At Lift France 09, Mike Kuniavsky spoke about Changing Things: Fab Labs, towards decentralized design and production of material products (link to 25 min. video). Kuniavsky’s new book on ubiquitous computing user experience design is now finished and will be shipping in August. Based on case studies, the book will show the evolution of products caused by ubiquitous computing. It also describes frameworks and processes, as well as giving practical advice on how to handle these unique design challenges. Abstract: The world of smart shoes, appliances, and phones is already here, but the practice of user experience (UX) design for ubiquitous computing is still relatively new. Design companies like IDEO and frogdesign are regularly asked to design products that unify software interaction, device design and service design — which are all the key components of ubiquitous computing UX — and practicing designers need a way to tackle practical challenges of design. Theory is not enough for them — luckily the industry is now mature enough to have tried and tested best practices and case studies from the field. Smart Things presents a problem-solving approach to addressing designers’ needs and concentrates on process, rather than technological detail, to keep from being quickly outdated. It pays close attention to the capabilities and limitations of the medium in question and discusses the tradeoffs and challenges of design in a commercial environment. Divided into two sections ? frameworks and techniques ? the book discusses broad design methods and case studies that reflect key aspects of these approaches. The book then presents a set of techniques highly valuable to a practicing designer. It is intentionally not a comprehensive tutorial of user-centered design’as that is covered in many other books’but it is a handful of techniques useful when designing ubiquitous computing user experiences. In shot, Smart Things gives its readers both the “why” of this kind of design and the “how,” in well-defined chunks.

Tackles design of products in the post-Web world where computers no longer have to be monolithic, expensive general-purpose devices Features broad frameworks and processes, practical advice to help approach specifics, and techniques for the unique design challenges Presents case studies that describe, in detail, how others have solved problems, managed trade-offs, and met successes

Mike Kuniavsky is a founding partner of Adaptive Path, a user experience consulting company in San Francisco. He has been developing commercial web sites since 1994, and is the interaction designer of an award-winning search engine, HotBot. He created the Wired Digital User Experience Laboratory and served as its chief investigator for two years. His design work and writing have appeared in many publications, including WebMonkey, ID Magazine, Wired, Step-By-Step Design, Inc., The Wall Street Journal, The LA Times, and .Net (UK).

During a keynote address at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Erik Huggers, the BBC Director of Future Media and Technology, shared his plans to make BBC Online even more accessible on mobiles, and what the industry can do collectively to further open up the huge potential of mobile for the benefit of the audience. “Today’s mobile audience primarily falls into four groups. “Mobile first” – people who use mobile as their primary access point to the internet. “Mobile lifestyle” – those who love the convenience of mobile services when they’re on the move. “Addicted devotees” – the gadget lovers on their phones all the time, even in the internet connected home, and “social animals” – people particularly driven by social networking. It’s with these people in mind we focus on today’s mobile propositions.” Read full story

In an interview on the website of Forbes India, the renowned behavioural economist Dan Ariely talks about some of the hidden forces that shape our decisions. “For years, my colleagues and I have been conducting experiments about human irrationality. When we present our results, the ‘rational’ economists say, ‘These are very nice experiments that make for great dinner conversation; but when it comes to professionals making decisions that involve money, irrationality simply doesn’t occur’. I never bought this argument: why would the human brain develop two different approaches to decisions that depend upon the importance of the decision? While I allowed that the market could possibly mitigate some irrational behaviour, I also felt that it could increase it.” Read full story

Thomas Petersen, co-founder and partner of Danish digital creative agency Hello, reflects on the experience and design implications of the exponential growth of information. “Constantly checking our feeds for new information, we seem to be hoping to discover something of interest, something that we can share with our networks, something that we can use, something that we can talk about, something that we can act on, something we didn’t know we didn’t know. It almost seems like an obsession and many critics of digital technology would argue that by consuming information this way we are running the danger of destroying social interaction between humans. One might even say that we have become slaves of the feed. Read full story

Bonnier R&D, the research unit of Bonnier, the publisher of Popular Science, invited the designers from BERG London on a corporate collaborative research project into the experience of reading magazines on handheld digital devices. “The concept aims to capture the essence of magazine reading, which people have been enjoying for decades: an engaging and unique reading experience in which high-quality writing and stunning imagery build up immersive stories. The concept uses the power of digital media to create a rich and meaningful experience, while maintaining the relaxed and curated features of printed magazines. It has been designed for a world in which interactivity, abundant information and unlimited options could be perceived as intrusive and overwhelming.” Watch video prototype

Mike Kuniavsky of ThingM was a speaker at XD Forum, Intuit’s internal user experience design conference, last week. His half-hour talk focused on the relationship between ubicomp devices and services. The talking points and slides can be downloaded from his blog, Orange Cone.

Joe Lamantia, an Amsterdam based experience architect, discussed the role of emotion in game design. In his article, Lamantia draws heavily on the work by Nicole Lazzaro, a leading games researcher and design consultant. “Emotion is one of the most powerful elements of an experience, and also the most difficult to design. Yet games regularly inspire intense emotions, drawing players into the experience they offer, and making these experiences enjoyable and memorable. With the best games, these feelings endure long after we finish playing. Plainly, interaction designers who want to better understand how to inspire emotions could learn a lot from games.” Read full story

The MIT Sloan Management Review has published Donald Norman’s paper ‘Designing Waits That Work‘ (available for $6.50). It is based on a 2008 paper by Norman, entitled ‘The Psychology of Waiting Lines‘ (which is freely available), but sections have been added on “Variations of basic waiting lines” (including triage, categorization of needs, and self-selection of queues) and “Deliberate Chaos.” According to Norman, “the original is better in the amount of detail and formal analyses, worse in the rough draft and inelegance of the writing as well as a lack of examples which I added for SMR.” Here is Norman’s introduction to the 2008 paper: Waiting is an inescapable part of life, but that doesn’t mean we enjoy it. But if the lines are truly inescapable, what can be done to make them less painful? Although there is a good deal of practical knowledge, usually known within the heads of corporate managers, very little has been published about the topic. One paper provides the classic treatment: David Maister’s The Psychology of Waiting Lines (1985). Maister suggested several principles for increasing the pleasantness of waiting. Although his paper provides an excellent start, it was published in 1985 and there have been considerable advances in our knowledge since then. In the PDF file, The Psychology of Waiting Lines, I bring the study of waiting lines up to date, following the spirit of Maister’s original publication, but with considerable revision in light of modern findings. I suggest eight design principles, starting with “emotions dominate” and ending with the principle that “the memory of an event is more important than the experience.” Examples of design solutions include double buffering, providing clear conceptual models of the events with continual feedback, providing positive memories and even why one might deliberately induce waits. These principles apply to all services, not just waiting in lines. Details will vary from situation to situation, industry to industry, but the fundamentals are, in truth, the fundamentals of sociable design for waiting lines, for products, and for service.

In a truly excellent article, entitled “You can’t innovate like Apple”, Alain Breillatt also discusses Apple’s approach to user research. “While I’m sure Jobs says he doesn’t do research, it’s pretty clear that his team goes out to thoroughly study behaviors and interests of those they think will be their early adopters. Call it talking to friends and family; but, honestly, you know that these guys live by immersing themselves in the hip culture of music, video, mobile, and computing. The point is not to go ask your customers what they want. If you ask that question in the formative stages, then you’re doing it wrong. The point is to go immerse yourself in their environment and ask lots of “why” questions until you have thoroughly explored the ins and outs of their decision making, needs, wants, and problems. At that point, you should be able to break their needs and the opportunities down into a few simple statements of truth. As Alan Cooper says, how can you help an end user achieve the goal if you don’t know what it is? You have to build a persona or model that accurately describes the objectives of your consumers and the problems they face with the existing solutions. The real benefit, as I saw in my years working at InstallShield and Macrovision, is that unless you put a face and expectations on that consumer, then disagreements about features or product positioning or design come down to who can pull the greatest political will—rather than who has the cleanest interpretation of the consumer’s need.” Read full story

New York Magazine has published a long article by Sam Anderson on “Twitter, Adderall, lifehacking, mindful jogging, power browsing, Obama’s BlackBerry, and the benefits of overstimulation.” “Free-associative wandering is essential to the creative process; one moment of judicious unmindfulness can inspire thousands of hours of mindfulness.” “Focus is a paradox—it has distraction built into it. The two are symbiotic; they’re the systole and diastole of consciousness. Attention comes from the Latin “to stretch out” or “reach toward,” distraction from “to pull apart.” We need both. In their extreme forms, focus and attention may even circle back around and bleed into one other.” Read full story

Consumer Electronics 3.0 is the name Intel has chosen for a new concept of seamless integration of internet and television. The CE 3.0 website is rich in content, but more than that, it exemplifies the relevance of a user-centred approach in the design of new and innovative technology-based products and services. A few weeks ago, I reported on a few articles that dealt with the problems and challenges related to digital storage in the home. Today, I will provide some user-centred design links on the topic of the changing TV experience: Usage models in the digital home: some simple advice by Dr. Genevieve Bell, anthropologist and director of Intel’s User Experience Group “Our findings show, at the broadest level, something many of us knew intuitively—people love their televisions. In many different cultures, in many families, TVs emerged as a beloved, if not sometimes annoying, companion, friend, and constant in the home. Wherever we live, TV content engages us at an emotional and visceral level—it is more than simply entertainment, it is about a kind of engagement and about nurturing us as people. TV has our stories, and the characters become extensions of our families. The irony is that while the industry tends to talk about new technology, consumers want to talk about their family, their constant companions, and the comfort and nurturing that TVs bring. To avoid unintended consequences, we as an industry must learn to listen to people, and to be clear about their perspectives. We need to be clear about the single purpose of an object—why people use it, care about it, desire it, buy it and keep it. The lesson here is not to be seduced by the impulse to increase the number of things any piece of technology can do, or to confuse its purpose with the functions it could incorporate. We must be very careful to identify the purpose of CE devices from a consumer perspective. It would be bad if we broke what people liked most about the television experience. In making consumer electronics devices smarter for instance, potentially increasing their number of functions and features, we should also keep their purpose in mind. Violating this principle is a recipe for disaster.” Opening a window into the lives of TV viewers Q&A with Brian David Johnson, consumer experience architect within Intel’s Digital Home Group “Our group includes two teams. The first team consists of social science and design researchers who spend time in people’s homes all over the world. This team is really dedicated to getting a sense of what makes people tick, what they care about, what frustrates them, what they aspire to. This research is focused around getting a sense of the larger cultural patterns and practices that shape people’s relationships to and uses of new technologies. [...] After we have observed people in their homes, our ethnographers get together with our second team, the human factors engineers and research designers. This group takes the data, and the opportunities we have identified, and begins to build them into platform requirements and product specifications. Through a set of rigorous processes and methods, the team creates personas, usage models and experience assessments that help drive the development of genuinely user-inspired and user-centric technologies. This process provides Intel with a uniquely valuable reference for our long-term product roadmap as well as a means of validating that our product development will meet the consumers’ needs.” The changing TV experience - Recent findings from the Intel User Experience Group This article by Françoise Bourdonnec, director of Home Experience Research & Exploration at Intel’s Digital Home Group, looks at what recent Intel research tells us about how Internet technology may change the TV experience – and some of the important questions that remain to be answered. Listening to the ‘Voice of the Customer’ helps Intel Design to redefine new digital home experiences Q&A with Jason Busta, a Voice of the Customer (VOC) researcher for Intel’s Mobility Group, and Kimberly Swank, primary VOC researcher for the Digital Home Group Catalyst for the digital home: 1. Evolution of the fourth-generation user interface In this first article in a two-part series, Gary Palangian and Randy Dunton of Intel’s Digital Home Innovations Team discuss the evolution of Consumer Electronics user interface. Catalyst for the digital home: 2. Intel’s fourth-generation UI research In this second article in a two-part series, Gary Palangian and Randy Dunton of Intel’s Digital Home Innovations Team describe Intel’s ongoing UI R&D program, and share some of the results to date. Making the leap: the internet comes to the living room Excerpts from a keynote address by William O. Leszinske, Jr., general manager of Intel’s Consumer Electronics Group, at the Digital Living Room Conference, March, 2008 The next-generation TV experience (video) Interview with William O. Leszinske, Jr., general manager of Intel’s Consumer Electronics Group Widget Channel: Personalize, enjoy & share your favorite Internet experiences on TV In collaboration with Yahoo! Inc., Intel has developed a full-featured software framework named Widget Channel, that allows TV viewers to enjoy rich Internet applications called TV Widgets while watching their favorite programs.

The blog series on New Media Practices in International Contexts, which I announced in January, is now complete. It covers the unique characteristics of digital media user behaviours in very different socio-cultural contexts of China, Korea, India, Brazil, Japan and Ghana, with a particular interest in the intersection of youth, new media and learning.
The authors, a group of people around Mimi Ito, believe that examining new media practices from an international (and, in some cases, transnational) perspective will enhance their current efforts to theorise youth, new media and learning, a wider MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Initiative. China (by Cara Wallis): introduction - mobile phones - gaming - internet - new media production - conclusion Korea (by HyeRyoung Ok): introduction - internet - gaming - mobile phones - new media production - conclusion India (by Anke Schwittay): introduction - mobile phones - gaming - internet - new media production - conclusion Brazil (by Heather Horst): introduction - internet - new media production - games - mobile phones - conclusion Japan (by Mimi Ito and Daisuke Okabe): introduction - internet - mobile phones - new media production - gaming - conclusion Ghana (by Araba Sey): introduction - mobile phones - internet - new media production - gaming - conclusion Each case study focuses upon the telecommunications landscape, internet and mobile phone practices, gaming, and new media production, and provides a unique perspective on the ways in which infrastructure, institutions and culture (among other factors) shape contemporary new media practices.

Who really needs a “You Are Here” marker when other visitors’ fingers have done the work for you? (Above, in Florence; below, in San Francisco)

Use-marks, like desire paths, are a kind of emergent behaviour record of previous users’ perceptions (and perceived affordances), intentions, behaviours and preferences. (As Google’s search history is a database of intentions.) Indeed, while we’d probably expect the “You Are Here” spot to be worn (so it’s not telling us anything especially new) can we perhaps think of use-marks / desire paths as being a physical equivalent of revealed preferences? (Carl Myhill almost makes this point in this great paper [PDF].) And (I have to ask), to what extent does the presence of wear and use-marks by previous users influence the use decisions and behaviour of new users (social proof)? If you see a well-trodden path, do you follow it? Do you pick a dog-eared library book to read because it is presumably more interesting than the ones that have never been read? What about where you’re confused by a new interface on, say, a ticket machine? Can you pick it up more quickly by (consciously or otherwise) observing how others have worn or deformed it through prior use? Can we design public products / systems / services which intentionally wear to give cues to future users? How (other than “Most read stories today”) can we apply this digitally?

After a short hiatus, Vodafone’s Receiver Magazine is updated again with a series of articles under the heading “Seizing the Moment”. The first one in the series is by mobile apps thought-leader Paul Golding, who talks about the user experience of always-connected widgets. “We are rapidly headed towards a new era of human interaction that is marked by perpetual conversations and perpetual info drip-feed, as enabled by the umbilical of the mobile. With its always-on and always-carried potential, the mobile allows our streams of consciousness and related intentions to be converted instantly into actions with both local and remote effects. Not only does the mobile enable us to seize the moment, but increasingly it is the cause of the moment, adding more and more events to our daily timeline.” Read full story

BBC technology reporter Maggie Shiels reflects on the quality of the mobile net experience. The article contains many quotes from industry representatives, but offers, I think, little insight. Read full story

Nokia’s IdeasProject site contains this week a video interview with Don Tapscott, and four feature articles that integrate some of the ideas presented thus far on the site:

Head in the Cloud: computing becomes virtual As the costs of sending, storing, and processing information descend, these services are moving into the fabric of the Internet.  Can technology actually make us more human? Humans are tool users, and hi-tech tools can isolate us. But in the brave new world of connected communications, they can also reinforce who we are.  Crowdsourcing and open innovation Businesses and institutions must now recognize that innovation is no longer confined within company walls.  Blurring the virtual and the real Technology is increasingly connecting the real and the virtual, in real time- and making it difficult to tell the difference between the two.

Also of interest is this reflection on virtual communications by Valerie Buckingham, Nokia’s director of technology marketing.

Matt Jones (of Dopplr) gave a talk recently on seduction at the Sensing and Sensuality conference at the Umeå Institute of Design, Sweden. It’s all about seductive data visualisation. But as per usual, impossible to summarise. And as per usual, highly recommendable. Download talk

UCL (which is the abbreviation for “University College London” although you have to look at the site’s footer to find out) is starting a new MA in Digital Anthropology. And it seems serious stuff. Digital technologies have become ubiquitous. From Facebook, Youtube and Flickr to PowerPoint and Second Life. Museum displays migrate to the internet, family communication in the Diaspora is dominated by new media, artists work with digital films and images. Anthropology and ethnographic research is fundamental to understanding the local consequences of these innovations, and to create theories that help us acknowledge, understand and engage with them. Today’s students need to become proficient with digital technologies as research and communication tools. Through combining technical skills with appreciation of social effects, students will be trained for further research and involvement in this emergent world. This MA brings together three key components in the study of digital culture: 1. Skills training in digital technologies, including our own Digital Lab, from internet and visual arts to e-curation and digital ethnography. 2. Anthropological theories of virtualism, materiality/immateriality and digitisation. 3. Understanding the consequences of digital culture through the ethnographic study of its social and regional impact. And what’s more: The Ma will be run by Danny Miller, one of the most outstanding anthropologists today, renowned for his book on the use of cellphones in Jamaica, and specialist on material culture. And no other than Stefana Broadbent (former chief anthropologist at Swisscom and featured as such in The Economist) is a fellow in the programme. The MA starts in September 2009. Read more

Rich Ling is a sociologist at the Telenor research institute and a visiting professor at the IT University of Copenhagen, who is particularly interested in understanding the social implications of mobile telephony. He just posted a short paper on the rise of mobile divides, that discusses the differences between the power users in advanced countries that use a lot of IP stuff, the user in the third world and the sort of soccer mom/dad user that is somewhere in the middle. A lot of attention goes to the first group but the real base of use is often among the other two. “[The advanced and technically sophisticated super user] is a legitimate object of study. However, it is very important to note that this type of user is a relatively small portion of the total user base. It seems to be very exciting to focus design and development work around this type of person. This is, however, a fallacy. This type of user is very atypical and, as we will see below, does not represent the broader form of mobile use.” Download paper (via Jody Ranck)

Microsoft Research Principal Scientist Bill Buxton argues that “by thinking outside the parameters imposed by technology, executives and designers can build businesses by creating an experience that truly resonates”. “User-centered design commonly tries to take into account different canonical user types through the use of persona. Perhaps one thing we need to do is to augment this tool with the notion of “placona,” that is, capturing the canonical set of physical and social spaces within which any activity we are trying to support might be situated. After all, cognition does not reside exclusively in the brain. Rather, it is also distributed in the space in which we exercise that knowledge—in the location itself, the tools, devices, and materials that we use, and the people and social context in which all of this exists. “ Read full story