The Conflicted Technologist

Letting Go .. For A Great Experience, Part 2

2008-09-15T06:30:00.000-07:00

And here we see the paradox clearly. By allowing the product to sink into the user’s background of attention, the device achieves publicity and user awareness far beyond anything that could be obtained had Apple tried to keep the iPod in the user’s focus. Thus, the more you try to call the user’s attention to your product during its use (in the mistaken attempt to create a great ‘User Experience’), the less successful the product will be.

So, how did Apple come up with this implementation of the paradox solution? Apple addressed the first problem mentioned above with the typical focus on the ‘Total User Experience’. They focused on the user’s experience (small ‘e’). But they recognized that an experience is not a single entity. It is made up of separate, contiguous episodes. Apple recognized that the experience included getting the device ready for its use (setting it up), the actual use of the device to listen to music (interaction), and being unobtrusive when it is not being used, thus encouraging the user to constantly have it with them. Each of these elements is represented in one or more of the contiguous episodes that make up the experience of using an iPod.

To achieve minimal setup, they created an intuitive, simple set of physical controls and a graphical user interface that required little navigation to access the desired music. This minimization of setup effort was even applied to unpacking the iPod.

Listening to music on the iPod requires very little effort and thought. Adjusting the volume, moving to another track or another song, all are very easy to do and can be done quickly. So the user spends very little time using (looking at, manipulating, focusing on) the iPod, and the vast majority of the time listening to music – the user’s real objective.

Carrying the iPod does not cause undue discomfort, nor does it constrain the movement of the user. Its simple rectangular shape is devoid of protruding elements, is shaped such that it can be easily placed in a pocket, and has no flashy surface decorations that would distract the user from focusing on the music information in the display. This very plain, simple design has suddenly become the in look. However, I submit this popularity of the appearance is riding on the coattails of the enjoyment of the experience.

What has this to do with mobile devices and our cell phones in particular? Simply this. Conformables design is built upon the concept of transparent use. That is, devices and services that are used with little or no user focus on the device or service..

At this point marketing people get very nervous. If our devices are transparent to use, which implies the user does not have to think about them, how can Motorola achieve any brand awareness? How can we build loyalty among our customers?

Refer back to the iPod. Like Apple, we must recognize that our phones, despite their technical sophistication and elegance, are, in the final analysis, simply tools. What people want to do when they pick up one of our phones to make a call is not use our phones, but to communicate. They want to talk to another person from whom they are separated by a distance that makes face-to-face communication impossible. Similarly, for every other capability that our phone has, we can identify the real user’s task, and this task rarely, if ever, is to use the phone.

So we must let go. We must design our phones and the wearable systems to which they will evolve such that they are and remain in the background of the user’s focus - allow the user to focus on what they really want to do rather than interpose our phone between them and their actual task.

As the iPod has shown, there is elegance and success in simplicity, both in form and in function. Our task as we look for differentiators in an increasingly competitive environment is to embrace this simplicity and extend it to transparent use.

Letting Go .. For A Great Experience, Part 1

2008-08-16T07:19:00.000-07:00

Paradox: 'par-&-"däks; n., 2 a : a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true - Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

One of the major objectives of any company is to build its brand awareness and loyalty among the customers of the markets it serves. This is crucial to maintaining market share and to the very survival of the company. The most common way of pursuing this objective is to ensure that the company’s products are familiar to the customer. This is typically accomplished by taking every opportunity to make and keep the user aware of the products and make them visually interesting and inviting to hold and manipulate. While this approach has been successful in the past and is held to be common sense, I submit that in the future it will be problematical.
We are beginning face a paradox. We want to focus on the ‘User Experience’. However, at the same time we are making our devices more complex by continuing to add features into an already crowded package.

There is a problem with this approach. Consider one of the most popular and successful (they are not always the same) devices to appear in the last five years: the Apple iPod. This mp3 player has not just succeeded as a product; it has inserted itself as a major element into the digital music subculture. The iPod currently has over 70% of the digital music player market and enjoys an intensely loyal fan base despite repeated attempts by all the major digital music player manufacturers to displace it.

The iPod does not compete on price (there are cheaper players); it does not compete on storage capacity (there are players with larger hard drives), and it does not compete on the number of features (there are players that provide more features). Instead, it competes on the user experience.

However, Apple is successful because they have let go. The have recognized the paradox and have understood the solution.

The hallmark of the iPod is its simplicity, both in appearance and operation. It contains very few controls. It possesses a very plain form factor. And it provides a few functions. Now this is not the solution to the paradox. This is the implementation of the solution. Our implementation of the paradox solution may be different. But the effect would be the same.

The simplicity of operation comes from Apple’s recognition of one key aspect of the paradox: the iPod is, in the final analysis, a tool. It is simply a means to enable people to listen to music of their choice when they want to wherever they want to. Nothing more. The key insight is that to achieve this, they had to let go of trying to keep the user’s attention focused on the device. They had to let go of the desire to keep the iPod in the user’s mind. Making the user focus on the device simply interposes the device between the user and what the user really wants to do. Apple had to realize that people really did not want to use an iPod. They wanted to listen to their own music whenever and wherever they wished.

Apple took this to heart. They devised the iPod such that it required very little attention of the user to access and listen to the music. They allowed the iPod to sink into and remain in the background of the user’s attention. The result: a wonderful user experience, a wildly successful product - and enormous publicity.
And here we see the paradox clearly. By allowing the product to sink into the user’s background of attention, the device achieves publicity and user awareness far beyond anything that could be obtained had Apple tried to keep the iPod in the user’s focus. Thus, the more you try to call the user’s attention to your product during its use (in the mistaken attempt to create a great ‘User Experience’), the less successful the product will be.

Next time: How Apple implemented this solution to the paradox

My Life As A Conflicted Technologist

2008-08-07T19:41:00.000-07:00

I have been developing technology for over 25 years, 13 of those years prototyping cutting edge technology. And yet, I am a conflicted technologist. I love developing technology. I am very good at it. However, I am often frustrated using it, and many times confused by it.

For 10 years I have been doing applied research on wearable system design with a focus on high usability. Starting with a project called Person Integrated Communications in 1997 and later on a project called Conformables I and my team investigated ways to design wearable and portable devices that could be used with very little effort and focus.

The fundamental idea of both projects was that people do not want to use technology for its own sake. They don’t want to focus on it. They don’t want to figure it out. They just want to use it to perform a task. And that task is rarely intrinsically connected to the device itself. The device is simply a tool.

The frustration, the doubting of our intelligence we have all felt at one time or another when using technology says more about its failings than our own. Too many devices and applications are very good at making smart people feel stupid.

The result of the wearables work over the last eight years is a unique focus on usability backed by the definition of 18 design principles and several dozen heuristics and examples. It has also resulted in several awarded U.S. and international patents as well as the book ‘Moving Wearables into the Mainstream’ published in November of 2007 by Springer.

The focus is not on just being able to use a device or service. The focus is on adopting a mindset that promotes design of devices and applications that can be used almost transparently, allowing the user to focus on their real task instead of on using (however easily) the device or application.

As technology continues to permeate more and more of our everyday experiences we must insist on placing ourselves first. We must become masters of our technology and no longer let it dictate how we perform our tasks. We must insist that our technology fade into the background of our attention, even as we use it. Companies that take this attitude and have the knowledge and resources to embody this in their products will be the success stories of the next decades.

This blog will discuss ways to reduce this conflict of technology with people and how to design applications and services that are almost transparent to use as they help us with our daily tasks. I look forward to your comments, suggestions, and questions.