New Year’s is a time of reflection. In my case, I pondered the many and varied ways we can promote the cause of information architecture. And I think I’ve discovered a completely untapped opportunity: professional wrestling.

Amazingly, there is not a single professional wrestler with an IA background! I’ve considered making this career move myself, but my wife thinks I look dumb in a Speedo (then again, who doesn’t?). So since my plans seem to have been vetoed, let me share my thoughts with you – perhaps someone else will enter the arena to make this bold, long-overdue move.

The name’s the game
First, professional wrestlers have a catchy name. I’ve considered the following:

Leo the Librarian (famous for the “Shssh of Death”)

Doctor Depends (never looks you straight in the eye)

The Terrible Thesaurus (a magical, yet misunderstood creature)

Getting a move on
Next, all wrestlers have “signature moves,” so I think I should have a couple, too. For example, Hard-Boiled Haggerty is famous for his “Shillelagh Swing.” And Cowboy Bob Ellis has “The Bulldog Headlock.” Well, here are some ideas I’ve been tossing around.

The Polar Bearhug
Perfect for tackling large-scale opponents

The Wurman Whirl
Create anxiety through the deadly use of information overload

The Dewey Decimator
796.8 ways to send your foe back to the stacks

The Barbed Wireframe
Box in your target no matter where he happens to be.

The Berrypicking Brainbuster
A shrewd combination of the very best moves available at any given time.

Michigan Leg Swirl
Prevail by degrees (this move is known in the industry as an “MLS”)

The Morville Mindbender
Become completely unfindable in the ring!

The Dublin Corner
Trap your opponent in a maze of metadata

Full Nielsen
Use statistics to pummel your adversaries into submission.

Defining the Damned Thing
A horrifying manoeuvre from which there is no apparent escape.

Moving forward
I have to confess, throughout my years as a professional information architect, I’ve had a secret mentor. I’d like to share his identity with you now:

Happy New Year!
Eric

Bill McLaughlin

CEO – Select Comfort

Minneapolis, MN

Dear Bill,

I have the most wonderful bed in the world, a Select Comfort bed.  It has two air chambers zipped into a padded quilted mattress cover, and attached to a pump with two controls.  Each sleeper can adjust the firmness of the mattress to his own preference with just a button.  We’ve had it for over 15 years.

Its only flaw is that every two or three years one of the air chambers inside the mattress starts to leak, and pretty soon it mostly deflates every night.  The only thing to do is to get a new one shipped out from the company.

Because it was my side of the bed this time, I was pretty motivated to solve the problem.  I went to the Select Comfort website, found their customer support contact page.  It was late, outside of their call center hours, so I decided to get the process going by email.  I chose my problem from their dropdown list (“Previous purchase questions”), entered my name and address and phone number and email (all required).  I also entered a description of my product and my problem.  Oddly enough, this was not a required field.  I unchecked both the “o please send me more promotional material!” boxes and submitted the form.  Immediately in my inbox was an automatic confirmation that they had indeed received my email, and would gladly get back to me within two or three days.  And that if I wanted to call them, they’d take my call right away.

Rule No. 1 – Respect your customer’s mode of communication.

If you’re going to offer email customer support, it should be at the same level of service as phone support.  A real response should come by the end of the next business day at the latest.

Two days later I got a nice email from the customer support specialist telling me that my name and address wasn’t in their database, and asking me if I could send any other names or addresses that might have been used.  I did, and shortly received an autoresponse thanking me for my interest in their product and informing me that they would be sending out the DVD package that I had requested right away.

Rule No. 2 – Listen to what your customer says, and remember it the next time you speak.

I had already provided them with a description of my problem AND a backend database code for their use by selecting “previous purchase question” as my subject.  And remember?  I had also unchecked both boxes asking them to send me more promotional literature.  (I’m still getting it; the DVD arrived in less than a week, and I’ve gotten follow-up postcards every three or four days so far.)

I replied that I didn’t want any DVDs, but that I did want a new single-port chamber for my dual queen size bed and inquiring how I could go about getting one, just as I had in my original email to them.  I got another immediate autoresponse telling me that they had received my email and that they would gladly get back to me in two to three days.

In a couple of days another nice customer service rep gave me instructions on how to confirm that the problem was indeed in the air chamber and not in the pump, and asked me to get back in touch with them after I’d verified the problem.  I was pretty sure that the problem was with the chamber, but I followed the directions and confirmed it for them by email: definitely the chamber.  After getting the expected autoresponse from the customer service ‘bot (2-3 days!), I then got an email from the support staff that said that it sounded like I needed to replace the chamber, and that I should order it from Customer Service.  They gave a toll-free number.  They also let me know that they couldn’t find me in their database.

Rule No. 3 – Respect what your customer knows.

Not only did I already know what the problem was with the bed and what I needed, I also already knew that I wasn’t in their database, and I already knew that email responses were running at 2-3 days’ response time.  A full week was wasted with this back-and-forth.

Meanwhile I’m sleeping on stacks of pillows every night because I start out with a bed full of air and by 3am it is nearly completely deflated, my butt on the slats of the bedstand.  I can’t pump it up in the middle of the night because the pump makes a heinous racket to which the DH for some reason objects most obstreperously.  My neck and shoulders and lower back are all killing me.  And then fall rolled into Los Angeles, and I found myself at the mall, looking for sweaters.  And there, across from the Build-a-Bear was a Select Comfort retail store.  So I popped in, spoke with the nice man there.  He listened to my story, looked me up in the database (“Yep, you’re coded as a prospect!”) and surreptitiously gave me a queen dual chamber that he had lying behind a big cardboard display.  I took it home and pumped it up, but it turned out to have a leak as well.

I was at the same mall a few days later and returned it to him.  He gave me another one, but while he was digging around looking for it, another customer in the store who was purchasing a bed and some accessories asked me if I liked my bed.  O how I did wax prolific on the wonders of the bed.  I truly love it.  At least fifteen years of slumbering bliss on this bed.  A testimonial, dear brethren!  After this, the nice store manager gave me the chamber.  I asked him, “If this one doesn’t work, can I come back here and order it from you?”  No, he said, I had to order it from Customer Service.

Rule No. 4 – Empower your service workers to provide service.

There was a customer sitting at the counter while I was there, checkbook in hand, ordering a bed and accessories.  We all of us there in the store know that orders can be placed through the retail store.  Why can I not get the replacement item I need from the nice person I’ve now got a relationship with?  Why can the email support staff not take my order?

I got the second replacement chamber home, and it leaked even worse than the first one.  I’m not too upset, because I didn’t pay for either of them.  I girded my loins, picked up the phone, and called Customer Service’s toll-free number.

It was busy.

I called again.  I got a recording that said, basically, that they were too busy to take my call, and I should call back later.  Click.

I called three more times and it was busy.

The fourth time I got put into the queue, after selecting the most likely-sounding option from the voice menu.  After about 10 minutes I was connected with a lady who asked me briskly for the name on my account.  I gave her my name.

“I can’t find you in my database.  What’s the phone number that might be on the account?”  I gave her that.

“I can’t find you in my database.”  I tell her what I want to do, to buy a replacement chamber.  She begins to go through what I recognize as the troubleshooting script, the one I have already been through with the email folks.  I stop her and start to say that I’ve already identified my problem, and that I just want to order the replacement chamber.

“I’m trying to solve your problem!”

“You haven’t even asked me what my problem is yet.”

Rule No. 5 – The customer’s problem is the one that needs solving.

So far my primary topic of conversation with these people, across ALL their modes of communication, has been about their database.  Now I didn’t call them up because I’m not in their database.  I’ve got a bed that deflates every night.  I just want my good nights’ sleep back.  I called them up because I need a single port dual queen replacement chamber, stat.

I tell her that I’ve followed directions given by the email team and have confirmed that I need a new air chamber.  “Well you can’t buy that from me!”  She says she’s going to put me in the database and then connect me with the right department.  I give her all my information (again) and she enters it all into the database, and she gives me a customer number (2275984) that I can give to the next rep so she can pull up my record.  And then she transfers me.

After a few minutes on hold I am connected to a new person who promptly barks, “Name on the account?”  I give her my name and, she says, “I can’t find you in my database.” At this point my weasel is pretty steamed.  I tell her that I have just gone through this exercise with the previous rep, and that she had put me into the database.  “She even gave me a customer number so you could find me.”  She asks for it, and I give it to her.  She tells me, “I can’t find that in my database.  You’re not in our database.  What did she use to give it to you?”

“Her voice,” I said.  “And I wrote it down with a pencil on paper.”

Rule No. 6 – Don’t ask the customer for any of your internal codes or identifiers.

How are the customers supposed to know which of your internal systems were in use?  At this point I’m pretty sure that I am in all of their databases and that customer number 2275984 is CSR-speak for “Give this customer some serious hell!”

She begins the troubleshooting script.  I stop her.  “I’ve already done that.”  After a fair amount of wrangling I force her to take my order NOW for a non-returnable $200 item.  I ask for the name of the VP of Customer Service and she gives me the name and mailing address of the CEO.

And since it had been such a <sarcasm> pleasant </s> experience overall, I replied to the last email that I had finally managed to order the replacement chamber from customer service, and that I’d be grateful if they could let their VP know that he could expect me to pitch him soon for some business process redesign work.  A few days later I got this response:

My replacement chamber did finally come, and it has worked very well.  I still love my bed, and I’m sleeping great again.  But I am afraid that any recommendation I make for Select Comfort’s product in the future will have to be tempered by serious reservations about their service.  And in the 21^st century, is there any difference between the two?

Rule No. 7 – Customer service is the product too.

Give us a call, Bill.  We can help.

Sogni d’oro,

Lynn

FatDUX Los Angeles

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.

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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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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This past year, I visited two strangely related museums: the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, USA, and the House of Terror in Budapest, Hungary. Both museums are in historically significant buildings. Both deal with human oppression. Yet the experiences couldn’t have been more different. Let me share them with you.

The National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis
The NCRM opened in September 1991 as an extension built onto the Lorraine Motel. The Lorraine was where Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in April, 1968. The actual motel rooms used by Dr. King and his entourage represent the culmination of the museum’s semi-chronological history of the civil-rights movement.

The National Civil Rights Museum built onto the Lorraine Motel, site of Dr. King's assassination.

The color scheme of the museum is drab – mostly brown and gray with dirty orange and a dusty blue for contrast. I was reminded of the colors perceived by folks who are colorblind. Perhaps this was a conscious decision. Nevertheless, the result is ugly. Worse still, the exhibits feature more flat paper reproductions of photos and newspapers, and more text than any other museum I have ever visited.

Because picture-taking was not allowed, please check out the museum’s own link:
http://www.civilrightsmuseum.org/permexhibits.htm

Oddly, the disappointingly few physical artifacts were hardly labeled at all. I guess that the gaudy uniform once belonged to Marcus Garvey, but, well, this is just a guess.

The physical layout created numerous bottlenecks for the visitors. At one point, the whole place seemed so claustrophobic that I just wanted to get out. Happily I stuck it out and saw Dr. King’s motel room, which was exceptionally moving.

Across the street, the museum has a second exhibition in the boarding house where James Earl Ray, King’s presumed assassin stayed. But since admission to the second section required going back across the street to check my camera (but not my phone), I decided I’d had enough and left.

Too monochromatic. Too many words. Too boring.

I’m a child of the 50s. I grew up in St. Louis where the civil-rights movement and desegregation played major roles in my world. Yet I left the civil-rights museum without any particularly meaningful feelings (except with regard to the hotel room), and didn’t feel I had learned very much.

Information overload, plain and simple.

I was accompanied by a friend who is younger and has a very different demographic background. Yet his impression of the museum “experience” was virtually identical to mine.

Here’s a YouTube video with the Museum’s director, Beverly Robertson. Apart from a few artifact displays (and two busses), notice the amount of text there is in the exhibits:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyxuAb_zlFE&videos=9dDJiUb9vH8

A brief description of video codecs
Video codecs compress television images so that they can be transmitted over great distances, on smaller bandwidths. The MPEG 4 algorithm takes the 24 frames-per-second of broadcast video and analyses the content. Unless movement is perceived, a codec will only refresh a pixel once every two or three frames.

What this means is, if you watch a football game, the pixels containing players and the ball will be transmitted almost all of the time. But the grass will only be transmitted a third of the time. Because players are important and grass isn’t.

So why do I mention this? Because the National Civil Rights Museum couldn’t distinguish between players and grass. The curators included every scrap they could dig up and they exhausted my cognitive bandwidth. A little MPEG 4 or feng shui would have gone a long way.

If it were up to me, I’d start over. I hope they will someday. How sad that such an important project was allowed to go so very wrong.

Terror Háza – The House of Terror, Budapest
Hungary had a disasterous 20th century. Most Central European nations did. But I didn’t really appreciate the plight of the Hungarians until I visited the House of Terror in Budapest.

Andrássy út (Andrassy Street) is Budapest’s finest avenue, leading from the center of Pest to the magnificent Hero’s Square and the city park at the other end. Of the street’s many notable buildings, number 60 is also the most notorious.

The House of Terror at Andrássy út 60 in Budapest, Hungary

In 1937, the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party (Hungarian Nazis), leased the building, which was dubbed the “House of Loyalty.” In 1944, when the Arrow Cross assumed control of the government, the House of Loyalty quickly became known as the House of Terror. After the defeat of Germany in 1945 and up to 1956, the building housed two murderous Communist organizations, the ÁVO and ÁVH. Both groups had offices above ground and cells and torture chambers in the basement.

The political persuasion of the occupiers – fascist or communist – made no difference whatsoever. Officers serving at Andrássy út 60 were masters of life and death.

In February 2002, the building was reopened as a museum, the exhibitions designed by the multitalented architect, Attila F. Kovács.

Once again, photography was not allowed, but do check out the gallery pages on the museum’s questionably structured website:
http://www.terrorhaza.hu/en/index_2.html

The outside façade has been restored to its pre-war glory. But the roof has been equipped with a metal “eyebrow.” When the sun is high in the sky, the ominous word “Terror” appears as a black shadow along the front.

Inside, the metaphors continue – with barely a written word to be found, or indeed needed. Instead, a simple descriptive sheet can be taken from a holder in each room. I collected these and skimmed them during my visit, saving them to read in detail later.

One of the most moving rooms was a long rectangular space with rough-hewn planks along the walls. The rug on the floor was a map – I entered the room in western Hungary. Along the walls, video screens show black-and-white movies of Hungarians anno 1950. Soft music plays in the background.

As I made my way through the room, I suddenly noticed that all the screens had changed to show a desolate landscape moving past, as though past the window of a train. The music had changed to the clackity-clack of the rails. I was in a boxcar being transported to a Soviet work camp. The map on the rug showed my progress.

I think this room is known as the “Gulag Room.” I found a brief clandestine video of it on YouTube, but unfortunately without the train effects:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDqjfkmctuQ

The entire museum was one of personal discovery. It encouraged me to read more about Hungarian history. And it was tremendously frightening, despite the elegantly simple exhibits.

So why are these museums so different?
Only 11 years separate them in terms of age. Yet the National Civil Rights Museum is a catastrophe and the House of Terror is an artistic and educational triumph. Perhaps it’s because the NCRM tries so hard to provide a complete picture while the HoT lets our imagination do much of the work.

Could it be that we should be viewing more interactive media (e.g. websites) as voyages of discovery rather than merely informational repositories? Naturally, if we just want to know when a restaurant is open, the good experience lies in our ability to get this information fast.

But maybe we need to think about moving a little slower once in a while. For example at http://www.wordsatplay.com

What do you think?

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At the recent IA Summit in Memphis, Tennessee, I was asked to host a luncheon table for a group of folks interested in project management/UX. Loay Alfi of the University of Indiana, who had attended a table I had hosted the previous day, suggested this topic as a natural extension of the first discussion – the business value of UX.

Loay’s question was simple (although the solution is not): who “owns” user-experience on a project team? What is the role of the project manager? How does one manage effectively in an “agile” environment? What will happen when folks start working seriously toward creating user experiences that transcend the online and offline worlds? How do we keep egos from getting in the way? Who has the most clout – project managers or project owners?

The eight of us at the table, Loay, Wolf, Matt, Craig, Kathryn, Carrie, Sam, and myself, discussed the various ways in which we currently handled these matters. But we know that there are more (and better) ways to create effective UX integration and more efficient project management.

Hence, we agreed to use this blog to collect ideas that can begin to form a body of knowledge around these issues. We look forward to hearing your comments, solutions, war stories, and other goodies. 

Loay Alfi and Eric Reiss in Memphis

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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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The past month, I’ve been working on a revised business plan for FatDUX and realized that there weren’t any particularly useful definitions of “user experience”. Just yesterday, UX designer Whitney Hess, published a compilation of 10 things that UX is not. Interesting article but no clear description of what is meant by “user experience”. Our industry tends to preach to the choir, but not to either the client or the bank.

Having thought a lot about a definition (over a period of years), I figured it was time to get this beyond the confines of my journal and our business plan and launch it into cyberspace. Use it in good health.

UX = the sum of a series of interactions
User experience (UX) represents the perception left in someone’s mind following a series of interactions between people, devices, and events – or any combination thereof. “Series” is the operative word.

Some interactions are active – clicking a button on a website, giving a waiter your order at a restaurant, getting out of the rain at a picnic.

Some interactions are passive – viewing a beautiful sunset will trigger the limbic system to release dopamine (a reward chemical). This applies to any and all of our five senses.

Some interactions are secondary to the ultimate experience – the food tastes good because the chef chose quality ingredients and prepared them well. The ingredients are good quality because the farmer tended his fields. The crop interacted well with the rain that year.

All interactions are open to subjective interpretation – some people don’t like celery or sunsets. Remember, a perception is always true in the mind of the perceiver; if you think sunsets are depressing, there’s little I can say or do to convince you otherwise. However, this is why designers often fall back on “best practice” – most people react favorably to sunsets.

UX design = combining three types of activities
Designing a “user experience,” therefore, represents the conscious act of:

• coordinating interactions that are controllable (choosing food ingredients, training waiters, designing and programming buttons)

• acknowledging interactions that are beyond our control (uncomfortable seats in a 100-year-old theater, lack of fresh produce in winter, low-hanging clouds that hide a sunset.)

• reducing negative interactions (providing tents as emergency shelters at outdoor events in case of rain; making sure restaurant seating next to the noisy kitchen door is the last to be filled, putting in an extra intermission so folks can stretch their legs).

A good user-experience designer needs to be able to see both the forest and the trees. That means user experience has implications that go far beyond usability, visual design, and physical affordances. As UX designers, we orchestrate a complex series of interactions.

“Jack-of-all-trades” is not a bad thing
The old expression “Jack of all Trades, Master of Nothing” suggests that being a “Jack” is somehow less valuable than being a specialist. Or that a “Jack” has only slight knowledge of the individual subjects. I think both interpretations are faulty.

User experience turns this maxim on its head – good UX designers understand a lot of subjects to a fairly sophisticated degree, including business models. They are not dilettantes and they possess more than the rather cursory knowledge demonstrated by most project coordinators. Alas, many of today’s UX practitioners promote their individual specialties (information architecture, graphic design, usability, etc.) at the expense of others – often demonstrating a narrowmindedness that is downright counterproductive.

Jacks-of-all-trades unite. Our time has come!

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