HITS: Humans, Interaction, Technology, Strategy 16-17 October 2003, Chicago Historical Society

A year ago the first HITS (Humans, Interaction, Technology, Strategy) conference took place, hosted and sponsored by the Illinois Institute of Technology and organised by the Institute of Design (ID) department, in cooperation with ACM SIGCHI.

It recently announced the sequel, the Institute of Design Strategy Conference, which will take place 18-19 May 2005 in Chicago, Illinois. It is intended to be “an international executive forum addressing how businesses can use design to explore emerging opportunities, solve complex problems, and achieve lasting strategic advantage”.

HITS was chaired the Institute of Design department director, Professor Patrick Witney. Austin Henderson of Pitney Bowes, and SIGCHI alumnus, is credited with initiating the conference concept. Approximately 225 people, including 20 speakers, participated in HITS.

Here we present the reflections of three HITS participants, Hugh Dubberly, S. Joy Mountford, and Ian McClelland.

Hugh Dubberly

Principal, Dubberly Design Office, San Francisco

A key theme of HITS was the relationship between business and design. Unfortunately, a few presenters (including Don Norman) took up a variation on the theme: ‘Business doesn’t understand design, and designers don’t understand business.’ Too much time was spent debating this old chestnut without shedding any more light on it.

Ironically, most of the conference presented a rather different story. Speakers from the business world offered their views on the role of design; designers shared cases in which they’d helped businesses; and even the presentations on design methods were squarely in ‘service’ of business innovation.

More interesting by far was a third theme that emerged around designing to enable others to design – designing for evolution or evolving systems. This theme might be likened to what [Carnegie Mellon University Schools of Design Professor] Richard Buchanan (who unfortunately was not at the conference) has called fourth-order design (the first three orders loosely being a focus on form, meaning, and behaviour).

Several speakers touched explicitly on the evolution theme. Business Week Editorial Page Editor Bruce Nussbaum sounded the first note with a warning on the growing fragility of our increasingly complicated systems. IDEO CEO Tim Brown nicely contrasted top-down and bottom-up approaches to design.

• Controlled processes / scripted experiences / eg: Disney, Apple
• Emergent processes / evolving experiences / eg: NTT DoCoMo, eBay

Austin Henderson of Pitney Bowes contrasted rigid and pliant systems, and designing for regularities versus designing for particularities. He upped the ante on thinking about users with a taxonomy of user roles:

• Users follow – designers design for users
• Users participate – designers design with users
• Users lead – designers create frameworks in which users design

Larry Keeley, co-founder of the Doblin Group, extended the evolution theme with a brief introduction to the use of genetic algorithms for modelling, and thus as predictive tools. (I wish Keeley had had more time to expand this section of his talk.)

Discussions during and after the conference suggested that the participants enjoyed themselves and the presentations. The presentations by Brown, Henderson, and Keeley are worth reading. I also recommend the presentation by Vijay Kumar on Innovation Planning. It’s a model of clarity.

While these presentations stand out, most of the presentations at HITS included models (rather than just examples of work) pointing to a change in the profession that is coming about as the way we talk about what we do becomes clearer and richer. At the same time, this change raises a question about conferences in general. How do design conferences build knowledge? Indeed, what is the raison d’etre of a design conference beyond a bit of socializing and promotion? Can a design conference have a lasting impact?

S. Joy Mountford

Principal, idbias, California

HITS surfaced a critical question not addressed within the various conferences around user-centered design: What value do designers actually add to businesses? And how can we quantify that value? According to event convenor Patrick Whitney, this was one of his primary goals in holding the conference. It is a key topic that all branches of design face, especially within a struggling economy. HITS attracted about 200 ‘designers’ to the beauty of Chicago. It was a great event where the size and quality of the attendees were both conducive to a productive and enjoyable event. TED [the annual Technology Entertainment Design conference] prides itself on having a quality audience that is on a par with the speakers, and this was certainly the case for HITS.

In general I found some of the talks seminal in their content and very thought provoking. WorldTel founder Sam Pitroda told us how hard it had been even for him to set up his new telecom services in his new home. Bruce Nussbaum, Editorial Page Editor at Business Week, pointed out the ever increasingly complexity of systems, which was heralded in his 1986 article ‘I cant use this *!& thing.’ These two talks at least showed us that not much has changed over the twenty years in which I have been involved with interactive systems design. This confirms that there should at least be a perceived user need for our services. Despite this perception, and numbers of people involved with interface design, we clearly have not been doing a great job everywhere of containing the increasing complexity of our devices. It was also sobering to realise, again, that simpler or easier to use technology designs have not played a significant role in making devices sell. Despite a wide representation of different companies at HITS, it was disappointing to notice that no one from Microsoft attended the event.

Don Norman shared his latest insight, the focus of his new book, that attractiveness plays a significant role in persuading people to buy things. Even the way they ‘feel’ is important, highlighted by his comment about weight making products feel less ‘cheap’. I believe that industrial designers and graphic designers have known this for a long time and use it to good effect. The problem appears to be that interface designers hang their mantle mostly on usability as the way to defend their design decisions. If interaction designers believe what they preached at interface design schools, we would celebrate the fact that good design is not all about making things more usable. In fact it is an art just like fashion. Sometimes functionality is key, and sometimes the key is just how it something looks. We should accept that design can just be fun and will sell more just because of that. It is all good.

IDEO President and CEO Tim Brown presented some wonderful projects that again showed how sophisticated and detailed the design processes are at his company. It would be great if the prototyping cycles he showed at IDEO would serve to educate other customers about their use in early product development design cycles. It was very useful to hear his insights about what worked and what didn’t – we do learn so much from ‘mistakes’. However in terms of understanding the value of design, I suspect [their work for the flagship New York store for] Prada was not a tough sell. Paul Siebert, Director of WorkSpace Futures at Steelcase, showed another great case study in furniture design demonstrating how a simple idea for informal work spaces, was carried forward into a successful new product line. It was particularly valuable that the conference programme included presenters from aboard – notably India and China – as designers need to consider these markets.

The closing talk by Larry Keeley, president of the Doblin Group, was terrific, and very optimistic. He gave a few examples of the role that design has played in creating successful products, as well as highlighting what he sees as key technology areas for design to address in the future. It was important to be reminded that the same key industries will exist irrespective of the technology they use and how they are manifested, for instance travel and entertainment. Keeley’s talk was the highlight of the conference.

I found the discussion between Bruce Nussbaum and Institute of Design Professor John Heskett, which was also picked up at the end of the conference by Don Norman and Roger Martin, Dean of the University of Toronto Rotman School of Management, quite revealing. They talked what should be taught to designers about business and to business people about design. We know that a shared common vocabulary is essential to starting a good working relationship, but how general should our graduate schools become without compromising the teaching of necessary skills? There is nothing new about this debate – all curriculum should by definition change. However having initiated and managed the industrially sponsored Interface Design project for over twelve years, I have found that students and professors mostly responded to the opportunity of working on a real industry project and in interdisciplinary teams. Most students have no experience in working in teams, but this is a strong determiner of long term company success. All professionals who survive technology evolution succeed largely based on their team skills and having a resilient charming personality. It seems that if our goal is for designers to be a significant part of achieving long term company business success, we need to teach more inter-personal skill development. It seems to be me that the responsibility for addressing this issue lies with designers, who should learn how to better present and explain themselves to others, and to adjust this depending on the situation.

The conference led to some good break-time conversations, and many participants noted this. However, there was almost no time for participation from the audience during the official time slots. I felt this was rather a missed opportunity, since the audience was very knowledgeable, and could have contributed further to the event. Many valuable and interesting topics were brought up and too little time was available to address them. I would have asked the presenters to give shorter talks and encourage more audience participation. The audience might also have been able to start some interesting discussions about useful approaches with clients, and what we as a community could start working towards to help achieve more business recognition.

The HITS event left me thinking and mulling over the a number of sets of interface topics – which is a good thing for a conference to achieve. As user interface designers and researchers we have spent many of our intellectual cycles studying the struggling users of technology boxes, without regard to the users of ourselves: our bosses. How do our bosses or companies get a handle on how to evaluate our worth? The language of worth used by business executives is around return on investment (ROI). If we do not contribute to this metric then our value will be further questioned, especially when margins decrease and sales drop. Those of us in the consulting business struggle with this daily. Why should any design company be hired and what value does it actually add to the bottom line, or to sales figures? Do interface designers have any metrics, and do we know how to assess our value added to a company? We need to better develop shared ways of presenting our worth non-defensively. Interface designers sometimes justify themselves through usability metrics. This is a poor reflection of their true range of skills, work and contributions.

HITS was a success and I would very much like to encourage HITS 2 to address in more detail what other metrics, values and vocabulary we as interface designers need to develop to be better able to contribute to a savvy business world in which design plays a key role.

Ian McClelland

Philips Digital Systems Laboratory, and ACM SIGCHI Adjunct Chair for Specialised Conferences

About 200 people came to HITS, mainly from the US with a few from other parts of the world. The two day, single track programme was well organised and was primarily made up of presentations from people closely associated in some way with the Institute of Design.

HITS was designed to address the link between interaction design and business strategy. It was of interest not least because, although many professionals involved in HCI, usability and design work would readily identify with the issue, it has seldom been the focus of a conference. HITS must be congratulated for getting such a diverse group of people together to address an issue that is clearly of considerable importance. But how far did HITS get us?

HITS began to highlight the issues but, at times, it seemed like trying to grasp that piece of slippery soap in the bath. The conference never quite got to grips with mapping out the agenda for how designers of interactive systems can evaluate their relevance to creating business value. And is designing interactive systems any different from designing in general? This question also went unexplored. That said, several presentations did clearly address critical issues that confront anyone concerned with making an impact on the future of commercial organisations. One of the principal themes was the question of innovation and how the professional practice of designing in a usage-centric way can create significant business opportunities. There are a few I would highlight:

Jim Euchner of Advanced Technology, Pitney Bowes provided a very interesting perspective on how a corporation should deal with user-centred design and innovation. If innovation means delivering solutions to the market that are quite different from those for which a company is known, then innovative solutions require innovation in its development process. Correspondingly, mature products and systems tend to generate processes that suit the end product and vice versa. So you want innovate products? Get a new process. And make sure your process is set up to first design and evaluate the ‘value proposition’ for your customer/user.[2]

Tom MacTavish of Motorola’s Human Interface Laboratories discussed business and technology. He also dealt with innovation and the value that a human-centred approach can bring to a company. But opportunities need to be created. He stressed the need for practitioners to “talk the language of business” and understand what makes good business sense. Practitioners need to understand the process they are working in, the roles of design team members, and the business problems the team needs to solve. MacTavish also stressed that change is endemic, so your approach will just have to adapt and evolve along with your company.

Don Norman, author and cognitive scientist, briefly introduced designing for emotions (of the positive variety) as one of the next big challenges and opportunities for business. He also outlined his three-tier model (visceral, behavioural and reflective) for how people emotionally relate to designs. In addition he stressed that the “problem of getting recognition and acceptance’ is ‘ours’ and not ‘theirs’”. And that to get more attention from the business community the designer needs to adapt to its way of thinking.

Stephen Wilcox, principal and founder of Design Science, discussed inclusive design as a way of increasing the market potential for companies. Inclusive meaning that designers should stretch the boundary conditions to provide for people with a limitation in ability who might otherwise become handicapped if the design is inappropriate for them. He presented data for the US population which clearly showed how great is the number of people with minor or moderate limitations. His key message was that the notion of what is meant by ‘the normal population’ needs to be redefined.

Austin Henderson, Systems Lab Director of the Advanced Concepts and Technology Group at Pitney Bowes, addressed the challenges involved in designing for evolution, in his case designing interactive systems for work situations. He stressed the importance of considering the use of systems in the workplace in terms of socio-technical systems that will evolve and adapt as technology is introduced and new usage patterns emerge. He argued that applying the principles of ‘usage centred design’ can support the evolution of business strategies by both trying to anticipate changes in work practices as well as evaluating the effectiveness of solutions.

Larry Keeley of the Doblin Group also addressed the issue of innovation. Keeley highlighted the very poor record of business in translating innovative ideas into commercially productive solutions. He also argued for the emergence of ‘platforms’ as the way in which companies will succeed in commanding the heights of one market segment or another. One example he cited was Sony’s Playstation platform, which started as a games player and is now growing into a audio-video entertainment terminal for networked applications.

The theme addressed by HITS needs more attention. There is clearly an appetite for insights into how we should deal with the topic. It was evident from HITS that we need a shared understanding of the relevant parameters. For example the notion of business value and the impact designing interactive systems can have on economic value (resources and capabilities), commercial value (brand development and maintenance) and financial value (cost reduction and earnings improvement) of commercial organisations. There is also the issue of whether interactive systems design has particular characteristics that sets it apart from other types of professional design practices. And if it does, what are those characteristics and how do they relate to improving business value?

ACM SIGCHI was very pleased to cooperate with the Institute of Design to establish HITS. SIGCHI is seeking to give greater attention to the professional practice of designing interactive systems, and HITS represents a further step in this direction. To this end SIGCHI hopes to see a follow up to HITS, and see the issue of business value addressed in other SIGCHI conferences. We also look forward to other communities, for instance in UK HCI, pushing forward this important debate.