experience matters

360-degree collaboration on XBox 360

cspot — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 00:43:00 GMT

Creative collaboration around XBOX 360:

http://www.core77.com/reactor/04.06_xbox.asp

Hall explains: "The brand discipline is changing. Getting your message out via mass-communications channels isn't enough. A thoughtfully designed, end-to-end user experience is a much more powerful expression of your brand than a sixty-second TV spot. That's why we focused so much on close collaboration between the product design and brand disciplines as we developed Xbox 360."

Design flaws in everyday experiences

cspot — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 11:01:00 GMT

Oddly enought, I was actually trying to get to sleep last night when I began thinking of things to blog about. 2 things came to mind:

Disney rides
The concept of the not-so-big house

Both of these are about experiences. Let's look closer...

Disney rides

Compare a ride/attraction at a Disney theme park to any ol' ride at an amusement park. The Disney ride almost certainly starts the ride experience at the very beginning of the queue. At an amusement park, you are lucky to get some loose theme with the ride which translates to maybe a color scheme that you start to see at the beginning of the queue for the ride. There is no storytelling here like a Disney ride would have. Disney focuses on the overall experience. I think they also see a "design flaw" in the ride experience. They know their customers don't like to wait in line...that just stinks. But to start telling the story, engage the customer, and start that ride experience from the very moment their customers get in line, well that solves that "waiting" flaw and spins it into an overall positive experience from start to finish. Think about it...how often have you stood in line for a roller coaster for like 2 hrs...sometimes in the heat around smelly and loud people, and then when you finally get on the ride, it's over in 2 1/2 minutes! Now really, was that a good experience? If it wasn't for the endorphines powering you past all that miserable waiting you did, you'd have to say it wasn't worth it. But a Disney ride attempts to completely eliminate any misery of the wait by throwing you into the experience at the get-go so that your ride experience seems more lasting and fulfilling. For a Disney ride, it doesn't stop there...I mean I could go on more about the ride itself and the thoughtfulness and detail that goes into that part of the experience, but I'll save that for later.

Not so big house

Some of you may have heard of the Not So Big House concept. I strongly believe that this has existed in architecture for quite some time--Frank Lloyd Wright had to have played a big part here in standardizing this concept in his designs--though it was Sarah Susanka who championed the concept and coined the "not-so-big" approach to architecting and designing a home. She challenges the concept of the cookie-cutter home or the McMansion. She suggests designing a home around your lifestyle and family needs and to de-emphasis square footage so that you can maximize quality of construction and living. She's all about defining an everyday living experience that you can truly enjoy rather than creating a big home with wasted space and poor construction just because folks think they need large homes to house their large families. In the end, the McMansion suffers from character, craftsmanship, and comfort which overall represents a pretty poor living experience. To the defense of those who live in McMansions, developers tend to buy up land and then build as many McMansions on the land as cheaply as possible to maximize profits. Folks looking to buy homes in competitive housing markets often have no choice but to buy into a McMansion because they are unable to find an older home (and perhaps one that is close to work) that provides comparable specs as the McMansions do. So there's more going on here socially, but I really just wanted to use McMansions to show the contrast in a living experience.

Finding a purpose

cspot — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 22:46:00 GMT

The funny thing with blogging is that you set out to have a blog that is "themed" or somewhat directed by a set topic or topics, but you really can't write your posts with an agenda or in a linear fashion unless you are completely going to do storytelling or lesson teaching. Even then, one should question whether a blog is the right forum for that. So, you just kinda have to let the blog evolve and find its purpose. I'm hoping that pans out here as I don't want to lose sight of things I intended to do with this blog, but I also think I want to do something slightly different in that I want to try my darnedest to mix more personl musings on design with a limited amount of "work"-related items without it seeming too premeditative. Bottom line is that I really just need to see where all my thoughts take the blog...hopefully it will take it to someplace wonderful where I've revealed the secrets of the world (ok, that's just cheesy and untrue).

Transparent marketing?

cspot — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 20:46:00 GMT

OK. So I might as well tell you that I grew up a big Disney fan. Over the years, I've shaken some of the fanaticism for Disney but not completely. I still love that they try to go the extra mile with most everything they do. But I saw a commercial tonight that I thought was interesting...and I'm not sure whether it was interesting for good or bad reasons. In this commercial, they said:

Give your child the Disney experience

Now is this a good or bad tagline? Part of me says that yes, this is a good tagline because it plays off what Disney is really good at: creating great experiences. But then when I hear it said, it almost sounds like, "Give us your money," making it a little too transparent a message for my taste. Perhaps it's the demand/command they are making by implying that if you don't take your child to Disney World then you are cheating them of something meaningful...basically making you a bad parent. Or, maybe I'm reading into it too much :). Thoughts?

Choose your words wisely

cspot — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 23:14:00 GMT

I came across an interview excerpt (Larry Tesler on The "Laws" of Interaction Design) the other day from the IxDA discussion list, and while I thought the excerpt itself was quite difficult to read as someone used an orange background with white text, I found the article to be quite valuable. I was particularly intrigued by one snippet:

Choice of words is important. Shorter is usually better. But if you have to explain what "x" means to many of your users--or worse, to your teammates--then you should probably replace "x" by whatever you said to explain it.

As I've worked with Program Managers on UI text, far too often I've seen them use literal strings in the UI to no fault of their own. But then I say to the PM, "how would you explain this to a user?" and the resulting explanation ends up providing the better words to use in the UI string.

By no means am I giving PMs a hard time and suggesting that this is common among the discipline, I'm really just trying to highlight how a PM and writer (user assistance) might work together on UI text to try to improve it.

Is it is a trend, a pattern, or a trend pattern?

cspot — Sat, 25 Feb 2006 09:19:00 GMT

More on design patterns from our friends at OK/Cancel:

When do we choose to follow a design trend versus a design pattern? Following a trend seems to be very short sighted in design whilst following design patterns can be restrictive and to many, stifling in creativity.

It depends.

A special thanks

cspot — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 10:53:00 GMT

A colleague of mine left my workgroup today to join another team. Though this saddens me because I will miss him being around for chatting about work, life, and design, I know that he's going to continue to do great things with his new team. This colleague has inspired me to get back into the world of design and UX full-force--something I had to set aside for a few years while I found my way...

Thanks Mano and bon chance!

On Target...

cspot — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 08:01:00 GMT

Target uses design/art to distinguish themselves and their products from competitors...thus, they use design to sell! Target even goes so far as to publish a philosophy: Great design isn't reserved for the few... it's for everyone to enjoy, everyday. We're here to champion the value of objects of great design big and small. And to deliver them at a value that really does make it Design for All....(read more)

Does a Design Pattern not have "design" in it?

cspot — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 07:22:00 GMT

The other weekend I was at the bookstore buying a journal for my wife when I happened upon a book called Head First Design Patterns. This book caught my eye first because it had "design" in the title. After I picked up the book, I quickly was intrigued by the writing style and teaching approach being a writer and all. Then as I dug deeper into the book, I realized 2 things: 1) this wasn't a book for designers and 2) this book was really for java developers. Being a writer, design enthusiast, and user experience dude (and as an employee of Microsoft), I first thought to myself that I needed to put this book down immediately...I was definitely the wrong audience.

BUT THEN I REALIZED...there is real value in this book, if not simply for the teaching style. And then I realized even more that even though this may be about java development, basic design patterns are quite universal. So not only can I get the teaching approach value out of this, I can also pick up some understanding and "shared vocabulary" that will now help me communicate effectively with developers--say, I'm really meetin' them halfway by learnin' this stuff.

Later that week at work, I began to receive emails about the new Yahoo! Design Pattern Library. At this point, I'm wondering if I've just been blind to all this "design pattern" talk or if it was just that it was picking up steam in the Web design/dev world as we move towards more Web standards. Maybe shared design patterns and standardization are one of those bridges between developers and designers? I'm still not sure I know the answer to these questions, but maybe you can help me out? Until then, I'll keep doing my research and studying up.

As a result of all this "enlightenment", I now have a folder in my Inbox dedicated to design patterns discussions & info!!

Hello, Moto!

cspot — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 07:12:00 GMT

I think one great example of design stepping forward in a now commonplace technology is with cell phones. Just look at what Motorola is doing with the RAZR, SLVR, and PEBL. I actually own a v400 Motorola and haven't been the happiest with the reception strength, yet I'm not certain the hardware/phone is to blame here but rather the network. So, if I assume it is the network that's the problem, then yes, Motorola is saying that they've nailed the "making cell phones" part and are now concentrating on the cell phone experience beyond function.

Man, how the heck do I upload images?! This post (and I'm sure future posts) would be a lot better with pictures!!!

EDIT: Oh, I guess I could just link to the image via URL in HTML..I was just hoping that I could upload my own images as well.

Embracing user experience at Microsoft

cspot — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 07:40:00 GMT

I joined Microsoft about 6 years ago fresh out of grad school. I was a student of rhetoric and spent most of my time studying the rhetoric of visual communication. When I was offered a job with the Office User Assistance team, they asked me if I wanted to write about Outlook or PowerPoint. I choose PowerPoint because that was a visual, presentation app. A presentation app must be visual, so this seemingly leveraged my visual communication skills. That's all and good, but where I went wrong here is that what I really enjoyed was designing user experiences--not just the visual layer or "look" of things. Outlook had just as much if not more experiences than PowerPoint. It is just because I got stuck on the type of tool vs. the experiences presented by the tool. Since then, I've realized this and I've seen Outlook improve its experiences dramatically over the last couple of releases.

Another aspect of this is that I didn't really think Microsoft presented much of an opportunity for me to use my visual communication skills. After all, my perception was that Microsoft was not about design...that was Apple's world.

But now, bigger things are going on. Users are demanding better experiences. It's like we've rolled out the technology and people were satisfied for awhile, but now that that flurry is over, they are challenging us to improve the experiences. I love that I'm at the company now because we are listening to this demand and responding to the challenge! I'm not pretending to be the first person to say this, but we are on the verge of a new era at Microsoft. Would we have even considered dedicating resources to a site like Microsoft Design just a few years back? Would we have laughed at the idea? And what about MIX? Never thought that'd happen, did you?

So why am I writing this on a blog on MSDN—a site designed for d-e-v-e-l-o-p-e-r-s? Because things are changing. I'm starting to embrace the notion that a co-worker of mine has (well, embracing to a certain extent) that MSDN really represents development in it's truest sense...that it is just now starting to gain its full meaning. Designers are developing. Makes sense. They just might not be developing using code or speaking necessarily using a common vocabulary. But there is a nice dichotomy here where both are working towards the same goals. We certainly shouldn't force developers to be designers or force designers to be developers. They are unique audiences. But we can get them talking. We can get them to understand each other better. We can get them working better together.

My co-worker is more of a developer and I more of a designer. But, we can learn a ton from each other, and as we work on Expression Interactive Designer (oh, is this the first time I'm mentioning this lovely tool?), we realize that we need to learn from each other to provide our users with better experiences--with each other, with the product, with content, with producing for our users customers, and so on.

Ultimately, it is all about designing great experiences for users. Experience does matters. Just look at what is happening...

Xbox. Windows Vista. Office 12. Expression. Start.com. Live.com. Media Center.

And much more I left off this list out of ignorance (hey, we're doin' a lot 'round here...I'm pretty sure I've left off a ton of work by the hardware teams!)...

And much more to come I'm sure...