DUX2003: Panel 'How far can design go?' Friday, 6 June. 1530-1700 Session chair: Nico Macdonald Edit 1.0 Where a person is identified they were either a panelist or a speaker from the floor who identified themselves. (It does not appear to be possible to retain Hydra's identification of the contributor.) However please don't quote people directly from this document as it has not been checked with contributors. Text deletions or the editors comments are [in brackets], with a question mark where the comments may not have been clearly transcribed. Emphasis is _underscored_. Irrelevant comments have been removed. The order of comments has been changed to help the flow of the ideas. Panelists - - - - Keith Teare, Chairman, President and CEO, Santa Cruz Networks Peter Morville, President and Founder, Semantic Studios Danny O'Brien, journalist and editor of Need To Know (NTK) newsletter Quinn Norton, usability consultant Emerging technologies and the technology environment of users - - - - Annette Wagner: UI design clashes with API design Keith: why is ICQ so successful when it is so ugly? Platforms are the key. Danny: Mozilla and other open source software have actually emerged into being very good even though design was on the other side of the room. Problem is not creating something good, but doing it to deadline. Should we learn from amateurs? Keith: many really successful things come from an engineering gut feel. Marketing then focuses on learning from users, who may not know what they want as they haven't seen it before, and the engineers are then cut out. Should marketers be playing less of a role. Annette: users do what they do as they find it compelling [?]. Keith hasn't experienced a successful project. Danny: some people are prepared to learn sub-optimal interfaces. Peter: resist locking in on one metaphor. Don't want to find the perfect metaphor. Quinn: need to be able to throw them away. We hack the people: quick, dirty fixes is the extent of what we can do. Quinn: if you can't expose something to the user base it can't have an effect. If designers ask for 'the world on a stick' you will lose the collaboration with engineers. Dennis Wixon: panel is setting up false dichotomies, eg: between design and engineering. Keith: Microsoft is one of the _best_ companies for integrating design and engineering. [But not typical.] Recognise the continuing input of engineers. Not programmers but architects of applications. The client perspective on user experience design - - - - [Not discussed] How far can design go: service design? organisation design? - - - - Modertor: Note Lauralee Alben's The 'sea change' method. Keith: designers operate at every level of society. Design applied can be to a small thing or to a big thing. Peter: depends on your definition of design. CEO make design decisions, ultimately shaping culture. Designing across media is something business folks need to absorb, as people move between interactions in the store and then online. Quinn: The fate of the world lies in the hands of designers. What you expect from technology is often what you make it do. Molly Steenson: think more widely about experience Design. Think in terms of systems. [?] Danny: designers are people who _bring other people problems_ to solve [and are thus viewed warily]. Solve them first. Need corporate cultures that [push] solutions. [Moderator: design as a model of problem solving.] Quinn: need to understand human mind better [?]. Lauralee Alben: the planet and world society should get included in the design discussion. Our abilities can complement what others are doing: not an arrogant positions. Design is the conscious planning of meaningful acts that truly reflects our relationships with ourselves... Keith: Modernist versus post-Modernist point of view. Example of Iraq war. Can designers be powerful as individuals? Peter: designing solutions that can emerge over time. Need to keep testing our boundaries. Danny: example of BBC. Many design solutions come from competition with other companies. Human needs and aspirations, examining the reality of our audiences - - - - [Not discussed] Is there an ethics of design? - - - - Moderator: Bob Zeni comment from previous sesion: "A tiny sliver of people is deciding issues in this country." The profession, collaboration and aspirations - - - - Quinn: if we knew what we were doing we wouldn't have to test all the time. We show all the signs of being a young discipline: guruhood in five years or less is now what you get in physics. Quinn: in gaming users will learn very complex interfaces. If you demanded the same things of a word-processing app you would be laughed out of the room. An incredible feature-set will compel people even if it has a terrible interface. At a lower level having things nicer _can_ make a difference. Danny: user experience designers want respect... from anyone. Design for adaption by users (users as designers) - - - - [Not discussed] General discussion - - - - I'd really like for them to be talking not just about user interface, but user experience. i think they would have something interesting to say. Comparing the design of productivity tools to video games is classically flip and facile. What's interesting is how this discussion so far has been indicative of the "client perspective" on user experience design What do you mean by "client? Well, I'm assuming that Nico means "client" in the way that designers talk about "client". The people who hire us for the work we do. So, in that sense, I'd sorta disagree. I think there's a bit more of designery-ness in the discussion than I expected, given that everyone on the panel doesn't define themselves as a designer. But I think that they've been very limited in their view of "user experience". Why is it that we need to do the changing? Why not adapt the technology to the user instead of adapting the user to the technology? Do we just throw things out there and see what happens? Is there a better metaphor for what we do? As long as it's realized that "design" is one tool among many. Design *is* problem-solving, not all problem-solving is design. Is design also problem seeking? Not just solving? How do you know which problems to solve? Do designers find problems, or respond to them? There is an interesting treatment on air traffic controllers in _The Myth of the Paperless Office_ in case anyone is interested. Paper works quite well for them. Question: The idea of design UX is a bit arrogant. Is there a better metaphor for what we do? Are we coaches calling plays, storytellers, diplomats? Is there any problem, really, with "design"? It seems accurate... This might be because this panel isn't equipped to speak about this issue deeply. What would a better equipped panel consist of? I'm thinking that something along the lines of what happened at the Scottsdale Advance for Design, where we had people collaborate to help address the bigger issue of user experience design... All of whom worked with or interacted with or were user experience designers. I dunno, I think the idea of talking to people who aren't so connected to "user experience" is an interesting way to investigate the meaning of such a thing. I didn't think we were here to address meaning, but to address the basic question "how far can design go?" And, well, I don't think journalists might be the best equipped to address that. I think we've seen interesting presentations from user experience designers showing some promise for how far design can do (design for democracy, etc.), I'd love to see an attempt at drawing together those issues in themes... Nick Ragouzis: long history of iterative practice going back to antiquity. Design is about generating possibilities. To Danny: sales is also a bringer of problems. Yay Nick! Keith: when you don't know what the architecture is you don't think about the end user. CEO _does_ care about the end product. Designers need to seem themselves as part of a team, and not always the most important part. Nick Ragouzis: I love sales people. [paraphrased] Danny: [do companies know what happens to a product after it is sold?] Eric Bergman: [example of a successful company that recruited a user experience person when it was small, and its competitors failed] Terry Swack: companies keen to incorporate open source technologies as a point solution rather than a comprehensive approach to [user experience]. If people who love command lines see a solution that is better they will pay for it. Quinn: pick up solutions _from_ open source, rather than see it as _the_ answer. I would love to hear more personal stories about "what can design do" where design has pushed commonly-held boundaries. See http://www.freshmeat.net/ and search for MP3 players: some are so amazing... Complementary relationship. Danny: Sun good at incorporating external input [?] eg: Gnome interface. ES, EFI: the best design removes rather than adds something. How do we design for minimal experience. We _have_ to be part of a team as we can't building things. I make smoke and mirrors. Best way to influence things is to fire the imagination of other people. Danny: Good design becomes invisible, which is the problem [?]. Gabe Daniels: danger of ending up automating design, with usability. How can usability people be sensitive to design but stay true our principles. Quinn: the role is so important to honing what the designer does. If we do our job right, then our footprint is transparent. I don't agree that usability's goal is to automate design, or that that is a potential result. If anything, usability is there to provide designers with better tools (guidelines) for design. Jacob Kim: problem of working on products that harm their users. David M: Every culture thinks it has the answer. And they do. We need to be open to understanding And why "design" has been successful at pushing boundaries. Me too - they pay the salaries. And ofthen help get design to be better. As a "user experience designer", I can say that I've had almost no contact with salespeople within companies, and that's probably a bad thing. A good sales person knows 'the customer' better than anyone else in the org. This depends... If the sales person is in the field with the customers installing the product vs. someone working with a CIO. True. Obviously, there are bad salespeople, too! And salespeople from whom you can't derive valuable input for your work... Sometimes, we say that the customer is the CIO/upper management and the user is the poor fellow who actually has to use the product. Exactly! Yes, it's very good to have contact with the salespeople, particularly if you can develop a good relationship. Another good relationship to curry is one with the support people, particularly if you have onsite support (in a large, vertical market situation). [Audience comment] Isn't design about communication? There is a lot that could be done to more specifically dig into those issues. And, you're probably right, digging in would be better done by folks within the field. But isn't that a comment on "how far can design(ers) go? Perhaps, but it's still interesting to see another perspective. Sometimes, we can be very much blind to our own faults, limitations, and capabilities and it takes someone else to shed a light upon us. What about people who aren't journalists doing it (e.g. bloggers) The web and other technologies allow for a whole new dynamic? What if politicians turned that light on us? Oh, I don't doubt that. Hell, I'm not a designer, and have a deep misgiving for those "trained in design", as they tend to see "design" as the hammer for the world's nail. Right, so the question still remains: where's the boundary of design? Or to quote the old tv campaign: where's the beef? Ah, but the answer may very well be... "it depends" and "I don't really know. I know where it was a minute ago, but it seems to have moved." Here's the other question: does it really matter, where design ends, where its boundaries are? How good is this discussion if we say, "Groovy, copacetic, design ends five miles and two blocks past the boundary of Kansas City." -- Why does it matter, really? This is what I get annoyed with: it's the continual discussion about "this is what we do." "this is what we don't do." it's cloaked in being visionary and is incredibly tactical at its core." It might be better to look further rather than prodding a stick into the ground and saying: there! There is the boundary. I wish that I could get it that far sometimes. Depends on the situation because there are other people involved. My limits depend on the players involved and their priorities, politics, social values, and other human-human stuff. I think that part of it is what someone (I forget who) mentioned and that is that we (as a discipline?) are still reaching/yearning for recognition (or at least a feeling that we are respected). But that's always been the case. We just want to be loved. So did the designers in the 50s, in the 20s. So did the arts and crafts guys way back when. It's almost as though we've got a complex -- an inferiority complex of sorts. Why? I don't want love, I want to create good design and have it make a difference. If people want love, they shouldn't be designing. I would argue that Charles and Ray Eames didn't say they wanted to be loved by their clients or by the people who bought their clients' products. Maybe because there aren't a lot of us and the field is specialized? Probably happens in quite a few specialized and relatively new fields. In a similar vein, software engineers are less likely to be respected in organizations whose primary function isn't to produce software. For example, oilfield service companies. One of the reasons UX suffers from recognition is that engineering typically drives product development instead of design. Engineering puts together a product that "works" and is based on prototype code. However engineering's defintion of what works is typically not what users define as what works. I would argue in my experience that engineering and design are on the same side and that's it's usually marketing, sales or management that run the product. Well marketing also tends to drive 'user experience', when it probably ought to be vice versa. One of the "problems" of UX is that it's nascency has made it unclear where 'it belongs'... Not that it belongs in any one place... I tend to think UX belongs everywhere... And that includes senior management, marketing, engineering, product development, etc. That's true. I've seen companies that put UX in engineering, some in marketing, some in product management, and if you're lucky, UX is it's own department that cuts across and interacts with the others, there's no (relatively) clear placement for it. I'm not sure whether this would help or hurt. That's because companies are all organized differently. For example, in my company, marketing and product management are in the same organization. UX is in engineering. It's best if it's in eng because their pay scales are better. :) Ah, good point. I benefit from that. ;-) Maybe we should ask, "who is 'us'?" I think that part of this comes from the perspective that design is subjective. I think it might matter, where "user experience" design begins and ends. Boundaries are worth pursuing, because focus is worth having. Good point. And just because we have boundaries doesn't mean we're leaving out, or neglecting those other areas. But perhaps boundaries isn't the correct term - maybe we're thinking more of focus... I'd love to pursue the cognitive science thread... It's also interesting to consider the people who've started calling themselves with designers. it's not just the pixel pushers. [Actually, it's an itneresting design solution, ala London, I think Nico's just miffed he can't drive his car into the city. :)] [Reference to a comment about the Congestion Charge in London.] Architects design! "Architect" is not a verb. "Hacking the user" might be all you can do in usability, but I would hope that user experience methods allow us to go a bit deeper, figuring out not just HOW to build something, but WHAT to build. Culture, as a rule, is not top-down. (Or wait. Maybe it is. Think North Korea.)