Ghost in the Pixel

FYI to those interested: here are the various session proposals I recently submitted for the next IxDA conference (to be held in Savannah, GA next year). They are available for public viewing and commenting, so please feel free to comment. To paraphrase IxDA’s message, your comments will allow me to help clarify, tighten, and otherwise improve my submissions, so ask questions, highlight gaps, suggest extensions or changes, etc. Public comments will close October 1. Thanks!

> Designing an iPhone App using Agile Methods

> Designing the Out of the Box Experience (OOBE): Tactics and Strategies

> Towards a Total Quality of Experience (TQX)

Finally, I also co-authored a proposal with a fellow colleague at Netflix, regarding a group discussion about the merits and pitfalls of data-driven design ;-) Check it out!

Lately I’ve been pondering this notion of “integrity” as a central ingredient in a well-designed communication, product, or service. This came up in a big way recently with the online outrage over IKEA’s decision to change their official font from a variation of Futura to Verdana, a commonplace font for web/screen usage by Microsoft.

Of course, ordinary non-designer folks may never notice or even care–it’s just a few letters, right? So why does this issue matter anyway? It’s just a font, for goodness’ sake! As an IKEA spokesman explained, “It’s more efficient and cost-effective.” I’m skeptical but OK fair enough, but just as with the adverse side-effects of “data-driven design”, the distinct voice & potential of a design becomes smothered, lost amid a haze of mundane, mediocre, “me too” sameness in the marketplace and cultural landscape. A font matters because the character, elegance, aesthetic quality and signature identity matter. A decision like this matters because of design integrity: Even if only a designer will notice it, as designers we have a moral duty, a noble imperative if you will, to establish and defend the emotional, cultural, aesthetic qualities that manifest in the structural proportions of layout, the harmonies of color and image, and the details of alignment/typography, and (increasingly) animation/interactivity.

Integrity matters for coherence, quality, and consistency–bound by a personally and professionally-held value of holistic connecting of elements into something that stands on its own, distinctive and memorable–something worthy of pride and envy. Integrity matters because it’s quite simply the right thing to do, even if only a few designers will notice it or it seems like “designers just being designers”–whatever that means :-)

After all, deep down, I believe that is why a designer is hired or design is “brought into” a company or project–to help a company stand out, demonstrate a significant value, and impress upon customers a positive impact with both immediate commercial and long-term cultural gain. When a company like IKEA succumbs to the short-sighted business-induced pressures of mediocrity, it forsakes the higher value of design integrity and thus diminishes IKEA’s standing as a hallmark for “good design”, in the pantheon along with Apple, Dyson, Virgin, Nike, etc.

Relatedly, this makes me wonder if Apple’s constant and pervasive championing of design (ie, in their interfaces, hardware, and service ecosystem with the Apple Stores, Genius Bar, etc.) is what designers like myself actually envy–not just their products’ “hip sexiness”–and wish our respective clients/employers placed more value upon that. It’s not so much about copying the Apple style as it is about emulating their total commitment to design integrity and thus serving as exemplars for the field.

This came up recently on the ixda discussion list regarding (yet again) in an argument about UCD/design issues…sigh. One thing that caught my eye, however: a respondent asked about the notion of “balance” and what it really means in the context of designing, how there’s multiple viewpoints on the concept.

I totally agree, “balance” is that ultimate challenge for a designer (and indeed partly why I got into this field–the irresistible conundrum of triangulating so many varied/diverse/extreme constraints and priorities and concerns into something coherent, daring, yet feasible), something we aspire towards, often fraught with frustration and conflict.

But in my view it’s not like “work/life” balance or “zen balance” of pure harmon or “cosmic balance” of matter-energy. Instead I think of “design balance” as a kind of negotiated compromise, a state of dynamic conversational engagement whereby issues/problems/perspectives are identified and debated and (through the force of either sheer personality, or hard constraints or pragmatic contingencies like budgets/schedules/customer demands–often a combination of all this!) some solution(s) are identified and evolved that acknowledges a range of needs (from engineering, from business, from design, etc.) at varying levels. In addition, there’s a taking the long view of the entire product-service-interface ecosystem, balancing features with strategic roadmaps and lifecycles. And of course, some playfulness, aesthetic quality, and imagination too. Indeed, this kind of balance is simply a dialectic, a rhetorical art even, not just quick-fire reacting to whatever the market or the user or the engineer said at a given moment.

It’s important to note that such “negotiated compromise” should be governed by a set of core principles (an “architectonic framework”, if you will) that define the original aims, company values, overall value prop to customers. Without these core principles, the compromised balance is in danger of being just whatever is lazily feasible or imposed by some random personality, or an erratic fiat that changes the next time…thus resulting in a lack of coherence across a strategy or roadmap or product/service ecosystem. Then it truly is lacking “balance”.

With the rapid and broad proliferation of “user-centered design” and “user experience” and “good design” among corporations large and small, comes a somewhat frustrating issue for IxD: now everyone thinks they’re a designer! And this of course leads to tedious academic arguments about what is truly design or “big D” design, etc. which becomes quickly boring and exhaustive with not much productive progress for anyone, resentful “clubby” feelings, etc.

How do I deal with this plight?

Fairly straight-forward: Acknowledge that, Yes, everyone from the CEO to the call-center service agent contributes in powerful and subtle ways to the “total quality of experience” (TQX) of the product/service delivered to customers. The goal of a “good user experience” should be everyone’s collective aim, respective of their particular corporate function/department/skills/tools, in terms of how to accomplish that goal.

However, I’m the one actually paid to be a designer :-) Sounds kinda snarky I know, but when it comes down to making the call about navigational structure, interactive behaviors, visual presentation, interface layout and UI framework, assigning that to a paid design expert hired for that position is really the best. (with informed guidance from engineers, PM’s, QA, CS, etc. of course!)

So, just politely, and sincerely, thank everyone for their valuable input and feedback, process/analyze it (either solo or preferably with peers/allies), and make the call with reason and judgment. If there’s pushback (inevitably!), be prepared to articulate your reasoning, or send out for user testing and assess together, and make a decision together, recognizing the value a professional designer brings to the table in advancement of the “good user experience” aim.

At the risk of introducing yet another meaningless corporate buzzword or stock phrase, I’ve been lately thinking about what it means to define a “total quality of experience” (TQX) as a way to 1) systematically define the critical elements of a digital product/service experience 2) cooperatively engage the various players of such development and 3) set up some measurable vectors of success.

The main motive, I must admit, is sneakily insinuating “good user experience” thinking into the corporate vernacular, alongside with acronyms like TCO, ROI, TQM, which (for whatever reason) already have gained the popular trust of executives and profit/data-driven decision makers at the highest levels of a company.

However, unlike such phrases like TCO or ROI, I expect TQX to convey greater significance than mere numbers or efficiency metrics. The phrase embodies certain core characteristics in easily digestible language that comprise a good user experience:

---

* style & brand — the visual/sensorial personification of a company’s value prop to customers; is it relevant, memorable, positive reinforcement, communicative, etc.

* functionality & performance — the features and technical capability of the product or service; do they work well and for the intended audience/situation.

* usability & utility — is it intuitive, usable, friendly, with all necessary affordances, etc.

* story & content — is there relevant and useful “stuff” to interact with, does it fit with user’s lifestyle/workstyle, overall flow and process, etc.

---

These are significant pairings that form a valuable foundation of elements necessary for any digital product experience to be well-formed and coherent, if it’s all done appropriately for a target user and situation, per research and design cycles. And of course these pairing bounce off of each other, blending and blurring in the actual engagement of the experience (ie, using the product or service).

Perhaps more important, each pairing relates to a typical major corporate function, thereby directly suggesting how someone who is “not a designer” can and must still impact the total experiential value of a product/service, per their specific perspectives/skills/abilities. Truly everyone within a company is collectively responsible for delivering a “good user experience”. (more on this later!)

* style & brand = marketing and brand identity
* functionality & performance = engineering / QA
* usability & utility = design, user research, ergonomics
* story & content = product and brand management, content strategy, and customer service as well!

Finally, these elements on their own individually imply certain vectors of success that can be defined, targeted, and measured in various qualitative and quantitative ways. At the highest level, a CEO can state these four areas need to meet specific goals independently and collectively, while at the ground tactical level, each individual contributor can cite specifically in their performance reviews what they did that advanced a goal along their respective vector. (for ex: marketing manager defined a quarterly campaign of brand awareness that aligned with content strategy team’s goals of , etc.).

Then these vectors become systematic, concrete, objective items that are benchmarks for success, meters for growth and evolution, and define the parameters of a strategic conversation in terms of overall product/service innovation and cultural change–rather than some namby-pamby esoteric hand-waving around random subjective elements.

TQX may become an entry point for designers to start proliferating the message of “good user experience”, not as a radical crazy new thing, but speaking to the business needs and encouraging cooperation from ALL members of a company towards user-oriented improvement and innovation. As designers we have to figure out how to insert ourselves into the higher echelons of corporate function/strategy. TQX could be a good start.