Three service experiences from a recent trip to Miami, FL.

At Whole Foods in Pinecrest
Me: “Hi. I’m looking for vermouth.”
Whole Foods: “That’s like beer, right?”
Me: “It’s like a strong wine.”
Whole Foods: “This is the wine department.”
Me: “Yes. I know. Where do you have stuff like port?”
Whole Foods: “Which port? Is this something you got on a cruise ship?”

At Macy’s in Dadeland
Me: “Hi. I’m looking for black, canvas tennis shoes.”
Macy’s: “Canvas? Is that a kind of leather?”
Me: “No. It’s heavy cloth. Like what they make sails out of.”
Macy’s: “Like nylon? We have Docksides. But they’re not made of nylon.”

At Staples office supplies
Me: “Hi. I need an At-A-Glance calendar refill.”
Staples: “What year?”
Me (biting tongue): “2010″
Staples: “But that’s next year.”
Me: “Er…yes…I need a refill for my current calendar.”
Staples: “We don’t carry that brand.”
Me: “You have an At-A-Glance display over there, but there’s nothing in it.”
Staples: “That’s a mistake.”
Me: “That you have the display or that it’s not filled?”
Staples: “Yes. Sorry we can’t help you.”

And we web designers wonder why folks can’t fill out online forms…geez.

Back in January, 2009, I published my definition of user experience. UX, as user experience is popularly called, is a difficult subject to discuss with business clients. To them, “UX” is just more expensive hot air from the folks who brought us the dot bomb.

The basic problem is that discussing an experience – any experience – is highly subjective. And although others have attempted to set up metrics (notably Robert Rubinoff’s User Experience Audit, and Livia Labate’s User Experience Health Check), we don’t always end up with particularly useful data. Here at FatDUX, we were looking for a simple tool that could help us turn observations and subjective conclusions into useful dialog with our clients.

Our UX quantification model will undoubtedly be criticized by the scientific hardliners. But it does help us uncover many problems and communicate these to the client. And it works better than beating them over the head with statistics.

Please note, we take a very broad view of “user experience,” incorporating both online and offline interactions of three types:
 
- active
- passive
- secondary

Please refer to the original user-experience blogpost for details regarding these types of encounter.

Avoiding complicated algorithms
There are lots of complicated ways to work numbers, particularly when dealing with the subjective data that invariably lies at the heart of any discussion of user experience. But rather than putting together confusing formulae to present our research, we work directly with our clients to quantify empirical observations in a very simple model.

The model in brief
We start by consolidating our research findings in a single first-person narrative – an X-log (experience log). This is somewhat related to phenomenology. Once we’ve assembled this story, we work together with the client to:

1. mark each individual interaction – we call these “snapshots”
2. assign a value from 1 to 3 to each snapshot in relation to its contribution to the overall experience
3. grade the experience on a scale from -3 to +3
4. multiply the value by the grade to get a score (this is the really useful number)
5. note any events that are recurring, unique, or may be influenced by chronology (cause and effect relationships).

Plugging in the numbers
We mark each interaction, but some may later be thrown out if they are sufficiently trivial or so unique in character that they are deemed irrelevant in the broader, generic sense of the project. Although no individual snapshot can be assigned a value of 0, if you really think it deserves a value of 0, this is probably an interaction you’ll want to ignore.

When we grade the individual snapshots, we use the following scale:

+3 = fantastic
+2 = good
+1 = better than expected
0 = no effect on the ultimate user experience
-1 = poor
-2 = awful
-3 = mission critical

Unique or chronological events won’t always influence the score, but in the case of repeating events, the interaction clearly needs to be looked at carefully.

A sample narrative
Here’s a simple story based on a trip to the movies. It represents an amalgam of several user interviews, onsite research, review of user-satisfaction surveys, etc.

My family (my wife, myself, and our two kids) decided to go to the movies. We checked the internet and found the website for our local cinema complex after a quick search on Google. But we had to click three times to get to the program page and wait through a silly animated ad for a movie that hadn’t even been released yet. Worse still, we were forced to download a pdf to find out the specific movie names and playing times. And after all that, we couldn’t even order tickets online, much less purchase them, so we couldn’t avoid waiting in line when we arrived. You’d think a big four-screen complex would have a more sophisticated website. But we did find out what was showing, decided to see the latest Harry Potter movie, and piled into the car.

Finding a parking place was easy. The theater has a big lot, which is important since driving to this particular theater is really our only option. Just as we were leaving the car, it really started to rain, but happily, the entrance wasn’t far away.

There were three ticket windows open, so the lines were short. The girl behind the counter was noisily chewing gum and barely looked up during the entire transaction. In fact, she didn’t say a single word to me except to ask for the money. Wow, prices have really increased this past year. I was surprised at how expensive it was.

The lobby was inviting and quite clean. We bought popcorn and soda at the concession and found our way to our particular auditorium. It was easy to spot the signs pointing the way. As we approached, we noticed overflowing trashcans with popcorn and other garbage from previous audiences.

The seats were well-marked and easy to find. The seating was comfortable but there was old popcorn underfoot. The temperature in the room was pleasant, although all of the wet people made it get a little steamy. The sound was great and really enhanced the special effects, so we really enjoyed the movie. When we left, there was a nice usher, who opened the exits and wished us a pleasant evening as we went out. And it had stopped raining. A nice end to a nice family outing.

Defining the interactions
Reading through the narrative, we mark the individual interactive events – the snapshots. This gives us the following list:

1. Find website on internet
2. Click three times to find relevant page on site
3. Reaction to irrelevant animation
4. Find schedule (download PDF)
5. Reaction to lack of purchasing options
5a. Opinion of website
6. Park car
7. Reaction to parking lot
8. Reaction to rain
9. Reaction to proximity of parking to entrance
10. Reaction to short line
11. Reaction to rude ticketseller
12. Buy tickets
13. Reaction to ticket prices
14. Reaction to lobby
15. Buy popcorn and soda
16. Find auditorium
17. React to overfilled trashcans
18. Find seats
19. Reaction to seats
20. Reaction to popcorn on floor
21. Reaction to temperature
22. Reaction to steaminess
23. Reaction to sound
24. Reaction to movie
25. Reaction to nice usher
26. Reaction to dry weather
26a. Opinion of evening

Note that opinions are not really interactions, hence we have 5a and 26a.

Assigning values and grades
Ask your clients to help you fill out the values and grades. This is a great way to get clients emotionally involved in the design project without having to show them pretty layouts.

Conclusions
Having made this chart, there are several things that become painfully apparent. First, the lack of purchasing options is really a major problem. The need to watch irrelevant animations and resort to PDFs for information was also pretty bad. Snapshots 11, 15, and 25 suggest that additional emphasis should be placed on customer-service training for front-line personnel. Snapshots 17 and 20 illustrate that cleaning is a problem. Snapshot 22 revealed that the climate-control system was out of whack, which proved to be an easy repair.

The most important point of the exercise, though, was that the client suddenly understood how all of these events ultimately contributed to the total perception of the movie-going experience. The X-log narrative started a productive dialog about user experience and not about the color of the links.

We hope you’ll find it useful.

Wednesday
FatDUX needed a book – fast. Amazon US had it, Amazon UK didn’t. So, we ordered from the American .com site and paid a fortune for two-day, international courier delivery. This was last Wednesday.

Friday
Friday comes and goes. No word. No tracking number. No joy in Mudville.

Saturday
Saturday, a disturbingly thick envelope arrives via snail-mail from UPS. Tanya Neerskov from UPS Danmark A/S has determined that FatDUX Copenhagen ApS (an officially registered company in the Kingdom of Denmark, with a completely legitimate tax number), is not registered as an “import organization.”  Er…well…no. We design websites and such.

The thick envelope contains masses of paperwork that will need to be filed before we can receive our book (to be sent via snail-mail – “changes will be effected within 14 days”). According to Tanja, FatDUX Copenhagen must be re-categorized as an ”officially registered importer of goods from outside the EU.”

There is a telephone number I can call for assistance. I call Saturday morning (about five minutes after the letter arrives). A recording tells me that if I really am desperate (I am) I can call another number (I do). The second number also tells me that I am out of luck until Monday at 8:30 AM.

Sunday
Sunday, I write the client report that might possibly have benefited from the knowledge purported to be in the book we ordered from Amazon.

Monday, 08:32
I call UPS. Unfortunately, Tanja is out sick that day. But Charlotte is very helpful. She explains that we need to pay sales tax on the book (normally, we do this at the post office and it takes no time at all). But because UPS has set these strange procedures in motion, we must now go to our “local tax office.” (Jeez, the total charge is only about USD 12) Good news: if we pay this today, UPS will send the book the very next day (Tuesday).

Charlotte explains that Tanja certainly must have called our office to determine the best way to expedite this package (she didn’t – I questioned everyone at FatDUX who was near a telephone on Friday when the book arrived at the UPS terminal). Also, Charlotte reminded me that we really should re-register our company so that we can avoid these problems in the future (er…I paid more for shipping than for the book and suddenly the delays are my fault???)

Next task – finding out where the local tax office is – we’ve never had cause to visit them. It turns out, the “local” tax office is about as far from our offices as two locations can be within the confines of Copenhagen County. But WTF…

Monday 12:16
Just after noon, I’ve now fought my way across town, arrived at my “local” tax office, and paid my sales tax (12 damned dollars). The genuinely charming woman behind the counter at the tax office explains that she must now fax (yes, fax) a note to the customs officials that the sales tax has been paid. “They go past the fax regularly. Your book will be released from customs very soon.”

Monday 13:55
I call UPS to hear the status. I am transferred to the sales department. But they need a shipping number, which I don’t have – only my customs number. No. They cannot transfer the call. No. Their system cannot access customs-clearance numbers. No. This is just not the right number for any help whatsoever.

Monday 14.01
I  call UPS again and am transferred to the customs department. I get the proper freight number. No, they cannot transfer me to the sales department. No. They cannot expedite the package. No. This is just not the right number for any help whatsoever.

Monday 14:05
I call UPS again (the operator now recognizes my voice). The sales department checks my freight number. No. The package has not cleared customs. Sorry, nothing they can do about this. I will need to take this up with the customs department.

Monday 14:07
I call UPS (the operator and I chat about bureaucracy and the limitations of modern technology). The customs department asks me to fax my tax receipts to them. After some negotiation, we agree that a scan sent as an e-mail attachment is also a viable legal instrument.  At any rate, UPS promises to send a reminder to the Danish customs authorities.

Monday 14:11
We scan all our documentation and send it to the e-mail address provided by our new friend at UPS, Hinna Somia. She (and the operator) are the first sensible people we’ve encountered at UPS.

Monday 14:13
Hinna forwards our mail to Kim Andersen at the tax office.

Monday 17:25:36 +0200
Kim Andersen announces that our book has cleared customs. Clearly, it took Kim from three to five hours to take care of this major task.

Tuesday (all bloody day)
We wait. No book. No e-mails. No nothing.

Wednesday 08:31
I call UPS. Message? The book went on the truck at 06:47 this morning “This is an express package, so it’s getting special priority”.

And I’m silently cursing, “don’t pee on my boots and tell me it’s raining…” Define “express” please…and “priority” too.

I then ask, “Why didn’t the book go out yesterday as you had promised?”

“Promised? Who promised? UPS can’t make promises. We cannot be held accountable for unforseen delays. Besides, your company isn’t registered properly. And even after it cleared customs, we had to wait for an inspector to come by and approve the package.”

“Er…someone from the tax office came by to inspect the package? Yesterday,” I ask, slightly astonished.

“Yes,” came the cocky, self-confident reply.

“Why? I’d expect an inspection to take place BEFORE I paid import duties and tax.

“Don’t tell us how to do our job!” The UPS phone didn’t slam down, but it came damned close…

“Hello??” I asked…but the line was dead.

Wednesday 10:54
The book arrives. The package is unopened. Not sure what any “inspection” might have consisted of…

Aftermath
Gosh, I’ve been receiving books in my company’s name for almost a decade. No problem – the customs people ask me to pay sales tax or import duties and I do. Simple – I do this at the post office when I pick up my package and it takes no time at all. And no one has ever asked my to reregister my company! Why should the procedures for importing a book be so much more difficult when a courier service is involved?

Honestly UPS, how could you possible waste so many people’s time? My goodness, the Kingdom of Denmark has actually lost money on this deal. My tax was DKK 79.70 or about USD 12. But if you work out the salaries for everyone involved it must be at least 10 times this amount). And UPS, why did you lie and say you had “agreed on procedure with my office” when you never called? And I strongly suspect you of lying again when you tell me that a package needs to be inspected after it has been released from customs.

Most importantly, how can you, dear UPS, rationalize delaying a priority shipment for five days after its arrival? What authority have you given Tanja Neerskov have that she has the audacity to tell me my company is improperly registered? (Tanja and Charlotte are what we used to call “skrankepaver” in Danish.

And Amazon.com. Are you aware that I will NEVER EVER EVER use this service again?

Before I started working at FatDUX, I didn’t know of such terms as ”user experience” or  ”usability”. Of course I had had both good and bad experiences with both – I just wasn’t aware of the fact that I was dealing with stuff that people actually write books about. But more importantly, neither did I know that a large group of people was lacking this knowledge, and because of that, caused me countless moments of frustration and hair pulling. I do have very healthy hair, but I see now, that it is most likely just due to good genes, and definitely not thanks to bad designers.

What I quickly discovered though was, that the “not knowing” part in most cases really is the criteria of success. “Don’t make me think” by Steve Krug made this very clear to me, and I can only give my best recommendations to newcomers in the field.

Relief
One of the things I love most about being a part of all this, is that my dread for failing as I use new stuff, is completely vanished. The worry I sometimes had, looking stupid not knowing which button to push or which way to go, has been replaced with this new feeling of being enlightened.

I conceive myself as rather competent when it comes to logic and common sense, and even though, all kinds of stuff from websites to electronics to road signs, have left me feeling slow and incompetent numerous times. I’m pretty sure I will never stop pulling my hair in aggravation every once in a while, but instead of feeling stupid, I’m merely intrigued – intrigued and urging to pinpoint the wrongdoings and suggest a better solution.

There is however a downside to this as well: as much as I hated being the laughee – an easy victim for not knowing how to use a specific item – just as much did I love being the laugher. I could of course give a rat’s ass and just keep demeaning my friends anyway, but nobody likes the double standards-guy.

Ignorance is bliss
Our job here at FatDUX is to design great user experiences. Sometimes we do this from scratch, and sometimes we correct other’s mistakes. Correcting mistakes is a discipline that requires a targeted search for errors, and this is done by using your error-goggles – goggles it’s crucial for you to take off at the end of the day. Because wearing these in your everyday life will surely cause your brain to overload.

Let me try to exemplify this in a different context:

Besides from being an intern here at FatDUX, I work as a bartender. What I have discovered along the way is that my standards and expectations have increased in step with my expertise. That means that I’m quite likely to be a mean critic when I’m out for cocktails myself. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss! If I hadn’t developed a taste for expensive whisky, I might as well pay 10€ instead of 20€ for a manhattan.

An expert of all things
I guess what I’m trying to point out is true for most occupations, but working in the field of user experience must be one of the most extreme cases. I mean, as a bartender, I can at least limit my criticism to the cocktail bar. UX has no perimeter. Weather you are using the toilet, drugs, a hat or Windows Vista, you are being a victim of a user experience. Anything can apply to the term. A very overwelming thought given the fact that certain people are experts.

I, myself, am no near being an expert as far as UX goes, and that’s what scares me the most; I’ve only just looked through the peephole, and yet, the analyzing-everything-era of my life has already begun. I fear ending up a grumpy old hind sighted man.

On the other hand, I know my boss Eric Reiss pretty well by now. He is no grumpy old man, but an expert indeed. I guess he has found a way to balance out these things – I sure hope I will too.

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Let me make this clear: I have no intention of making this post politically correct. If you’re easily offended, click off now.
 
CNN Sports just aired a weird report about the women tennis players, currently slogging it out on the three courts at Wimbledon. The “centre court” is the most prestigious place to play. And yet some major tournament winners (Svetlana Kuznetsova, for example), have been relegated to side courts while lesser players are being showcased in centre court, such as Denmark’s Caroline Wozniaki (Danish born of Polish parents, if you were wondering).
 
Now Caroline ranks number nine on the WTF’s list for women’s singles, so she’s clearly no slouch (Svetlana is ranked number five). But it was fascinating to see CNN work so hard to avoid mentioning the obvious: the good-looking women are getting centre court exposure. Caroline ranks number three on cutiepietennis.com. Svetlana didn’t make the cut.
 
“I don’t understand this scheduling,” asked Svetlana with innocence in her voice and daggers in her eyes. Great CNN interview where a picture was truly worth a thousand words.

Caroline (left), Svetlana (right). Images borrowed from cutiepietennis.com and svetlana-kuznetsova.com

Wimbledon is about user experience
Although no one will ever have proof, it would seem the organizers of this tournament have considered that sex appeal will create a better user experience and raise more cash. And centre court is the pricy ticket (and where the TV cameras are). Now this theory is just guesswork on my part (wink, wink), but the strategy certainly makes sense. The fact that this story made it to CNN suggests that there is something to it.
 
Political correctness doesn’t always mean good business
Here in Denmark, many people still believe it is bad manners to discuss money. This is also an example of political correctness – at least in terms of our local culture. For decades, “profit” was a dirty word, never spoken in polite society. This started to change in the late 80s and early 90s. But the problem still lurks just under the surface.
 
Problem, you ask? Yes, that’s exactly what it is. You cannot run a business without thinking about profit. And you cannot make wise decisions if you avoid discussing profit with your colleagues and advisors. Or avoid talking about the use of sex as a commercial draw at Wimbledon.
 
And this relates to the web…how?
When FatDUX pitches new Danish clients, you can almost hear the gasp when we suggest that a website should become a profit center. There are three things at play here. First, older business leaders still think that a website is just an electronic brochure, so using the web in a more proactive manner is a very hard concept for them to grasp. Second, how can a site become a profit center? (“We’re not an e-commerce company. We don’t sell online.) Third, it’s still rude to talk about money.
 
The first issue is tough. But as the economic situation becomes more and more dire for those companies that have dropped their advertising and fired their sales force, some business leaders are starting to see that a good website is a must-have asset.
 
The second issue is even tougher. If people are not willing to talk about profitability, it’s difficult to formulate an effective internet strategy. This has very little to do with online sales. Rather, it’s about building trust, creating the shared reference that helps potential customers make the decision to contact your company. And ultimately, it’s about improving the bottom line, no matter which revenue streams are in play.
 
It’s not particularly difficult to create a useful website that supports business goals. But if this is what you need to build, then take my advice: get past the internal politics and forget political correctness.
 
And as to the third issue? To paraphrase the American advertising guru Rosser Reeves: “Do you want to be politically correct or do you want the damned sales curve to go up?”
 
Wimbledon seems to be getting it right. Are you?

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I’ve used Eurocard (the European equivalent of MasterCard) for about 20 years. That’s why we also chose Eurocard for the FatDUX corporate cards. My particular card was set to expire sometime in 2010. So I was surprised when I got a new card in the mail with a nice cover letter already in April 2009:
 
“Here’s your new Eurocard Corporate Gold”
 
“New card, new name, same code…”
The letter went on to tell me that now that they had added the word “Corporate” that it would be easier for me to distinguish this particular card from the others in my wallet – not really a problem as far as I was concerned. Buried among the other services that were promoted (none of which were new), the letter discreetly suggested that I contact any companies that had my card number on file and let them know that it had changed.
 
Yikes. I could barely remember all of the places this particular card is registered. Why couldn’t they simply let the card expire normally? Was there a security issue? I could understand that. Or an improvement to the built-in chip? Who knows?
 
Bother disguised as improvement
I asked the company. After all, there was basically no advantage, just a lot of bother to me.
 
Janni Hansen of Eurocard Customer Service wrote back to tell me: “We had to make new cardnumbers on all Eurocard Gold Corporate cards, because of ‘Corporate’ had to be on the front of the card.”

No word as to why “Corporate” had to be on the front of the card. Or why the company had to issue new card numbers, etc. You’d think that if they could retain the PIN, they could also retain the card number.
 
And then the fun started…
Having missed the really fine print that explained the old card was soon to be cancelled, I unexpectedly found myself barred from the Copenhagen Airport Business Lounge.
 
Our electronic pass that automatically paid the toll-bridge to Sweden no longer worked.
 
Basecamp wrote a nasty letter:
“This is your first failed credit card transaction. You have 6 more days to update your credit card information before your account is frozen.”
 
I’ve since talked to a dozen different business entities. And I keep finding new places where our card number no longer works – from Amazon to Avis. Honestly, Eurocard, I’m so irritated this may well mark the end of a long and profitable relationship for you guys.
 
As I generally say when people disguise inconvenience as better service, “Don’t pee on my boots and tell me it’s raining.”

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The FatDUX site is overdue for an overhaul. Microblogging will be one of the new features. Our Duckmaster, Andrea Resmini, has asked that I work out some guidelines for the FatDUX family.

As practiced today, I think microblogging is being abused by self-promoters and debased by people who have absolutely nothing worthwhile to say. This is a shame – microblogging has great potential as a communicative concept.

What is microblogging?
For those of you who aren’t familiar with “microblogging,” it’s based on short (max. 140 character) text messages, sent to a group of predetermined subscribers, often via a mobile phone. Twitter is the application of choice (but Jaiku, Qaiku, and Plurk are also popular). Facebook and other social networking sites have similar functionality, generally termed “status updates.”

“Eric doesn’t get it”
I’ve been accused of not understanding the value of Twitter. And perhaps my critics are justified. On the other hand, let’s not confuse my personal dislike for the way Twitter is used and for the application itself, which I think is great.

Here’s my situation – I generally keep pretty busy and don’t need microblogging to combat boredom. But most “tweets” add little value to my life. For example, travel is stressful enough without having to hear folks on Twitter announce “In a taxi on the way to the airport.”, “TSA folks can be such pricks” or “My flight is delayed”.

I’m not very interested in the doings of one’s brood either: “What’s suddenly wrong with Cheerios for breakfast?” “Just picked up the kids from school”, “Little Sarah won’t go to bed.”

On the other hand, I enjoy the backchat (backchannel chatter – and I don’t necessarily mean negative remarks) at conferences. This is the kind of stuff that does provide me with vicarious value. The blow-by-blow reporting from presentations-in-progress is particularly useful. (Even so, I dislike the behind-your-back sniping, “This panel just crashed and burned. I’m outta here.”)

I realize these are my own views and that other folks probably love gossipy tweets. (Hmm…did Andy Warhol’s “fifteen minutes of fame” just get reduced to 15 seconds?) But please give me better mechanisms to filter out the chirpchaff and give me the warblewheat. Happily, Qaiku is doing this by encouraging thread-based conversations. Twitter lags sadly behind in this regard.

Signal to noise
Let’s face it, some folks take pride in posting 5,000 – 20,000 updates (tweets) a year. But do you really want to receive all of them? Some come from twitterholics who feel the urge to make noise. Others are incorrigible self-promoters who think noise somehow equates with thought leadership. Please, work to improve your signal-to-noise ratio. The medium is NOT the message – don’t confuse the two.

There are also the self-promoters who are merely people collectors, such as actor Ashton Kutcher (first to gain a million Twitter followers). But with fairly little to say, I can’t imagine his following will last; if there is any long-term impact, it will probably be because he was able to get new users to sign up for the Twitter service. Oprah Winfrey falls kind of in the same category – I guess followers get a lift from Oprah’s deep philosophical missives like “Hey tweeters, hope you’re loving your Sunday as much as I am.”

Twitter as a debate forum?
The news media, CNN in particular, have been good about using microblogging as a debate forum. Since many full-scale blogs are also debate fora, this activity would seem to be part of a natural evolution. (CNN competed with Kutcher in the race to 1 million followers).

The problem is that like all politically heated environments, microbloggers are already subject to bullying, online threats – and offline violence. The debate rages as to whether user-based moderation of such discussions works.

In the recent South African election, the ANC used Twitter fairly effectively as a debate forum – a good gimmick in a country where text messaging has exploded in recent years. For an excellent account of the election activities and some good discussion of the pros and cons of political twittering, check out the superb Voice Of Africa blog.

One of the more interesting points related to the limits to message size:
“But, does [Twitter] add value in this case?  Most people in South Africa are probably familiar with the ANC’s policy positions already.  A 140 character recap of the standard positions (140 characters is about 1 sentence) can’t really tell you anything deeper.”

Nevertheless, the medium does seem to lend itself nicely to discussions of current events – even on a very local level (a conference, for example).

Keep it short
Keeping messages to under 140 characters does have one key advantage: it forces people to get to the point. This assumes they actually have something to say.

The French philosopher and mathematician, Blaise Pascal (of triangle fame) once remarked, “Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parceque je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.” (I made this letter longer than usual because I didn’t have time to make it shorter.)

If people want to be true thought leaders, my advice would be to tweet less and think more.

So, when the FatDUXlings start to microblog, our guidelines will be simple: say something relevant to our fields of interest, say it gracefully, say it in as few words as possible. And stop.

Don’t tweet when you’re mad or drunk or…
At a conference recently, someone Twittered “I think Eric Reiss just lied to me during his presentation.” Since I hadn’t lied, I was momentarily offended by this tweetshot until I realized it was juvenile self-promotion. But, I’m both thick-skinned and ethical, which helps me ignore the slings and arrows of outrageous Twitterers.

Rule Number One of Twittering: Don’t tweet when you’re mad, drunk, or under the influence of your own ego. Stupid comments live forever. And although microblogging can be fantastic, reducing this elegant concept to that of mere electronic graffiti is truly a waste.

Diamonds…and tweets…are forever
Here are some publicly available musings:

“On April 19th, I made bread.”

“XX got me pregnant.”

Today, almost identical comments can be found in two places: on Twitter and the walls of Pompeii. (the name of the purported father-to-be changed from Atimetus to Dave.)

Caveat Twitterati: you never know when or by whom your musings will be seen. So say something worthwhile.

Graffiti at Pompeii

A visit to the Reichstag in Berlin
Sir Norman Foster, the British architect, reworked the Reichstag (parliament) in Berlin, which reopened in 1999. It had been abandoned since 1933 – the Nazis burned it as an excuse to arrest Communists and other political opponents.

After the Battle of Berlin in April/May 1945, Soviet soldiers “decorated” the surviving walls of the burned and bombed hulk. Sir Norman felt the graffiti was significant in terms of the building’s history and preserved it (after translators censored the obscene comments).

Twitteren erwachen: do you want to go down in history as a social commentator or as a vandal? Stealing my time is vandalism.

Graffiti at the Reichstag

A visit to Charlottenlund Station outside Copenhagen
The train station in Charlottenlund, Denmark, just north of Copenhagen, features a lot of graffiti. Not gang-tags or spray-painted innertube script. Rather, these are names and dates written in pencil, which have surprisingly survived for many decades.

Charlottenlund Station in Denmark, built in 1895

Graffiti at Charlottenlund Station

Ms. Nielsen's message has survived an entire century.

In the last photo, you’ll see a young lady’s tag from October 1909. It is slightly obscured by a modern billboard. In a few weeks, the advertisement will have changed. But Ms. Nielsen’s tag will live on. I wonder if she could have imagined that her spontaneous scrawl would survive an entire century? Or be blogbeamed around the world?

Twitter-folk: if you want your name to live forever, choose a resilient medium. Although pencil on brick sometimes works, ideas are truly immortal.

More ideas, please.

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I bought an interesting book in the United States a few weeks ago. It turns out, it is the second volume of a trilogy – but the first volume is now out of print. So, I turned to Alibris, the well-known online used bookseller for help.

Since I live in Denmark, I naturally chose the UK site rather than the US version. And I found a bookseller, John B. Driscoll, Ltd, who had the book at a reasonable price.

On April 14, I placed my order.

And waited.

On April 23, I received an e-mail that my order had been shipped “today.” Except that according to the actual order, my book had been shipped two days earlier on April 21.

Upon closer investigation, it seems John B. Driscoll, Ltd. is located in Helena, Montana.

My book is expected to arrive on May 9.

So, here are my questions:

First, why did an American vendor get priority exposure on a UK site? Why even bother with a UK site if it isn’t selective?

Second, why did it take a full seven days to wrap a book and put it in the mail? It seems booksellers in Helena, Montana are busier than I would have thought.

Third, why did it take a full two days for Alibris to send an e-mail telling me the book was in the mail?

Quite frankly, I am seriously underwhelmed. I know that when I deal with companies online, I generally get a better selection than I would find at a bricks-and-mortar shop. And the tradeoff is that I accept having to wait for an order to arrive – no instant gratification here. But I do expect online service providers to make a modest attempt to keep my waiting time to a minimum.

“We shipped your order today” wrote Alibris – a full two days later on April 23. This gives a whole new meaning to the concept of “today”.

Equal time to Alibris
Before publishing this post, I did pose exactly these questions to Customer Service at Alibris.

After the usual problems of finding a useful contact e-mail, which was buried somewhere in the FAQ, I did receive a prompt and somewhat helpful answer from Tim Garvey, Alibris Client Services. Here is his explanation:

“If you’re ordering on our UK website to ship to an European address, shipping costs will be less than the US website.”

OK. A thoroughly reasonable explanation. However, cognitively, this makes little sense to me as I don’t understand Alibris’ distribution routines. I would think that the company would always try to achieve the lowest shipping costs no matter which site I use.

Tim continues:
“The delay in shipping you saw was the seller sending their book to our distribution center for consolidation before it was shipped to you.”

Again, I have no knowledge of distribution centers or other logistical elements within the Alibris organization. So, if Mr. Driscoll can’t get his act together and send the book promptly, well, here’s a customer-service aspect that is begging for improvement.

Tim concludes:
“I can’t speak to the exact reason for the delay in shipment notification, but I’ll be sure to look into that for you and make sure it doesn’t happen again!”

Good, clean answer. But my advice would be that all three of the problems need to be addressed in some way.

Fix things BOTH ways
As is the case in every complaint situation, fix things BOTH ways. In other words, make sure to fix the root of the problem, don’t just make me happy. Here’s how.

The first action should be to ask John B. Driscoll, Ltd. why they waited so long to send the book to begin with. Next, find out what the average delay is across the board – how many other booksellers are equally slow? Then figure out if there’s any way Alibris can encourage booksellers to expedite orders on a same-day basis – carrot (loyalty program benefits), stick (we’ll kick you out of the system if you don’t perform). Finally, follow up with customer satisfaction surveys to establish a baseline and revisit these issues regularly.

There’s also a basic disconnect between what we customers perceive as happening when we place an order and what actually happens. If the point of the UK site is to reduce shipping charges to European customers, then this needs to be communicated more clearly. However, I do wonder if this is enough reason to justify the existance of a UK site. If I am to believe Tim Garvey’s answer, this is pretty much the ONLY reason for this site – which, as a web strategist and businessman, makes no sense to me.

Do you have any other helpful suggestions to give these folks?

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In every Germanic language, except for English, the word “experience” has two translations that are not directly translations but actually synonyms.

For example, in Danish, “Oplevelse” (German: “Erlebnis”) translates into “experience”. In Danish, “Erfaring” (German: “Erfahrung) also translates into “experience”

In Danish (and other Germanic languages) the meaning of “oplevelse” (German: “Erlebnis”) is the experience in progress or a recent event. On the other hand, ”erfaring” (German: “Erfahrung) is more closely related to remembering, accumulated experiences – or simply to be skilled.

There are approximately 200,000,000 people in Europe who speak a Germanic language, of whom roughly 50,000,000 are native English speakers. They would therefore perceive the word “(user) experience” without problems. But the rest of this group (150,000,000) will often have to find and use synonyms to describe and understand a key concept in our industry. Imagine how hard that is, and just how many misunderstandings that can cause.

So, those of you who speak German, Dutch, Flemish, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian – how are you addressing this issue?

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As it seems to be a common pattern with me in recent times, this post has been long in the making and even longer in the thinking. And I’m not done yet, really, but since the 10th IA Summit in Memphis, Tennessee, seems to have expanded our horizons in novelty ways, I have a feeling the times are ripe for a first attempt at my tuppence on the subject. What subject? IA, IxD, UX, and where we stand, of course. And thanks to JJG.

Posts are in the numbers, but I’m not going to recapitulate years of “I think IA is this and UX is that”. Eric’s piece on this very blog is a good starting point if you want to look into the nuts and bolts of definitions, practice, and business. And it’s a good one as well, with interesting comments, so read it. But I’m concerned with the bigger picture. I’m all for big pictures, you know: I’m a big rock, small rock kind of guy.

The Summit was a pivotal event in a number of ways, and comments are already online that capture this tension (Erin Malone here, Cennydd Bowles there), but I’m mostly interested in what our man Jesse James Garrett’s said in his closing plenary. He was provocative, inspirational, and offered some strong arguments against the divisiveness, the factions, the current creeping tribalism. I hope you were there to listen to it. If you were not, I hope someone will post a podcast somewhere sometime. Let’s recap a few things Jesse said, and as I’m calling this up from memory please correct me if I get it wrong.

Everyone listening to JJG

All rejoice in UX

Jesse wrote “IA Recon” in 2002, and there he maintained that the role of information architect and information architecture were two distinct concepts and that the right message focused on the discipline. The role would follow. In the plenary, he said he was wrong, he changed his mind, and now can see the light. There is no such thing as IA. There. Small numbers and a bad economy have played their part, petty fighting for a place in the sun has helped along, and so forget about IA and its pal IxD: we should all rejoice under the larger, warmer UX umbrella and call ourselves user experience designers and be done with it. We cannot stand divided (hey, Eric).

Now there, hold your horses.

What are we talking about? The practice, the business? Then I as many others have no issues with this. A number of influential people have already expressed their view on this: Chiara Fox, Richard Dalton on the IxDA Discuss ML. Fine. Businesses want to advertise for UX designers? Want to put a UX on your door? You want UX on your card? Fair enough, mostly because there is no preventing that. This has to do with the market.

Role, label, discipline

But if we are talking field of study, or discipline, I do have issues. You bet I do. And I have already argued in “IA Growing Roots”, co-written with Dorte Madsen and Katriina Byström for the February ASIS&T Bulletin, that role, label, and discipline are different concepts we should handle separately, yet we continue to confuse them. Seems common sense enough but confusion is aplenty nonetheless, so let me make my point clear once again in the less formal context of this blog. And for the sake of discussion let’s use discipline as a word meaning “the field”, no further connotation, no strings attached, as even that might be a matter of contention. Thank you.

The role has to do with what my duties are on my job: what my practice is, if you will. On one level there is no direct correlation between role and label, as I’m not changing the latter anytime I perform duties which are not strictly related to the core of the former (say invoicing a customer as opposed to analyzing the result of a card sorting), but of course on the other hand the association between the two is vast, especially when they touch on boundary areas, as it happens with IA and IxD for example. This association is usually the center of the debate: we tend to define everything from here. I do therefore I am, I am since I do. What I do is what I am. And labels vary wildly for a number of reasons: people get bored, love to come up with new funky definitions, companies organize and reorganize, IA is young and unsettled, and the times are fast.

Build the tools: they’ll build us

But this continuous shifting influences our mindset as well: as Michael Wesch outlined in his keynote, we build the tools, then the tools build us. Chiara clearly illustrates this point in her post: she found herself describing her job as user-related, and not tool-related, and this helped understand it was time to reframe her ‘label’. What strikes me is that she says nothing about her practice, she only talks about her mindset: I’m not talking wireframes anymore, I’m talking users. I guess her practice didn’t change though: wireframes or whatever is part of her process are still there. It feels a lot like saying that my work is building houses, but since now I care more about the future inhabitants than the layout of the walls, I’m a UXD and not an architect, and you should do the same, as you should care about the “users” and not the bricks.

And even if she did change her practice to reflect this new mindset, well, does that instantaneously make every other different practice obsolete? I’m not sure of that. But my point is, we are still talking about labels. Names. Surface. We need to go deeper than this, as even the relationship between being and doing goes deeper.

Being and doing

I have a background in Architecture and Industrial Design and I’d be an architect even if designing window displays for shops. My label might say differently, especially if working inside a company, but that wouldn’t change the fact that I would be doing window decoration as an architect would, and not as a painter or graphic designer. I’m sure Chiara’s view on “the user” is radically different from mine, she coming from LIS and me coming from ergonomy and design. We need this common view, the body of knowledge Jesse was talking about, much more than another discussion on names, but if we want to go all the way with labels, here’s my view in a nutshell: as much as a physician can specialize and become a cardiologist or a gastroenterologist, so can we.

Generic and specific

Physician or doctor is the generic term, cardiologist the specific term. If UX is a larger umbrella under which IA, IxD, and other fields of expertise live, that would mean that I can be labeled both as a UX designer practicing IA or IxD, depending on my current tasks or job position or specialization, or as IA or IxD tout-court, much like a physician would.

Both of these are fine with me. What’s important is that we do not loose focus on the big picture: as much as the current generation of IAs and IxDs is LIS people, graphic designers, anthropologists, biologists, whatever (in a ’90s sense, I think), who have a working practice of IA, future generations of IAs and IxDs will also see practitioners who have Masters or Bachelors in IA or IxD. They are there now completing their courses, and will be on the market soon: shall they all be called UX designers nonetheless? I don’t know. Might be, as far as that is a job title they might get on top of their academic skills. And we will see people with a UX degree as well, as Karl Fast anticipated in his closing comments, who will be UX2 then.

The discipline side of things

If this is the “profession” side of things, what about the discipline then. Well, let’s say it again: this is not debatable, there is such a thing as Information Architecture, and it does not overlap 1:1 with what we call User Experience, as much as color theory does not overlap with painting (and sorry for the bad example). We still don’t know much about it, and that’s the main reason behind the founding of the Journal of IA, but it’s definitely there. And if Jesse was arguing for a definitive get together of IA and IxD and whatnot even on the discipline side, I’m there with him, but I do not see this happening easily. Nor today. Once you draw lines, it’s difficult not to see or follow them. Just check the number of books or academic courses on IxD to have an idea of what I’m talking about. We might have started the machine, but now it has a mind of its own.

So, profession, yes maybe, but careful about framing the future within the present; discipline, no thank you. It might be me, but I say this is still mostly DTDT. Jesse was brilliant, captivating, and I’m listening. But really interested? Sort of, but not that much.

A most important issue

And I’m afraid this is obscuring something much more important Jesse said at the beginning of his talk, one single vital observation the community should ponder upon with great care. He asked the audience who were the best IAs out there, and he got names. As his was one of them, he said well you all are taking my word on the fact that I’m the best, as you are not judging what I do, but what I say about what I do.

And he had a point: the community at large has a strange fascination for words and little interest in deeds. The top guns we all look up to might or might not very well be those who can talk the talk and walk the walk, as we seem to care little for facts and figures. It’s true that any community or discipline normally has a fair share of doers (say Gehry) and a fair share of sayers (say Loos, whose writing largely exceed his practice), and some who are so talented to be both, great achievers with strong opinions (Le Corbusier comes to mind). But right now, as far as the IA/UX community is concerned, where are the works? And mind you, I don’t mean they are not out there, as I think they mostly are, but do we know who did what and to what extent?

Pick a book on the history of architecture, and you’ll see that it has to do with artifacts. Now pick a book on IA, and you’ll find words, theory, propositions, manifestos, and grand visions. In the best of cases early stages or draft ideas. Where are the artifacts we can discuss? I see this as the one great divide we have to overcome in order to mature as a field and achieve a richer deepness. We need critique, and the tools to do that (Erin’s piece is spot on on this). I also see this as much more urgent than how we should call ourselves.

Big rock, small rock, and chorizo sausage?

One final note for those still wondering what the hell is the title about. It goes all the way back to EuroIA 2008, Amsterdam, and an Argentinian restaurant. It was a fairly large crowd and conversations were abundant, and someone came up with how IA is tightly coupled with the digital domain. Eric, me, and someone else for sure, have some kind of naïve idea that once the first caveman decided to have a pile of large rocks for building and a pile of small rocks for hunting the roots for what we call today IA (whatever) were laid out. We were challenged on this, and since we had a couple of different cold cuts still in the plate, we kind of made the point by arranging chorizo sausages in groups and patterns. Big rock, small rock, chorizo sausage. That’s it. And I’m sure Peter Bogaards will appreciate.

Big rock, small rock, chorizo sausage

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