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.

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.

Logitech Customer Support Gets It

Two years ago, my fiancé bought me some portable Logitech speakers for my birthday. I put them through their paces for two years, and they worked great – you could charge them up and take them anywhere.

Recently, I turned them on and the volume was blaring (they do get pretty loud too). Each time I tried to turn down the volume, the speakers would just turn it back to the max all on their own. I logged on to http://support.logitech.com to look for answers, and was greeted with multiple options to find my product: Search by Image, Search by Name.

I immediately found my product by looking for the image:

This approach is awesome; who actually knows what their product is called? Especially when technical items often either have cryptic names like “LS21” or else have names that are too similar to one other like “Pure-WiFi Anytime” versus “Pure-WiFi Anywhere”.

After selecting my product, I followed a few troubleshooting steps. The steps were easy to follow and complete, but unfortunately nothing solved my volume problem. I had to resort to the dreaded “Email Us” troubleshooting contact form.

I reluctantly filled out the lengthy form and sent it away to cyber-space, but did not expect anything – especially within the first few days. They must get millions of these, right?

I immediately got an automated response: “Your question has been received. You should expect a response from us within 24 hours.” While that’s a nice touch, it doesn’t do much to instill confidence. However, about 16 hours later, I got a very polite reply from “Ron”:

“Hello Amanda, Thank you for contacting Logitech Technical Support. My name is Ron and I will be assisting you with Incident # 0923-00442.”

Ron asked me to simply send him my original purchase receipt, and he would send me a brand new replacement set of speakers since it appeared that the set I owned was defective. Great! But I couldn’t find the receipt. It had been two years after all, so I let Ron know the bad news.

Amazingly, the reply was essentially “no receipt? no problem!” Ron sent me an email with several UPS links:

I was even more impressed that when I clicked “Find the Closest Service Location”, it knew my address and was already showing me the closest locations.

So easy! I immediately packaged everything up, slapped on the label, and dropped in the nearest UPS drop box I could find.

A couple of days later, I got another email letting me know that they received my speakers and were shipping out a new set. All correspondence was done in an extremely timely fashion with complete follow-through.

Maybe that seems like an obvious and logical transaction, but the fact that I was able to relate the complete story in a few short sentences (where there were no “pain points”) is exactly the point. I am amazed that this was so easy, and that I actually got a new set without spending a dollar. But why am I so amazed by this? Shouldn’t this be the way customer support always works?

Most of us will agree that it usually doesn’t. It’s sad that we’ve come to expect such a low level of service from most companies that we’re essentially resigned to bracing for the pain whenever we begin these interactions. In fact, there are plenty of us who simply assume it will be a waste of time and energy and don’t even bother.

Kudos to Logitech – smart companies know that especially in these times, it’s the experience that will win you repeat business, and I will buy their products again based on this experience alone. They truly “get it”.

The Tyranny Of Choice Strikes Back

I’ve experienced a few things recently that have brought something I first read a few years ago back to top of mind – the idea of Tyranny of Choice. If you haven’t read the excellent article describing this phenomenon by Scientific American, do yourself a favor and download a copy of it here – courtesy of Swarthmore College.

The gist is that providing people with more choices is not necessarily a good thing – and in some situations can actually be debilitating. It makes sense – maybe you’ve had a similar experience to me: I’m in no way an expert on investment funds, but when it comes time to figure out where to put my money, I’m faced with a daunting list of options – and I’m such a novice that I can hardly even make heads or tails of the differences between them aside from a few very broad categorizations.

(Illustration Courtesy of Scientific American)

What’s worse, once the decision is made, since it affects me on an ongoing basis I continually ask myself “did I make the right choice? Was/is there a better one? How will I know? What am I missing out on?” As a result, there are plenty of people who just disengage altogether because they can’t or don’t want to deal with the various stresses associated with it.

So how can we tame this beast?

1. Don’t Provide Choices That Are Invalid And Prevent Users From Achieving Goals

The first time this resurfaced for me recently was at An Event Apart, during a usability session where Robert Hoekman, Jr. was doing on-the-spot usability reviews and was looking at a website for an airline (we’ll let it go un-named and give them a chance to act on the collective feedback of the audience at AEA). Even though the airline only flies out of certain airports, in their “select a departure city” drop down list there are hundreds of major and minor ones – many of which (or most of which, based on our results) they don’t even have flights out of.

Oof.

Is this an out-of-the-box list or something? Why in the world would they do this? Better yet, the drop-down for destination city includes the same list, which isn’t truncated in any way after the departure selection is made. If selections are made that aren’t 100% compatible with available flights, the user feedback is simply “Sorry, there are no flights that match your criteria.” This means that even if you are lucky enough to select a valid departure city, if you select an invalid destination, you get the message above and no prescriptive feedback indicating where the problem lies. Aaargh, we could spend paragraphs on this alone – but the faults should be obvious. The user experience is only a few notches shy of this.

2. Don’t Provide More Choices Than Are Necessary in the Interest of  “Showing Off”

Next I had an interaction that I’ve experienced plenty of times over the years in different guises. Without going into too much detail it boiled down to a desire to use valuable screen real estate to display numerous options and features that aren’t available (and therefore aren’t helpful) to users. This was an effort to show off the robustness of the product with all of the bells and whistles turned on. Instead of considering the tyranny of including choices that are smugly turned off, the thought was that a user would want to know why they couldn’t access those options and would try to find out how they could pay to turn them on. To me this is akin to visiting a car dealership and the salesperson trots you past every make and model on the lot regardless of your price range or other personal preferences and parameters. That doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun, does it?

Walk The Lot With Me...

It’s OK to provide users with information about what other choices are available, but at best it should be when they ask for it – and at worst, it shouldn’t be a hard sell. Most people will want to get in and accomplish their goals quickly, intuitively, and with minimal distraction – not be constantly reminded of (and confused by) things outside of their workflow. Otherwise, your advanced user will see what you’re up to, and your novice will be confused and frustrated. Make your core product a killer, and people will ask what else you can do for them on their own terms.

3. Don’t Make Users Responsible For Making a Choice Unless Absolutely Necessary

This one is more of a stretch than usual and my example isn’t technology based, but I still feel it’s a great illustration of the mental strain that choices can create. Without getting melodramatic, our dog very recently succumbed to a debilitating disease and had to be put to sleep. There’s enough emotional baggage inherent in that as it is – but as my wife and I tried to decide what to do, we came to the conclusion that we simply couldn’t make the decision while it was a CHOICE. There would be too many “what if” questions; so we would do whatever we had to do (short of completely draining our bank account) if things were still at a stage where it was a “choice”.

Even when things were looking pretty dire, initial meetings with vets at a few locations had them saying things like “well, you could try acupuncture…or you could try putting the dog on wheels” – both of which would have done nothing for our dog in his particular condition, but were choices thrown out there (somewhat offhandedly, and I felt, irresponsibly – because of the pressure they placed on us) that confused us and made us wonder if we were doing the right thing. Those additional choices just didn’t seem consistent with what we knew of the disease and what we could see with our own eyes, but still we lost sleep over them.

Finally we met with a compassionate vet at Rau Animal Hospital who removed the tyranny of choice, explained the fallacy of the other proposed choices, and suggested to us that the most humane thing would be to let him go. While that was tough to hear, it felt like someone pulled a 10 ton weight off of us. The burden of choice had been removed, and we could make the decision to let our dog go without further loss of dignity or quality of life.

Rau Animal Hospital GETS IT

This is an extreme example with a heavy emotional component, but it proves a point – often times when you think you’re providing benefit by suggesting choices, it’s an easy enough thing for you to do but can have crippling effects on the novice users of your system. We’ve all interacted with clumsy systems that have way too many nodes of choice even when they could easily learn from individual user behaviors (ATM machines, anyone?), and some that even force you to make choices when there is only ONE OPTION (don’t get me started on the haphazard implementation of EZPass).

You don’t gain repeat business and loyal customers by increasing the amount of time someone spends interacting with your system – you gain it by minimal inputs required to accurately achieve a desired result, minimal cognitive (and emotional!) processing, and keeping advanced features and functionality available for the nerds who want to look for them but out of the way of those who just want to get on with their day.

An Event Apart: Gets It!

There’s only so much money/time one can allocate to attending conferences. When your skills and interests overlap several fields, the available choices can be daunting – and deciding which ones are worthy of investment can be a real head-scratcher. This is especially true since in my experience, every one I’ve attended has either been a (sometimes thinly veiled) shameless sales pitch or otherwise so poorly planned and managed that I’ve often come away feeling swindled.

This is why it is so nice to be able to finally have a conference recommendation that comes with no caveats: An Event Apart (AEA), from the same great folks who bring you A List Apart (which is, quite simply, required reading).

This past week I was lucky enough to attend the “show” with Carl and Brian out in Seattle, and thought it would be nice to write about it from the User (Attendee) Experience standpoint – and about why An Event Apart GETS IT.

Seattle Skyline, 5/3/09

1. They’re Non-Elitist

One of the things I dread about conferences (especially those with any sort of technical or design component) is that for whatever reason, the vibe often tends to be competitive, elitist, and condescending. In turn, this breeds all kinds of unsavory behavior from the participants who, their feathers ruffled, actively snipe at the presenters (and each other) on Twitter and other mediums – the whole thing feeling like a skirmish and making you contemplate a career change when it’s all over.

An Event Apart was so refreshingly different; I was actually a little shocked – all of the tweets were positive and constructive, and the snark-factor was conspicuously absent. The room was jam-packed with talent from around the globe (literally), and the mood was collegial, convivial, and downright pleasant (owing also, I must say, to the fabulous soundtrack hand-picked by founder Jeffrey Zeldman). It felt like a movement to collectively increase quality and aesthetic value in our work rather than a few individuals flexing – in other words, a hand reaching down to help you up rather than a muddy boot in the face.

A lot of this is due to the fabulous selection of speakers, which can be seen here – all at the top of their game, and willing to share their tricks of the trade freely, humbly, and with deft delivery that sometimes verged on stand-up comedy. It was highly entertaining – but going one further, these folks were approachable and accessible; all genuinely nice people who were happy to kick back a few at the happy hour as well.

Zeldman's Web Design Parfait (As Imagined By Brian)

See, smart people understand that there’s more than enough work out there for all of us – and if you know what you’re doing, you’ll get your share. They also know what Paul Arden tells us: “Do not covet your ideas. Give away everything you know, and more will come back to you.”

And, for what it’s worth, what my great grandmother used to say: “you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.”

2. They’re Well Rounded

Plenty of others have gone into detail about the content each speaker presented – but suffice to say it was all solid, professional, and there were more than a few “things that make you go hmmm…” that I know I’ll be considering as I push forward. But what I appreciated most was the breadth of content – it wasn’t all code, it wasn’t all design, and it wasn’t all strategy – instead, it bridged the gaps between the various disciplines and took great pains to point out where the dependencies lie and the pitfalls of not paying attention to them.
For a bunch of folks from pretty varied backgrounds, the agenda was mighty coherent in that way – and added up to a sum greater than its parts. Personally, even though I’m not much more than a mercenary tinkerer when it comes to code, there were still ideas in Eric Meyer’s CSS sessions that made me seriously think about how I design interfaces – and I was glad that people like Kristina Halvorson (I think 9/10 of the room walked out of there with a new professional crush on her) were putting eloquent structure to things that I think about often.

Kristina H. - Content Queen (Picture by Warren Parsons)

So again, if your interests and skills lie in a few different areas, you might feel that attending a conference focusing on any one of them would mean consciously neglecting the others – AEA provides a well rounded sampler that goes deep into special topics in several disciplines that are specific to some and useful to all.

3. Yet, Focused

To that point, so many conferences have several “tracks” and breakout sessions, which I think results in more anxiety than anything else.

“Did I pick the right one?”
“Oh crap, this one sucks – I should have gone to that other session!”
“This session overlaps with the other one I’m interested in, I’ll never be able to make both of them…”

Wisely, AEA goes light on the quantity and high on the quality – with one solid track on the main stage that is rightfully called “the show”. Tightly and respectfully time-managed, not only does this adhere to “Don’t Make Me Think”, but it exposes attendees to ideas from other disciplines they can use in their own work that they might not otherwise experience if they were only chasing down things they thought were 100% relevant to their skill set. Again, this is part of the point of AEA.

This also has the added side effect of making the group itself a bit more coherent – and it feels like more of a shared experience, even for just the two days (which, BTW, is the perfect length). Therefore, at lunch, it isn’t a lot of “nice to meet you, what session were you at?” but instead it’s a lot of “woah, Ethan Marcotte’s visual presentation was SICK, right? We’ve got to do more of that…” and “I’m picking up Luke Wroblewski’s book RIGHT NOW – we run up against that stuff with clients all the time.”

More Musings Captured By Brian

Hats off to you, AEA – we came because we heard great things about you (and because we’re old pals with Greg Hoy from Happy Cog – and we know he wouldn’t hang his nametag just any ol’ place), but we stayed for the little minty malted milk balls. Oh, and because you KILL IT.

Mmmm. Little minty malted milk balls.

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…

Falcon Waterfree Technologies Gets It

“As much as 5% of fresh water consumed is currently used to carry away urine. Each Falcon Waterfree urinal typically saves an average of 40,000 gallons (151,000 liters) of fresh water per year.”

Not much would be required beyond that quote to say that Falcon Waterfree Technologies clearly “gets it”. Read about them and their mission and vision, and you’ll also be thinking “yes, these are the kinds of companies that deserve to thrive and prosper” – and should they succeed, it’s going to make the world a better place for all of us.

But wouldn’t you know it; they’ve taken it a step further and incorporated some great design as well. Sure, as far as urinals go, their products have some nice lines and are easy enough on the eyes – plus, no piping or anything that you need to touch with your hands (bonus).

But did you notice that little speck in the back of the bowl? No, that’s not a bad scan – that is, in fact, a little cartoon bee that is painted on the unit itself – and it is a brilliant example of iconography, universal language, and simplicity.

The unit is water-free after all, so to keep things as clean as possible and working properly it stands to reason that there are optimal ways to, um, “interact” with it. They could have created little instruction panels (bringing up language concerns) that nobody would read or certainly wouldn’t read until they were already in mid-relief. They could have done any number of designs like bulls-eyes or arrows or other things that were heavy-handed and might make people loathe to comply for just that reason (unless the consequences were dire) because we’ve all got a little bit of rebellion in us. Instead, they acted upon a piece of universal knowledge: guys like to aim at stuff.

There’s something about that bee, isn’t there? It’s not overly cartoon-ish. It’s not overly realistic, making you think that it might crawl out of there if you don’t zap it – perhaps adding to some patrons’ existing stage fright. There’s no explanation, and no pressure. It just…is. Consequently, it is almost diabolically hard to resist aiming at. You see, there isn’t really much else to do whilst in the act, so there’s a bit of human nature there to turn what would otherwise be total downtime into a simple game. That’s the impulse that makes you kick a bottle cap around when you’re waiting for your friend to pick you up; the impulse that used to make you try to flick a field goal with a little paper football while waiting for the bell to ring. So, if all else is white on a standard urinal but there’s a little black chip mark in the porcelain or something, dollars to donuts, guys will aim at it. Why not take it up a notch, and in the process, guide the users of your product to keep it working more efficiently (proper aim reinforces the vortex that keeps the liquid moving down the water-free drain) – reducing maintenance costs, keeping things more sanitary, and improving the experience for everyone?

So there are a few lessons here:

1. When all else is equal, something that offers people the chance to test their skill or have a little fun in an otherwise rote or mundane setting will likely be utilized.
2. There are few things as intuitive as directing specific behaviors by capitalizing on the innate trends and tendencies of the target audience; thereby reducing potential fatigue and misunderstanding that can occur when using more traditional methods of communication (text, audio, video, instructive graphics).
3. Not every design decision has to be beaten into the ground – sometimes it really is acceptable to just go with something because you have a visceral response to it or because it is “cool” (properly executed, of course). I’m sure there was research behind using the bee, but if it was a little hammer or one of those mushroom guys from Super Mario Brothers, I’m willing to bet the results would be the same.

Strong iconography that can be understood (or elicit specific behaviors) globally is something to strive for – I’d be pretty proud of this had I come up with it. To quote one of our fearless leaders (Brian) when we were talking about the genius of this design at the Think Space (obviously, our inspirations know no bounds): “…that’s what is so brilliant about it…I mean, I think Europeans probably like peeing on bees too.”

Who wouldn’t, Mr. McIntire. Who wouldn’t.

Ivan Gets It: Getting Your Point Across

Last night I was enjoying an IM conversation with a former colleague of mine. Among the topics was a bit of a gripe session about some designers we’ve known who insist on creating Flash applications inside of browsers that look and function more like a software application than a web app. I think I said something like, “Not only do you lose a lot of real estate by building a frame within a browser frame, but you’re limiting any kind of expandability by building a frame in the first place.” I thought I was soooo smart.

This morning I started catching up on some of my blogs and Darryl over at Plaid wrote about Ringo by Ivan Tihienko.

Holographic Interface – round interface – Ringo from Ivan Tihienko on Vimeo.

This is still a concept piece done for a final project at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, but it blows away my thoughts about the limitations of a frame.

Why does Ivan get it? Aside from coming up with a cool idea, Ivan found a way to demonstrate it in a compelling and entertaining way. How many great ideas have been destroyed by the 30-minute PowerPoint presentation meant to pitch the idea? This is the same reason car manufacturers create unbuildable prototypes.

Will Ringo ever be built? Who knows. But it has more potential to inspire the next generation of UIs to be built than a flash app in a browser window.

Way to go Ivan!

TV News Gets It: The Future of Presentations

Don’t worry, this is not a political entry. For all of you who have ever made a presentation with PowerPoint using 60 slides riddled with bullets: We want you to watch this short clip from Meet the Press. This should be the future of business presentations:

See what’s going on here? This is an interactive presentation tool. It is not just ten bullets on a slide in 14-point text. This allows the presenter to do several things:

1. Get his initial point across
2. Demonstrate variations on his point
3. Not just answer questions, but SHOW the answer to questions
4. Involve his audience by letting them play “what if”

Think about this the next time you put together a presentation. We’re all guilty of putting our audiences to sleep with PowerPoint, it’s about time we started devising ways to involve our audiences.

You don’t need an expensive touch screen either. I remember staying up late during the 2000 election because I wanted to go to sleep knowing who our next president was going to be. The late, great Tim Russert got it, he sat at the news desk with a small white board and sketched out every possible scenario. A WHITE BOARD!

Russert and his famous mini-white board