Don Norman writes about why Simplicity Is Not the Answer

If my cellphone only had one button it certainly would be simple, but, umm, all I could do would be to turn it on or off: I wouldn’t be able to make a phone call. Is the piano too complex because it has 88 keys and three pedals? Should we simplify it? Surely no piece of music uses all of those keys. The cry for simplicity misses the point.

The language that we as UX practitioners use to talk to each other isn’t always useful to our customers. Author David Sherwin suggests having a cheat sheet for talking to clients about the business value of UX and shares his own cheatsheet as a guide.

Can You Say That in English? Explaining UX Research to Clients

As much as I’d like to tell my clients to go read The Elements of User Experience and call me back when they’re done, that won’t cut it in a professional services environment. The whole team needs a common language and a philosophy that’s easy to grok.

I created a cheat sheet to help you pitch UX research using plain, client-friendly language that focuses on the business value of each exercise.

A design student, Pascal Raabe has created a very nice tool summarizing the definitions, techniques, and roles of User Centered Design. It’s available as a free download as a jpeg or pdf. Alternatively, for a donation, it can be printed and shipped.

Did I mention that it includes penguins?

User Centered Design Infographic Poster

The central premise of user centered design is that the best designed products and services result from understanding the needs of the people who will use them. -Design Council

I’m a Graphic Design student about to go into my third year at the University College Falmouth. During a year of self-directed study I had the pleasure to work with many interesting design studios and practitioners which got me interested in user centered design.

Although I know that this diagram is by no means complete, I believe that it can be beneficial for students and design practitioners in various disciplines. I release it under a CC BY-NC-SA license with the hope that others will find it a useful tool for learning or teaching and to share and build upon…

This is an information graphic poster illustrating the underlying lifecycle, methods, principles and techniques in a user centered design process where the visual part is only the tip of the iceberg.

The title of the linked article below is approaching hyperbole. Nevertheless, a basic understanding of these two different cultural dispositions — Askers and Guessers — could have real impact on not only your relationships with your clients, boss, and coworkers but perhaps every relationship in your life.

This column will change your life: Are you an Asker or a Guesser?

... We are raised, the theory runs, in one of two cultures. In Ask culture, people grow up believing they can ask for anything — a favour, a pay rise — fully realising the answer may be no. In Guess culture, by contrast, you avoid “putting a request into words unless you’re pretty sure the answer will be yes. . . . A key skill is putting out delicate feelers. If you do this with enough subtlety, you won’t have to make the request directly; you’ll get an offer. Even then, the offer may be genuine or pro forma; it takes yet more skill and delicacy to discern whether you should accept.”

Neither’s “wrong”, but when an Asker meets a Guesser, unpleasantness results. An Asker won’t think it’s rude to request two weeks in your spare room, but a Guess culture person will hear it as presumptuous and resent the agony involved in saying no. Your boss, asking for a project to be finished early, may be an overdemanding boor — or just an Asker, who’s assuming you might decline. If you’re a Guesser, you’ll hear it as an expectation. This is a spectrum, not a dichotomy, and it explains cross-cultural awkwardnesses, too: Brits and Americans get discombobulated doing business in Japan, because it’s a Guess culture, yet experience Russians as rude, because they’re diehard Askers.

(via Bobulate)

Designing with film:

In these experiments we designed and invented spaces, objects, movements and audiovisual techniques that map and visualise the interactive phenomena of RFID. Many of the visual/cinematic concepts for Nearness and Immaterials were invented by exploring and experimenting with film.

Rather than investing time in creating complex software and hardware prototypes, the interactive experience can be quickly explored inside film compositing applications. These experiments have shown us that there is great value in having tools that offer efficient prototyping of interactions at an experiential level, that don’t need to rely on complex electronics or physical design. There is also value in working within a medium that is not tied to a specific location or a unique demonstrator, and that is editable, reproducible and transmissible allowing it to be shared freely and widely amongst a research group and across the internet.

The sample videos, in my opinion, aren’t particularly compelling. That said, the essential idea itself has a good deal of merit—use digital video and post production tools to mock up concepts, interactions, and experiences.

Post production video tools are powerful. Design experiments in video could provide rich, meaningful feedback and move far beyond 2D, static mock ups. Creating the video itself is an exercise in working through the essential design challenges. Because it’s video there is opportunity to confront issues like transitions and movement of elements that is difficult to do with static mock ups. Using this approach could apply equally well to user interface development and physical product design.

Does the U.S. Produce Too Many Scientists?:
Beryl Lieff Benderly, Scientific American, February 22, 2010

Average scores for K-12 students in the U.S. never top those lists in either science or math (although they do in both reading and civics). On one widely cited assessment … U.S. students ranked between fifth and 12th in math and science—results bemoaned by many as dangerously deficient.

But a detailed study of students’ performance … suggests otherwise. ‘Their point is that the average performance of U.S. students on these comparative international tests is not a meaningful number,’ Teitelbaum says. Far from trailing the developed world in science education, as some claim, ‘on PISA, the U.S. has more high-scoring kids in science than any other country’ and nearly as many in the top math category as top-scoring Japan and Korea, Salzman says.

... raising America’s average scores on international comparisons is, therefore, not a matter of repairing a broken educational system that performs poorly overall, as many critiques suggest, but rather of improving the performance of the children at the bottom, overwhelmingly from low-income families … This discrepancy, of course, is a vital national need and responsibility, but it does not reflect an overall insufficient supply of able science students. Nor do American students lose interest in science once they reach college.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always known the U.S. to be lagging behind the rest of the industrialized world in technical education. The excerpt above is the first account I’ve ever come across that speaks counter to this notion (and isn’t it interesting that even the average U.S. scores top other countries in reading and civics). It makes sense. As one of the largest industrialized countries (both geographically and by population), statistical effects are sure to skew simple averages and inspire doom-and-gloom headlines.

Incidentally, the primary thrust of the quoted article is to dispel another widely held notion—that the U.S. does not produce enough top-flight technical talent. From the article, however, it seems it’s merely the makeup of the U.S. job market for PhDs in Science and Engineering that creates this illusion.

At the time of this post, Grand Rapids, Michigan is the 114th largest city in the nation (by population). Anecdotally, I believe I can attest to the claims of the Scientific American article. Though Atomic Object is quite selective in whom it hires, we haven’t had a tremendously difficult time finding the Atoms the make up our molecule. In fact, I would say that our employees are some of the brightest and best educated technical people I’ve ever known. And the same goes for many of the very bright employees of our clients with whom I’ve worked and become friends.

(via Delanceyplace)

Matt Legend Gemmell on Engineer Thinking:

All too often, when faced with a decision about how to implement certain functionality, engineers take the extreme position that:

1. A feature must be exactly what 100% of users want.
2. If the above isn’t true (and it almost never is), the feature must be configurable.

This binary approach is gravely wrong, and unjustly offloads decision-making onto the user of the software. We’ve all seen where this approach ends up: multi-row sets of tabs, scrolling panes of checkboxes, nested radio-buttons and a general overload of configuration.

Matt Linderman (37signals) saying Computers shouldn’t make people feel like idiots:

For those of us surrounded by the minutiae of computers all day, it’s easy to forget there’s a world of people out there who just don’t get it. And it’s not their fault. It’s ours.

Mike Monteiro (Mule Design Studio) on The Failure of Empathy:

As an industry, we need to understand that not wanting root access doesn’t make you stupid. It simply means you do not want root access. Failing to comprehend this is not only a failure of empathy, but a failure of service.

(via ignore the code)

Back in November I got an email from Jiho Han asking a question about Presenter First:

“In Presenter First, is databinding still feasible? I’m speaking about situations where you might have a 3rd party grid control where it is almost unusable without databinding.”

Happily, we have a new sample illustrating the Adapter extension to Presenter First. The application is a simple book inventory manager with a sophisticated editable table widget (JTable and TableModel data bindings) and MVP-triplet-to-triplet coordination between the editor components.

• Read the Java source code
• Run the executable JAR file

Read the rest of this entry

I love our morning stand-up meetings: short, low-stress, and effective. Besides agenda and news, we often share technical topics with the group.

Here’s a quick list of some recent projects we’ve noticed or discussed:

• Rango – a new web application framework in Ruby, influenced by the success of the Python project Django. There’s a nice overview in PDF form.
• Atomic Object’s github account was started, hosting a few of our open-source projects.
• jesus is a web interface to God.
• jaml is an HTML template library for JavaScript, influenced by Haml.
• Lawnchair is a JavaScript client-side document store.

About a year ago, we launched our first Twitter application, Uladoo. A collaboration between Dave Christiansen and Atomic Object, Uladoo is designed to "chart your life", allowing users to create a chart for anything they may want to keep track of. Users have charted cookies baked to blog-posts written.

Uladoo was developed keeping in mind the extreme simplicty of Twitter. Users need only to tweet a value to @uladoo to create a new chart. This low barrier, no sign-up setup makes Uladoo inviting, encouraging new users to try out the application without commitment or hassle. Users can create as many charts as they want, and are able to tweet values to any chart simply by referencing the name of the chart in their tweet.



Since its inception as an extremely simple interface, Uladoo has undergone some new features that allow Uladoo'ers to share their charts via Facebook and HTML embedding, while still maintaining the application's original simplicity.

When Uladoo was launched, the idea was not to dictate or direct users how they should use the service. Rather, the developers chose to let users determine how the service should be used. It's interesting to see how users have adopted and utilized Uladoo. Some of the more creative and unique charts on Uladoo are:

• Pages Written , from c_bass, Germany
• Pop Expenses , from ryanfogle, Michigan, USA
• Glasses of Water, from DugaldWilson, North Carolina, USA
• Windows XP Reboots , from catenate, Iran
• Coughs (I'm Sick) , from trentcarlyle, Colorado, USA
• Tweeple Following Me, from sarach, Washington, USA

Anything that can benefit from a simple line graph is perfect for Uladoo. We are excited to see how users continue to find creative ways to make Uladoo valuable to their lives. What will you be charting?

This past year, Atomic Object stepped forward and sponsored the Creston High School robotics team. Comprised of mentors from local industry, parent volunteers, and corporate sponsors, the diverse team works together building not only a robot, but community as well.

The scope of the Creston High robotics team expands far beyond just the construction of the robot. The team consists of four separate sub-teams:

• CAD team, designers & engineers of the robot
  
• Build team, primarily responsible for the construction of the robot
  
• Programming team, who bring the robot to life, so-to-speak
  
• Web design team, maintaining and updating Team 904's web site
  
  

There are even opportunities for writers as the team tracks and publishes their progress and results via their website. This allows students an opportunity to participate where their interests and talents are best suited. Many components of the team do not even necessarily require an interest in robotics: all students need is a passion for their respective discipline.

Team members participate to some degree in all aspects of the design and construction process. This cross-team integration allows students a chance to try something outside of their interests--and sometimes they wind up finding they have a new interest as a result, opening students to possibilities and avenues they might have not otherwise explored.





Grant Gumina, a student who has been involved with the team for the past three years especially enjoys working with the the older, more experienced industry professionals. These professionals serve as mentors to the students, not directing the students, but rather guiding the students. The professionals also provide the students with valuable connections to the industry, and advice garnered from years of real-world experience. In addition to providing their expertise, the professionals assisting with the program can also help to guide career and college decisions based on their own personal experiences.

The team also participates in regional and national competitions, with an admirable 11th place finish in this year's state competition. The 11th place finish secured Team 904 a trip to the national competition in Atlanta, GA. The competitions serve as motivation for the students, as the students compete against other schools. Creston High's final project, adorned with a large Atomic Object sticker, will go on to compete starting with district matches against other local schools, and if successful will go on to statewide and finally nationwide matches. These matches are as intense as any sporting event. Students wear team shirts, and even go so far as to paint their faces and cheer like any zealous sports fan would.



Much of what the Creston High's Robotics Team does fits in with what Atomic Object does. We write custom software for automated machinery, much like the programmers from the robotics team. We also do web development, much like the web design component of the robotics team. Gumina made it a point to say that "Atomic Object's sponsorship is not buying parts for the robot, the money is actually going towards the education of the students." By sponsoring the team, AO is investing in the education and growth of Creston's bright students, and the Grand Rapids community at large.

Rapid Growth TV created a video about Carl Erickson and Atomic Object. Check it out on the Rapid Growth Media site.

http://www.rapidgrowthmedia.com/features/rgtvatomicobject.aspx

Bill Higgins draws an interesting parallel between the ideas of The Uncanny Valley in human-like robot design and user interface design. He makes an argument for why web apps should look and act like web apps and desktop apps should look and act like desktop apps. He even offers interesting thoughts on why Java never took off on the desktop.

“The Uncanny Valley of User Interface Design“

”... we must ensure that we design our applications to remain consistent with the environment in which our software runs. In more concrete terms: a Windows application should look and feel like a Windows application, a Mac application should look and feel like a Mac application, and a web application should look and feel like a web application.”

“So I’d recommend that if you’re considering or actively building Ajax/RIA applications, you should consider the Uncanny Valley of user interface design and recognize that when you build a “desktop in the web browser”-style application, you’re violating users’ unwritten expectations of how a web application should look and behave.”

A short article in Scientific American entitled “Tough Choices: How Making Decisions Tires Your Brain” looks at “executive function.” A growing body of psychological and neurological studies demonstrates that the human mind has a limited amount of decision making juice available each day.

When said juice is used up decision making declines markedly in measurable ways. Given that software development is an all-day exercise in decision making, trade-off resolution, and implementation (all topics discussed in the article), the evidence cited in the article supports the idea of Sustainable Pace (the idea, nay fact, that programmer productivity goes down past about 40-50 hours of work per week).

The human mind is a remarkable device. Nevertheless, it is not without limits. Recently, a growing body of research has focused on a particular mental limitation, which has to do with our ability to use a mental trait known as executive function. When you focus on a specific task for an extended period of time or choose to eat a salad instead of a piece of cake, you are flexing your executive function muscles. Both thought processes require conscious effort-you have to resist the temptation to let your mind wander or to indulge in the sweet dessert. It turns out, however, that use of executive function—a talent we all rely on throughout the day—draws upon a single resource of limited capacity in the brain. When this resource is exhausted by one activity, our mental capacity may be severely hindered in another, seemingly unrelated activity.

So, scientific study is bearing out what good programmers know implicitly and what great programmers incorporate into their lives. Working longer actually leads to poor decisions and negative productivity; working at a sustainable pace optimizes productivity.

Allan Kelly draws some interesting conclusions about Agile software development methods as related to forming business strategy. The impetus for his post was a piece in the MIT Sloan Review entitled “Should you build strategy like you build software?.”

From Allan’s “Make strategy like you make software?”:

...for companies which use a lot of technology software and strategy are increasingly converging. Ultimately your software is your strategy – so much so that I sometimes imagine software code as liquid strategy.

...many of the practices and techniques used in Agile software development can be applied to strategy formation and execution. McFarland focus on techniques such as small iterations, collective ownership, overlapping phases, direction changes (i.e. refactoring), organising around people not tools and abolishing big up front design.

It is not only software development where managers and companies have suffered from the Illusion of Control it occurs in strategy formation and planning. Strategy formation is an emergent process, in the same way that software design is emergent.