personalities when you take the time to get to know them.
I'm thinking of getting some cat food or treats to try to lure Socrates into coming by more often. I'm hoping get all the benefits of having a cat without all of the responsibilities :).
Email Rob:
Power and Language in Interaction Design
language, usability
August 04, 2003, 10:59 PM
I found an Ask Tog column today via Dan's weblog proposing "Interaction Architect" as a new name... er... "brand" for interface designers as well as the development of a corresponding professional association to elevate this discipline to a more respected status in the computing industry. I always thought interaction designers / user experience professionals / whatever they want to be called fit rather nicely with the user testing people under the umbrella of the Usability Professionals' Association, but no matter. Tog's proposal is interesting in its own right, but it lead me down an entirely separate avenue of thought.
In the past, I've argued that terms like "architect" speak towards similar patterns that appear in many disciplines. Tog's post, however, provides some indirect contradictory evidence for this assertion; he wants to use the term "architect" primarily because it's a "power word", i.e. its a term that is associated with a certain amount of respect in the political climate of software development teams. I could see someone arguing that this implies there is no such common meaning; terms like "architect" just get co-opted by certain groups of people to further their own political purposes. (To be clear, I'm not claiming Tog is taking this position.)
There is some merit to this argument; language gets used for many purposes by us naked apes. One of those purposes is, in fact, political posturing; politicians have to master this method of using language if they want to be effective at their jobs (just read some Machiavelli to see what I mean). But this argument doesn't tell the whole story. Tog uses the words "architect" and "designer" not only because they further his cause, but because they make sense in the context. Tog explains why he sees "Interaction Architects" as leading the development of software systems in a similar fashion to the way building architects lead the construction of houses. If there weren't underlying commonalities in the meanings of the terms, no one would be willing to accept "interaction architect" as a moniker. After all, Tog didn't choose "Interaction Executive" as his name of choice, even though "executive" is certainly a powerful title. "Interaction Executive" is laughable in this context precisely because it makes no sense.
Words are powerful to humans, and get put to a wide variety of ends. But ultimately they must follow the rules and norms of human languages; they must be grounded in common concepts and must make sense to those who hear them.
Posted by Lyle, Lyle, Croc O' Lyle on August 06, 2003 at 02:41 PM
Hi Rob,
I responded to Tog in "An Open Letter to Tog"
http://crocolyle.blogspot.com/.
In short, I think he's got it all wrong.
I also point to some related resources and articles on titles in the user experience area.
Lyle
User Experience Architect
Posted by Rob on August 08, 2003 at 09:32 PM
Hi Lyle,
I didn't bring this up in my post, since I wanted to focus on other things, but I'd tend to agree with your main premise: why do we need yet another professional organization for people in the interface design trade? Why can't "interaction architects" just join UPA?
However, I was talking to a guy who has reviewed for UPA (the conference) in the past, and he said it tends to be pretty focused on usability testing. If your paper isn't testing-related, then its a good chance it won't get in. So at least in its current instantiation, UPA might actually be too "tester-oriented" for our friends in interaction design.
I believe this just points to a need for change in UPA, however. If interaction designers infiltrated UPA instead of forming their own organization, then more funds and energy would get funnelled into one place and UPA could be a stronger advocate for the usability trade as a whole, for testers, designers, and those renaissance men and women who can do both. I'd much rather see our field unified behind the banner of human-centered design than splintered into subcultures that never communicate even though they share so much in common.
Email Rob:
Posted by Dan on August 06, 2003 at 11:58 PM
I'm surprised Cooper would make this arguement. I'm pretty sure he's a big proponent of "goal-directed design," wherein if a product helps a user meet their personal goals, it will also help the company meet their business goals (ie more revenue, brand awareness/loyalty, etc.). And the people making sure users achieve their goals: interaction designers.
Posted by Rob on August 07, 2003 at 08:04 AM
You are certainly right about Cooper's position, and I don't think he's claiming Interaction Design isn't important to businesses (that would indeed be a strange claim coming from him), but rather that people don't always _perceive_ it as important because the end result seems trivially obvious when its completed (even though it was far from obvious to begin with).
So the argument is about humans' perceptions of interaction design, and not its true importance in an objective sense. Believe you me, neither Cooper nor I have to be sold on the importance of design and usability as disciplines :).
Posted by Jeff on August 07, 2003 at 11:06 AM
I think it's okay that the people who use our solutions (our clients' clients) never think about the process of interaction design. To them it *should* be transparent.
As to our clients... Maybe it's easier to show them than to tell them. 37signals series of redesigns (FedEx etc.) does this pretty well. In a side-by-side comparison, clients (and most people in general) can recognize improvement, even if they can't articulate it.
Maybe a usabilty case study is one more thing you build into the pitch.
In a design firm, I despair if they don't already understand the benefit of usability. If they don't, I think it's our job to kindly beat it into their heads.
Posted by Rob on August 07, 2003 at 01:02 PM
I agree that the people "downstream" from the designers shouldn't have to know or care what the designers do for them. Demanding that is just like claiming you should have to appreciate how an internal combustion engine is built in order to drive a car properly.
I like your case studies / "before and after" comparisons point, Jeff. "Evidence" of that sort is often more convincing that dry statistical data anyway, and may suffice if you can't easily make a sufficiently solid "bottom-line" argument. Know of any existing (public) body of knowledge that would have such material?
Posted by Jeff on August 07, 2003 at 02:33 PM
37signals seemed to do it first and best at:
http://www.37signals.com/better
A few of the improvements are minor, and they're all ficticious projects, but it's a great example of how to present this sort of information. Slides or powerpoint presentations rely on how an interface looks, while this gets to the heart of how it acts.