User Experience Off-Roadin’

I’d like to introduce myself: I’m Kristen, the newest member of Think Brownstone. On our website, I’ve been dubbed the “off-roader” of the team, an appropriate nickname given the perspective I bring with me: I have a long history in the learning industry, with expertise in the field of Learning Experience Design (LXD, or Instructional Design, as it is most commonly known). It’s not a typical skillset or background among Information Architects, Visual Designers, Human Factors Specialists, and others in the field of User Experience, so I’d like to make a second introduction: UXD, meet LXD.

I’ve written before about the critical intersection of UXD and LXD, in my role at a learning design firm. Then, it was an attempt to open the minds of learning designers to the relevance of UXD and the critical mistake of overlooking the user experience in designing learning experiences. Now I’d like to make a reciprocal introduction to UXDers.

How, exactly, is the learning design angle relevant to an Experience Design firm and those practicing in the various disciplines of UXD? To start, the two fields share common ground in Cognitive Science and Psychology. The same research about mental processes like categorization, perception, and memory that informs ideas and practices from a UXD perspective is much the same as that which informs andragogy/pedagogy from a learning design perspective.

In addition to that common ground, there are specific outputs that have crossed paths between the two disciplines. The learning industry has seen a major uptick in the use of serious games as a learning strategy, and gamification is a topic of much discussion in both Learning and User Experience Design. In fact, Karl Kapp offers some interesting commentary on the Sabastian Deterding’s Google Talk “Meaningful Play: Getting Gamification Right” and draws direct lines from his ideas to what learning designers have always done.

Many user experiences have an impact on learning, whether intentional or not. Take social media, for example – a common and critical component of many user experience designs. Opportunities for informal learning and the creation of personal learning networks (rooted in Connectivism) are some of the affordances offered by social media tools. These are important components of a holistic, supportive, and continuous learning experience. There have even been scientific studies that show a connection between the use of social media and stimulation of brain activity and our inclination to learn in a social setting. Having an understanding of the principles of learning design can take that social media app (and many other user experiences) even further to support a learning experience as well.

Those are just a few thoughts on what LXD can bring to the practice of UXD. As I get settled here at Think Brownstone, I’ll continue to explore the connections among our many disciplines and areas of study, and will share my thoughts and insights as I go.

(Design) Thinking About Bernard L. Brock

Years ago in graduate school I had the honor to study with Bernard L. Brock, a profound critic and theorist who was passionate about rhetorical criticism — the process and methods for conducting comprehensive and systematic analyses of persuasive communication. Dr. Brock cultivated, in me and countless other students, a deep appreciation and disciplined approach for analyzing rhetorical acts, simple to complex, to evaluate their “dramatic” impact on our attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. Many of his students, friends and colleagues referred to him as Bernie. But, despite the fact that I felt a personal connection and sincere appreciation for his scholarly devotion and guidance as my advisor, I referred to him as Dr. Brock.

Dr. Brock is the reason why I devoted most of my mid-twenties seeking to understand the symbolic actions that drove the fatal struggle between the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People in Nigeria and the Royal Dutch Shell oil and gas company; or conducting a dramatistic analysis of news coverage surrounding the “500-year flood” (now one of many) to argue that the widespread use of the “unjust war” metaphor could ultimately impact our attitudes toward the environment; or applying experiential criticism as a lens to describe the  Grateful Dead concert experience and the profound lessons that Jerry and the band taught us about the power of community.

Some of Dr. Brock's Books & Those He Contributed To

Dr. Brock is the reason why I continue to share my passion for rhetorical criticism by mentoring students on the St. Joseph’s University speech team as they analyze and articulate answers to critical questions about The Onion’s deliberate use of political satire during the mournful days after 9/11; or David Horowitz’s controversial act to denounce reparations for slavery; or the socio-politico impact of the LA Gang Tours.

Dr. Brock would often repeat: Describe, Interpret, Evaluate… Describe, Interpret, Evaluate during our round table discussions about rhetorical criticism. As a lifetime scholar of Kenneth Burke, he favored the Burkeian approach as a theoretical framework through which to analyze communication as symbolic action. He believed that a dramatistic analysis of human motives and the forms of thought and expression, conveyed through language, could help us understand and respond strategically to the situations around us.

In many ways, Dr. Brock was a Design Thinker. Design is rhetoric – it is symbolic, motive-driven, representative and persuasive. It has consequences. It serves as a narrative of our social reality, is driven by our belief systems and spurs collective action. It demands our descriptive and interpretive judgments about its effectiveness so that we may respond accordingly. Rhetorical theories can serve as our lens and provide us with the language and structure to dig deeper and draw conclusions that go beyond the obvious – to make more informed decisions in the future based on a better understanding of its impact on the human condition.

Sadly, Dr. Brock passed away on March 31, 2006. It had been years since I last spoke to him and it wasn’t until years later when I had learned of his passing. I’ve thought of him often since my mid-twenties and always intended to express my sincere gratitude but life got in the way. Something I’ll always regret.

So, to Dr. Brock –thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing your wisdom, your passion and your critical impulse. It was contagious and the experience design community can learn immensely from your thinking. I intend to help further that cause.

When Life Should Imitate The Web

Lately we’ve been having some spirited discussions about “upsell” and its ubiquity in our daily lives. Of course it’s a basic tenet of business, and has surely been around since long before there was a buzzword for it (“how about a gourd with that beard, then?“). Furthermore, if you want to be successful in business, you’d better be good at it. But lately I’ve been noticing how upsell is becoming more and more blatant and in some cases downright absurd – and the seconds and minutes that are stolen from me while I field litanies of upsell questions are starting to add up. Experiences are suffering.

LEVEL 1: FAST FOOD

At its most basic, it appears as “would you like to Super Size that for just a dollar more?” – it’s a pretty logical question in the workflow, doesn’t take much time, and requires only a simple “yes” or “no” to get past it. Fair enough. I have no doubt that this little phrase has proven extremely lucrative.

LEVEL 1.5: CHAIN CAFÉS

A slightly evolved variant is the “can I get you something to eat with that?” that you’ll now experience at Starbucks, Seattle’s Best, etc. It irks me a tad that I have to field this question anytime I just want a simple coffee drink, but maybe I’m in the minority there (I’d be willing to bet the contrary, though). It’s a slight interruption, one question long, and I guess it could be argued that it’s reasonable given the workflow.

LEVEL 2: RITA’S WATER ICE

It becomes a little more irritating as the queries veer further from the likely goal in pursuit of the upsell. Ever go up to a Rita’s Water Ice on a scorching hot day, order up a cool, refreshing treat, and then be asked “would you like a hot pretzel with that?” Hm. Actually, when I started sweating through my shirt and pulled over for some refreshment, I hadn’t really considered a warm hunk of bread. Now I’m used to it of course, but the first few times it definitely threw me. Yes, in the grand scheme it’s a small hurdle between me and my cherry gelato, but OK, now I know Rita’s has pretzels. And you do too.

LEVEL 3: BEST BUY, APPLE, CAR DEALERSHIPS

Let’s ratchet this up a notch. Go buy some electronics from Best Buy or Apple, and wait for the significant upsell at checkout for a warranty or “Apple Care” protection plan. And how about buying a car? After you’ve made peace with the monthly payment you’ll be shelling out for the next five years, you need to meet with the head of sales or someone similar and endure the endless waterfall of warranty combinations that could ratchet it up hundreds of dollars…and the “hm…should I?” question is sometimes literally phrased as a question of life or death. I always feel assaulted by this process. One reason is that at no point can you simply end the transaction – you’re forced to hear the explanation of each option, and it’s time intensive.

JUST PLAIN ANNOYING: THE USPS

And finally, the upsell experience that got me thinking about writing this in the first place: the U.S. Post Office. Every time I go into any local post office, the experience goes something like this:

1. Stand in line and clearly listen to every person in front of me endure the script I will be hit with when I reach the counter.
2. Approach the counter with an oversized envelope to ship.
3. Be asked if my envelope contains anything liquid, fragile, perishable, or potentially hazardous. It’s federal law, so even though it’s annoying and I said “no, it’s only a DVD” after “liquid”, and then “no, no, no” afterward, I get it.
4. Be told that it can arrive by 9:00 AM tomorrow morning for $32, though I already said I just wanted whatever was cheapest. Repeat this, and perhaps hear one or two more options before reluctant acceptance that I’ll just be going with Priority Mail for $1.32, thanks.
5. Be asked if I want confirmation or tracking. I’ll give them this one, sometimes I do.
6. Be asked if I want any stamps. I’ll give them this one too, sometimes I do.
7. Be asked if I want any packing materials. Now this is getting a little silly. I saw the packing materials display, and if I wanted them I would have grabbed them. I endure.
8. Be asked if I want to open a P.O. Box. OPEN A P.O. BOX. Every. Single. Time I’m in there. Who in their right mind figured they should add this to the script these poor clerks have to recite all day long? FOR WHOM IS A P.O. BOX AN IMPULSE BUY?
9. You get the picture. Depending on the length of the line in front of you, this process can eat up your lunch hour in a jiffy.

Now think of your online business transactions. Most self-respecting e-commerce retailers wouldn’t think of forcing their customers to endure experiences like those described above (to be sure, there are definitely still exceptions). They know that if they employ annoying upsell tactics they’ll be skewered by the design community and their users will flee for alternatives. Teams of goal oriented, user-focused designers (the kind that are often employed to design digital experiences and too often not for real-world ones) would never allow this kind of workflow interruption and non-sequitor questioning/clicking on the way to goal completion.

For instance, on Amazon the upsell is EVERYWHERE, but it’s off to the side and there if you’re interested. On Amazon, you don’t see your final cost and THEN get solicited for additional warranties and protection packages to jack up that price (though a default to Free Shipping when it’s available would be a nice touch, guys). On Amazon, you get recommendations based on what is in your cart and what you’ve purchased before, not random recommendations from a vast list of products simply because they exist. These are just a few examples of how digital experience design has now evolved to the point where it can have positive impacts back to poor experience design in the real world. We’re not going to get away from upsell, and I’m not suggesting we should – but like most things, there’s a right way and a wrong way.

2010 and Onward: No Squirrels Here

This is one of my favorite tweets from 2010:

The squirrels of hesitation

It’s a favorite because it helps me believe that Carl and I might not be crazy. I’ll tell you, it felt crazy to leave our jobs in the fall of 2007 to start Think Brownstone. It felt crazy to take on our first couple of employees and the responsibility of making payroll each month. And if you had predicted in 2007 that Think Brownstone would be what it is today in 2011 we would have called you crazy.

In 2007 we expected that our company would do user experience design – that we’d help our clients design intuitive interfaces for websites and web applications. In 2010 we did lots of that. But we also helped a client create an entirely new consultative sales approach, including new infographics, marketing collateral and sales aids. We helped another client teach its top executives about the ins and outs of Twitter, Facebook and other social media channels in order to inform the creation of an important new social media policy. And we helped another client navigate a season of significant organizational change, providing support to a newly-formed department in creating strategic roadmaps, articulating vision, and executing on new and different roles and responsibilities.

Lots of new Thinkers in 2010

In 2007 we expected that our company would eventually grow to be approximately five people – a lean, mean UX design machine. But in 2010 our team surpassed twenty with the addition of eleven new employees. Our new team members have backgrounds and skills as diverse as the projects we’re working on. To highlight a few: Mike Colibraro (aka “8-bit”) is a whiz on the Wacom tablet and has a remarkable ability to visualize concepts in the form of a quick sketch, detailed illustration or beautiful infographic. Mike Pitone (aka “HD Mike”) brings deep e-commerce and branding experience – valuable assets for our clients as they seek to establish or strengthen their brand identities. Brad Sukala (aka “Brakula”) brings e-Learning and project management chops to the table as he helps us keep our design work user-task-oriented and our projects on track. Matt Pitone (aka “brother Matt”) came to us after a stint designing physical interfaces inside mine-resistant military combat vehicles – knowledge he draws on as Think Brownstone works with clients to design more real-world physical experiences. And Emily Bryan (If I shared her nickname she’d kill me) brings leadership experience from the non-profit world to bear as she helps Danielle grow our Strategy practice.

2010 was a great year for Think Brownstone, and so a great big THANKS is in order to all of you who helped make that happen – you know who you are, and you’re awesome. We think we’ve got something really good going on here, and so we are raising our expectations and re-envisioning what the future might hold for Think Brownstone. As our company grows, Carl and I are committed to growing in such a manner that ensures the work we produce remains of the highest quality. We know this involves a combination of calculated risk (not hesitating, lest we go the way of the squirrel) and responsible restraint. We know this involves taking the time to personally build into our team members and also establish the processes and systems that will help them do their best work.

Thank you for trusting us as we do our best to build an extraordinary company.

Why Don’t You Publish Your Org Charts?

Do you work for a large organization with multiple locations and thousands of employees? GREAT! Let’s try an experiment: walk around your office, find ten people with different backgrounds/responsibilities/titles and ask each of them, “what do you use the company intranet for?” Go ahead… I’ll wait here.

Back already? I bet at least two of them said something about finding people. Based on Nielsen Norman‘s review of corporate intranets and our own experience working with our clients, finding people and learning what they do is one of the most popular uses of corporate intranets.

OK, now ask those same folks, “what are your five biggest gripes about the intranet?”

I bet at least two of them said they can’t find the company org charts anywhere. Why would this frustrate them? Because org charts are used to find out about the organization and the people: who does what, what departments live where, etc. If nobody complained about org charts, you win! Proceed to the “Kudos” section of this article.

However, if people did complain about org charts, this time you need to find an HR executive or one of your corporate attorneys and ask, “why don’t we publish our org charts?” Not brave enough? I’ll handle this one. The biggest excuses I hear directly from clients and have found on the internet are:

1. If they get in the wrong hands, our competitors will use them to recruit people.
2. We do publish them! Use our online directory to find people and you can see who they manage and who their managers are.
3. It changes so often, it would be very difficult to maintain.

Lost in Organization

Dear Leaders of Medium-to-large Corporations,

It’s time to stop sounding like the kid who didn’t do his homework. Here’s why your excuses are lame:

“Headhunters Will Use It”

Do you honestly think hiding org charts is a barrier to headhunters if they want to find your best and brightest? Headhunters are the folks you go to when you want to poach someone from your competitors. How many times have they told you, “I wish I could help you find the best VP of Doohickey Optimization in the industry, but nobody publishes org charts.” A successful recruiter knows how to find the most talented people in the industry. It’s called networking, and they’re good at it with no org chart required.

At Think Brownstone, we are so unconcerned about headhunters that our best and brightest are featured prominently on our home page. If you are in a medium-to-large corporation and you compare the size of our company to the size of your company, we have a lot more to lose if someone gets poached.

“Just Use the Company Directory”

Hmmm… you’ve checked that box off your list, yet your users are still frustrated… deeply, deeply frustrated. If we rated your effort on a scale of 1-10 you’d land somewhere between 2 and π. Online directories do not give your employees an understanding of the complex structure of your organization. Do you know why they want to find people and know the organizational structure? TO GET WORK DONE. They want to know who does what and how they fit into the organization. The sooner they do that, the less they’ll be calling you to find out who to go to and the faster both of you can go home tonight and be prepared for another hard day of work tomorrow.

“It Changes Too Much”

Wow, imagine if one of your direct reports told you they weren’t going to do something because it was too hard. This excuse is nonsense… it drops your effort rating to 1. This information is encoded in multiple locations: HR databases, individual departmental documentation, ISO certification filings, SEC documentation, etc. Delegate the task to some smart folks who can work with your IT group or, better yet, crowdsource it. Don’t be scared of letting the crowd manage your org charts – THE CROWD IS ASKING FOR IT – they’ll make sure it is accurate.

Kudos To The Few

Finally, I’d like to applaud those organizations who provide comprehensive org charts and contact information to your internal employees. You don’t really need my reinforcement for it, though… your employees probably love you, they work effectively and independently, and they’re much more productive than your competition. They’re also more likely to say, “no thanks” when headhunters call them.

Who Owns Your Social Health Data?

A recent Wall Street Journal article on Nielsen scraping data from patientslikeme.com has drawn attention to the privacy debate regarding personal health information. It’s important to note that Patients Like Me (PLM) encourages patients who suffer from specific conditions to actively record and share their health information with the PLM community.

I have used this blog to express my opinions about social media and privacy. Here, I declared, “your stuff isn’t worth anything.” My comment was a generalization aimed at the picture of a cat wearing a turtleneck that someone posts on Facebook or the 140-character “ode to cheesecake” shared on Twitter. I stand by that statement; “they” aren’t interested in ownership of gems of that ilk.

However, your stuff is worth something, just not in the way many people think it is. Your stuff is valuable to marketers. It’s called data mining. They send internet applications (called bots) to collect your stuff,  mix it with other people’s stuff, then analyze and sell it. Then they roll around in huge piles of gold coins they store in their vaults, of course. Patients Like Me knows about this because, as they tell you in their privacy policy, they do just that (minus the gold coins), they just try to do it transparently and responsibly. PLM just got snippy when Nielsen figured out they could log in under fake accounts to do the same thing. Nielsen did get caught violating the terms of service of the site, and they stopped their bots from scraping.

There is value to the public health if social health data is compiled into a composite form. For example, what if:

• A group of patients using a specific drug suddenly report a side effect that wasn’t caught in clinical trials
• The entire population of Springfield complains about a local hospital being dropped by an insurance company and threatens to find another insurance company
• A diabetes blogger suggests a new feature for an insulin pump and the entire online diabetes community weighs in
• Digitally-active physicians chime in and correct misleading information about a disease that is proliferating on the internet

What’s alarming is that users may be contributing information to a site that can be combined with other public data and used to identify who they are, what they suffer from, where they live, etc. In other words, someone can scrape data from the entire internet to piece together your personal puzzle, looking something like: Alphonse Brownstone, 123 Main Street, chronic earlobe fungus, likes chocolate-covered tater tots, 1987 conviction for public drunkenness. Needless to say, this poses an issue for privacy wonks and you should be worried about that.

Whether we like it or not, data scraping is what makes the internet useful and free. Turn that off and all of our favorite sites will have two choices: charge for service or shut down. Some digitally engaged patients already expect their information to be analyzed, they just want to be treated appropriately. Some research firms are asking for an open conversation about privacy.

So what we really need is some sort of Declaration of User-Generated Content that spells out exactly what everyone’s responsibilities are. Some examples:

• Organizations who own digital properties that encourage User-Generated Content must allow users to control who their content is shared with
• Organizations who scrape the internet for data must make every effort to avoid personally identifiable information and publish data only in composite views
• Individuals who publish their own content on the internet must assume that the information is visible to everyone unless they have made a clear effort to block that content from the public view

I’d put my Phil Hancock on that. Would you? If something is missing, tell us in the comments…

Our Public Private Lives

Recently, a blog post about a Yelp comment gone wrong circulated through the office. Despite being fictitious, this isn’t something to be written off. One doesn’t have to look far to find legitimate instances of social media blowback in our real-world lives.

What does this mean? Do we, as social media participants, need to craft all our posts to the lowest/most-agreeable common denominator, avoiding any possibility of offense (or individuality)? After all, it’s becoming a given that your online activity will be examined fairly early in the courting process, whether by a potential employer or partner. Or, will society mature, acknowledge the merging of personal and public, and evaluate people as a whole; on both their skillset and ability to conduct themselves as appropriate given the setting? If you put any stock in this CareerBuilder survey, it seems like Corporate America is at least a few years away from such an enlightened stance (and if you ask me, that’s being generous), so either get editing or get ready to defend your life.

While I like Kit Eaton’s take on the CareerBuilder survey and issue in general, I feel like he’s missing a fourth option: let it all hang out. Being a reader of this blog, I’m going to assume you’re an intelligent, well-rounded, and high-performing individual who contributes a lot to their organization and/or clients. Employers are lucky to have you and clients want to work with you. Do you think their opinions would change if they found your mullet-adorned, beer-swilling college photo? What about last week’s salty tweet about Mel’s, ahem…opinionated…voicemails? If so, maybe that fit wasn’t as good as you thought. However, if truly putting yourself out there means posting stuff that would turn off even the most open-minded of us, maybe you need to reexamine your life.

This seemed like a good idea at the time (on multiple levels)

That’s a tough stand to take in such tenuous economic times, but do you really think this whole social media thing is a fad? Me neither. So let’s be the ones to jump in with both feet and show the way. If we’re to do that, there’s definitely some reorienting of expectations needed by all players.

Users: Expect everything you post will be discovered. By everyone. Forever.
Employers: Learn and embrace the new sharing. Focus on the whole person and their ability to be a professional in professional situations.
Parents/Educators: Orient your charges to the impact/permanence of online posts. Help give them the perspective they inherently lack.
Creators: Manage participation, but don’t suppress opposition. Use your power to build communities.

Nobody’s going to argue that Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook sure have some things to learn in the PR department. And while what the Facebook creator said in January about privacy no longer being a social norm could have been phrased a bit better, I think the idea behind it is right on. People are sharing more and more of their private lives online for the world to see and despite threats to the contrary, nobody’s leaving because of privacy controls (especially Phil). We like the idea of privacy, but when push comes to shove, we’re pot-committed to our social media lives even if we’re not ready to admit it.

Social Media: No Spectators Allowed

How many times have you heard a key stakeholder in a digital initiative throw out a broad statement like “we need to include some social media in this”?

“Well Duh” Statement #1: Many folks who say these kinds of things can’t really quantify what they mean or what the value proposition might be.

“Well Duh” Statement #2: Many folks who say these kinds of things do so in the same manner that they might say “what the heck, let’s super size it too” or “can we throw some racing stripes on there too? That’d be cool, right?” Obviously, they don’t get that there’s a whole discipline of business strategy emerging around the phenomenon. It’s not nearly as simple as “turning it on” – especially because with social media there’s not simply the potential for great uptake vs. no uptake, but also for self-destruction. You need to curate and shape your social presence, not just “set it and forget it”.

Illustration by Mike Colibraro

But there’s also something more subtle going on that I’ve recently come to see as a trend: too often we hear these folks (particularly those in higher positions at larger organizations) talk about social media as if it’s something that will occur at ground level and they’ll watch it unfold from above. They talk about it as if it’s something to delegate to others. They talk about it as something that might perhaps be good for some other class of folks but not for themselves.

If social media is good for your business, it’s good for you. It is not good enough to read articles about how social media is influencing the business landscape and to know some of the buzzwords. If you don’t have accounts in the various types of outlets and you’re not actively using them, then no, you don’t get it. Period.

I’m not saying that all executives should be engaging in social media on behalf of their brand, per se (though when done right, there are benefits to be derived). But they should be engaging at least on their own, and here’s why – if you’re not in the thick of it, you simply can’t understand the dynamics of the interaction, the manner in which things trend, the way news breaks, the way brands are made or destroyed, and the real dynamics behind things like crowd-sourcing and cyber-bullying (of people, brands, or otherwise). That’s important because, “duh” again, if you’re a decision-maker for initiatives that may have social components, you need to be familiar with how these things work in order to effectively manage, direct, and lead in this space.

Not Even If You Dedicated All Day, Every Day

But, let’s put some parameters around this too – you should be familiar with the different flavors of social media, but being everywhere (see above) would be impossible even if it was your full time job. The key is to be informed and participate in a qualified subset and to leave their opinions and preconceptions about those channels at the door. It’s OK if you “don’t get why it’s so popular”, but it’s not OK to let that be an excuse for avoiding it. That’s the same as a 1940′s advertising executive saying, “this TV thing is a fad, newspapers aren’t going away – that’s where we should be focusing our business.”

The good news is that getting up to speed is free – it just requires some of your time and dedication. What it all boils down to is that you can’t effectively answer the question “how can we harness social media?” until you’ve answered “how can I?”

An Overlooked Enemy of Good Design

Today I did something I don’t get to do very often: I turned off my email. Aside from three pre-scheduled check-ins to make sure nothing was melting down, I was off-line almost the entire day and able to focus on a single design assignment. Toward the end of the day I reviewed my work with the client to collect their feedback and tomorrow we’ll start the review process with other stakeholders.

It later struck me that eight consecutive hours of focus is a rare thing. In this case I was making significant changes to two months worth of work due to a very wise decision made by a very wise executive. That is not sarcasm – a good decision was made, and to be successful we needed to take three steps back in order to take four steps forward. It was refreshing to do this kind of rework and feel like I was “doing the right thing” rather than diluting something as a result of design-by-committee.

I’m a huge fan of theoatmeal.com, but when Matt Inman vents over idiot clients or copycat design methods, I feel like he’s missing the point. In my experience, one of the greatest enemies of good design isn’t what we typically blame: clients, technology, time, money, or even nepotism. I’m calling out the turf war.

illustration by Mike Colibraro

We do a lot of work with pharmaceutical companies and much of my efforts focus on helping clients communicate important information to physicians, nurses, and pharmacists. I’m not talking about your typical marketing site for a new drug, but the volumes of clinical information that pharma companies provide to the medical community free of charge and without any marketing messaging. This information gives your healthcare providers the data they need to make informed decisions and, without question, it saves lives. The sad fact is that the medical industry doesn’t always trust information coming from “Big Pharma.” There are a lot of reasons that have contributed to this situation over the years. The pharma industry has been spending a lot of energy trying to remedy the situation, but fixing trust issues is a hard game.

I can’t meet physicians without grilling them about how they use technology in their practice. A while ago I ended up sitting next to an ER doc at a baseball game. We got to talking and I asked him about the electronic medical record systems at his hospital. I was not surprised by what I heard, but it’s a great example of how turf wars are the enemy: a series of battles between medical departments, vendors, healthcare systems, and their IT departments leaves many ERs with multiple systems. Sometimes they have multiple screens up for one patient: charts, radiology, labs, research, etc. Many of these systems don’t talk to each other because they’re built by competitors who want to dominate the market. None of these decisions were made to improve usability or achieve better patient outcomes; they were all made to “protect” someone’s group, market share, or position.

So…back to my entire day of focus: the reason why that’s so rare is due to the unfortunate reality that in my typical day, much of my time (and I suspect yours) is dedicated to dealing with the fallout from turf wars. Over time, those successful in these wars become unable to function any other way – they default to tactics of offense or defense. The wisest don’t contribute to the wars. Fueling that fire means you’re not doing what you do best: focusing on good design. Less time spent on design means less time collaborating with your friends and colleagues over in Content, Development, IT, and Testing. It also means missed opportunities reaching out to users and stakeholders for critical feedback.

David Maister wrote a book called “The Trusted Advisor” that every UX designer should read. Much of the book is dedicated to trust building. You don’t build trust by getting sucked into the turf war, you build it by doing the right thing.

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.