Happy Bastille Day!

At Think Brownstone, we’ve started a tradition of celebrating Bastille Day in honor of Phil’s fantastically French heritage. Instead of storming the local prison-fortress, we’ve taken to assembling a world-class collection of “dangerous cheeses” and enjoying them wherever Phil happens to be that day. So today we celebrated with a group of clients (friends) who were treated to Phil’s guided tour through the cheeses of France – complete with fresh bread, grapes, cherries, almonds, saucisson sec (French salami), and cornichons (French pickles). Of course we also supplied the soundtrack, including the French National Anthem, “Foux Du Fa Fa” by Flight Of The Conchords, a host of French Canadian ditties from Russ’s collection and of course, “Bastille Day” by Rush.  Will we be celebrating with you next year? Vive La France!

Phil As Master Of Ceremonies

The Suggested Path Through The Fromage & Accompaniments

Mike C's Plate Of Glory

Motivation-By-Numbers

In case you missed it, our last post declared Stephen Anderson’s “Serious Play: Designing Seductive Business Apps” our favorite talk from the Philly stop of the UIE Web App Masters Tour (not that there weren’t plenty of other highpoints!).

I made a note during that talk to revisit Malone & Co.’s Theory Of Motivation, because although that model was first proposed in the context of instructional design (specifically, in the early days of computer-based instruction – we’re talking like mid-1980′s here), the concepts that Stephen was employing seemed to be the same universal ones captured and organized by Malone & Lepper all those years ago.

Illustration By Mike Colibraro

I found some great practical discussion on motivation and a Spartan but incredibly useful chart (content is king, after all) in the course notes for one of Edward Vockell’s Educational Psychology courses at Purdue Calumet. Check out the chart here, and pay close attention to the Related Guidelines column…because IT’S ALL RIGHT THERE! One little chart, and it’s the instruction book on how to design for motivation – no matter the technology or the channel. These are the keys to the kingdom, friends!

P.S. If this stuff brings out your inner geek the way it brings out mine, be sure to click through some of the links below the chart as well.

Memorial Day w/ The HTC Incredible

About three weeks ago, I spent an excessive amount of time in a Verizon Wireless store and finally made the decision to order the new HTC Incredible. I’ve been in the market for a smart phone (my first!) for some time now. I played with a couple of friends’ iPhones when they first came out and really loved the touch interface and the variety of apps. Then another slew of friends picked up Motorola Droids and, once again, I found myself green with envy. Yet I waited, wrestling with the knowledge that the next best thing is always 3 or 4 months away from being released.

The HTC ended up winning out over other smart phones for a few reasons:

1. I was already a Verizon customer so it was a simple upgrade
2. It was being touted as a multiple app running beast (very appealing to the multi-tasker in me), and
3. I thought there might be more interesting apps coming out of Google’s Market than the more strictly moderated iTunes Store

After running around all holiday weekend with it by my side, I think I made the right choice.

Observations:

Easy setup: Even though I was upgrading from an older model phone (Motorola W385), I was able to transfer my contacts without any issues using Verizon’s Backup Assistant app. The Incredible downloaded them all, sorted through the rather disorganized mess of numbers/addresses/emails and did a great job of linking everything together into an usable directory (finally!).

QR Barcode

Fun apps: I immediately downloaded a number of apps that I had heard about, like Barcode Scanner, Pandora Radio, FourSquare, Google Sky Map, and a new battery widget that let me easily manage the WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, and screen brightness. I’m really taken with the Barcode Scanner, as it ties right into Google Shopping so you can quickly check out price ranges on anything you can scan. It also supports QR Codes, which you may or may not have seen before. They can be used to quickly share a URL or short message and are great for accessing something quickly on a mobile device without having to type anything.

Holy 8MP Camera, Batman: I’m exceedingly impressed with the camera. It’s not the high megapixel count that does it for me, but the performance of the autofocus. My last phone came with a VGA camera which was useless unless I wanted to know what something would look like if I was underwater with a clear plastic bag over my head. The Incredible on the other hand takes great pictures and the Photo app is very intuitive. I also like the app FxCamera which provides a number of filters to apply to photos to make them look like Polaroids (nostalgic), overexposed (hipsterific), or Warhol-esque (groovy).

These camera pics turned out far better than I expected...

Battery usage: The battery life seems to be alright. I’m very aware that anything I decide to do will use it up but I’ve been good about enabling/disabling services as needed. I can definitely go through the whole day on less than one charge. (As I’m typing this, the phone has been up and running with moderate usage for 8 hours and I still have 70% of the battery left). Because my previous phone could go for 3 or 4 days without a charge, I initially felt cheated – but the Incredible has far more in common with a laptop than a phone. That point of view helped massage my expectations into something more reasonable.

I feel the need – the need for speed: Thus far I’ve experienced nothing but great performance while navigating features and running apps. The phone is very responsive and the haptic feedback (the buzz whenever you click or type) is very nice. Last night I started running all sorts of apps to see if I could make the phone sweat and, even while using Google Earth, Layars, generating directions in Navigator, playing music, and recording a video; the phone never stuttered. I don’t know if that should be expected but I was impressed.

Call quality and messaging: To be honest, the calling is only so-so. My last phone was unable to do anything but make calls and double as a doorstop, but it did both of those things exceedingly well. The Incredible falls down a bit here. I do like the way it handles SMS messages, however. It displays them like a chat log, increasing the feeling of natural conversation rather than uni-directional texts.

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Anyway, my iPhone lovin’ friends at Think Brownstone were interested in my gut-level thoughts on usability with this very alien device after the first 72 hours and I thought maybe you would be, too. Has the battle for the smart phone throne just gotten even more intense? For me, it’s over. For now, anyway.

Simple Things That Are Awesome

Sometimes you stumble on things that are simple and awesome. This Gmail feature is far from perfect, but I stumbled over it the other day. I was sending an email and referred to the attachments in the email, but forgot to attach anything. When I hit “send” I saw this:

Gmail

I played with the feature a bit and there are some holes in it… for instance, if I write, “In the attached files…” and don’t attach anything, I don’t get the same warning.

Perhaps it is looking for generic phrases that indicate attachments or perhaps they’re looking at my linguistic tendencies around attachments. Regardless, I’m sure the feature will improve over time. The main point is the intent is there. We know Gmail is looking at the content of your emails to place ads (hooray). While they’re there, they may as well do some good (non-sarcastic hooray).

Google Labs has a slew of lab features you can add to Gmail, including two of my favorites, “Don’t forget Bob” and “Got the right Bob?”. Pretty much any feature that involves Bob has to be good – everybody likes Bob.

We have been spending some time with our clients talking about the Google Labs model. Google didn’t invent the idea of fostering small R&D projects from within. One of the best examples of how lab projects can benefit a company is the story of 3M and Post-It Notes. Few people realize Gmail itself was a lab project as well. Fostering innovation from within and freeing it from the typical bureacracy of your organization can result in simple, awesome things.

Then, once you’ve built it, you can name it Bob.

Information = Action!

Recently I watched a highly recommended video of Eric Topol discussing the future of smartphones in health care and wireless medicine. The potential inherent in the technology he discusses is enormous…but it got me thinking a little more deeply about how this type of technology might affect human behaviors – and more specifically, how this type of information might affect them.

One of the issues with leading healthy lives is that people know that there are things that are “Good for You” and “Bad for You”, but they have traditionally had no way of conceptualizing and internalizing just what that really means. In most cases, that kind of knowledge only comes with experience – sometimes when it’s already too late to change things. There’s a lot of wiggle room when defining “healthy” (plus, it varies significantly per individual), which is why we need more information to be consistent. More on that in a bit…

First, a disclaimer: I’m the type of person who likes more information. Give me HUDs and readouts, maps, charts, and figures! I want as much information as possible, about everything around me, and then I’ll sort through and reprocess it. For instance, my parents’ car has a cool little display that provides all sorts of information about the car; which doors are open, if the tire pressure is low, the temperature outside, which direction you’re driving, etc. It also has a gauge to show you both your overall and real-time fuel efficiency:

The Dashboard Setup in a Honda C-RV

As we learn to drive, we each develop a working mental model of how we think a car operates. I suppose I believed mine was pretty good but in fact I never really thought much about it. Once I started driving a car with a meter that told me exactly how much gas I was using, I found myself making conscious adjustments: accelerating a little softer, or laying off the gas to coast to a stop instead of slamming the brakes. These behaviors weren’t completely new to me, but that little meter helped reinforce them and made me more consistent.

Now let’s take that concept and apply it to our own health:

• What if your Smartphone helped you track your blood sugar levels, so that when you had an enormous slice of cherry chocolate cake you could see quite clearly the effect it had on you? How long would it take before the food selections you made and portion sizes would start to change?
• What about applying that same principle to cholesterol levels?
• How could continuous blood pressure monitoring help you consciously make decisions to control your stress levels?
• If you had access to a sleep diary like the one Eric Topol discusses, and you found out that the nights you had a late dinner or fell asleep with the TV on resulted in an hour or two less REM sleep, would you act on that information to feel more rested and alert?

For years we’ve obeyed the gauges in our vehicles, but we didn’t have gauges on our bodies and so it was easier to make decisions that deep down, we knew probably weren’t the best for our health. It’s going to be a lot harder to turn a blind eye to destructive health decisions with this kind of technology becoming available to the masses – and if that’s what it takes to turn more people onto the benefits of preventative health behavior, then I say bring it on!

The Cost of Not Focusing on UX? $170M

The Think Brownstone design team has been closely following Mint.com for almost 2 years now. From the very beginning we’ve been enamored of its “sexy” design; intuitive, clean, fun and free. We’ve been equally impressed by its evolution – each new iteration being better and smarter.

We’ve told our clients and prospects about the site and encouraged them to sign up. Most of them did, and it was always an eye-opening encounter for them. In fact, in a lot of ways it was a great proof-of-concept for us – it helped clients understand the importance of a great user experience and helped streamline the path we would take with them. It was a concrete example to use when warning them that if they didn’t pay serious attention to their users’ needs, one day two guys working out of their studio apartment might come along with a competitive product that would steal market share – market share that they were already fighting to hold on to.

Sure, that competitive product might not have as many features, but it would instead succeed based on the tried and true 80/20 rule:  80% of your users employ about 20% of your features; so instead of giving them every bell and whistle you can possibly think of (jack of all trades, master of none), carefully identify what that core 20% is and do it better than ANYONE else. That makes that 80% of your users (at least) very happy, who tell their friends, and before long the amount of users that make up that 80% has grown significantly. It comes down to this: all else being equal, users will pick that which is most intuitive, simple, and yes, pretty/fun. As mentioned earlier, figuring out how to make it “free” for them also ain’t too shabby.

Earlier this week, on the second anniversary of launching, Mint.com announced that Intuit (makers of the behemoth Quicken, among others) would acquire them for $170 Million. As the saying goes “if you can’t beat them, buy them” – and the folks at Intuit are likely thanking their lucky stars that they managed to grab hold of that nimble little nuisance before Mint.com completely left them in the dust.

The real gem in all of this is the fact that Mint.com made something exponentially better by making it simpler.  We should probably get that printed up on t-shirts or something. Congrats, Mint.com – stay cool.  Please.

The Piazza At Schmidts GETS IT

OK, the last of our summer vacations is over (mine), and it’s time to get some new thoughts and ideas up on ye olde blog! So here’s something that has been on my mind for a few weeks now…

Our group of extended colleagues and friends, much like yours I’d expect, has been having an ongoing debate about the pros and cons of the different types of online communities available to us. That’s not my direct focus with this posting, but suffice to say that I have a love/hate relationship with them that continues to ebb and flow weekly. One thing that doesn’t waver for me though is that even when I’m in “advocate mode” they still just don’t rival actual, real, tangible communities that you can get up off your nerdy computer butt and go walk to.

Piazza Images Courtesy of GoPhila.com

However, I’d suggest that one of the reasons online communities have gained such a stronghold (and I’m quite sure I’m not the first), is that many traditional communities have gone the way of the dodo thanks to poor urban (and suburban) planning that has given preference to sprawl, strip malls, auto traffic over pedestrians, and the relentless focus on quantity over quality that started plaguing us going back to the 1950’s.

I know that other areas of the country have made strides against this trend, especially in recent years, but in our stomping grounds of the greater Philadelphia area there haven’t been enough. Sure, we’ve got some great squares in the more glamorous parts of town like Rittenhouse – but there’s an elitist quality to what surrounds them that makes it feel a bit inauthentic. You just wouldn’t expect to stumble upon Rittenhouse on a mid-summer afternoon and see an incredibly diverse group of folks sporting big smiles and un-self-consciously dancing together with their kids and pets to live music. This, however, is standard fare at the recently opened Piazza at Schmidts in the continuously evolving and improving Northern Liberties section of the city.

My wife and I stopped by earlier in the summer when a good friend of mine happened to be in town promoting his new album and had a performance scheduled in the square as part of one of the regular afternoon shows that are staged there – free of charge. This time it happened to be one of the fantastic shows organized by Sundae Philadelphia – so we’re not talking about puppet shows here; this is the real deal. In fact, here’s a video filmed the day we were there:

We had no idea what to expect, but stumbled upon what she called “a little utopia”, the kind of place we fantasized about bringing up our kids around.  We marveled at the huge open-air plaza with new apartments atop rent-controlled artist studios, funky shops, market stands, and affordable cuisine (including killer pretzels and bubble-tea right next to fancier restaurants) – filled with people of all ages, races, hairstyles and lifestyles strolling around happily interacting. Then at the end of the plaza was the giant 400 square foot year-round LCD panel that is used to project everything from “Family Movie Night” during the week to the Phillies games – with the stage below pulsing with fabulous musicians from around the world being joined by locals dancing on roller skates and playing with hula hoops.

At The Piazza with Nickodemus

Yeah, it was all “peace and love” but in a very urban, modern way – and it was completely refreshing. There’s a lot of sensational media out there aimed at scaring the pants off you – that’ll keep you tuned in and the advertising money flowing – but by and large, people are awesome and it’s worth it to get out there and meet a few new ones every now and then. We honestly didn’t want to leave, and talked the whole way home about how this model might be applied to our own neighborhood, our work, online communities, and elsewhere. We also hoped out loud that what they’ve created over there is sustainable and will be supported by the city and the people who live in it. Maybe the climate is finally right for more Piazzas out there, breaking down superficial social boundaries and mirroring the same diversity found in friends lists and iTunes playlists in the “real” world.

Coming Up For Air: Updates & Links

Hey there fellow Think Bloggers – we know it has been a while since the last update, but things have been really hectic around 201 Fayette the past few weeks – not that we’re complaining! I know some of the other folks have a few entries cookin’, but until we get something more substantial posted, a few updates and links:

1. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out our latest job posting for a Sr. Experience Designer on LinkedIn.

2. We’re headed to An Event Apart in early May to frolic with some of the big dogs in the design world – and are very excited for a little Think Brownstone field trip (“make sure you know who your buddy is, and don’t lose them!”) . Maybe we’ll see you there!

3. I’m continuing to catch up on reading books people have been talking about for a few years now – the latest being Alan Cooper’s The Inmates Are Running The Asylum (a great read so far, with fantastic case studies). As usual, I’m gathering a little collection of favorite quotes from it that I’ll be posting after I finish it…and am again reeling at the juxtaposition of this book and Kurt Vonnegut’s 1952 masterpiece Player Piano (which I just finished). The experience and usability undercurrents in that book, particularly how they play against self-worth, belonging, and satisfaction, are simply mind-blowing – it just goes to show that these concepts are universal, timeless, and sociological; they are certainly not tied only to computers or the computer age, although they may be exacerbated by it.

4. If you have a few minutes, check out our buddy Jeff Lyons over at Used Wigs and his latest design rant about the design of The Huffington Post website – a super solid design critique delivered in his characteristically snarky (and hysterical) style.

Over and out.

Mario and Zelda Get It

The last time I had a game console in my house (that wasn’t in a box in the attic), it was in my dorm room – a shiny new Super Nintendo that provided many hours of “nothing-better-to-do” fun often accompanied by a blasting soundtrack of Rush and 90’s grunge. I’ve always been a fan of video games but have resisted the urge to own a console since, for two reasons: (1) on subsequent systems the games seemed to go in the direction of becoming so complicated and needlessly complex that it just became unappealing, and (2) I felt like there were much more productive things to do with my time.

While the latter may still be true, it was the former that was the kicker. Sure, there have been a lot of studies showing the benefits of gaming such as building hand-eye coordination and enhancing problem-solving and relational skills (personally, I recently had a near-miss in the car that would have proven devastating had I not reacted the way I did – and I know without a doubt that the somewhat unconventional action I took was due to my video-gaming past) – not to mention the relationship building that is possible with more than 1 player – so it’s easy to make the argument that it isn’t completely “wasted” time.

But what DOES feel like wasted time, for me anyway, is thumbing through a two inch thick book of complicated button combinations to be prepared for everything a game will throw at you and all of its possible permutations, before even turning the darn thing on. It’s the same reason that complicated board games can be such a drag the first few times you play them.

So, you guessed it, for Christmas this year my wife suggested that we get a Wii. But where I’m going with this isn’t to talk about the more advanced and physical method of interacting (not that it isn’t the coolest EVER – we’ve got Wii Fit and the dancing game and the whole nine, and LOVE it) – but is instead to talk about how the better titles use the elaboration theory to teach while the user (learner) is immersed in the game rather than the “read first, then play” approach.

It isn’t an entirely new concept in video games (or software tutorials, for that matter), and I’ve seen it done with varying levels of success in the past. But being a fan of the classic franchises (Legend of Zelda, Mario Brothers) I of course had to pick up the latest installments – and they really, REALLY get it.

Both games are actually deceptively complicated – and they do indeed have a ton of different button combinations (with the added complexities of various hand movements on the Wii) for the numerous settings and levels. If it were all presented at once in a manual, it would be a daunting volume. Instead, when you begin the games, you can only perform the most basic maneuvers. As you encounter new enemies and problems, there are characters and signs and things that give you information and elaborate on techniques you’ve learned previously, teaching you the new twist you need to know to get past the present obstacle and ones like it in the future. It’s all presented in small chunks, just-in-time for the task at hand, with immediate practice and feedback, and before you know it your wife is yelling at you that “you have to use the Z button and wave the nunchuk back and forth to build things on this level! C’mon!”

But think about it – that last paragraph? Replace the game-speak with dance terms and the progression in a beginner’s dance class is identical. This is one reason why the Wii and these titles in particular are a breath of fresh air – they harken back to a simpler and more effective way of ramping people up to complex behaviors that existed before this type of technology (and technical writers) existed. They’re breaking the trend toward heavier cognitive loads being thrust upon users that some of that technology spawned.

In one of the classes I teach I always harp on applying Keller’s ARCS model to your (instructional) designs – and in particular I’m impressed at how well the techniques discussed above get at the Confidence and Satisfaction pieces of that model; concepts that can sometimes be a little esoteric.

There are certainly many more ideas we can take from games. It’s not a bad idea to look there for inspiration since the percentage of people that play them is growing at a huge rate – even moreso now that platforms like the Wii have blown the doors off of the traditional gaming demographic. Conventions that began with video games are slowly infiltrating other types of media if you know where to look. I recently pitched the idea of “unlocking” additional content in a video game style to encourage medical professionals to voluntarily progress through a system, and it went over like gangbusters. So “wasting” a little time here and there can actually add some additional ideas to your design toolbox.

Also, it’s just fun.

Daniel Pink’s “A Whole New Mind” Gets It

Happy 2009, everyone!

In the spirit of kicking off the New Year on a positive note, I am just going to scrap the follow-up missive I was writing to my previous post about US Airways and their ongoing frequent flier miles swindle (based on further experience over the holiday break, it continues to get more bizarre, and their underestimation of the intelligence of their passengers/customers is mind-boggling).

Instead, I am going to focus on something that was inspiring and uplifting – Daniel Pink’s book “A Whole New Mind”. The book was recently recommended to me by our friend Todd Marrone, who said, “hey, this book seems to really parallel what Think Brownstone is all about” – and after finishing it on the plane coming back from New Orleans a few days ago, I take that as a very high compliment indeed. I’m glad others (particularly accomplished right-brainers such as Todd) see these qualities in our work.

Checking out the listing on Amazon will give you the basic gist of the book, so I won’t reiterate here – but this was a fun, quick, and exciting read that made me more pumped than ever to hit the ground running in 2009 and add some of these new tips and techniques to our arsenal for crafting the best user experiences. I’m hereby suggesting that this book be added to the Think Brownstone bible (along with MUST reads like this) – and to quote the Fort Worth Star-Telegram: “If its likely that someone in China or India can do your work more cheaply than you can, of if a computer can do your work faster than you can, READ THIS BOOK.”

A few nuggets that I dog-eared because they struck a nerve with me and echoed the way I talk about what we do:

“…because of abundance, businesses are realizing that the only way to differentiate their goods and services in today’s overstocked marketplace is to make their offerings physically beautiful and emotionally compelling.”

“As (overseas outsourcing) takes over the routine work of software fabrication, maintenance, testing, and upgrading, Conceptual Age software types will concentrate on novelty and nuance. After all, before the Indian programmers have something to fabricate, maintain, test, or upgrade, that something must first be imagined or invented. And these creations must then be explained and tailored to customers and entered into the swirl of commerce, all of which require aptitudes that can’t be reduced to a set of rules on a spec sheet – ingenuity, personal rapport, and gut instinct.”

“Design is a classic whole-minded aptitude. It is, to borrow (John) Heskett’s terms, a combination of utility and significance. Design has become an essential aptitude for personal fulfillment and professional success for at least three reasons. First, thanks to rising prosperity and advancing technology, good design is now more accessible than ever, which allows more people to partake in its pleasures and become connoisseurs of what was once specialized knowledge. Second, in an age of material abundance, design has become crucial for most modern businesses – as a means of differentiation and as a way to create new markets. Third, as more people develop a design sensibility, we’ll increasingly be able to deploy design for its ultimate purpose: changing the world.”

Changing the world. I’m in. How about you? Let’s hit it!

P.S. To have your mind completely blown, follow up this read with Kurt Vonnegut’s “Player Piano” (as I did, completely by chance) – written in 1952 and, amazingly, the embodiment of so many of Pink’s observations in fictional prose. I become more of a fan of KV with each passing year…