Listen to Steve on the UI Breakfast podcast

I had a great conversation with Jane Portman about interviewing users (to coincide with the launch of the second edition of Interviewing Users).

Do listen to our fifty-minute conversation on the episode page, embedded below, and at Google, and Apple.


I think some of our fear is that that are questions are kind of probing and confrontational, inappropriate, but you can even just acknowledge that thing that someone said right now, you can say “divorce.” The person will say “Yes, yes, yes.” If you build this connection with them and so you have to make an ethical decision because we have a lot of power to ask about a lot of stuff. I like to go into that a little bit because I think when they bring it up…I don’t want to hear about their divorce if I’m not working on a relationship thing I want to respect their privacy. But they’re bringing it up as something that is relevant.

I talked with someone about digital photography and they brought up their relationship ending and it was actually was relevant because it was about trying to document their new baby and share those images with relatives who weren’t around when the family structure was shifting. I didn’t ask about the relationship and they gave more information than I needed to hear, but they needed to share something and I was able to hear it, but not push into something that was not appropriate. I wanted them to feel heard and accepted but I also didn’t want to push into it. But it was relevant context to we’re trying to understand, what they were trying to share about doing the work or the process of the tools.

If someone brings it up they’re testing to see “Do you want to hear about it? Is it ok to share?”

Listen to Steve on Understanding Users: The UX Podcast

In promoting the second edition of Interviewing Users, I spoke with Mike Green on Understanding Users: The UX Podcast.

Go check out one-hour conversation (and a transcript) on the episode page, embedded below, and at Spotify, and Apple.


Highlights

  • 05:20 – How user research has evolved in the last 10 years and the genesis of the second edition of the book
  • 11:00 – Remote research and the impact of COVID
  • 17:22 – Developments in user research tooling
  • 23:40 – Emergence of ResearchOps as a career path
  • 31:40 – Navigating challenges in running user research
  • 39:37 – Steve’s own key takeaway from the book
  • 45:11 – Feedback loops and ways of building rapport with users
  • 50:35 – The joy and privilege of researching and learning
  • 57:25 – The impact of AI on research as a discipline

I’m excited for Advancing Research 2024



More info and registration here.

I’ve found this to be a unique event, both in the depth of talks and the breadth of experiences, perspectives and angles on the crucial topics within user research. I’m honored to be part of this event – in person in New York (and with a remote option), later this month – and I hope to see you there!

Learn interviewing techniques from Steve in New York in March

As part of the Advancing Research conference, I’ll be teaching a full-day workshop (registration info here) on March 27th.

Interviewing is undeniably one of the most valuable and commonly used user research tools. Yet it’s often not used well, because:

  • It’s based on skills we think we have (talking and even listening)
  • It’s not taught or reflected on, and
  • People tend to “wing it” rather than develop their skills.

Results may be inaccurate or reveal nothing new, suggesting the wrong design or business responses, or they may miss the crucial nuance that points to innovative breakthrough opportunities.

In this highly interactive workshop, Steve Portigal will teach you crucial techniques for successful user research, and give you an opportunity to practice and reflect in a supportive environment.

Target Audience
This workshop will be valuable to anyone who is using user research to inform the decisions their organizations make. This includes both people with “researcher” in their job description, as well as designers, engineers, and product managers (also known as “People Who Do Research.”) If you’re new to interviewing people, you’ll learn the fundamentals; if you’ve been doing research for a while you’ll benefit from the opportunity to reflect on and improve your own practice.

It’s been a few years since I’ve done an in-person workshop open the public on the east coast. Please pass this along to your friends and colleagues who might benefit!

Join me on March 13th for a UXPA webinar “We Already Knew That”

Join for me on March 13th for a UXPA International webinar.

We Already Knew That: When Research Findings Fail to Land

Sometimes when we share research findings, we hear back, “We already knew that.” In this talk, I’ll examine why that happens, and what we can do about it. Sometimes, it’s a cognitive bias, called hindsight bias and also known as the “knew it all along” phenomenon. But there are other causes and we can adjust our approach to research to try and limit this all-too-common challenge.

Register here; all webinars listed here.

Listen to Steve on the Product Manager podcast

As part of the ‘book tour’ for second edition of Interviewing Users, I was interviewed by Hannah Clark for the Product Manager podcast, for an episode titled “How To Master User Interviews To Build More Lovable Products.

You can find our 40-minute conversation (and a transcript) on the episode page and also embedded below.


I like Hannah’s preface:

Before we dive in, I just want to say that what you’re about to hear was the most meta conversation we’ve ever had on this show. I’m not talking about Meta the company. I’m talking like this was the Inception edition of the Product Manager Podcast. In this episode, I got to interview a user interview expert about how to interview better while simultaneously getting better at interviewing in real time.

Yes, I am still excited about it. And not because of how helpful it was for me, but because the next half hour or so is going to make a noticeable difference in how you conduct user interviews.

Highlights

Structuring Questions for Insightful Answers

  • The importance of structuring questions before silence is discussed, with an emphasis on the impact of question formulation on user feedback.
  • Steve suggests having various ways to ask a question in the interviewer’s toolkit, such as comparisons, specific examples, and projections into the future.
  • Examples of question structures are provided, including comparing across time, asking about colleagues or bosses, exploring exceptions, and delving into childhood influences.
  • The goal is to triangulate around the interviewee’s mental models, helping them articulate the underlying reasons behind their behaviors.
  • Interviewers should adapt their questioning techniques to uncover deeper insights, recognizing that individuals might not be consciously aware of the roots of their choices.

Addressing Bias in User Interviews

  • Steve encourages self-forgiveness, recognizing that cognitive biases are inherent in human thinking.
  • Confirmation bias, where interviewers hear what they expect, is highlighted as a challenge. Steve suggests pre-research discussions about assumptions to make biases explicit.
  • Steve shares a personal story of overcoming his own ageism bias during an interview with a small business founder. He realizes his preconceived judgments were incorrect, leading to self-reflection and redirecting questions.
  • Steve emphasizes the importance of recognizing and addressing biases during interviews, with the goal of understanding participants more deeply.

Listen to Steve and Lou talk about the evolution of UX Research

In anticipation of the Advancing Research conference (in person, in New York, coming up in March), I spoke with Lou Rosenfeld about:

the state of the user research industry – where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re headed. If the field of research was once a lonely desert, today it’s a jungle. It was once a field where researchers could get lost and forgotten. Today, the field is teaming with life—so much so that you could get eaten alive.

Gleaning lessons from the past, Steve doesn’t want us to forget the desert. But he has no desire to return there.

In his chat with Lou, they look back, and they look ahead. They discuss shifts in community and networking, and how research agencies are being replaced by in-house research teams. Finally, the two discuss Steve’s role in the upcoming, in-person Advancing Research conference in Queens, New York.

You can find our 40-minute conversation at the episode page and embedded below, twice.




Listen to Steve and Jorge talk about their writing processes

Late last year I spoke with Jorge Arango on The Informed Life podcast. I’ve just written the second edition of Interviewing Users, and Jorge has just put out Duly Noted: Extend Your Mind through Connected Notes. We thought it would be helpful to reflect on our different processes for organizing information and book-writing in particular.

Our conversation is in two parts (between 35 and 40 minutes each). You can find the audio and transcript at the the episode pages (Part 1, Part 2) and each are embedded below.

Part 1:



Part 2:

Topics

Part 1

  • The New Edition of ‘Interviewing Users’
  • Writing the First Edition
  • The Evolution of Writing and Publishing
  • How We Got Into Writing
  • Writing Books for a Changing World
  • Writing a Second Edition

Part 2

  • The Mechanics of Writing and Organizing Ideas
  • The Challenges and Joys of Writing a Book
  • The Role of Structure in Writing
  • Using Different Tools
  • Reflections on Writing

Listen to Steve on the Experiencing Data podcast

In connection with the second edition of Interviewing Users, I spoke with Brian O’Neill for his Experiencing Data podcast, titled “No Time for That:” Enabling Effective Data Product UX Research in Product-Immature Organizations.

You can find our one hour conversation (and a transcript) on the episode page (and on Google, Apple, Spotify, and Stitcher) and embedded below.

Quotes

“If you don’t know what you’re doing, and you don’t know what you should be investing effort-wise, that’s the inexperience in the approach. If you don’t know how to plan, what should we be trying to solve in this research? What are we trying to learn? What are we going to do with it in the organization? Who should we be talking to? How do we find them? What do we ask them? And then a really good one: how do we make sense of that information so that it has impact that we can take away?”

“What do people get [from user research]? I think the chance for a team to align around something that comes in from the outside.”

On the impact user research can have if teams embrace it: “They had a product that did a thing that no one [understood], and they had to change the product, but also change how they talked about it, change how they built it, and change how they packaged it. And that was a really dramatic turnaround. And it came out of our research, but [mostly] because they really leaned into making use of this stuff.”

“If we knew all the questions to ask, we would just write a survey, right? It’s a lower time commitment from the participant to do that. But we’re trying to get at what we don’t know that we don’t know. For some of us, that’s fun!”

Watch Steve on the Rock n’ Roll Research Podcast

It was a real treat to speak with Matt Valle for the Rock n’ Roll Research Podcast.

Steve Portigal of Portigal Consulting has been doing User Research since the days our software all came in a box. He has written a seminal book on the topic, “Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights,” recently released in a 2nd edition available through Rosenfeld Media.

Steve shares his journey from the nascent years of user research through today and his take on where user research is headed. We discuss his book and how studying creative writing has informed his approach. Steve also tells the story of building a community of Rolling Stones enthusiasts – pre-World Wide Web! – that is still alive and kicking (just like Keith Richards).

You can find our 35-minute conversation on the YouTube and embedded below.

Episode #105: Steve Portigal - User Research Expert, Author, Rolling Stones Enthusiast

Bonus: the shirt I’m wearing is available here

Listen to Steve on the Product Mastery Now podcast

Thanks to Chad McAllister and Product Mastery Now for their interview with me, titled How product managers best interview users (bonus: it’s still good advice if you aren’t a product manager)

You can find our 35-minute conversation on the episode page (and on Google) and embedded below.

Summary

[2:52] Why did your book, Interviewing Users, need a second edition?
It’s been 10 years since the first edition was published. The fields that we all work in have changed. There was a little bit of discussion 10 years ago about remote user research, and now remote research is much more common. I wanted to talk in-depth about the best practices for remote research, even as they’re still emerging. Research operations, which is a field adjacent to user research, has emerged. The book also draws from 10 more years of me doing research and teaching research. I’m always learning. I updated the stories and included better examples.

[6:09] How do we ask customers the right questions?
First, don’t assume you know what people want. Second, recognize that just asking customers what they want is not effective. There are a few related questions that you should answer.

Business challenge: What do we want to do? What do we want to change? What’s coming up? Why are we doing this research?
Research question: What do we want to learn from people?
Interview questions: The questions you ask customers.

What you want to learn is not the same as what you should ask. For example, if you want to understand where people find the most value in their budgetary spending, don’t ask, “Where do you find the most value in your budgetary spending?” Instead, craft a set of questions and build a discussion guide that has a flow and sets context. Ask questions like:

  • What do you do?
  • How do you do it?
  • How long have you been doing it?
  • What are you big problems?
  • Where does budgeting fit into those larger problems?

Use the interview to ask many questions to get a larger context so you can conclude what the answers to your research questions are.

[10:19] How should we prepare for a customer interview?
Once you understand your business question and research question, think about your sample. Who are you going to talk to? Be creative in your sample. Don’t talk to the same people over and over again. Be intentional about who is going to give you the most information. Talk to people who will give deeper insight about the situation so you can make decisions about the changes you want to make. Figure out who will give you answers to your research question.

Next, figure out how to get to those people.

Then figure out what you’re going to ask them. Write a discussion guide. No interview looks like the guide you write, but it is a great tool to share with stakeholders to respond to their questions. This is a case of “Chance favors the prepared mind.”

[12:42] How do you avoid interviewing the wrong sample?
It’s much better to have a stakeholder object to your sample at the beginning of the study than at the end. Have a rationalization for the people you are choosing to talk to. Make everyone aware of the tradeoffs and how far these interviews will take you in your understanding.

[15:13] What do you do during the interview?
Don’t go through the interview line by line. All the good stuff comes from follow-ups. In the best interview, you ask one question and everything else follows. Every question you ask comes from something they just said. You are connecting and engaging such that everything they say is important because you have another thing you want know that builds on it. Telling someone honestly that their information is important and valuable to you creates rapport that makes these interview successful. Asking follow-up questions is a great rapport builder. You’re trying to poke around in the dark with a flashlight to see what’s behind the corners. You’re looking for your own understanding, not just checking off questions. Follow-up questions come from your own curiosity.

You can’t really do an interview by starting with a single question. There are points where you have to switch gears. That technique is really important. I call it signaling your lane changes. Tell someone, “Well, this is really great. I want to switch topics a little bit here and now move on to your procurement process.” Again, this tells them that what they’re saying is important.

[5:35] How do we stay curious and avoid developing biases?
Cognitive bias is very natural, and I don’t want anyone to feel bad about it because I think feeling bad about it makes it harder to overcome. When I do an interview and uncover one of my biases, that’s the most fun feeling. You could easily feel stupid because you have biases, but I think we’re doing this research to learn things so it’s exciting when someone knocks our sandcastle down. Not every bias you overcome is an insight about your product, but it puts you in that mode where you realize you’ve been holding onto something. Be able to hear when you have biases and feel good about that.

The skill is not to not have biases. The skill is to be able to hold on to multiple truths at once. Set your worldview aside and use the interview to embrace somebody else’s worldview. Set the intention that makes you curious.

You want to hear how they approach their problem or your product. That doesn’t diminish what you know. Being curious and having a beginner’s mind does not negate your expert’s mind. You just compartmentalize them for a time during the interview.

[24:42] How do you ask questions?
I like to have a first interviewer and a second interviewer. The first interviewer controls the flow of the interview. The second interviewer records the interview, listens deeply, and identifies things to be curious about that have gotten past the first interviewer. Before transitioning to a new topic, the first interviewer asks the second interviewer if they have any questions.

[27:35] How do you analyze data from interviews?
In general, you might do two hours of analysis for every one hour of synthesis. Analysis is taking large things and breaking them down into smaller ones. You can pull out some things from an interview about the person you’re interviewing. These are not conclusions, just distillations.

Synthesis is taking small things and organizing them in a new way to make something larger. You reorganize the broken-down pieces from many interviews. This can be done with affinity maps. You start creating frameworks that create segmentation or a list of priorities.

How much analysis and synthesis you do depends on the size of your project. Don’t just tabulate what people said—you’ll miss all the nuance. You’re creating your narrative, a new story that’s put together from the data.

Listen to Steve on the Greenbook podcast

I was on the Greenbook podcast recently, in a episode titled Beyond the Surface: Navigating the Depths of User Research with Steve Portigal.

Check out our 40-minute discussion on the episode page (and on Spotify, Apple, and Google) and embedded below in two different formats.



Excerpt:

There’s this interesting part of research where it’s collaborative and facilitative…I can do a better job if I can help them learn something and take something away. But, if I hear what they’re taking away, especially [as] I’m not the domain expert. I work as a consultant, so I come into an area that somebody else inhabits. And so they’re going to always see things in the research that I won’t see. It’s really helpful for me to understand what didn’t they hear that person say. Like, if there’s a gap in what they took away, then I now know I need to kind of emphasize that because there’s a takeaway that’s obvious to me that isn’t to them. So I can get that out a debrief. And, when I hear what they heard and what surprises them, I understand, yeah, how they’re framing the world, what’s relevant information. I’m getting this indirect feedback.

Listen to Steve on the World of UX podcast

The World of UX with Darren Hood

Thanks to Darren Hood for leading a great conversation on his World of UX podcast.

You can listen to our 70-minute conversation on the episode page (also on Spotify, Apple, and https://media.transistor.fm/5414ab59/f8ed8755.mp3

Excerpt:

There was a semi viral post about how to go into a bar and show people stuff. I think it was meant to be helpful, but it was kind of a smart-ass post…”give people beer and ask them a question.”

It seems like, if one is trying to help somebody else learn a skill or utilize a process or a practice – I guess everything is on a continuum. But you can see one end of the continuum says “this is really hard” and the other end of the continuum says “this is really easy.” And I mean, hopefully I’m somewhere in the middle. I think I’m trying to say this is hard, but here’s how to get there. If that’s my story, I feel pretty critical of people that are like, oh, anyone can do this. This is easy.. There are books and posts like this that kind of say that.

And I think there’s something to be said for lowering barriers, reducing intimidation, kind of giving people some power and some confidence. So we got to ask ourselves, like, is that person, you know, all exhausted from talking to one person in the office? Is it better that they did that than they just sat in their cube and kind of thought how smart they were? Is the team going into the bar or the one person going, is that better or not than not doing that? And I think argument for “better” is like any effort you make to get out of your own head is, it can be well intentioned.

And the evil part of me hopes that people try and fail –if you go to a bar and think if you just ask somebody one question in a bar about something that’s on your laptop and you fail somehow in that and you at least learn that you failed, you know, now I feel like now I’m going to hand you my book and say like, okay, you know, here’s how to get there.

And so maybe people need to try these things where someone says “Oh, yeah, it’s super easy just to ask this one question.”

That’s not how I would go about it. I would like to say “This is hard for the following reasons and here’s the way to get there.”

But, you know, people learn.

Join me for the Expert Series event hosted by Michele Ronsen

Interviewing Users: Evolving Perspectives & Umpteen Paths
An intimate conversation about research evolution, updating the book Interviewing Users, & finding inspiration.
Featuring Steve Portigal
Author, Research Expert and Consultant
Sponsored by Curiosity Tank
January 10th, 9am PST
*Registrants are invited to attend live and/or watch the recorded replay.

Please join us on January 10th! The brilliant Michele Ronsen is hosting me for an Expert Series event we’re calling Interviewing Users: Evolving Perspectives and Umpteen Paths.

We’re going to talk about

Registrants can attend live or watch the recorded replay.

All proceeds will benefit the International Rescue Committee.

Tickets are just $5.00 USD and additional donations are welcome.

The Eventbrite registration link is here. We hope to see you there!

Listen to Steve on the One Knight In Product podcast

One Knight in Product, Episode 193
Making Sure You Make an Impact through User Research
Steve Portigal
User Research Consultant & Author
"Interviewing Users"

Thanks to Jason Knight for having me on the One Knight In Produc podcast.

You can listen to our 45-minute conversation (and see links to podcast services) on the episode page. The audio is also embedded below:


Episode highlights

1. Some people are still wary of user research, or think they don’t need it, but it remains as important as ever

It can be tempting for founders to think they know exactly what they need, rely on feedback from customer-facing teams, or not speak to anyone until they’ve already built the thing they want to build. Feedback from sales teams and founders is an incredibly important vector, but should only be the start of the discussion never the end.

2. Continuous discovery and point-in-time research both have a place in a researcher’s armoury

There are methodological constraints to continuous research, alongside the difficulty of finding the time and buy-in to do it but, on the other hand, it can be incredibly impactful to have rapid research tightly coupled to the product team. On the other hand, well-planned up-front research can still help you to find truly disruptive insights for your company. Do both!

3. We all have cognitive biases – we should accept that and be honest with ourselves about their effects

People look at the word “bias” and worry about the negative connotations, but “bias” just represents how our brains are wired. Cognitive biases will affect how we interview people, and we should do our best to counteract their effect and improve on getting better (even if we’re not perfect).

4. The best research has a tangible impact rather than being research for research’s sake

It can be a heavy burden to bear if all of your well-planned and well-executed research ends up having no effect on decision-making at all. It’s important not to get downhearted, and work out ways to build actionable, accessible repositories to enable your stakeholders to make the best decisions possible.

5. There are a lot of similarities between good user research and improv

We don’t need to be able to create 45 minute plays off the cuff, and knowing when to stick to our interview plans and when to deviate from the script, enables us to get to the real generative insights that we need from our users and find out what we don’t know we don’t know.

Excerpt:

Sometimes we think that what we’re going to do in research is go ask people what features they want and then figure out somehow among these competing requests which ones to implement. And that’s not what interviewing users is about. It’s about actually finding a new interpretation, a new point of view, a new understanding, a larger framework that’s built up from all those things. And so, yeah, if people tell us what they want to tell us, they’re going to tell us what features they want. But we have other questions for them. How do you work? Why do you work that way? What are your tools you’re using? How has that changed? What has led to the definition of that as like a work process? How do you acquire new tools and technology? What’s been successful when you’ve rolled things out? What’s been a challenge when you’ve rolled things out?

A Zoom video still with Jason in a small corner giving a thumbs up while Steve is in the main window wearing headphones and a dark shirt holding up a copy of Interviewing Users

Listen to Steve on the UX Research Geeks podcast

I’m grateful to Tina Licková for hosting our great discussion on the UX Research Geeks podcast.

You can listen to our 40-minute conversation on the episode page, where you’ll also find a transcript.

It’s also on Spotify, Apple, and Google (and embedded below locally and from Spotify).


The trend of democratization in research implies more people will engage in it. My book aims to guide not just dedicated researchers but also those who incorporate research as part of their broader roles.
Excerpt:

It’s a messy human activity. It’s something that you can plan for, it’s something that you can prepare for, but will always, especially if done well, will always be surprising and unexpected and force you, I think in a good way, to be improvisational, to be responsive…I think that might be a negative to some people, that might be scary, but for me, it’s very joyful and creative and challenging. It’s always challenging. And I think that’s where we get all the great value out of research. It’s not, “What do you want? Thank you. I’ve got it.” It is meeting somebody where they are and trying to figure out how are you going to be with them?

Listen to Steve’s “Tent Talk” with Russ Unger/Chicago Camps

It was wonderful to reconnect with my old friend Russ Unger to give a Tent Talk for his Chicago Camps series. I learned that (obviously, in retrospect) they are tent talks because the whole series of events is a camp!

You can check out our 30-minute conversation on the episode page. There you’ll find an audio-only widget, a transcribed video, the full transcript, and links to the episode on Spotify and Apple. The episode is embedded below and also on Vimeo



Session Notes

The session with Steve Portigal, discussing the second edition of his book “Interviewing Users,” delved into how the field of user research has evolved over the past decade. Steve highlighted significant shifts, including changes in societal norms, the rise of remote work due to the pandemic, and advancements in technology, particularly in user interview techniques. He also touched on ethical considerations in user research and the role of AI in shaping future dynamics. Throughout the session, Steve shared insights from his extensive experience, emphasizing the importance of context, adaptability, and the ever-changing nature of user research.

Evolution in User Research:

  • User research practices have shifted significantly, particularly in compensating participants. The trend moved from cash payments to more convenient, digital forms.
  • The rise of remote work, accelerated by the pandemic, has transformed user research methodologies, with a notable increase in remote interviews.
  • There’s a greater focus on data privacy and regulatory compliance in research, reflecting societal and legal shifts.
  • Adapting interview techniques for remote settings has become crucial, with adjustments needed for communication styles and technological limitations.

Impact of Remote User Interviews:

  • Remote interviews lack the personal connection and context-rich environment of in-person interactions, affecting the depth of insights.
  • Collaboration within research teams and post-interview synthesis have become more challenging in remote settings.
  • New norms of communication, like managing turn-taking and interpreting non-verbal cues, have emerged, necessitating adaptation by researchers.

Ethical Implications in Research:

  • The ethical landscape in user research is complex, with a growing emphasis on informed consent and transparent data practices.
  • Resources like Alba Villamil’s “Ethical Researcher’s Checklist” provide guidance on navigating these ethical considerations effectively.
  • The approach to consent has evolved, with more nuanced methods being developed to respect participants’ autonomy and privacy.

AI in User Research:

  • The role of AI in user research is evolving, with its potential impact still largely uncertain.
  • AI’s current strength lies in data summarization rather than synthesis, which remains a predominantly human-driven process.
  • As AI technology advances, its application in user research could extend to supporting creative thinking and problem-solving.

Most Profound Learning Experience:

  • Steve recounted an experience where he confronted and overcame his own age bias during an interview, highlighting the human nature of biases in research.
  • This experience underlined the importance of being aware of and challenging personal biases to gain true insights in user research.

Notable Quotes:

  • “We operate on biases, but research allows us to overcome and revisit our assumptions.”
  • “Remote research has changed our norms of communication and collaboration.”
  • “Ethical considerations are vital in user research, especially in the age of data privacy.”
  • “I had a conversation with someone that I respect the other day, and they said to me, a large language model, they can summarize, but it can’t synthesize because it can only be based on what is, so summarization is like a great use of that, but synthesis isn’t.”
  • “AI’s potential in user research lies more in aiding creativity than replacing human analysis.”

About the Author/Doggie Diner

A man in jeans and a black t-shirt, with his arms spread, sits on top of a blue platform which is shared with a large cartoonish sculpture of a reddish dog wearing a yellow bow tie and a chef hat and a blue checked shirt.

Thanks to Alisa Weinstein for taking this great photo of me. I used this for the About the Author page in Interviewing Users. Also thanks to Kim Goodwin for (earnestly? teasingly? does it matter?) suggesting on Instagram that I use this as my author photo. Inspiring!

The SF Chron provides some context

The three Doggie Diner dog heads that once loomed over outlets of the long-defunct Bay Area fast food chain. The 7-foot fiberglass doggie heads, each weighing 600 pounds and sporting a chef’s hat and a bowtie, are camped out on a stretch of car-free JFK between Conservatory Drive West and 6th Avenue. The dachshund heads with their long snouts, sit atop square podiums with a couple of Adirondack chairs in front…

“If you rub one of their noses, you get one week’s good luck,” said John Law, a San Franciscan who considers himself the steward of three cartoonish canine heads. The disembodied heads have been painstakingly restored and repainted thanks to a Kickstarter campaign seven years ago that raised thousands to save the doggie heads, said Law. He frequently hauls the heads around San Francisco and the Bay Area to charity events, street fairs and art events.

Listen to Steve on the CXChronicles podcast


I had a great time speaking with Adrian Brady-Cesana on the CXChronicles podcast.

You can listen to our 40-minute conversation on the episode page, on YouTube, or embedded below, both as local file and via YouTube.

The Secret to Achieving Customer-Centric Excellence Revealed! 💥 Steve Portigal | CXC #215


We talked about:

  • Understanding the core of a user’s experience and how its originally designed
  • Investing in user research operations to help scale your business
  • Prioritizing what you need to learn about your users & how you can take action
  • Mapping the iceberg of your customer and user experience
  • Getting your team to prioritize the key CTAs that will drive innovation & growth

Excerpt:

One thing I’ve seen that to be really successful is when you pair up someone who’s great at research, which is ‘OK, I don’t know about this, I want you to explain it to me’ and someone who is great at the domain, whose job isn’t to ask questions but is to hear what doesn’t make sense about the technology or about the deployment or about the process, and that collaboration is really really sharp and has a great effect when you’re talking to customers and users. I think sometimes we’re nervous because, we want to be seen as credible, especially if it’s an actual customer. We ask for their time, we want to go talk to them…it can be really a really great triangle between, a user or customer who has who’s a practitioner of something very complex, and a person from the producer or, maker side of it, the company side, who knows the domain, and someone who knows how to listen and ask questions and follow up and facilitate this. When I see researchers getting immersed into a domain, they do build up some competency. But some of these things are decades of specificity and really kind of elusive stuff. Where there’s bandwidth for collaboration and you can bring in people with different perspectives, different domain and process expertise to create a great interview for the customer that you’re talking to. It’s a good experience to talk to a researcher and a domain expert, you can watch who they make eye contact with. I’ve had people even tell me, ‘Oh okay, you’re the question asker and you’re the person that knows that you’re the engineer.’ People can figure that out. Nobody’s pretending to be anything that they aren’t and it really can be very harmonious, but you have to create the bandwidth to support that collaboration on the team so everybody can work together to get the insights that we wanna get from the people we’re building for.

Listen to Steve on the Content Strategy Insights podcast

Thanks to Larry Swanson for having me on his Content Strategy Insights podcast.

You can listen to our 30-minute conversation (and find the transcript and various links to podcast services) on the episode page. Also, the audio is embedded below


The episode is also on YouTube (and embedded below)

Steve Portigal: Interviewing Users | Episode 167


We talked about:

  • my work at my UX research consultancy
  • the elements of a good interviewing mindset
    1. checking your own world view at the door
    2. embracing how others see the world
    3. building rapport
    4. listening
  • the difference between chatting and interviewing
  • how to stay mindful as you transition from one mode of communication to another, and the need to consciously cultivate new rituals in the modern, non-stop Zoom world
  • how to keep the business intent of your interviewing activities in mind, in particular the relationship between the business opportunity at hand and the research-question planning that best aligns with it
  • how to kindly share with colleagues relevant new discoveries that emerge in your research work
  • how to balance the amount of domain knowledge you bring to an interviewing project
  • the importance of knowing and keeping in mind the scope and importance of documenting, analyzing, and synthesizing your interviews

Excerpt:

Chatting is, it’s a crutch. And I don’t mean that in an unkind way. If people haven’t spent time learning this and practicing it and reflecting on it, I think people go pretty far by being friendly and open and conversational, and I think that’s a good start. But in chatting, for example, we share about ourselves, “Oh, you like cats? Well, I also like cats and I have two cats at home and one is named Binky and one is named Winky.” That’s seen as, it’s a chatty rapport building technique. And I think that’s one I see people relying on and I don’t think they should ultimately, that the interview is about the other person and so if you’re new, you tend to think, “Oh, I can build rapport with you by showing you how I am like you.” “I like that too. I hate that too. Oh, that happened to me. My cousin also has that problem with Facebook,” whatever the thing is, you try to share something about yourself, but actually that takes focus away from the other person. So that embracing how they see the world means you want to spend time on them. So when someone says, “I have two cats,” you can say, “What are your cats’ names? When did you get them? Are cats part of the content that you share on social media?” If that was our topic. You can keep talking about the thing that they shared and not bring yourself into it. And you have permission not to talk about yourself and you have power to be still interested in their thing. And it actually is much more effective.

Kirkus Reviews on Interviewing Users, second edition


Kirkus Reviews just published a review of Interviewing Users, second edition. [You can purchase the book here].

An extraordinarily thorough and thoughtful introduction to the art of the research interview.

Portigal presents a comprehensive guide to conducting and analyzing user research interviews.

Conducting a professional interview, the author astutely observes, is not the same as casually “chatting”; in fact, a well-structured interview can be “fundamentally different” from an ordinary conversation. “Interviewing users involves a special set of skills. It takes work to develop these skills. The fact that it looks like an everyday act can actually make it harder to learn how to conduct a good interview because it’s easy to take false refuge in existing conversational approaches.” Portigal, who has 25 of years of experience as a researcher and consultant, rigorously anatomizes the chief structural elements of an interview—the formation of a plan, the interviews themselves, and the consequent analysis of the data yielded. The text covers a remarkable expanse of intellectual territory very concisely—the book is less than 300 pages long—especially considering that it includes guest essays from industry experts. With great clarity (the author never indulges gratuitously inaccessible jargon), Portigal walks readers through every constituent part of the interview process, from finding the participants to interpreting their answers. This is more than a technical field guide—the author deftly analyzes the human element of the interview as well, this “shared, unnatural experience” that can produce “something profoundly new” but can also be unsafe, awkward, and hostile. He details how to build a quick rapport with a stranger and empathetically encounter the interviewee as a “real live person in all their glorious complexity.” An effective interview requires more than a “toolkit” for asking questions—it demands a “way of being” that cultivates an undogmatic openness to others. While the focus of the book is on user research interviews, this guide will be helpful to anyone in a position to extract information from others in a professional environment.

An extraordinarily thorough and thoughtful introduction to the art of the research interview.

New storytelling workshop in partnership with Inzovu

Over the past while I’ve been working with Jason Ulaszek of Inzovu to deliver a storytelling workshop to clients. After a number of successful experiences, we’re making it more widely available. Check out details at the Inzovu site, highlights below.

Storytelling is an essential human skill for any team. It drives connections, influences decisions, and inspires empathy. Discover how powerful storytelling can unleash your team’s potential.

Integrate Storytelling Into Your Team’s Practice

In innovative and creative practices, the ability to tell a compelling story is just as crucial as doing the work itself. While good teams focus on delivering high-quality work, great teams go beyond and wrap the delivery of their work into stories. A team’s ability to tell well-crafted stories is a critical factor in influencing their success and achieving the outcomes they seek.

That’s where our storytelling workshops come in.

Benefit’s You’ll Get
Our storytelling workshops are designed to empower your team by enhancing their storytelling prowess.

Your team members will supercharge their ability to:

  • Share stories of your customer’s experience, help build empathy, and influence decision-making
  • Create a shared understanding for the vision or roadmap of your product or service
  • Engage your audience by demonstrating your understanding of their unmet need or the values and benefits of your product or service
  • Ignite a passion within your organization for what’s possible

This workshop is valuable for a range of roles and functions within growing product and service organizations including User Experience (UX) Design, Product Management, Marketing, and Innovation teams.



What To Expect
Depending on the format and your organization’s goals, you’ll:

  • Practice, receive feedback, and improve your storytelling skills
  • Prototype and iterate a story in a creative and collaborative environment
  • Understand how to apply storytelling to organizational and team challenges (e.g., build a compelling narrative about user research insights, or explain a team’s function to the rest of the company)
    Advocate for storytelling as a force for cultural change
  • Be able to choose between different storytelling formats that best suit the material, audience, and your own strengths

And, we’ll have fun together while learning a crucial skill.


Formats To Suit Every Need
No matter your industry or your type of team, our workshops are designed to enhance storytelling skills–whether that’s a series of short sessions, an in-person all-day workshop, or a multi-day activity.

  • Virtual: A series of short sessions across three weeks, with individual and group assignments between virtual meetings. For virtual workshops, we typically meet once a week.
  • In-person, one-day session: A one-day, in-person workshop where we will group participants throughout the day, explore storytelling formats together, and deliver a story at the end of the day.
  • Custom story building: A custom workshop for your specific scenario that builds off our storytelling basics. Custom story building could be a one-day event or a multi-day activity depending on your needs.

New guest essays in Interviewing Users, second edition.

The second edition of Interviewing Users is out! You can buy it here. Now, a little bit about what’s new: a whole set of guest essays!

Thanks to the sidebar contributors: Kate Towsey, Tamara Hale, Gregg Bernstein, Jorge Arango, Joyce Kakariyil Paul, Monal Chokshi, and Shima Houshyar for making the book better through your expertise.

A summary of Interviewing Users, in Portuguese

Aline Ferreira, a sociologist who is studying UX and UX research, read Interviewing Users and summarized it in Portuguese (Planejamento e boas práticas de entrevista: o que aprendi com “Interviewing Users”, de Steve Portigal or Planning and good interview practices: what I learned from “Interviewing Users”, by Steve Portigal).

Com uma linguagem simples e concisa, o livro de Portigal é excelente para o público iniciante em UX, assim como para os mais experientes.

O livro “Interviewing Users”, de Steve Portigal, conta com dicas práticas sobre como entrevistar usuários em profundidade. Ele é excelente especialmente para aqueles que não têm muita experiência. Contudo, eu não tenho nenhuma dúvida de que seja um livro que contribui também com profissionais mais experientes.

Read How To Talk To Strangers with Steve Portigal

A logo showing icons of two talk balloons, one has the three-dots indicating someone is typing. The title is How To Talk to Strangers, a conversation with Steve Portigal

Jennifer Rash interviewed me for DesignTalk, her blog.

I pulled out one part of our exchange, but there’s more and you should read the whole thing (it’s pretty short!):

What is your approach for discussing sensitive topics?
I can think of plenty of times where participants opened the door to an off-topic sensitive area (say, repeated, thinly-veiled references to being frustrated with a spouse) and I just left it alone, because it wasn’t germane to our focus. In general, It’s worth being clear with ourselves whether a topic might be uncomfortable for us or for our participants and not conflating the two. So I think there’s a combination of sensitivity for either party, and relevance that informs how if or how I proceed.

When we’re talking about sensitive topics, I’ll generally be neutral (maybe using body language to indicate I’m listening rather than an exclamation like “oh no!” that indicates I have my own emotions about what they’ve shared). My follow-ups may be neutral and direct (“What did you decide to do then?”) if I perceive my participant as comfortable, but if I’m going to be more cautious I can ask a projective question, where the question isn’t about them, but some other group of people.

Q: How have you seen other people in the community deal with that situation?
A: Well, when it happened to me, I decided to…

Making the question less direct sometimes prompts a response about them, but those cases, it was their choice to talk about themselves specifically rather than more broadly about other people.

Watch Steve speak about Boosting User Research Impact

Steve Portigal banner

I recently spoke about Boosting User Impact to the Product Makers community. The 47-minute video is embedded below, and on YouTube here.

Boosting User Research Impact | Featured Product Maker, Steve Portigal

Steve joined us to talk about how organizations can operate user research programs with greater maturity, engaging stakeholders to maximize influence and impact.

Event summary here (registration required).

Superficial, stereotyped user research bullshit.

Screenshot of the landing page for an online AI service that has the headline "user research. without the users."

If you’re at all online, you probably have seen the reactions to SyntheticUsers. I have enjoyed the snark and outrage about this ridiculous ‘service’ but we really benefit from Niloufar Salehi actually trying it and reporting back so the outrage can be founded in the facts. Ironically, this is something that SyntheticUsers doesn’t actually do

This short post, I tried out SyntheticUsers, so you don’t have to is summed up by the sub-head

Using AI as a replacement for interviewing actual users is a brilliant idea if you want to look like you made an effort, but are really looking to fill the page with superficial, stereotyped bullshit.

Further in, we see that this experiment compared the output of SynthesicUsers with the conclusions from some actual research. In the research itself

Our own in-depth interviews over months with real parents found that the dashboard was a misguided solution and that what was really meeting our participants’ information needs was through trusting relationships that met them where they were and went beyond information about schools.

but SyntheticUsers reports that

Participants said that the dashboard would be “very effective,” “very useful,” and “very helpful” in solving their problems (6/6) and rated it on average 3.4/5.

Again, there’s no surprises here, but there is delight in seeing an actual example. Send this to your bosses, clients, and colleagues who decide to suggest these sorts of tools instead of actually, you know, doing the work.

Watch/read The Evolution of User Research: past, present and future with Steve Portigal

Kritika Oberoi and Looppanel did a great job editing down a long and discursive exchange into a few key takeaways. The full article is here.

I offered my high-level take on the history of user research, especially in tech.

Phase 1 – Research Consultants (aka the Caveman era): The first cohort of User Researchers in the field were primarily consultants—think IDEO, a particularly successful example emerging at this time. But while research consultants could be hired, in-house researchers were still a rare sight.
Phase 2 – Individual Contributors: As organizations started to realize the power of research, the function began to emerge within companies. But although there were individual contributors running research, they weren’t empowered—no big titles, not a lot of access to senior management, and a limited ability to influence crucial decision-making.
Phase 3 – Empowered Research Practices: Today we’ve entered the third phase—a phase where Research leaders have titles like Head of Research and Director of Insights. These leaders are empowered to build practices—hiring their own teams and influencing their peers in senior leadership to make decisions based on actual user insights.
And while every organization may not be at the same level of maturity, Steve sees the field as a whole headed in the direction of greater empowerment and influence, driven by hunger from verticals like Design & Product.

A dramatic shift in the industry


I talked about the two major drivers that have fed research growth in recent years:

#1 Consistent evangelization by industry leaders: Over the last 20 years, industry leaders have been advocating for research, demonstrating the impact of the practice, and teaching others their trade along the way. This consistent advocacy—speaking, writing books, organizing conferences, and so on—has helped organizations understand the value of research and learn how to run it themselves. Of course, the work is far from complete, but it was definitely effective.
#2 The rise of Design: UX Design has grown rapidly over the last decade, and Design leaders understand the need for research. Design teams have opened the door for Research inside companies, hiring talent and building a practice to enable better decision-making.

What has driven the growth in User Research?


In the final clip I talk about the tension between confidence and crises of confidence that happen in many growing companies.

Gaps start to emerge between the company’s vision and what users actually want and need. At some point in the journey, the reliance on vision instead of insight leads to a major failure—maybe a feature release epically fails, or an unexpected competitor that starts to grab market share.

It’s when the inherent confidence of the organization transforms into a crisis of confidence that a tipping point is reached and research emerges to bridge the gap between the company and its customers.

Where's the tipping point for organizations to believe in research?

There’s more in the full article.

Watch Steve present Stop Solving Problems! at CEDIM

I recently presented Stop Solving Problems! as part of the CEDIM Innovation Talk series. The 40 minute video is embedded below, and on YouTube here.

Webinar: Stop Solving Problems! - Steve Portigal

The old maxim says we should “Find a need and fill it;” while at a one level that is certainly true, even in this era of fetishized disruption, organizations seem to easily fall in love with the idea of being in the problem-solving business.

In this webinar, Steve reviews a number of different mindsets for creating products and services, consider their benefits and risks, and challenge you to go beyond a fixing mentality.

Watch Steve on Good Morning UX

Thanks to Rafael Burity and Rodrigo Lemes for having me as a guest on Good Morning UX. The one-hour episode is embedded below and can also be found on the episode home page and YouTube.

Are we really doing research? With Steve Portigal - Good Morning UX

We usually have this life training to ask questions, but it doesn’t make us researchers, to be honest. Especially when we are talking about learning from users, customers, stakeholders, etc.

As designers and researchers, we have this kind of “power” to help companies to avoid mistakes, bad ideas, and guesses. It has been becoming a huge differential in the industry of digital products, but to really take advantage of this ability is important to have some points in perspective.

This show will pass through some questions like:

Are we doing research well with a real impact on the business?

How a designer can be prepared to do it in the real world, in a short time but with quality?

Is there a difference between leaders with research or design backgrounds?

For this, we invited Steve Portigal a researcher who has interviewed hundreds of people and with a huge experience working in telecommunications, banking, media, energy, and e-commerce industries. He is the author of some important books and host of the Dollars to Donuts podcast. He helps companies to think and act strategically when innovating with user insights.

Listen to Steve on The Informed Life

Thanks to Jorge Arango for a great conversation on The Informed Life podcast. The half-hour episode is embedded below, available at the podcast site, and wherever you get yer podcasts. The episode page also has a transcript.

And I have found, over the last few years, that in addition to providing tactics and kind of mindsets and sort of, “here’s what I advise and recommend for you to be successful in doing this work.” In these interactions that we have in kind of these feedback sessions, the role that I’m often playing is in giving people confidence and being able to say, “oh, the thing that you are describing is very common.” Because I think people have some experience, it feels weird, and they’re like, “well, I’ve screwed this up.” And so I’m working hard to give people confidence and say… to affirm their experience, to validate the uncertainty and struggle they felt in it. And then maybe say, “yeah, here’s a thing that you can try,” or, ” you know, there are tactics to kind of address this.”

But they need the confidence as much as they need the tactics. Because they might get to those tactics on their own, but if they feel like, “this is not the right way to do it, I’m screwing this up,” because it is a weird thing, because you may find yourself feeling like you’re screwing up when you actually are succeeding, because you’re dealing with the absolute uncertainty of another person who you don’t know, who you’re spending time trying to get to know a little bit… it’s entirely unpredictable and uncontrollable. And so, all the ways that we expect ourselves to be successful is to be controlling for all that uncertainty, but it’s inherently uncontrollable to some extent.

So yeah, the more you do it, the more you either make mistakes or feel uncertain about an experience that you’re having and reflect on it, whether it’s through listening to a podcast where people are talking about this or reading a book, or, working with someone who’s more experienced, who can reflect back to you. Those are all ways that we do become more confident with these sort of… surprising or unexpected aspects of what the nature of the work is.

We say we value innovation and creativity…but do we?

It shouldn’t be a big surprise to anyone reading this that the uncertainty of something new and innovative creates a feeling of risk, and can discourage the pursuit of a creative option.

Some research from 2012 (The Bias Against Creativity: Why People Desire but Reject Creative Ideas) delves into that further.

“Prior research shows that uncertainty spurs the search for and generation of creative ideas, yet our findings reveal that uncertainty also makes us less able to recognize creativity, perhaps when we need it most.”

Via the New York Times,

“People actually have strong associations between the concept of creativity and other negative associations like vomit and poison,” said Jack Goncalo, a business professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “Agony was another one.”

A new study shows how people unfavorably evaluate others who are described as being creative. It appears that even the mention of their creativity (as opposed to experiencing it directly) was sufficient to cause a negative assessment of the creative person.

Like many biases, being aware of their existence can be a first step to addressing them, but like many biases, their baked-in nature can make for a significant challenge to overcome.

Watch Steve on The Service Design Show

Thanks to Marc Fonteijn for having me back on The Service Design Show. The one-hour episode is embedded below and can also be found on YouTube.

User research - what to do when your company doesn't get it / Steve Portigal / Episode #127

Everything in service design starts with user research. But as you’ve probably experienced often it’s challenging to get the time and resources to do proper research.

And when research is already being done by an organisation it’s often not the type of research that we’d like to see.

It can be frustrating to see that user research isn’t making the difference you know it can.

So what does it take to push user research beyond it’s current limitations?

Author and industry icon, Steve Portigal has been thinking about this topic for some time now.

I invited Steve (back) on the Show to share his thinking and together explore what it takes to take user research to the next level.

And also ask the question: What is that next level in the first place?

Without proper user research you can’t do good service design. So it’s our job to make it more relevant and impactful.

This episode will show you how.

Listen to Steve on the Nodes of Design Podcast

Thanks to Ravi Tej for having me on the Nodes of Design podcast. The 35-minute episode is embedded below and can also be found on the podcast site.

In this episode, Steve shared wonderful insights on user interviews and why we do user interviews in design; we then discussed the framework of interviews using which we can gain great insights from users and few tips on actively listening and note-taking during interviews. In the latter part, Steve recommended five do’s and don’ts that designers/researchers must avoid while doing user interviews

Video of my Delta CX AMA

I recently did an Ask Me Anything session organized by Debbie Levitt of Delta CX. The video is now online.

23 Mar 2021: Office Hours/AMA, special guest Steve Portigal

We went for about 75 minutes and talked about learning to balance all different pressures when leading an interview, encouraging teams to support the need for research, helping teams to act on user research findings, and a lot more. Check it out!

What you asked/What they heard

In this video from 2016, basketball player Taurean Prince, in a post-game press conference, responds to a question about the team’s rebound performance with an explanation of how rebounds work.


I can’t tell from this clip if there’s an actual miscommunication or if Prince is being intentional, and for my purposes here, I don’t suppose it really matters.

It’s not uncommon to ask a question and get an answer to a different question, and while it can throw the conversation off, it can be a visceral reminder that we have different basic assumptions and that we need to work to overcome those, to bridge that gaps. Those miscommunications are awkward but they invite us to make the effort to realign.

The other day I met with a group over Zoom. As happens on video meetings, people adjust their video to communicate something about themselves, manage their privacy, etc. One person stood right in front of a heavily blurred background. Another was in front of a block of color with their company logo in the corner. Another person was clearly in a garage converted to a home office, and one person was in front of (what I assumed was) a painted scene, perhaps from some artwork. We each took turns introducing ourselves.

When we got to the person with the painted scene, I asked a followup question: “Can I ask about your background?”

They proceeded to describe a bit of their educational experience and how it led to the nickname that they go by nowadays.

My question should have been “Can I ask about your Zoom background?” but what they heard was “Can I ask about your personal background?” Given the nature of a video-platform-mediated conversation, I had forgotten that what they are showing of themselves doesn’t actually match how they see themselves (e.g, if they have turned off self-view, they aren’t even seeing that painted scene themselves).

I was mortified because the question they heard might have been too personal, perhaps asking them to explain or justify an unconventional nickname. I’m curious, of course, but I also have no right to start asking personal questions in the first few minutes of meeting someone! This is not how I want to start off our relationship!

I laughed in embarrassment, and tried to create a teaching moment, modeled by me and my own mistake, but even explaining that I asked the question poorly, the other person felt apologetic for misunderstanding me! Perhaps we established some rapport through this misunderstanding, if I’m idealistic I can imagine that we both worked together to find our shared space of understanding after this mistake (my mistake, for sure!).

The answer, by the way, is that what I assumed was “art” was an image from a video game. Of course video games can be art!

How Garfield Helped Me Make Peace With a Culture in Decline

I really enjoyed this thoughtful (and gentle) analysis (NYT, Archive.is) of Garfield, brands, culture, consistency, and nostalgia. Despite the proliferation of arch/snark Garfield remixes, the author considers them authentically.

Little did I know that iteration would become the dominant model of 21st-century entertainment: beloved intellectual property endlessly spun off, rebooted and crossed over; culture not as a series of works but as a constellation of reliable draws. It is true that I am getting older, but it is also true that culture can get worse: less surprising, more reliant on references and brands, familiar to the point of revulsion. I worry that I have witnessed these changes in my short lifetime, although I cannot really know. As a hedge against uncertainty, Garfield variants offer a course of conditioning.

Listen to Steve on the Enterprise Product Leadership Podcast



Thanks to Daniel Elizalde for having me on the Enterprise Product Leadership podcast to talk about user research, especially in enterprise and industrial organizations. The audio (51 min) is embedded above, and available on the episode page.

We discuss the complexities of doing user research in a B2B context, the challenges of getting access to users, the need to understand customers’ pain (as opposed to only focusing on usability), and how to influence your organization to conduct more research. Steve also shares his advice on how to build a practice that encourages ongoing user research.

Topics

  • Steve’s career background and the work he does today as an experienced user researcher
  • What a user researcher does and why it is important
  • Invaluable tips for user researchers
  • Why companies struggle to understand their customers’ challenges
  • How a company can become more user-centered
  • How to enable a culture that empowers everyone
  • Why you may want to bring on a user researcher or an external expert
  • The nuances of being a team player and contributing to the success of the company
  • How to challenge baseline assumptions to move forward and grow as a company
  • The differences between B2C and B2B user research
  • The challenges of user research (and how to overcome them)
  • Why user research is not only incredibly invaluable but needs to be figured out for your company
  • Why culture is critical to research
  • How to support leaders in helping transform the organization’s mindset into a customer-centric culture
  • Proactive vs. reactive research

Tips

  • Keep in mind user-research is a skill. You can read about it, take classes, listen to podcasts, but you also have to practice.
  • Practice can include: knowing when to do research, knowing what research to do, how to go about actually doing the research, learning how to leverage the research that you’ve done, and learning how to help others understand the research.
  • And be sure to give yourself the chance to get better. All of this takes time. Be compassionate and understand that research is not just binary; there are many, many facets of it.

Frederick Wiseman on observing natural behavior

This wonderful profile of documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman confirms my own experience with this frequently-asked-question about user research.

“There’s a whole issue as to whether the camera changes behavior — the pretentious way of talking about it is, ‘Does the Heisenberg principle apply to documentary filmmaking?’ — but in my experience, 99.9 percent of the people don’t act for the camera,” he said. “My explanation for that is most people aren’t good enough actors to become somebody else. Not everybody’s Meryl Streep. And when people are uncomfortable or putting it on, so to speak, you instantly know it.”

How William Gibson keeps an eye out for possible futures

From an interview with William Gibson last year for the Mother Jones podcast.

You’ve always had an uncanny ability to write about technology that doesn’t exist or certainly isn’t widely known, but that then comes to the fore. Do you study cutting edge research or are you just a time traveler come to warn us like Wilf [Netherton, a character in The Peripheral and Agency]?

No, I’m lazier than that. I just walk around. And when I’m my normal human self, and not actually sitting at a computer writing fiction, I walk around with sort of an eye peeled and looking for little bits of new stuff, or sometimes old stuff that we’ve sort of forgotten about, but that could, if it got into sufficient circulation, really change things. I see that as often how technological change happens. It’s never the stuff that the people who invent the technology or develop the technology think is going to happen. That’s never the stuff that causes the big change. It’s stuff that nobody anticipates.

Check out Steve on the Brave UX podcast

Brave UX: Steve Portigal - The Future of User Research


I enjoyed the chance to speak with Brendan Jarvis for his Brave UX podcast. The 67-minute episode is embedded above, and is on YouTube. Update: Now on the web, with a transcript!

In this episode…

  • How Steve’s adapted his practice in recent years, as a result of industry changes
  • Why should researchers stop focusing on problems and start focusing on people?
  • What’s important for user researchers to remember about bias (their bias)?
  • How can researchers overcome resistance and level-up their impact?
  • And why does Steve have a museum of foreign groceries in his home?

Steve interviewed for “People of Research”

Thanks to Research Loop for interviewing me as part of their People of Research series. The interview is here, and I’ve reposted it below.

Big thanks for accepting the invitation, Steve, a pleasure to have you on #PeopleOfResearch interview series! Let’s start!
You have more than 19 years’ of experience, how user research changed and evolved since the beginning of your career?

When I started out, user research was primarily being done in consultancies. If you wanted to do this work, you went to work at an agency. As I progressed and people would come to me for advice, I was always sending them to Adaptive Path, frogdesign, IDEO, Jump Associates, and so on. And as we’ve collectively raised awareness of the value of research, companies have invested in building their own teams. I can’t even guess at the numbers these days, I feel like Facebook had 700 user researchers at some point? How many hundreds of user researchers do we think Google has? So when you have that kind of scale, the job opportunities are in those organizations.

It means that you have leadership roles in user research, which maybe we take for granted now, but that wasn’t always the case. That was the inspiration for me to start my podcast, Dollars to Donuts, to shine a bit of a spotlight on a relatively new role in the field of user research.

To be honest, it’s so interesting to me to speak with people inside of an organization about research and hear them talk (as you’d expect) like corporate people, people who spend all of their time inside that culture. Back in my early days, as a researcher/consultant, our job was to bring that outside in, to surface the language of the real world, not the language (and mental model) of the producer of the tool for the world. So when the person whose job it is to bring the outside in is actually part of the inside, the producer culture, they’re going to do that very, very differently. Their own professional success, their financial incentive, is tied to the performance of the company, or the product. And yet the work is about telling truth-to-power. So how I practice that as a consultant is going to differ from how someone who leads an internal team and reports to the VP of Product will. I mean, we’ve long had consultants and internal people in the world of business, but in user research, it’s still a relatively recent change.

We are living in a high speed society, therefore startups and companies work in a very agile development environment, trying to deliver products or features as quickly as possible. How can user research fit in this fast paced context?

Agreed, we’re under pressure to work quickly. And so we respond with new methods that aren’t the “best” method but that work within the constraints that others are placing on research. Teams are understaffed so this means pressure to work more quickly. We even adopt the terminology, like “sprints” which is not an effective word choice if you want to be given time to work through your process. This willing compliance with unrealistic expectations doesn’t serve the practice and it doesn’t serve us individually that well.

I see this as an issue of leadership, though, and not something that an individual researcher can impact that easily. There needs to be someone with authority, responsibility, and credibility to help the organization best utilize research. Without a peer to the leaders in (say) design, product, engineering, then researchers are relegated to taking instructions from people who may be less conversant with the operations of user research. A research leader will work proactively to understand upcoming design and product activity in order to prioritize and allocate resources so that the research that gets done is research that will have the most impact at the right time.

There are a lot of ways to learn research and juniors often feel overwhelmed and discouraged because of that. What would you tell them to do?

Practice. Do as much research as you can. Create your own practice occasions: maybe it’s that chatty person you meet in public like an extroverted cashier – ask them a question and then ask them follow up questions! Also, reflect, just like a sports team coach who reviews game films; watch your videos, read your transcripts, and look at what worked well and what you might have improved.

Take the opportunity to be interviewed yourself – whether it’s for a survey or a usability study or a poll, find an opportunity to experience the interview from the other side of the lens. Keep reflecting by observing others at work — including both great and poor interviewers in your work context, and in the media (for example, what do you think works in a particular Terry Gross interview?)

Junior researchers need guidance at the beginning of their career, what advice do you have for them?

Take advantage of all the ways you can learn more about research (meetups, articles, conferences, mentorship, discussions) but look for adjacent ways to learn. Read widely. Go to museums. Travel. Watch documentaries. Or whatever it is for you that helps you encounter ways of living, being, creating, thinking outside your own as it can inform your own research practice in surprising and joyful ways.

What qualities do you think a researcher should have?

At a fundamental level, there’s an essential inherent curiosity about people (which may be more of a leaning than a skill). There’s the ability to deeply listen. We need patience. We need to think quickly on our feet, to be in the moment and creative in how we ask questions.

There’s also something very individualistic about research. My style as a researcher is connected to my way of thinking and speaking and listening in all of my interactions and in all of my relationships. We’re all unique that way. Of course, in research we are making choices about how to express or not some of our tendencies, but there’s no perfect choice, and over time researchers can develop an authentic style that will continue to evolve with them.

But the most important thing I’ve learned about research is about myself. Research is a person-to-person activity and every time I go talk to somebody I come in with my own experiences and my own biases – my own expectations about what I’m going to see based on (for example) what the research project is about and I have had to learn to hear my own judgment. It’s actually one of my favorite things about research – that feeling you get when you discover an assumption you have made. It could be about anything. It’s just so rewarding that I feel like I am learning about the world and learning about myself because I have dismantled a presumption that I didn’t know that I had. So that keeps happening – I keep discovering my own biases, prejudices, and assumptions and so it feels like I’m always growing as a person.

Thank you again, Steve, for sharing your story and your experience, very insightful!

About #PeopleOfResearch

#PeopleOfResearch is a series of mini-interviews for the Research Loop Community where researchers all over the globe share their vision, experience and advice.

Lee the Puppet teaches you about body language over video conference

User researchers are continuing to experiment with and be challenged by remote research, especially around rapport and building empathy. For help, check out this charming 9-minute video from puppeteer and sci-fi author Mary Robinette Kowal about body language and communicating meaning and intent between people over video conferencing.

PLAYfest: Mary Robinette Kowal

Check out my articles on “Great User Research For Non-Researchers”


I was honored to be invited to be part of User Research Explained – A Charity Collection Of Essays For Pandemic Relief (To Benefit Doctors Without Borders).

My contribution is Great Research For Non-Researchers, presented in three parts

  1. Planning Research
  2. Doing Research
  3. Acting on Research

The demand for User Research exceeds the supply of researchers. And when, ultimately, our goal is “Learning from customers’’ and our user research community is a helping profession, we should be finding ways to empower everyone to do well. This is the first of three connected articles aiming to help overcome territorial and quality concerns within our community. In the first piece, I provide some of the essentials on planning user research for those “other people” wanting to go out and work with users…In the second essay, I provide some of the essentials on doing user research for those “other people” wanting to go out and work with users…In the final essay, I’ll provide some of the essentials about acting on user research.

Listen to Steve on the Why UX? Podcast



Thanks to Helena Levison (“Queen of UX”) for having me on the Why UX? podcast to talk about Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries. The audio (28 min) is embedded above, and available on the episode page.

This was a particularly exciting conversation for me because over the past while Helena has been hosting a online book club where she reads from the book, and even features appearances from some of the authors of the stories themselves!

Steve contributed to “Remote User Research: 12 Tips from Experts”

There’s a really good range of ideas and best practices in Remote User Research: 12 Tips from Experts. Mine is below

2. Set expectations for your participants
If you’re carrying out remote research via video conferencing tools, it’s always a good idea to set expectations before the interview.

“It’s likely that a remote user research session, however you understand that term, is going to be something different for your participant,” explains experienced user researcher Steve Portigal. “It’s not a work meeting over Zoom, it’s not catching up with friends over Facetime. So begin your session by calling attention to anything that might be especially awkward for either of you.”

Steve suggests pointing out that you might not be making eye contact, for example. Let the participant know that you’re going to be taking notes while they talk and that—even though you won’t look at them directly—you’ll be listening to them and watching what they’re doing.

“Eye contact works at a human perceptual level,” Steve stresses. “So it’s not clear that you can simply explain away something about how the brain works. But, at worst, it serves to establish the rapport and frame this session as a collaborative endeavor.”

3. Consider not using video or only doing so sparingly
We’re currently seeing a lot of articles about “Zoom fatigue”, which argue that the slight glitching of video, and the expectations for posture and gaze, are not sustainable for our mental health. So while it may feel counter-intuitive, audio may actually be preferable for making a connection with another person.

“Terry Gross, the host of NPR’s talk show Fresh Air, for example, is famous for eschewing any visual context at all for her interviews,” Steve points out. “Similarly, the psychotherapist’s traditional couch serves to create intimacy specifically by avoiding looking at the other person.”

Steve therefore suggests beginning a remote session with video to greet each other, but then to keep it off for the conversational parts of the interview. Experiment and see what works for you—and for your participants.

Video of my Mind The Product AMA

I recently did a small Ask Me Anything session organized by Mind the Product. The video is now online.

User Research AMA with Steve Portigal

It runs about an hour and includes discussion about balancing quantitative and qualitative research in an organization that leans heavily towards one or the other, doing research when you have an exceptionally small user population, what happens when the work you are performing is well outside your job description, and more!

Read the recap of my Rosenfeld Media AMA

I recently did an “Ask Me Anything” session on the Rosenfeld Media Slack. We touched on subjects ranging from how to handle difficult clients, my favorite band, and recommended reading, to dealing with “heavy topics” in interviews and how to improve your skills. Here’s a recap of the session…

Q: What book except your own would you recommend to read for UX designer? -Natalia H.

A: There are so many things to learn about. For design, I think this recent book by Scott Berkun is a great examination of how design is everywhere and in everything. It’s a quick read, it’s fun, and it’s empowering for designers I think, telling us again about all that we do, we have done, we can do.


Q: I often deal with “heavy topics” such as life, disability, cancer etc in my line of work, so it is not unheard of that we have someone break down and cry in interviews. We try our best to mitigate and avoid unnecessary stress (participants health and safety is our primary concern and we tell them in advance about the topics that we will be discussing), but can you talk about some advice how to mitigate these situations or what to do when this happens? -Fabian B.

A: Of course the stress and the emotion is going to impact all the people involved, say the participant and the researcher. I think researchers need to keep in mind that they aren’t (in most cases) trained for this, and that they need to find ways to take care of themselves. Often we will emote less in the interview than we might want to, so we want to leave space for ourselves to have feelings, to have reactions, to have someone to talk to. Work out what that is going to be. Who are you going to be able to speak with? When will you be able to speak with them?

For the participant, I learned something new to me from Sarah Fathallah at the Advancing Research conference when she talked about referral paths, something that if you are doing academic research that has an IRB ethical review needs to be put in place (someone correct me if I have this wrong) – where you identify things that might come up, like if someone reveals they are being abused, or is going through addiction, or having suicidal thoughts, you already know what your action is going to be.

I don’t know that we need that level if we aren’t doing say specifically traumatic research, but it’s the idea of planning for that. I’m also not saying that we need to DO anything; I think well-intentioned but under-informed do-gooderism is potentially worse than doing nothing in certain situations.

The complexity here is you can’t come up with every possible thing that might come up. But you can come up with SOME. I am also intrigued by sort of a generational shift in how we see our role; from “we need to observe, listen, empathize, not judge” to “all those, but we must also help.”


Q: I suspect a lot of us always did at least some of our research remotely, but now with covid, we’re seeing way more remote/virtual research. What are a couple of your top best practices for doing remote research well and getting high-quality information from respondents? -Amy B.

A: I think it’s worth co-opting that thing I see tweeted all the time “you aren’t working from home, you are working from home amidst a global pandemic.” Same for research, right? All the parties are living through an emergency. So yes, there may be dogs and kids, and construction noise, and someone may be in their garage so they can get some privacy. And as we’ve adapted our tolerance for informality in terms of focus, energy, duration, attention in work, we can apply those to these interactions with strangers. A guy I spoke with yesterday put us on pause as his daughter asked for the car keys, she just got her license the day before. It was fine. I didn’t get ruffled like I might have in another time (no that’s crazy I’m nothing if not entirely cool and rolling with the changes). I don’t have a good answer for how fully remote research locks us out of getting to certain people. I just had a brainstorm with a colleague who was thinking about how to understand how people were or will be using transit, given that we can’t go on transit right now, and that the people who he’d want to learn about are possibly not sitting at home with a room with a laptop and a webcam and a good internet connection that is available all the time for them to just get on a call with us over Zoom. So who are we excluding even more so now (as society is excluding people in those circumstances even now) ? I know people are trying hard to deal with this, but I don’t know?


Q: Which musical group has had an interesting impact on your life and how? -Corey B.

A: I’m going to say The Tragically Hip. Being an expat Canadian, when the Hip would come to town it was always an interesting gathering of the community, at least a bunch of fellow Canucks. You’d go to a show and see hockey jerseys and University leather jackets, and just stuff you don’t EVER see in the US. And as time passed, we all got older, the fans got older, the band got older, and how we expressed ourselves and our identity shifted, gradually. I haven’t really moved through an era of my life as clearly in common with other people, not close friends, just strangers, but to feel it so tangibly through ANOTHER experience has impacted me. And of course the ultimate end of aging is death and the loss of Gord Downie still impacts me every day pretty much. I listen to the band and my many bootlegs and think about them and him, constantly. Perpetually.


Q: Do you have any tested tips/tricks on working with difficult clients? I recently had a challenge of convincing the client to use our approach when they wanted to do something else. Curious to hear what you do in such situations. -Kama K.

A: I don’t know enough about the context, and the power dynamic, as I think it often comes down to that. Two big directions, though: Empathy/Walk away. For the first, and I don’t mean to tell you stuff you already probably know and do in all your relationships, but there is that weird power to detoxify some broken interactions when you just listen, when you ask more, when you acknowledge, etc. Probably this has some buzzword for leadership people, I don’t know what that is. It sets you up to say authentically “Yes, And, and not No, But.”

For the second, if someone is a client, then you aren’t in a full-time job with them. Of course as someone who also provides services to clients, I want to do a good job, I want to be appreciated, I want to bring value, I want to be employed, and brought back in, etc. So I don’t like that framing that design people in agencies sometimes like to espouse which is making the client the enemy. But we can walk away. And even if we just hold in our head that we have the OPTION of walking away can making a less desired choice perhaps more tolerable. I’m CHOOSING to do this which I don’t agree with and which distresses me but I could and may at some point choose NOT to do it.


Q: What are your most counter-intuitive insights about research as it propagates through the product development process? -Scott W.

A: I don’t know that I can claim counter intuitive as a goal, if you agree with me then it’s probably not THAT counter intuitive? I think there’s this desire to create models and visuals that say if you are here do this, if you are here do that. Whether that’s the double diamond model or (VERY HELPFUL) recommendations for methods based on a stage in a process like Christian Rohrer’s.

I just am not that organized, I am just not able to constrain myself to a discrete stage, maybe I’m trees and that’s the forest and I just can’t do the forest well enough. That all being said, I think there’s something about how these processes are a continuum, a gradient, and not stages. I know Software Development Lifecycle Methodologies are all about gates, and stages, and review cycles, and (ugh) sprints, but I think in terms of where we are in terms of certainty, of belief, of ideas, it’s a much more creative process, I can’t control what thoughts I have in the shower in that way we have of considering and being inspired about what it means, what to do, what the opportunity is. Some of that is always happening for creative people – and research is ABSOLUTELY a creative process of sense making and understanding.


Q: Are there any topic(s) or technique(s) you hope more places of instruction cover for individuals entering into research? -Randolph D.

A: As you know, I love storytelling, and I think it’s such a powerful tool, but it’s just kind of considered to be something that is maybe part of your personality, your own personal toolbox. But obviously it can be taught, practiced, developed. Research is about gathering stories and creating new stories, and “story” is of course an ENORMOUSLY broad construct so one can take it however one likes.

I mentioned ethics in another question, I think as a field we haven’t reckoned with it sufficiently. I’d like people coming into the field to have a perspective on it. I know a researcher who wrote up their own research philosophy, not even as a document to publish but as a way of working out what they were trying to do. I was extremely impressed with that.

Research as a practice to me is a constant consideration of who we are in the world, as people, how we relate to other people, how we judge and don’t judge, and just how we move around and exist and perhaps make and help. So, being intentional about what you believe and what you want, damn. It’s a brilliant activity. I haven’t ever done that and hadn’t ever thought of doing it. So philosophy isn’t ethics literally but is adjacent?

I’d like something in training – and I don’t know that the places people are learning about research are the right environments to be considering this aspect – about what the researcher’s role is relative to the rest of the people they work with. I do not like the idea of research as “support” – you hear “oh I support three teams” – I know research is a helping profession like say librarians, and I don’t mean to squelch that strength, but I think we are partners and leaders, and if we don’t believe in the value we can bring in the role we can play, no one else will. I think it’s a hard field to break into and there are a lot of entry level people and so if they are told they have to be subservient, that can set a long running pattern for their career and for the practice.


Q: Someone interested in working with us recently asked how we recommend she improve her interview skills. I recommended your books, but are there any classes or seminars you might recommend as well? -Amy B.

A: I’m going to pitch my upcoming workshop. Also very very good is the cycle of “do, observe, reflect.” (which probably has a smarter name than I’m giving it). Listen to Terry Gross – listen to her technique. Reflect on her technique. Print out a transcript and mark it up. What choices did she make? What other choices could she make?

Listen to your own interviews. Print them out. Listen to a colleague’s interviews. Same same. Have someone ELSE listen to your interviews. Have someone else mark up Terry Gross (or anyone who does a lot of interviews).

I think training will get you further than you are, but practice, man practice is the way. Do a lot of interviews. A LOT. Reflect and analyze!


Q: What are some tips for building rapport in remote interviews? (with camera and without camera) -Erika

A:
One avenue to explore is pointing to the medium, just acknowledging that you are doing what you are doing. And not pretending that you are as smooth as you are when you are in the same room. I did an interview yesterday where I had to share screen from Google Slides (not what I normally use for giving talks) and see speaker notes and it’s just a mess, and so I stopped and said what was going to happen, and then you heard the “unprofessional” sounds of me, saying, “Okay I’m going to hit share screen…yeah I think it’s shared now, okay, now I’m doing this, can you see this?” It just normalizes the interaction so you are both having a similar experience.

One thing I think needs to be explored is around shared sensory experiences. I saw Alice Waters talk recently and she described how she’d meet with people and she’d put a piece of fruit or something else down in between them and they’d just eat it beforehand and it created these interesting connections and well, rapport.

I don’t know how to operationalize this for remote research but I’m imagining having everyone pet their furry animal before starting and just sharing that moment that is about the senses, even though we are having our own experiences, we are having similar ones together. I think there’s probably some work to do to create that in a non-weird-sounding way.

Check out Steve on the Design Thinking 101 podcast



I really enjoyed my conversation with Dawan Stanford for his Design Thinking 101 podcast. The audio (57 min) is embedded above, and available on the episode page.

We talk about Steve’s excitement for and interest in spending more time with stakeholders within a client’s organization. He has learned why a stakeholder’s perspective is essential in relation to the success of a project. He talks about creating “learning-ready” moments, how he helps people have these moments, and how learning and sharing the journey of learning affect learning retention.

Listen in to learn:

  • How Steve and others developed the design processes in the early stages of user experience and research
  • How Steve’s skills, interests, and the work he does for his clients has evolved over the years
  • When Steve knows he’s found a great client
  • Why he believes that learning together is when change can happen
  • Why understanding stakeholders gives better results with clients
  • Being able to embrace realistic expectations of what you can accomplish

Check out Steve on the SHIFT podcast

Learning from Customers is "Messy", with Steve Portigal


I had a really lovely conversation with Kavita Appachu and Mike Kendall for the SHIFT podcast. The 56-minute episode (available as either video or audio only) is embedded above, and available on the episode page.

Steve Portigal, Author, Speaker, and Customer Research Expert, shares how to drive innovation using the power of strategic customer insights. He reminds us that learning from customers is “messy” because we are complex beings. In order to go deep while interviewing customers, you should have clarity about what is uncomfortable for you versus what is uncomfortable for customers and not conflate the two. His provocation, “No One Cares,” highlights the risk of magnifying the significance of our solutions in a customer’s life and missing the opportunity to focus on things that customers care about.

Sign up for either of my new Masterclasses, hosted by Business of Software

I’ll be teaching two Masterclasses in partnership with Business of Software. You can sign up for either one, or both!

The first is User Research – Uncovering compelling insights through interviews being held on Tuesday June 16th and Thursday June 18th (9-11am PT / 12pm-2pm ET / 5-7pm BST).

Following that is We’ve done all this user research, now what?, Tuesday June 23th and Thursday June 25th (9-11am PT / 12pm-2pm ET / 5-7pm BST).

Hope to see you at either of these masterclasses!

Here’s a whole pile of new episodes of Dollars To Donuts

Dollars to Donuts

In the past couple of months I’ve managed to post a raft of new episode of Dollars To Donuts, the podcast where I speak with people who lead user research in their organization.

Here are the latest episodes

You can also find the podcast on Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, and Apple.

Ask Us Everything online series

If you follow me on LinkedIn, you may have noticed I’ve been doing an online series of open conversations called Ask Us Everything. Each hour-long meetup (on Zoom or Google Meet) is co-hosted with someone else, and we take questions from the people who show up. We might talk about mentorship, or leadership, or career transitions, or product management, or design, or collaboration, or user research, or…everything!

Past co-hosts have included Lauren Isaacson, Amy Santee, Tom Greever, Jason Ulaszek, and Rich Mironov.

Upcoming sessions will feature Justin Dauer, Noel Franus, David Holl, and Gabe Trionfi.

Steve’s talk “Stop Solving Problems!”


I’ve been giving a talk entitled “Stop Solving Problems!” over the past year or so. Last week I shared that talk remotely at a joint uxWaterloo/Product Tank meetup. They’ve published their writeup here.

Often UX designers are focused on the solution, he said, rather than a deeper consideration of the people they’re trying to help. That’s partly because designers only control part of the experience, said Portigal, who appeared via videoconferencing from California where he’s based. Because designers only control part of the experience, aftermarket fixes emerge when the original design fails, said Portigal, pointing to the selfie stick as an example.

Rather, UX researchers should shift their focus from problems to people — observing them and trying to understand them…By starting with people, UX researchers can better understand their lives, their contexts, and their values. Find out what those people have done and what they have tried, he said. Let people present themselves most broadly and then, listen deeply, Portigal added. Learn what you don’t know, then focus on what you need to understand better. “This isn’t just warm and fuzzy stuff,” he said.

I’ll be doing a similar talk next week at Remote Design Week.

Tamara’s War Story: Piercings, Power and Getting Older

Tamara Hale leads the research practice at Workday. She presented this story live at the Advancing Research conference. (This post will be updated with videos etc. as available)

As a researcher, I’m quite used to changing my appearance and my bodily practices to fit the circumstances. I’ve donned a headscarf when recruiting door-to-door at the Mosques of East London. I’ve traded my butch boots for kitten heels when interviewing scientists who adhere to biblical beliefs of Creationism. I’ve dyed my hair black and acquired a rural accent to better pass as a Peruvian when conducting research in Peru. From Managua to Caracas, I received instruction from my hosts about how to walk the Latin American city with purpose, and how to develop a second pair of eyes in the back of my head. That’s right, in my research experiences, I have literally relearned how to walk.

A few years ago I was about to embark on a research trip to Tokyo. I knew enough about Japanese business culture to consult the interpreter I had hired about appropriate dress for doing business in a large, traditional Japanese company. I wanted to know specifically should I remove the multitude of visible piercings I had acquired in the last few years? Earlier in my career I’d been a consultant, and had done a lot of work for conservative financial services firms and had been part of large sales pitches. But then I joined a California-casual tech company, in an arguably more casual Colorado office. Over the years, what my business suits accumulated in dust, my ears collected in precious metals. It was probably a good idea to remove the piercings, my interpreter confirmed.

Soon I arrived in Tokyo and in the tiny hotel room I proceeded to carefully remove my jewelry. After my sacrificial act of extraction, I made my way to dinner with the team. I’d only met the product manager a few times, mostly over video conferencing tools, and as soon as she walked in, with her gleaming nose stud, I realized that I’d neglected to share my knowledge about piercings and Japanese business attire with her. What to do now?

To some people (perhaps non-researchers especially?) the acts of bodily modification and change to my bodily practices that I have undergone for research may seem inauthentic, maybe even a betrayal of my unique “self”- that which has come to be called “identity”. The reality is more complex. Other people familiar with fieldwork that crosses cultural boundaries, will understand that at times such modification comes from a place of respect, and an attempt to lessen the distance between ourselves and our research participants. Further, women, people of color, LGBTQ folks and other minorities are deeply familiar with having to modify bodies and bodily practices as steps for protection and self-preservation, necessary acts to go about living in spaces that were not designed with us in mind or deliberately designed to exclude us. Yet other acts of bodily modification are ways to enact agency, to question and subvert the social and cultural constraints imposed on some, even while some bodies’ trespassings are scrutinized more heavily than others.

All of these thoughts went through my head over dinner and I was unsure of what to do with them. I chose not to mention anything to the product manager. The next day over coffee before our first customer visit, I fretted with my interpreter, “What should I do?! Should I ask my colleague to remove her beautiful nose stud?!”

He informed me matter of factly not to worry too much about it since it was going to be obvious to our customers that I was the “serious business lady” and that the PM was the “cool, young California kid”. My heart sank. What the f*&?! Clearly this guy didn’t understand – I’m the one working in the Design department! I’m hip! ‘I have an asymmetrical haircut!’ What’s more, how dare he refer to me as a “lady”? I’m a millennial! Just barely, but still!

But then he added that what was important was that in the eyes of the customer, I, an important, formidable, business leader had been sent to listen to their concerns and relay them back to executives in our company – and that I conveyed the part authentically. I was reminded in that moment, that whatever image I had attempted to craft for myself was at best tenuous and always subject to interpretations that I could not control. At the same time, I realized that many of the bodily adaptations I have undergone over the course of my career have allowed me to discover and come into alternate and new versions of myself. Through practicing research over more than a decade and a half, I’ve learned not to hold on too tightly to the ideas I’ve constructed about myself. And so, at once humbled, and feeling a little more powerful than usual (at least for the day) I stepped into the elevator to meet our customer.

Randy’s War Story: Don’t Fall Flat

Randolph Duke II is an Experience Strategist with Cantina. He is always open to connecting on Slack or LinkedIn. He presented this story live at the Advancing Research conference. (This post will be updated with videos etc. as available)

As a researcher, you come to expect the unexpected. But that doesn’t mean you don’t get surprised. I had received my first project as the lead researcher and designer for an internal IT group. The IT group hired me to help them learn about and fix some internal software tool. I agreed to a really tight deadline so the client provided an employee to support and shadow me. We’ll call her “Laura”. Laura was really bright and took well to instruction – the ideal apprentice, if you will. Although I shared some potential questions I might use during employee observations, I warned her that fieldwork could go any which way and that she should try to be ready for anything. I hadn’t realized we were both going to need that advice.

Two days into visiting offices across their different buildings, we were finally scheduled to meet “Carol”. Carol was important to my small data pool; she represented an important team within the company and previously shared unfiltered, critical feedback. Compared to her colleagues more nuanced responses, we knew time with Carol was going to be different. Upon introducing myself and thanking Carol for her time, she immediately responded with “I know who you are and I have opinions.” Before I could even come up with a response I just instinctively smiled and thought I am going to need to bring my A game. I planned to be approachable and responsible in guiding a fruitful conversation instead of just letting her complain. As therapeutic as it might’ve been for Carol, I needed to help Laura and myself understand why Carol felt the ways that she did so we could do something about it later. That’s what I planned, at least.

I first attempted to build rapport by asking Carol to describe how she works which immediately sent us down another path. One of the first things Carol brought up was a coworker she introduced to the company: Flat Carol. Flat Carol was a nearly life-size cardboard cutout of Carol. It was a 10-year old photo of her, smiling and holding a phone to her ear. It had a blank speech bubble encrusted with the remnants of old pieces of Scotch tape. I was caught completely off guard! Was this something that people just did here? I looked to Laura to gauge if something like this was somehow common and the look on her face confirmed that yes, Flat Carol was definitely out of the ordinary. I had warned Laura to be ready for nearly anything but here I was the one who needed to act. I thought to myself: do I find a way to make this conversation more about the software as scheduled or do I show Laura how to react to the unplanned?

In the few seconds I had to collect my thoughts I made my decision: I was going to be as present for Carol as possible. How could I hold onto a well-intended plan of talking about software when Laura and I had the chance to meet “someone” Carol was willing to share? I put down my question guide, and just focused on Carol. She told us how she put Flat Carol in her seat when she was away from her desk, whether she was going on vacation or as far as the restroom. How Flat Carol would have kind words or notes taped to the speech bubble for people passing her desk. We occasionally spoke about company processes connected to the software research, but that wasn’t my priority. Every so often I would look over at Laura to see what she was gaining from this experience and saw several approving nods, smiles, and fervent note taking. By the end, Carol shared that she was grateful for our conversation and Laura was relieved. Once we left Carol, Laura let out a sigh of relief and said “I don’t think I could ever recover the way you did.” That’s what research is about.

In mentoring Laura (who was, after all, still my client), I had spoken generally about being ready for anything, but when we were faced with a real surprise in the field, I had to live up to those words in a way that surely exceeded what either of us had in mind. We all walked away better for it.

Tamara’s War Story: Sea Legs

Tamara Hale leads the research practice at Workday. This story is adapted from Hale, T. 2018 People Are Not Users. Journal of Business Anthropology. 7(2):163-183. She will be telling a completely new story at the Advancing Research conference.

A ferry boat is a place of questionable comfort for conducting research. A ferry boat in a storm is an altogether different matter, as I found out several years ago, when I was researching the experience of travelers sailing across the English channel between Dover and Calais, on one of Europe’s biggest ferry companies.

My objective was to inform a complete redesign of the newest fleet of ships, based on an understanding of the needs of ferry travelers: from queuing, to parking and wayfinding to the deck, to using the facilities on board and deboarding, all viewed through the perspective of service design. I spent a week observing and interviewing couples, families, traveling groups, truckers and staff on the ship. With time I felt I had become part of its very inventory: adapting to the ebb and flow of passengers for their three hour crossing. At each port, the ferry emptied itself of people, cars, buses and trucks and grew quiet, as if the ship sighed in relief and then braced in anticipation for the next wave of passengers. While the staff cleaned up from the last crossing and prepared for the next sailing, I would organize my fieldnotes and change the batteries on my audio recorder (yes, we had those back then). With multiple crossings a day I eventually forgot which port we were at, and it was only by locating a flag on the docks outside that I would know whether we were in Dover or Calais at any given time.

In my second week of fieldwork, just as I became accustomed to the daily routine of life aboard the ferry boat, I found myself suddenly in the midst of a formidable storm. As the waters grew rougher, and the ship floor started responding to the undulation of the tempestuous waves, I gave up on asking passengers to show me around the ship because none of us could walk or stand confidently. Instead I wobbled over onto the luxury travel deck, hoping for some relief amidst the red velvet lounge sofas, oak bar, and unobstructed ocean views. There I attempted to interview a retired couple on their vacation, my audio recorder sliding back and forth on the table between us. But I was soon forced to abort the interview, trying my best not to throw up on the red velvet, or worse, my research participants. The ferry staff, seeing my distress, tried to assure me that this weather did not pose a threat to our lives, while simultaneously scooping up the wine and champagne glasses off the bar into the safety of lockable wooden cabinets. At the end of the night, I stumbled off the ship to my hotel, wondering if I could ever set foot on another boat.

After a few nights of rest, I returned to the ship to complete my research over a span of a few much calmer days, this time focusing on truck drivers who regularly made the crossing with different concerns than my holiday travelers. I attempted to regale my research participants with the story of my storm of Titanic proportions days earlier, an endeavor which sparked pity and laughter rather than admiration. I wrapped up fieldwork as I always do, with a sense of deep humility and an expanded sense of different lifeworlds. This time, however, that humility was less intellectual in nature than corporeal.

The storm had added a new layer of complexity to my role in the project and to my personal and bodily relationship with the site of my research, the ship. Through the storm I became acutely aware that, despite my best intentions, I had treated the ship primarily as a backdrop for my interviews instead of considering it as a space and material object that seemingly possessed its own agency. The affordances of the ship when activated by the storm had challenged my sense of safety, comfort, and routine and replaced it with fear, confusion and malaise. Through my own body I learned of the ship’s potential to make its passengers feel a range of emotions and physical sensations. This attuned me more fully to the ship’s design shortcomings, to travelers’ and staff needs, and ultimately enhanced my ability to shape the decisions in the design and funding of the new fleet. While I never did fully find my sea legs on that research trip, I had reached a turning point in my appreciation of the spaces and environments in which research takes place.

My talk “Great User Research (for Non-Researchers)” at Mind the Product

I recently spoke in front of a 1500+ person audience at Mind the Product. My 25-minute talk was Great User Research (for Non-Researchers). The video is embedded below and is available here. Also below is the write-up by Emily Tate (originally posted here) and some audience sketchnotes.


Researchers often have concerns about what will happen when “other people” go out and do work with users. But the demand for research far outweighs the supply of researchers, and everyone wins when more people are enabled to do research themselves. At #mtpcon San Francisco, Steve Portigal, Principal at Portigal Consulting, tells us how to quickly level up our research skills as product managers across the lifecycle of a research effort.

Steve tells us how to be more effective in the three main elements of research: planning research, conducting research, and acting on research.

Planning Research

Ultimately, our goal is to learn from interactions with our customers. However, we typically focus on researching only if our product is usable or if people like the thing we’re making. In research we should be looking at broader questions, and proper planning will help ensure we are getting the answers that we need.

What are we Trying to Accomplish?

Research planning should include three areas:

  • Business question: What challenge does the business face?
  • Research objective: What do we hope to learn to help us answer that business question?
  • Participant questions: What questions can we ask customers to help us achieve that research objective?

We often skip straight to writing participant questions without addressing the other two areas, and end up with unfocused interviews that don’t fully get us the answers we’re looking for.

How are we Going to Accomplish it?

Steve highlights a few considerations when planning how to go about research.

  • What method of research should I use? It is easy to conflate “research” with “testing” and only focus on validating what we already have. But there are many research methods we can use.
  • Who should I learn from? You don’t have to focus only on the people who are already using your product. Think about who else in the customer journey might have insights that could have an impact on your understanding of the customer’s needs.
  • How should I interact with them? Remote work is easier than ever, so it is tempting to think using collaboration tools like Zoom or Skype are enough. But you learn so much by pushing yourself outside your comfort zone and interacting with people in their environment. Make sure you spend at least some portion of your research in the field.

Doing Research

Steve provides some tips for talking to your customers once you’ve planned your research.

  • Specific questions are better than general questions. The more specific you can be, the better a user will be able to answer.
  • Don’t ask users what they do. Ask them for an example of a time they have done something, and then ask if it was typical.
  • Ask follow up questions to get to specifics. If a user gives you general answers, asking for stories or examples will help you move beyond surface level and into deeper insights.

He also highlights some common mistakes we make in understanding our role as an interviewer.

  • Don’t provide the answer in the question. You may want to try to provide some examples to help guide the user, but this ends up tainting their response.
  • Don’t try to build rapport by telling the participant ways you are just like them. This removes the focus from the user and pulls it back to you. Hold off on sharing your experiences and just continue asking them questions.
  • Don’t become the expert. Users will often ask questions like: “Is this feature going to be in the next version?” Answering this, even if you know the answer, will change your role from researcher to expert and it is very difficult to get back into research mode. Ask: “Why is that important to you?” instead.
  • Don’t correct the user. You’ll have users mispronounce your product name, or ask for features you already have, or any number of things that you will want to correct them. Don’t do it. This, again, makes you the expert and harms the research.
  • Use the language they use. Don’t add acronyms they haven’t mentioned, or try to sound smart by using terminology they’re not using. Let them be the expert.

Your goal in interviewing is to make the user comfortable. Your aim should be to move from “Question-Answer” to “Question-Story”. Continuing to ask questions and follow ups will help you build that rapport.

Steve also recommends recording your interviews. We can’t take notes fast enough to capture everything, so our notes become filtered versions of what we heard. Having a recording to return to gives you the full context and allows you to revisit the interview with fresh eyes.

When interviewing, it is important to avoid bias and try to look to new situations as learning. We also need to have empathy for the people we’re interviewing. But we are all human, and our own feelings can creep into our interactions. When you feel yourself moving into a judgmental mode:

  • Hear your own judgement
  • Refute the assertion
  • Use new data to flesh out your new thinking

Stress also hinders empathy. So make sure you plan your research in a reasonable manner so you’re not trying to do too much in too short a timeframe.

Acting on Research

Once you talk to people and write up your key takeaways, you are not done. Truly getting to new insights is a combination of analysis and synthesis.

  • Analysis is breaking out larger pieces into smaller pieces, such as breaking out the insights you heard in interviews.
  • Synthesis is combining those smaller pieces into larger ones to gain new understanding, such as taking the insights from multiple interviews and bringing together common themes.

When doing synthesis, you should go back to your business problem and what your stakeholders were looking for in the beginning. This will make sure you’re pulling the insights that will help answer the questions you were trying to understand. You should also make sure you’re presenting the information in a way that your stakeholders can consume to avoid research being dismissed.

Research is very important, but also very difficult. Being intentional in how you plan, do, and act on research will help to ensure you are get value out of the time you spend on it, and help you truly to understand your customers, and build products that solve their problems.


Ty Hatch



Mateo Fern

Steve Portigal on Reusable Research, Interview War Stories, and Letting Go of Implicit Beliefs

I did a brief Q&A with Bloomfire. The original is here and I’ve reposted it below.


As just about any market research professional would be quick to tell you, their job isn’t just about conducting research: it’s about disseminating what they learn to the stakeholders who need that information to make informed decisions. As a result, successful market researchers spend a lot of time thinking about how to share their knowledge in the most impactful way possible.

It seems fitting then, that the second entry in our Future of Knowledge at Work series features Steve Portigal, a researcher (as well as an author and podcaster) who has built his career on helping businesses better understand the people who use their products or services.

Tell us a little about yourself.
I’m a user researcher, and I’ve run my own consulting practice since 2001. I lead user research efforts for teams, and I also serve as a coach for teams doing their own research, and I also teach organizations how to improve their research skills. I live in a small, foggy coastal town just outside of San Francisco where there are lots of trails for walking my dog.

How did you get started in your career as a user researcher, and what led you to start your own consultancy?
After graduate school I ended up at a small consultancy that was experimenting with user research as a service that could bring value to their clients, and I was able to get on board in those early days. I have always liked consulting for the variety and how that provides continuous learning opportunities about almost everything I do. So when that agency failed to make it through the stock market crash, it seemed like the obvious next step to go out on my own.

What knowledge do you rely on most to do your job?
As a user researcher, I’m usually working with knowledge from two different groups— the team that makes something (or wants to make something), and the people that the team hopes will buy or use that thing. My job is to uncover and synthesize new knowledge about both parties (e.g, how is this artifact or service understood, how is it being used, and how might it be used?) and then work to resolve the gaps between them.

In your experience working on research projects for your clients, what do you think are the biggest knowledge management challenges (and how do you solve them)?
There’s often a certain amount of anxiety about the data (say, recordings and transcripts of user research sessions), but the knowledge is the key to having the research be impactful and lead to meaningful change. But that change can be painful, as it means letting go of previously held beliefs. It’s especially difficult with those that are implicit beliefs.

To have the most impact, I share anecdotes and examples along the way— not to present patterns and conclusions too early, but to introduce the rest of the team to the real people whose stories are the basis of the work that we’re doing, and then I work collaboratively with them to take apart and reassemble all that data into knowledge. Being part of that process— which is messy and divergent at points— really makes them the owners of the new knowledge that we’re creating. And then, we work to transform knowledge into (potential) actions.

Thoughts on how new technologies will impact the way researchers manage and share their results?
This is such a hot topic among growing research teams. The need is evolving from sharing results and archiving, to really building up a collection of data and knowledge that can be revisited. Siloed research and repetitive research are inefficient and hurt the cause of bringing research into every part of the organization, so the more the work of researchers (from data through results) can be made accessible and reusable, the more impact research can have inside the organization.

What best practices would you recommend for capturing and sharing knowledge?
When I work with people who are new to doing research, I urge them to record their user research interview sessions. People think that they’re pretty good note-takers, but for research, you need to capture exactly what people say, and you can’t take notes quickly enough to do that. In the moment is not the time to be editing and interpreting.

If you record the research, then you have a high-fidelity record that can be transcribed and then can be both analyzed (e.g, pulling out key quotes, examples, anecdotes) and synthesized (e.g., arranged into new themes, frameworks, opportunities). It’s crucial that people have a good model for how to treat the knowledge that they are building in this process and that they understand when and how to emphasize the customer’s point of view, and when and how to insert their own interpretive point of view.

Can you tell us a little about your book Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries?

I wrote a book called Interviewing Users that is a pretty solid introduction to (go figure) interviewing users. I’ve long been interested in the fascinating experiences that researchers have going into people’s lives, physically going into homes and workplaces and other environments. Sometimes things go wrong in amazing ways. We have encounters that are hilarious, embarrassing, distressing, confounding, and more. These become stories that researchers share informally, but I hadn’t ever seen anyone collect these stories, let alone reflect on how these stories can be used to teach us about the practice of research.

As part of writing Interviewing Users, I set up an online channel for documenting these war stories. Now, as much as we create structure and rigor and tools around the work of research, there’s an element we can’t control—we’re meeting other people in their space. But that’s the beauty of research: these experiences teach us and change us. Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries collects the stories of 65 researchers from around the world and unpacks the lessons they provide.

Can you tell us a bit about your podcast, Dollars to Donuts, and what inspired you to start it?
Dollars to Donuts features interviews with people who are leading in-house research teams. As companies have invested more in user research, there’s now more people in research-specific leadership roles. This is something that didn’t exist until recently. I wanted to discover and share their stories and best practices as an extension to the consulting work I do with many different teams.

Check out Steve on the Happy Market Research podcast


Excerpt


Ep. 228 – Steve Portigal – How Trends in User Experience & Market Research are Driving Success



I had a great conversation with Jamin Brazil for the Happy Market Research podcast recently. The audio and video are embedded above, and available on YouTube, or on the episode page.

Check out Steve on the “Nie tylko design” podcast

Nie Tylko Design #025 - Interview with Steve Portigal



While I was in Poland last year I was interviewed by Tomasz Skórski about the state of UX and user research.

The audio and video from our conversation is embedded above, available on YouTube here, or on the episode page.

Steve interviewed by dscout for People Nerds

I was interviewed by dscout for their People Nerds blog. Check out Finding the ‘Aha!’ Moment!

Expert user researcher Steve Portigal breaks down why thinking about bias and mistakes is the key to joyful discovery.

Steve Portigal says being a researcher allows him to do things he would never do as his “civilian self.” A self-proclaimed introvert, Portigal recalls the kind of uncanny magic of going to dinner with a friend who’s particularly extroverted. “We joke about all of the service experiences and interactions it unlocks,” he says.

The structure of research work, Portigal says, allows him to have those kinds of interactions, the ones he’d normally feel locked out of in everyday life. It’s why he posits introverts are so common in the research field.

“Introversion’s not about shyness or dislike of people,” Portigal says. “It’s about energy. One of the coping mechanisms for introversion is to play a role. And in a research situation, there’s that kind of structure to talk to strangers and ask them questions and learn about them, and do all of the things you’d never be able to do as your civilian self.”

Join my ‘Fundamentals of Interviewing Users’ workshop in NYC

I’m teaching a full-day workshop on Fundamentals of Interviewing Users in New York City on May 20. Indi Young is teaching a workshop the next day. You can register for one or the other or both. It’s part of a series of workshops that also includes Dave Malouf, Kate Rutter, Nathan Curtis, Steve Krug. Spread the word!

Listen to Steve on Tech for Good Live

While I was in Manchester last year I had a very enjoyable and friendly conversation with Bex and Jonny, the hosts of Tech for Good Live. We talked about the role of the user researcher, the increasingly blurry line between design and research, design ethics, and my favorite stories from user researchers out in the field.

The conversation is posted at Tech for Good Live and embedded below.


Listen to Steve on This is HCD

I had the pleasure of speaking recently with Chirryl-Lee Ryan about user research and more – we got into outcomes versus deliverables, tipping points for the tech industry, and a few other fun areas. The conversation is now live on This is HCD (including a transcript), and embedded below.

Chi shared her own user research war story

We didn’t have a car. We should have hired a car or we should have had a driver because we had no idea what the traffic was like in Manila. One of the team members went to catch their flight back to Australia and the taxi driver kind of kidnapped them because they didn’t have cash – all the things that you don’t think about when you’re going to do research – they happened to us on that on that particular research trip. And so you know, we got great insights and the client was just amazed but at the same time we sort of went through this wild adventure of our own on the back side of what was actually happening on the trip.

Steve on the Service Design Show

Thanks to Marc Fonteijn for having me as a guest on The Service Design Show. The episode, entitled How To Unlock The True Power Of User Research, is online now (Soundcloud, YouTube) and embedded below.

By now we all know that storytelling is one of the most powerful tools in the service design toolbox. But can we also use storytelling to actually improve our own practice? Steve Portigal thinks so and he explains why in this episode.

And how well aware are you of your own biases, beliefs and assumptions when you go into a project? Learning to better listen to ourselves might be a key to get more meaningful work done.

Finally we discuss why the value of deep research is still often not aligned with the value we put on designing solutions. For this we dig into some economic fallacies that might have to do with this.

The big question of this episode is: When has storytelling worked for you (and when did it fail)?

How To Unlock The True Power Of User Research / Steve Portigal / Episode #52

Watch Steve on Like/Unlike

Here’s a twenty-minute conversation with me, for the show Like/Unlike for, in anticipation of Product Camp Poland, coming right up! I talk about three things – something I recently experienced that I liked (our Punk Rock walking tour of the East Village); something that I did not like (an app required to get filtered drinking water), and a perspective on user research that others may not be thinking about.

Like/Unlike #6: Steve Portigal

sorry about the occasionally blurry video

Video from User Research London keynote: Learning From User Research War Stories

Last summer I went to London to give the opening keynote at User Research London, User Research War Stories. The video is now available and I’ve embedded it below.

Steve Portigal, War Stories - User Research London 2017

The talk features bonus war stories from Kristina Lustig (27:24) and Elizabeth Chesters (31:20)

Much Better Than The Original

Comedian Laurie Kilmartin tweeted

Hey aspiring comedy writers, when my brain is foggy or I just need multiple punchlines for the same setup, sometime I consult my transitions list! It’s dumb but it helps

It’s sort of a low-fidelity methods card approach, where a phrase suggests a particular structure, or triggers the writer to generate a certain type of response. As a comedy consumer, I am amazed at how familiar so many of these phrases are. While I do some amount of deconstructing the form as a fan, it is very cool to see how fully she reverse-engineered standup tropes for her own benefit

Listen to Steve on the Conversation Factory Podcast

It was great fun to speak with Daniel Stillman about research, collaboration, communication and facilitation. now live on the Conversation Factory site, and embedded below


Here’s part of how Daniel framed the conversation in his writeup

Steve is a User Researcher, heart and soul. And he talks and writes about it, fluently. Facilitation is something that he *has to do* in order to bring people together. He’s an extremely reflective practitioner about research, but about facilitation, less so. For me, it’s fascinating to see that divide. I think there are a lot of people where facilitation is a means to an end.

Steve illustrates something I coach people on often – you have to be your own kind of facilitator. I can be theatrical and energetic. Steve is more introverted and centered. My way of solving for group work isn’t Steve’s: he’s adapted his own approach that feels natural and gets the job done.

Tad Friend: Interviewing Master

I love this bit from Tad Friend’s New Yorker profile of Donald Glover

Noting that he often spoke about how life would be different if he were White Donald, I asked Glover how our conversations would be different if I were black. He gave me a considering look. “We’d have a language we both understood, and you’d know me better,” he said. “But as Black Tad you’d only be in a position of talking to me because you were good at placating a white audience. As a black person, you have to sell the black culture to succeed. So I’d try to trust Black Tad, but it’s really up to him whether he’d sell us out.”

Glover is an elusive interview, dismissing many expected norms around career, goals, success, creativity. Here, Friend takes a framework that Glover has presented (if Glover were white rather than black) and twists that into a new question (if Friend were black rather than white). He’s extending and adapting what Glover has already told him in order to probe more deeply on that model, by asking Glover to consider a hypothetical. And in doing so, Friend points back to the actual instrument of inquiry – the interview conducted by an interviewer, and asks Glover to examine that relationship.

That is masterful interviewing: hewing to the world view the interviewee is articulating; building a hypothetical evolution of that framework in order to examine the assumptions of that framework more closely; and acknowledging the context of the interview itself in order to probe even more deeply.

Since we are reading an article, and not an interview transcript, we only know about this because Friend put it in his article; in order to make his point he had to reveal the questions as well as the answers. And it’s a delightful reveal.

Listen to Steve on the User Defenders Podcast


Artwork by Eli Jorgensen

I had a wide-ranging and personal conversation with Jason Ogle for the User Defenders podcast. We talked about my professional trajectory, my disdain for Forrest Gump, rapport-building, listening, disgust, and war stories from fieldwork. Our conversation is now live on the User Defenders site, and embedded below



And yeah, that’s me in a black-and-purple cape, but you’ll need to listen to the episode to understand what’s about.

How to Grow and Thrive as A User Researcher

Check out an interview with me in How to Grow and Thrive as A User Researcher on the Adobe blog. An excerpt is below

What are the benefits of sharing career failures and mishaps rather than just successes?

We need to share both! Thinking about the field of user research, it’s important for practitioners to continue our development. Examining what went wrong (or what was different from what we expected) can highlight practices that might have avoided any particular mishap. But user research is so much about people and all their quirks, personalities, strengths, flaws, emotions, and so on — it’s what the work is about! There are inevitably surprises, and failures, and so another way to think about improving our skills is in accepting the lack of control, and even embracing it.

Researchers are often ‘selling’ the benefits of the practice to colleagues and stakeholders, and while I’m probably not going to lead with failure stories, it’s helpful to have a framework for considering them. ‘Failures’ are inevitable and while we work hard to prevent them, they are still coming for us, and reframing them as part of the messy people experience that we’re out there to embrace can help us discuss more realistically with our collaborators. There’s no reason any of us should feel alone with these experiences; as Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries illustrates, they are part of this work.

Some well-known and very successful designers don’t do any user research. What do you think about that approach?

Let’s assume that’s true. It’s foolish to declare that the only way to innovate is through research. Even when we do research, there are many other factors at play that determine success. What does concern me is that approaches championed by ‘well-known and very successful’ individuals won’t succeed for everyone. It’s real swell that Steve Jobs (or substitute your favorite successful innovator) did it this way. But you’re not Steve Jobs!

Special thanks to Oliver Lindberg for the interview!

Snark about Bark

I’m rolling my eyes at this article about successful dog toy company, Bark. Specifically:

Bark’s design process begins with research. Packed in every BarkBox sent to 600,000 subscribers is a survey questioning dog parents about their beloved canine’s playing styles. The design team also gets anecdotal data from their Ohio-based customer service team who chat with with BarkBox loyalists about how toys were received. Based on user insights, Jensen and his team creates goofy toys that heighten a dog’s natural play style—chewing, fetching, or even destruction play.

“We know what a golden retriever in Kansas will like compared to a chihuahua in Seattle,” claims Jensen.

Some of what is grating is simply due to sloppy writing, but I am bothered by the hollow virtue-signalling around user research. Their methods are surveys – sent only to people who have purchased their product, and customer service reps – who are probably doing more troubleshooting than chatting with loyalists. The quote, then, implies a Big Data-style sense of insight across geography and breed, which is just untrue. They haven’t met any pet owners and they haven’t met with any pets!

I realize it’s expedient for PR to anchor your genius in customer-centricity, and I guess that’s a win. The founders are industrial designers and there would once have been a day when their innate brilliance would have been sufficient. But really, don’t cloak yourself in shallow methodologies and then claim you are doing everything based on research!

Customer Satisfaction at the Push of a Button


Image from HappyOrNot.com homepage

The New Yorker profiles HappyOrNot, the company that makes those kiosks to measure “satisfaction” (you may have seen them in airports or malls, they have a few colored buttons with different happy/unhappy faces). The article explains the history of the company and gives examples of organizations who are using the technology, what kind of data they are getting, and how they are acting on it.

On a large monitor on a wall of Javaid’s office, Jochym showed us several ways she’d devised to represent HappyOrNot data graphically, for presentation to other members of the organization. One was a stadium seating map on which the HappyOrNot terminals were identified by numbered, colored circles. “You can see all the terminals here, and you can move through the data hour by hour. The colors change as the ratings do.” The most consistently high-rated performer—even during the two most problematic periods for customer service, halftime and the fourth quarter—was a new vender, which, unlike most other venders, used the same, experienced work crew at every game.

How Louis Theroux asks questions

From 2016, here’s a great video by Ryan Hollinger analyzing how documentary filmmaker asks questions, builds rapport, uncovers information. This video doesn’t get into one of my personal favorites of Louis’s superpowers – that he ignores negative energy – discomfort, anger, superiority – from his interviewees. Rather than fleeing, he stays calm and continues to engage.

(update: video link corrected)

How Louis Theroux Asks A Question | Ryan's Theory

Listen to Steve on Helping Sells Radio

I had a really enjoyable conversation with Sarah E. Brown and Bill Cushard for their Helping Sells Radio podcast.

The episode is posted here and embedded below

Research is sometimes about not doing anything at all

“Sometimes the best thing you can do in user research is to sit on your hands,” Portigal said. For example when talking to someone and they use a product feature in a different way than you intended or mispronounce the name of your product. “Just let them talk, don’t correct them,” he advised.

By sitting back and letting the interview subject take control of the language they use and how they explain things, you’re giving them the power in the session. The power in any interview tends to lie with the interviewer, so by sitting back and letting them speak however they like, you’re giving it back to them.

The bonus lesson here is that interviewers are getting a first-hand look at the customer perspective and they can use that information to shift their own mindset. It can be hard figuring out what customers are thinking about or what they’re looking to get out of your products, so any interview you do with them helps with that. You are so invested in your product and so focused on it that it can be hard to step away and look at it from another view point. User research interview sessions give you that opportunity.

Highlights from my Ask Me Anything with What Users Do

I did an Ask Ask Me Anything with What Users Do recently. Here’s the recap they put together.

Any tips for interviewing users who work with highly confidential information? Any strategies for incentivising such an audience to be open about which problems they struggle with and how they use our software, when almost everything they do is supposed to be a secret? [Timi Olotu]

I think it’s always good to set expectations clearly when arranging for interviews; perhaps in that situation there might be concern – before even agreeing – about risk. I worked with a bank and they had a standard set of text they used in recruiting bank customers, along the lines of “We won’t ever ask for your bank balance or any information about accounts.” Perhaps that was required for regulatory compliance anyway but it served to be very clear about what we were NOT going to be asking about.

I think managing expectations is more important than incentive; but gaining access is also about understanding their dynamic or their relationship to you. Like, if they use your software, then they have a chance to give input and feedback.

I’d also add, I wonder what kind of anonymized experiences you can create, and I don’t mean that to be so fancy sounding, but how much of the interview could you do on paper, with wireframes.

I don’t mean give them a usability test, but can you give them a set of high-level scenarios and have them pick some and choose which to walk through using a sort of simulated or high level version of your experience.

You wouldn’t want to do that for the whole thing, but it could be a component of an interview.

When generating questions for interviews, how do you reduce bias from pre-existing hypotheses? [Amy]

I think bias is obviously a concern but it comes up so often as the main thing people are concerned about. This is totally biased work! We are humans who are the product of our experiences and meeting other people and exchanging the slipperiest of substances: words! How can we not have bias?

I think that having hypotheses is a great thing when going into research. I mean, you put it exactly right – hypothesis. That’s not a closely-held belief, or an aspiration, it’s an idea of what you think might be happening. That sounds like what we’re supposed to be doing.

If there is a belief or a hope or an expectation – be it implicit or explicit – that seems like something we want to get to in research.

Of course there’s a ludicrous way to do that. “Don’t you agree that it’s better now that we have this feature located in this part of the UI?”

That’s a biased form of inquiry, that’s almost abusive of your power. But trying to understand someone’s framework, expectations, preferences, experiences, mental model, etc. from an open and curious point of view, and having that curiosity informed by what you have been already considering about the problem space, sounds like good research to me.

You writings and talks have been a big influence on many folks working in the area of UX – but who are your influences and inspiration, and why? [Rob Whiting]

Our field is packed solid with great people. I keep thinking about some of the over achievers I get to meet and how accomplished they are.

I love Jess McMullin, he is one of the first people to start doing civic design, like YEARS ago, before it became such a big thing in so many parts of the world.

I am a big fan of Allan Chochinov (he wrote the foreword to Doorbells, Danger and Dead Batteries). He started a graduate program in design at SVA in NYC, called Products of Design that kind of takes a big picture look at what design can do. Mentor, friend, inspires me.

I think Kevin Hoffman is really inspiring. Funny, passionate about pop culture and knows everything, cares about people. His book about meetings is going to come out soon (I can say I saw the cover and it looks really cool).

It’s horrible to try and pick people as I’m using recency to come up with a list.

I’m trying to get user testing ingrained into my company’s process but it’s a struggle. It always seem to be the first element dropped when budgets are tight. Any advice on keeping it a part of the process? [Mike Mellor]

I think you’ve got the #1 FAQ about research… that it isn’t supported. I don’t think there’s a stock answer though. But you might wonder – or seek to understand – why is it being dropped? And why was it even being proposed or considered in the first place?

I mean, it’s one thing to say there’s no budget or time… but if someone chose to put it in to begin with, there was a narrative about its value.

If one could understand that better, one could propose an alternative or advocate, with a bit more information. I’m sure there’s some Rhetorical Studies model here I’m not expressing well, but understanding your adversary’s objections seems like one possible persuasive technique.

I’ve long said don’t advocate for the process “we have to do research” but for the outcomes “we have to make sure we understand this issue or this consequence will happen.”

IU059: Figure 9.4

IU060: Figure 9.5

If you want to get into a discussion of timing, you can use the above diagrams as inspiration – lets say the top one is sort of my gold standard, here’s what it takes to do it “all” – but if you want to do it more quickly, here’s how it’s going to look – it may be more or less appropriate but that way you can have a discussion about tradeoffs.

If we only have a day to find participants, for example, then we can’t be too picky, we can’t go beyond who we know right now at this moment. Maybe that’s sufficient.

So even though your question was about doing it – or not doing it – I think looking at ranges of commitments – where zero is in that range – and encouraging reflection on trade-offs – could be good. It’s not about what YOU need, it’s about what the work requires. So don’t take it on yourself. “I’m not allowed” “they won’t let me” – it’s about us, about our shared goal and your expert advice about how to reach that goal.

I’m wondering what strategies and methods you use to analyse data from your interviews. Would you recap after each interview and write down your observations when they are still fresh and then wait for all of them to be over to listen to transcripts? [Edyta Niemyjska]

You describe my preference pretty well. I separate the “processing the experience” and “processing the data.”

After an interview, I might do a debrief worksheet – but typically not. But at the end of each day, I write up a VERY quick paragraph or two about the interviews we’ve done.

It’s meant to be a storytelling exercise, it’s a forced analysis (take a large thing and pull out some smaller bits) – and it shares the fieldwork with the rest of the team. Here is a PERSON, they have a NAME, they own a THING, they told us an EXPERIENCE. So it helps me make a first pass at distilling and it gets people to think about these real actual people really quickly.

It’s not field notes.

I try to do it in just a few minutes, and do it stream of consciousness.

When we’re done with fieldwork, I like to sort of collate, very quickly pull together a topline – here’s what we think we’re hearing., what did you all think, what did you all hear. We started with questions and we have some thoughts, we have some weak signals, we have some things we’re excited about. Nothing about what to DO with this info, just where we’re at, at the moment.

And then, finally, let’s dig into the transcripts and see what actually happened.

What is the most effective way to ask simple questions to better understand where our users are coming from? Often, the users are ill at ease and want to “help” or are simply biased so they muddle the actual answer. [Karunakar Rayker]

Part of your question is about building rapport. People are often ill at ease at the beginning of a session. They want to do a good job and they don’t really understand what is going on, I mean not to be patronizing, they understand, but they don’t “get” what this exchange is meant to cover.

It’s one reason why super short interviews are challenging because it’s hard to get to a point in the relationship where you have established a smooth dialogue, where the person is not only comfortable but excited, reflective. That takes time, sometimes a huge amount of time – and people are unique, and the way we find a connection is unique to the combination of them and us.

The ways we have to contact with people ahead of time – before the interview – can be rapport builders. Maybe we have a quick phone call and let them ask any questions. Maybe we give them an exercise so we can see something about them. Exercises also prime people – it engages them in thinking about the topic so when we meet they aren’t coming up to it raw and fresh and new, it gets them involved.

Sometimes we make sure in our recruiting process that we screen out people who aren’t already meeting a certain comfort level – “the articulation screen” – if the person can’t answer a question from the recruiter (tell us about a recent experience you had going to the movies) for a few sentences, then they may not be the best participant for the study.

But assuming they are “articulate” – they may not be comfortable. So our job is to keep listening, to keep affirming. I do NOT mean “okay great! Cool! Wow!” etc. I mean listening, I mean, asking follow up questions, expressing interest, validating that their point of view is important because you give it time – that’s a harder way to validate the person because you want to do MORE, but when you do that enthusiastic thing you are actually pushing them to perform for you.

Finally, when you have an uncomfortable person YOU feel uncomfortable, you are sensitive to the cues that this person is feeling weird and I should probably do something different or leave. What if you could ignore those cues – which are about YOUR feelings? And just keep listening and focusing on them?

Can you share examples of what type of exercises you have the user complete when connecting with them prior to an interview? [Anne Jackson]

Come up with something that seems relevant, and so many different ways to go about it. But an approach can be ask them to take a picture of two different things, and send the pictures along with an explanation. Two, because it’s about examples of contrast.

Send us a picture of something in your neighbourhood that you think adds value to the experience people who live there have. And explain why. And send us a picture of something that detracts from the experience.

Send us something you’ve organized well. Send us something you wish was more organized.

These are kind of digging into the theme you suspect the session will get into.

The interview kicks off by getting them to tell you that story again!

It could be fill out a form and give a couple of examples, but the photo stuff can be fun. A screen shot, even.

I am currently in the process of introducing a lot of PMs and Engineers to customer interviews. We are also training a few younger designers to talk to their target users.

What are some basic strategies and tips to keep in mind when introducing non UX researchers to UX research? [Nachi Ramanujam]

I write – well, scribble – on the paper. I might draw a big circle around the quote that is interesting and then write my own thoughts, “Why does she do this” or “they don’t have alignment between their goals and their choices” etc.

This formative UX study is a bit more tactical but might be really helpful – it’s so well explained (not specifically transcripts but at least about analysis in general – I think less about synthesis – where we take small bits and put them into new ideas and frameworks – which is what I think we do with the big mess of annotations I’m producing).

My consulting guide to fieldwork is a one or two pager that is meant to help people do well when they are joining in (NOT LEADING) user research interviews. It is the most boiled down set of points I have. I think it’s like anything, the more you put in, the more you get out.

Here’s a 40 minute presentation that is about doing research. Do they have 40 minutes? https://portigal.com/speaking/ has a bunch of links to past talks so you can see where there are videos and slide decks.

I also do a workshop where I ask people to interview each other and then reflect on what worked and what did not work. Practice – in a safe place – not on a work problem but on a practice problem.

Listen to Steve on the Aurelius podcast

I had a great chat with Zack Naylor about user research for the Aurelius podcast. We talked about

  • Why you should be doing [more] user research
  • How to convince your stakeholders that user research is important
  • 3 approaches to building brilliant products and features (and which one is best)
  • Convincing your stakeholders and leaders to do (more) user research
  • What is a user research process to make sure you’re learning the right things
  • The difference between research analysis and research synthesis

It’s posted here and embedded below

Alexandra’s War Story: When One Door Closes

Alexandra Wills is an ethnographer working at Fuse by Cardinal Health, an innovation center in Columbus, Ohio. She told this story on stage at Midwest UX 2017.

I’ll never forget when I did ethnographic research for a project aimed at helping a car manufacturer learn what Millennials with small children really needed.

The project was hard. Taking on a project at the height of the Great Recession meant navigating a radical change in client engagement from what I had experienced since starting the work two years prior. “It’s Friday at 5 p.m. in Ohio and you want me in Los Angeles on Monday?” Okay. “We’re doing video diaries and in-home interviews and a post-interview ideation session with participants in two cities, all in two months?” Okay.

Added to all that, I had a nine-month-old and simply didn’t want to leave her for days at a time. Over the past few months of work, I had already breast pumped on an airplane and in dirty airport bathrooms. I had already begged flight attendants and fast food workers for ice to put in the cooler carrying pouches of my “liquid gold.” Did I mention it was my birthday?

At one point in the project, I was hanging out with a family in Austin who had a toddler. I knew nothing about toddlers. After all, I had a nine-month-old. Did I mention I am not a ‘kid person’?

We had just returned from running errands in their car. As we got out of the car, they were showing me some specific details about the vehicle. They had a Honda Element – the car with the interesting doors that open and close like a book. I was paying close, close attention to the parents and I had no idea that the little kid was right near me. So I closed the door. Suddenly, we all heard the kid screaming! His parents rushed to his side and looked him over, examining his hands. All I could do was yell impulsively, “I didn’t do it!” I was horrified. I thought, “I hurt a child! This child! A participant’s child! Oh noooooo this is bad. How am I going to fix this? What am I going to tell Melinda (my boss)?” To this day I don’t know if his finger got caught in the door, or if me closing the door just scared him.

There was no blood, no broken fingers. But inside, I wanted to die. I already felt plagued by my own mommy guilt and that feeling spread throughout my body like lava. So, not only did I feel like a horrible mom for leaving my kid, but here I was in Austin, making someone else’s kid cry. What a moment. Needless to say, any rapport I had developed in my time with the family evaporated in that instant.

I stopped recording, stepped back, apologized to the mom and waited for the parents to finish calming down their kid. I waited for them to say, “This is over.” They didn’t. Miraculously, they continued the interview, even if I could feel all their judgment the entire time as we wrapped things up. “Maybe I didn’t traumatize this family,” I thought insecurely.

The icing on the cake was that we used video to capture all our data, so not only did this happen, but my boss got to see the whole thing when she reviewed the video. Later in the project I mentioned the incident and she said, “Yeah I saw that.”

Joel’s War Story: From Moscow with Love

Joel Kashuba has practiced design for nearly two decades, with a career spanning the practices of architecture, industrial design, branding, UX, and innovation consulting. He currently leads the Innovation & Design functions for Fifth Third Bank located in Cincinnati, Ohio. He told this story on stage at Midwest UX 2017.

While working for a major CPG company I was placed with a cross-functional innovation team assigned to write and vet concepts that would take a well-known women’s shaving brand into several other personal care categories. The focus was on serving the needs of young women in several BRIC countries. The theme we had been asked to unlock was “A Day at the Spa” – a theme the company had uncovered in earlier research within the United States and projected as a fruitful area to mine for opportunities and frame our expansion.

Before going out into the field – specifically, to Moscow – the project team undertook countless hours of concept writing sessions, often with heavily resourced vendor partners. We created roughly 25 concepts, each taking unique inspiration from the theme “A Day at the Spa”. Armed with our concepts we set off to Russia and began collaborating with consumers in the field to vet each concept.

By the noon on the first day, none of our concepts were resonating and we recognized our first challenge. The translator we had been assigned by a local agency was an older Russian gentleman who sounded much like a James Bond villain. As he readied each of our painstakingly word-smithed concepts, they each ended up sounding like the dastardly ideas of a dour old man who may like to cross-dress. To fix this, we recruited a spritely young woman who worked as an assistant concierge at our hotel to read the concepts. She was great! Several of our consumers even mentioned that she had the perfect voice for commercials in this category.

Despite this change, our concepts still weren’t hitting the mark we were aiming for and we couldn’t figure out why. These concepts had been exceptionally well received in our early test back in the States – what was going on here in Moscow that made them such tankers?

Finally, near the morning of day three, one of our consumers asked us plainly, “Why are you trying to make me feel old?”

“Old?” we asked her with sincere confusion, “Can you say more? Is there something in the concepts that makes you feel old?”

“Yes,” she quickly retorted, “you keep talking to me about spending a day at the spa.”

“And what does that mean to you?” we had our translator ask her.

She looked surprised and a little pissed off. She explained, “It means the place we send our grandmothers when they are too old to take care of in their homes. It’s the place people go before they die.”

It hit us like a ton of bricks. In Russian culture, a “spa” is what we’d call a retirement home. As we had been pulling out concept after concept trying to get these young women to fall in love with our theme, all they saw was of tone-deaf Americans shoving the idea of products for a retirement home down their throats.

We were horrified. We called off the rest of the day’s consumers and stayed up all night re-writing the concepts. The young concierge we had hired to translate became an adjunct team member. Constrained by time, we changed our strategy and turned consumer research into consumer co-creation. We had consumers work in teams to read and re-write the concepts, which were passed along to other teams of consumers to be refined. By the time we finished we had three great concepts that all resonated well.

Coming back to our home base, we reflected on the experience as a team. What we had set out to do was valid, but how we remained nimble in the field is what made the clear difference in how we would found success.

Nadav’s War Story: Baptism by Tears

Nadav Zohar is a UX researcher at AEP in Columbus, OH.

My first ever user research project was for a healthcare app. Our users were nurses who work with poor and high-risk patients, often called “the under-served.” My supervisor and I had a reserved conference room at the client’s site, and our pre-scheduled users rotated in about one per hour. It was a grueling two days of nonstop interviews. For the first day I took notes while my supervisor moderated.

On the second day, after he moderated the first couple of interviews, my supervisor turned to me and asked if I thought I was ready to take the lead on the next one. I said “Sure” so he handed me the discussion guide. In came our next user, a middle-aged nurse who was very sweet and eager to help us in any way she could. This was my very first user interview and I was ready for a clean, uneventful affair.

As the questions on my discussion guide turned to the technological hurdles she encounters when helping her patients, her frustration mounted. At one point, while discussing how her technology failed to help her manage the stress of the enormous workload placed on her and her colleagues, she mentioned having lost a patient. I watched her relive that pain – she broke down and started sobbing. None of the other users we’d talked to had even come close to that kind of emotional response, even though some of them had lost patients too.

Right then and there I learned there’s an awkward balance between not wanting to seem clinical and cold at that crucial moment, but still wanting to preserve an interviewee’s dignity: I figured weeping in front of strangers at work must be somewhat embarrassing. So I bowed my head and looked down at my notes, or my lap, or at nothing in particular, to give the crying nurse a bit of privacy. I waited a few sobs so it didn’t seem like I was trying to shut her up, and then I warmly and gracefully offered her a box of tissues. I let her know I empathized with her pain (although looking back on it I don’t see how I really could have…but my empathy felt genuine anyway) and she eventually calmed down and we finished out the interview. After that, back at the office I was jokingly known as the guy to call in to make people cry.

I think I deal fairly well with very emotional user research situations and over my career I’ve learned they are not uncommon, but it was interesting to have one right off the bat.

Emily’s War Story: Getting To The Point

Emily Mayfield (Twitter, LinkedIn) is a User Experience Researcher at The Kroger Co. in Cincinnati, OH.

Before my current job, I spent six months in Bangalore, India, doing research for a lab that was part of a design school in the northern part of the city. I did not drive while I was in India – I took public transportation and little “autos,” which resemble a golf cart in terms of size and a lawnmower in terms of sound. At that time Uber was barred from India. The driving style in Bangalore struck me as very different from the States: sometimes the traffic lights/stop signs are ignored, sometimes drivers go well beyond oncoming traffic lanes, sometimes when a freeway exit is missed drivers throw their cars into reverse on the freeway. I saw enough daily to get my heart pumping.

I was doing research to understand what the notion of “smart city” might mean in India? As part of the research, I made cold calls to different innovation centers and companies, setting up expert interviews that would inform the research. I learned a lot about how companies had explored the concept of “smartness” in cities. In retrospect, the interview part was easy. Finding the location of the interviews was the challenge.

I had a smart phone. I had a camera. I took photos of the locations on Google maps on my computer or on my phone in case the connection on my phone was lost or hiccuping. One time, I got on the bus headed south and rode it two hours deep into the city to a neighborhood I was unfamiliar with. I hopped off when it seemed like I was close to where I needed to be. There was a queue of auto drivers at the bus stop. I showed my phone and camera screens, with their neat pin-point of my destination on the digital map, to the first driver in the queue. I showed him the address: a building number and street name. The driver waved me in. “No problem!” I thought to myself. I smiled and held on tight to my bag and the rail of the auto. We were off! Turning and bending through little streets and big ones, weaving in between cars and buses. We flew past people crossing the street, animals doing the same, and carts selling food and tea. We drove and drove and drove some more. Minutes led to double-digits. The driver was flying…in what felt like circles. Checking the time, I thought “Oh boy…”

Eventually the driver pulled over to ask other auto drivers for help finding the location. Local folks came to help. A cop or some kind of military person joined in the effort. The mass of people tried to help, pointing around like the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz guessing all directions to try next. They discussed, pointed, checked and double-checked the address and the maps. At last I got a solid idea: I called my interviewee and he chatted with the driver. We met in a place that the driver could find and then I walked with the interviewee to the building together.

Afterwards, a colleague let me know that the European conventions of maps as we know them don’t make sense to some people in India who have never seen a map in that form. Also, Bangalore is constantly changing, adding streets and changing names of streets. Later on I learned that landmarks are the way to go, as well as calling people sooner rather than later. Still, the worst case scenario was handing my phone to friendly-looking strangers to communicate with a driver when I’m really lost and it worked. A quick shout out to the kind and patient people of Bangalore: Thank you for your constant help getting me to and fro!

Side note: It’s possible my geographical difficulty is just a me thing. More than once I’ve gone to conduct research at the wrong Kroger store on the same street here in Cincinnati!

Krispian’s War Story: If Texas and England Had a Baby

Krispian Emert has over 12 years experience working in UX. She has worked all over the world: for startups, agencies, and companies like Microsoft, The NFL, Thompson Reuters, ING, etc. Currently, she is lead UX Researcher at TELUS digital. She told this story live at Radical Research Summit.

It was my first field study at my new job in Sydney, Australia. I had just uprooted my family and flown to the other side of the world to work for Australia’s largest user experience consultancy. Did I want to do a good job? You bet. Was I nervous? Hell, yes!

I had had a couple of weeks to settle in and explore the city, and to get to know my colleagues. My impression of Australian culture was that it was surprisingly similar to Canadian culture: We both have the Queen on our money, we both drink copious amounts of beer, and we both say “no worries” a lot. The only glaring difference I was able discern up to that point was that for a casual greeting Canadians asked “How’s it going?” and Australians asked, “How’re you going?” So I had experienced little culture shock thus far.

The assignment was for one of the big banks. We were to conduct contextual field studies in the moment while people used the bank’s ATMs. The only problem was that due to privacy constraints we had to recruit people just as they were about to use the ATM. This was made more challenging because the bank gave us very little in the way of official ID.

This meant that I, an extra polite Canadian, was nervously approaching busy Australians and anxiously stammering the first few sentences of my recruitment spiel. To say that I got turned down by my prospective interviewees is an understatement. The fact that I didn’t look “official” or in any way affiliated with the bank made me seem suspect at best, and criminal at worst. ATM users glared at me as though I were panhandling, and time after time, I was told to “Fuck off!”. I was worried that I wouldn’t complete the assignment. I needed 10 participants and after two hours I had exactly none.

As I stood in the street in Sydney, miles from home, failing to secure participants and on the receiving end of some choice language, I had a “Dorothy moment.” I was not in Canada anymore. Despite my initial impression that our countries were similar, I was in whole new culture – one where people were not afraid to say the F-word to a complete stranger. I realized I had to stop assuming people would stop and politely listen to my lengthy recruitment pitch, and that I had to just accept Australians for what they were – blunt and direct. I changed my approach, and went up to prospective participants boldly, waving my gift cards at them. I shortened my pitch to state only the benefits of participating in the research. This produced much better results.

They say that if Texas and England had a baby, it would be Australia. After this experience, I grew to appreciate the unique Australian culture of “wild west gunslinger meets cricket games and meat pies.”

And despite our differences, I guess we’re pretty similar after all.

Billy Eichner on Interviewing

In this interview with Billy Eichner he articulates a beautiful principle of successful interviewing (even though his show features “interviews” that are over-the-top aggro street-intercepts)

Q: What makes a good interview for you?
A: I might have jokes in my head, but the best interactions come when I listen to the person’s response. I let go of whatever my plan might have been, and I meet this person where they are, and I let them lead me wherever they want to go, to a certain extent. It always bothers me when I watch interviews — even serious ones on a news program — and there are no follow-up questions, and the journalist sticks to their plan, and they don’t let the conversation guide them.

Steve in conversation with What Users Do

What Users Do has published our conversation about user research and war stories. Below is a tiny excerpt but please read the whole thing here.

Your book ‘Doorbells, Danger and Dead Batteries’ is a collection of war stories from the world of user research, collected from real life researchers. Are there common themes between the stories?

That’s how the book is structured, actually. Each of the 11 chapters considers a particular theme, something that is of particular challenge to researchers. Some of these are obvious (such as participants we have problems with, or the potential to end up in a dangerous situation) and some are less obvious (encountering not-safe-for-work content in the field, or dealing with our own emotions as well as those of our participants). The chapters begin with an essay by me, include a handful of different stories about the theme, and then wrap up with takeaways that researchers can use to develop their own practice.

You say that improving research skills is about coming to grips with our own ‘flawed humanity’ – how so?

Pulling off a research program is an enormous logistics exercise. Coordinating materials, participants, times, locations, stakeholders, incentives, recording equipment, and on and on. When you work inside a commercial enterprise, there’s a desire to optimize processes, create spreadsheets, build checklists, summarize objectives, deliver key takeaways, etc. But the truth we may forget is that research is an activity that researchers perform with participants. People who make mistakes, people who come to the session with something else going on in their lives, people who have emotions, people who have different verbal abilities, people who have different expectations of the session, and on and on it goes.

While the optimizing efforts are important, these will always be person-to-person interactions. You can fight that and always be frustrated or stressed or disappointed, or you can embrace that as part of the joy of doing research and a source for richer learning. Learning to overcome the pull of frustration and to find a way to actually embrace it is where we can personally grow in our practices.

A user research reading (listening/watching) list

I’m in Chattanooga today, teaching the students at Center Centre today (and tomorrow) about ethnographic research.

In preparation for the class, they asked me to put together a list of readings, so I pulled together a bunch of links that I’d posted in the last few months, some of them on this blog but mostly on the Portigal LinkedIn page. I’m sharing the list below.

Listen to Steve on the Design Your Thinking podcast

I had a fantastic conversation with Karthik of the Design Your Thinking podcast, posted in two separate episodes.

The first episode is Problem Space vs. Solution Space

Listen at that link, or here, or embedded below

The second episode is Master The Art Of Listening

Listen at that link, or here, or embedded below

Joe’s War Story: Clean Break

Joe Moran is a product research scientist at Cogito Corporation in Boston, a startup using AI to decode emotion from voice.

Working as an applied cognitive scientist, I was in the field at Fort Bragg, NC, embedded with an airborne military unit. Our group was tasked with learning about typical soldier maneuvers and the surrounding culture. A few of us (along with a couple of ex-Army handlers) had been invited to watch a “movement-to-contact” drill. This is where a single squad marches to an agreed-upon point, followed by a simulated firefight. I thought this was to be a straightforward observation; it turned out to be a learning experience punctuated by hubris, initiation, and a broken bone.

I had failed to realise what “movement-to-contact” really meant. Assuming we would be safe behind glass surveying a sanitised battlefield, I was wearing a thin jacket, jeans, and decidedly flimsy sneakers. We arrived at the agreed upon start point, and I quickly realised that we were in for a full-on march through woods with no trails (and since it was winter, the ground was muddy and slippery). Nevertheless, I was in reasonably good shape, and confident that I could keep up. After all, how hard it could be to walk and observe at the same time?

I strode off to follow the soldiers. The squad realised we were in tow, and decided to set a pretty quick pace to show us where we belonged; while the officers had brought us in, the rank and file didn’t seem to have much need for us. No matter, we were not weighed down by heavy gear, and we could keep up, even if it meant breaking into a jog every now and then. As we marched along, I managed to get some great photographs of the soldiers in action. After a while, we came upon a small ravine, eight feet wide, with the side nearest us having two ledges that each descended about four feet. The soldiers marched right across, and we soon followed. I stepped down off the first ledge, directly into soft ground and slid down on my butt those four feet. I got right up, and dusted myself off, wiping my hands on my jacket. I looked down and saw my left little finger pointed about 20 degrees off to the left. It was clearly dislocated, and I was clearly past “observation.”

At this point, every fibre in my British being was telling me to keep calm and carry on, ‘tis just a flesh wound. I covered the offending appendage in a coat sleeve and thrust out my other hand for a lift up and out of the ravine. I continued on the march, but soon it was clear this situation was untenable. Either I could continue protecting my darkening finger from catching against anything unruly and risk breaking it, or I could call for help, bring the whole exercise to a crashing halt, and end up branded as the scientist who ruined the researchers’ privileges during our very first observation.

I decided to flag down one of our handlers, who had been a medic. He gave me the classic “Look away, this is going to hurt me more than it does you!”, snapped it back into place, taped it up, and I continued with the observation. I was able to observe the rest of the movement-to-contact, and learned a lot about how this group works.

But this was only day one of a planned five-day trip! If I went to the Army medic, I risked being sent home and unable to complete the research. When I showed the unit commander my injury, he winced, laughed, and gave a broad smile welcoming me to the unit. By seeking treatment in a way that did not impact the mission, I gained the trust of the commander, and our group was invited back for many subsequent observations, leading to lots of fruitful observations about all aspects of the unit’s work.

I got an X-ray when I got home and unfortunately my finger was worse than merely dislocated: there was a clean break through the proximal phalange. Next time I showed up to Bragg, my finger was in a cast after surgery, and the soldiers got a good laugh at the return of “that guy”. From this experience I learned to (a) prepare for the unexpected, (b) not be be headstrong and charge in when I’m not prepared, and (c) improvise quickly when thing do not go to plan!

Have A Nice Day

I’ve just published Have A Nice Day as part of The Human In The Machine, a series about productivity. Excerpted below, but check out the whole piece here.

I interviewed a young couple who were both working in corporate sales (for different companies) out of their shared home office. The goal of this research project was to understand how people worked, outside of traditional offices. I had my own assumptions about what we’d learn, expecting stories about people folding laundry while they were on the call with a colleague (In fact, we met one woman who described being on a web-based teleconference from her laptop while she drove her child to after-school activities). But this couple had a particular approach: they went into the home office at 9 am and focused only on their work, until 5 pm (with a break for lunch). They deliberately maintained a firewall between their work environment (and the associated tasks) and the rest of their lives. This took intentionality and focus.

In this interview, the husband explained to us that he begins every day by making a list of what he wants to accomplish. Beyond managing his productivity, having this list meant he could tell if he had a good day!

The Turnaround is a great new podcast that interviews interviewers

The Turnaround is a new podcast where interviewers are interviewed about interviewing. The episode with Audie Cornish is just fantastic. Anyone who is thinking about the interview (the mechanics, the preparation, the rapport, the search for the story, working against constraints) should listen at least to the first 50 minutes or so. I’m looking forward to hearing the rest of the series (but I’m also afraid that it can’t possibly live up to how great this interview is!).

A partial transcript – just the highlights – is here

Because I know the conversation will be edited down, I don’t necessarily have the luxury to go on a fishing expedition. So I often write my questions in advance wherever possible. I rewrite and noodle around with the language even though I know for fact I won’t necessarily read it word for word. And I always have more questions than I need. In fact my poor producers and editors always see me coming in with like a long script, and then I’ll say, “Let’s put a star next to the things that actually matter.” Like, even though I have 15 questions. Because I want to make sure I at least get the things we absolutely know we want to ask, even if they don’t yield great answers. It’s not that I run out of things to ask, you know what I mean? It’s more that I have occasionally, where you just like flip over the paper, and you’re just having a good conversation, and one thing leads to another and things can go very easily. When in doubt, I often say something, like, very straightforward, and this is directly from the Sound Reporting handbook. You know… “What haven’t I asked that I should have? What’s something you wish people would ask you that they never do?” Like, people oftentimes have an answer for that.

Elizabeth’s War Story: Nail Polish for Insights

Elizabeth Chesters is a UX consultant based in London, who volunteers for organizations like EmpowerHack and CodeFirst:Girls. She told this story live at User Research London. Update: the video is here.

I volunteer for EmpowerHack, an organisation dedicated to building technical solutions for refugees. When I joined in 2016, I was working on a project called HaBaby; a mobile app that stores medical records of pregnant refugees and offers symptom cards to help them communicate with doctors. Throughout my time volunteering, I noticed a lot of barriers. One of the biggest was that a lot of people in the organisation did not understand refugees! Many had never spoken to an actual refugee, which led to some wild assumptions (such as how some women had got pregnant or the age they would typically marry).

In April 2016 my team member and I planned a trip to the refugee camps in France. We did not feel comfortable turning up as researchers, as our digital skills didn’t directly help refugees or fit the environment. They needed houses, not interviews. Our plan was to spend as much time as possible observing, in order to better understand issues refugees faced. Our research would then be reported back to the organisation, validating our ideas about what it means to be a refugee and our technical solutions.

The first visit where we were able to talk with refugees was at the Dunkirk camp. Dunkirk was a much cleaner camp than one of the other camps we had been to, The Jungle in Calais. My team member and I met with a volunteer and a group of refugees who were working on an open-source map project. After introductions, we quickly gained the trust of a refugee, who I’ll call “Zach”. We went to his cabin, met the temporary family he had made in the camp and mentioned that we were in the camps to do research.

We walked around the camp, and came across a group of three mothers who were sitting outside with their babies. By the time we communicated to Zach what we were trying to do, so that he could translate for mothers, it was raining. The women looked at us and stood up, gripping their children. Zach explained that the women would not talk to us without trading for makeup. We were testing an app, so we had nothing physical to give them. In the end they went inside to get out of the rain, and we had to walk away… though not without a few marriage proposals from passing men.

On our last day volunteering we were invited to help at a spa day for female refugees in The Jungle. Here we could get close to the women and ask questions in their safe space. This time we also brought makeup to exchange! We turned the top of a donated double-decker bus (with no seats) into a beauty room. Everyone relaxed, leaving their shoes downstairs. We laid out carpet, lined the windows with bunting, and scattered cushions around the room. My friend and I set up our nail polishing stations and settled in for a long day of painting nails.

Throughout the day we were able to meet refugees and ask questions. The women were from all around the world, with the majority from Eritrea, Syria and Afghanistan. Sadly conversations did not flow as well as expected, partly due to my inability to paint nails. Most seemed unamused at my efforts. So, I spent most of my time redoing the same nails and ensuring we still had enough polish for women who would come later.

Halfway through the day journalists from Grazia, a fashion magazine turned up to interview volunteers and refugees about the spa day. They made no effort to ask for help to translate questions. The more questions the journalists asked, the more you could see the women retreat into themselves.

By the end of the day we had no makeup left. I had a makeover done by a little girl and looked like I had two black eyes. My friend also had a bright red face, due to being sat on and having her eyebrows threaded by an Iranian beautician. I walked down to the bottom deck of the bus, to an empty box of shoes. After scanning the whole bottom deck, it became apparent that I no longer had shoes. The other volunteers helped me find something I could wear temporarily. We found a pair of silver slip-on shoes. They were slightly too small, so I had to stand on the back on them. Someone reassured me that I could go to the warehouse to pick a donated pair that fit me. But when I walked outside, the woman we had arrived with (and her car) were gone, our passports along with her. We were now stranded in The Jungle, late in the day, with the warehouse an hour’s walk away. All I could do was pace up and down, frantically phoning volunteers who I knew were at the warehouse. I prayed the woman got my message to stay at the warehouse after dropping off other volunteers, so we could retrieve our passports.

In the end we were rescued by a volunteer called “Superman John”. He drove us back to the warehouse which housed the donations, so we could get our passports back and I could pick out some shoes that fit. I have never been so happy to see that little red book!

Kristina’s War Story: Trampoline Spies

Kristina Lustig is a researcher at Stack Overflow, and is currently based in London. She told this story live at User Research London. Update: the video is here.

Last year, I was in Bangkok with eight members of my product team. For our research, we planned to speak with people who we saw taking videos with their smart phones. We split into a few groups, each with their own interpreters. My group tried – and failed – to find people at an open-air market or around a couple of malls before we got the idea to look for parents taking videos of their children. Our interpreter, Kay, in a flash of genius, suggested that we’d probably see a lot of this behavior at a trampoline park, so off we went.

After riding several long thin escalators far into the interior of an extremely large mall, we arrived at the trampoline park and bought our tickets. Before we went in, we put on the mandatory lime green sticky socks and neon pink wristbands.

Now, I’ve done a good bit of international research in questionable situations, but at this point, this was the strangest research situation I’d been in. Let me paint the picture for you: two white people in business casual with neon pink wristbands and lime green sticky socks, holding notebooks, accompanied by our Thai interpreter, all wandering through a trampoline park full of Thai parents and children. On the 700th floor of an upscale mall on a Wednesday morning.

But really, it was also a research goldmine! We found many mothers with their smart phones out, filming their children. We spent about 30 minutes chatting as casually as possible with a few different women. We learned a lot about how they shared videos on social media. Then we were approached by a trampoline park employee. She began speaking with Kay, and although we couldn’t understand a word, we watched as Kay moved from confident to concerned and finally to incredulous.

As Kay translated for us, the employee was concerned that we could be spies from a rival trampoline park, or that we were we attempting to sell these women passes to a rival trampoline park!

Kay explained to the trampoline park employee that we were from a big company in the US and that we weren’t selling anything, but she didn’t believe us. We gave her our business cards (with potentially impressive or reassuring titles like “UX Researcher” and “Product Designer”) but no dice. She started to kick us out of the trampoline park, but in a last ditch effort, we asked “Well, can we just… stay and jump?”

So, we didn’t get to do too much research, but we did spend a lot of time bouncing around under that employee’s watchful anti-research eye. We observed as much as we could, while bouncing. In retrospect, we probably should have cleared our research with the trampoline park beforehand…but any research endeavor that starts with intercepts and ends with extreme trampolining is a win in my book.

Wisdom from “The Americans”

On the season finale of The Americans, there’s a bit of a post-mortem (so to speak) on a mission, including this bit of dialog

The people back home who aren’t in the field, sometimes they get what we do and sometimes they don’t. But when you’re in the field you have to make split-second decisions. You don’t always have the luxury of thinking things through every time…it’s important to be honest about mistakes. But acknowledging them doesn’t always keep them from happening again.

Obviously they are referencing a different sort of fieldwork. But the lesson applies, nonetheless. For more on this theme, check out my new book Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries: User Research War Stories.

Steve’s War Story: Details Disconnect

This story was originally published on behalf of The Field Study Handbook.

Last year I was working on a project for a financial technology client. Finding participants is often a challenge, but on this project, for small business owners, it was particularly difficult.

We had hoped to base this research on previous studies, but it proved difficult to glean details about how previous studies were done. There were rumors that another team, elsewhere in the country, had developed a segmentation algorithm, but voicemails and emails went unanswered. We heard about great participants from previous studies that we should revisit, but no one would get back to us. The schedule ticked by and the pressure mounted. In the end, we were left with no choice to work around these limitations. Finally, I began to approach recruiting agencies.

My go-to recruiting team refused to take the assignment on as they had, ironically, recruited for one of these previous studies and felt like they had tapped out the local market. Another company had gone out of business, and a third didn’t think they could accomplish the recruit.

I ended up with a recruiter I had never worked with. In the end, I think they did a good job, but a new relationship added stress to the increasingly complex recruiting process.

In our introductory call, one of our recruits expressed surprise and concern that there would two of us visiting his very small office. We eventually agreed that even though it might be cramped, it would be okay. The recruiting agency, when asked about this disconnect, reassured me that they made it clear, as per my instructions, that there would be two of us. I was confused, as the participant had insisted they had never told him anything about this.

Later that day I got an email from the participant, who sought reassurance about the purpose of the interview. He had clicked on my website (seen in my email signature) and was concerned that I was actually going to be pitching him my services. He had been involved in a focus group through this agency before, and presumed this would be something similar. I confirmed that this was not a sales pitch.

A few days later we met with him in his exceptionally cramped one-person workspace. As the interview unfolded, he abruptly stopped and directly, yet politely expressed confusion and discomfort about the interview itself. Why were we asking these questions? Who do we represent? How are we going to use this information?

It took a long, unhurried conversation about the process and our objectives to put him at ease. We resumed the interview and learned a great deal about his truly amazing businesses, past, present, and future.

I emphasize his politeness in stopping the interview, because now, when I go back to the transcript, that’s what I see. But at that time, sitting in that interview, it didn’t feel that way. It felt aggressive and angry and I spent the remainder of the interview feeling uncertain about our rapport. I overcompensated with excessive deference, people-pleasing, and probably flattery. That’s not a comfortable feeling and it’s not conducive to a good interview. I have empathy for someone feeling uncomfortable about something as odd as two strangers with a video camera coming into their office space to ask about their professional history. It’s easy to mischaracterize people that don’t “get it” as difficult. And I assume that I am pretty good at managing expectations at all the common points of failure in establishing rapport.

But boy it’d be nice if we had someone to blame. That guy was a jerkface! The recruiter didn’t do their job (and then lied and insisted they did!). Steve didn’t handle the first call or the interview kickoff properly! Yet it doesn’t seem like any of these are true.

While I felt sheepish at the end of the interview, I was surprised to get a LinkedIn request from the participant immediately afterwards. And, I guess, less surprised when I heard from him a few times weeks later about not receiving his incentive payment (This was one of the very few studies where I asked the agency to send checks after the interview was completed, rather than handing people the incentive directly myself. Mistake? I don’t know). When I followed up with the recruiter about the missing incentive, I heard in some detail how this participant had already called and yelled at the admin staff.

And so it goes.

Making an Impact with UX Research Insights

I wrote a short piece for UX Mastery about ensuring the results of user interviews have the most impact. I’ve included an excerpt below, but you should read the whole piece here.

In your analysis, how do you decide what’s important?

Take time at the beginning of the research to frame the problem. Where did this research initiate? What hypotheses – often implicit ones – do stakeholders have? What business decisions will be made as a result of this research?

What research reveals doesn’t always fit into the structure that is handed to you ahead of time, so knowing what those expectations are can help you with both analysis and communication. Some things are important to understand because they’re part of the brief. But other things are going to emerge as important because as you spend time with your conclusions you realise “Oh this is the thing!”

Why you should encourage bad ideas in your organization

In this article by Jon Strande, he riffs on my Power of Bad Ideas talk and then throws in a bunch of other frameworks and references around creativity and innovation. It’s a quick and inspiring read.

Why you should encourage bad ideas in your organization One of the things that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is idea generation, especially related to how large companies innovate. I bet more than half the articles I’ve saved in Pocket are in some way related to bringing great ideas to life in this world (the other half are about Ponies… just kidding… the other half are about really technical topics, I am still a geek at heart).

Museum of Failure

Opening next month in Helsingborg, Sweden.

Museum of Failure is a collection of interesting innovation failures. The majority of all innovation projects fail and the museum showcases these failures to provide visitors a fascinating learning experience.
The collection consists of over sixty failed products and services from around the world. Every item provides unique insight into the risky business of innovation.

Samuel West from the "Museum of Failure" showing some epic product fails

Devika’s War Story: The Young Men Of Najafgarh

Devika Ganapathy is a design researcher and the founder of Anagram Research, a design research and usability consultancy located in Bangalore, India.

Last year, I was in Delhi doing fieldwork about a smartphone news app. The primary users for this study were male college students in their early 20s, who regularly read English news on their smartphones.

One of the participants scheduled for an interview lived in Najafgarh, a place I did not know much about. I checked on Google and what I found was not encouraging: it was more than an hour away from my hotel, near the Delhi-Haryana border (possibly even longer with traffic); It was also home to the Indian capital’s most polluted water body, the Najafgarh drain!

Meanwhile, the clients who were to have accompanied me on the interview dropped out at the last minute. I was apprehensive about travelling to Najafgarh and conducting the interview on my own. The state of Haryana is notorious for being lawless and is known to be particularly unsafe for women. Men from Haryana are stereotyped as aggressive and misogynistic. I wasn’t sure if they would be comfortable being interviewed by a lone woman. Moreover, the village of Dichaon where my participant lived is infamous for its ongoing gang wars.

Despite these initial concerns, I decided to go ahead with the interview. Realistically, how unsafe could a pre-arranged hour-long meeting be? At the worst, I thought that it might be a challenging interview to conduct, but felt I would be able to manage.

Driving into Najafgarh, we passed a dead cow lying on some rubbish on the side of the road. The city looked markedly different from urban Delhi – all the women I saw on the road were traditionally dressed, scooters and public transport prevailed rather than cars, and all vehicles on the roads were driven by men.

It was difficult to find the participant’s home, though I was on the phone with him, getting directions. There were hardly any significant landmarks to guide us. Eventually, my participant asked me to park near a huge open sewage drain – He would come and find me.

My heart sank as a particularly scruffy looking young man approached the car. He confirmed that I was the person he was looking for, and got into the front seat to direct the driver to his home. We meandered our way through narrow roads and a crowded marketplace and eventually reached our destination.

His home was a multi-story building in the midst of commercial establishments; So narrow that there was only about 1 room on each floor. The steep staircase was cemented but not tiled, it didn’t have any railings.

As I followed him up to the third floor I wondered if I was being foolhardy going into his house alone. Perhaps I should have asked my driver to accompany me? And even worse, I was skeptical that this guy read English news on his smartphone!

We finally reached the top, and the room did nothing to reassure me. There were a number of rough wooden benches (typical to Indian government schools) placed in rows. Sitting there waiting for us was a very snazzy young man, with a prominent pompadour and reflective sun glasses! He greeted me with a cheery “Hi Ma’am!”

I had to now quickly decide who to interview. The first young man was the one we had originally screened and recruited. He did not seem promising: he was very quiet, his English was sketchy and I doubted that he read English news on the phone.

On the other hand, the snazzy young man spoke good English and possibly read English news. But I wasn’t certain he was a primary user or even genuinely interested in the topic since we hadn’t screened him.

It turned out that they were cousins. When the snazzy one heard about the interview, it seemed that he decided his cousin was not cool enough to be interviewed. He said to me incredulously “Why would anyone want to talk to him when they could talk to me instead?”

I decided to stick with the guy I had originally recruited, but told the snazzy cousin he could sit in and speak up if he had something interesting to add.

This interview led to some of the richest insights for this study – Such as the aspirational aspects of reading English news, where reading local language news is seen as infra dig and can invite ridicule.

The time I spent getting to know these young men also put all stereotypical thoughts I had about them to shame. I eventually learned that the room we were in was a classroom and that they worked with other young men to tutor school kids in their area. Throughout our interview, the guy I had recruited looked after his sister’s toddler son while she was busy with chores around the house. When I was done with the interview, they insisted on waiting with me on the road till my driver came to pick me up, pointing out that it was “not a good area” for women to stand on the road unaccompanied.

This experience strongly reinforced the guidelines I always need to remind myself about, even after years of being a researcher: Never judge a book by it’s cover. Never be dismissive or judgmental. Openness can lead to the best insights.

David’s War Story: The Well-lit Redhead

David Bacon is a UX Designer at Telstra Health in Melbourne, Australia. He shared this story at the UX Melbourne Book Club (see video of the group discussion here).

Standing in front of a house in a quiet suburban street, my phone buzzed and a text from my note-taking partner popped up: “Sorry can’t make interview, something urgent has come up.” We had spent the past week researching allied health professionals who worked from home. This was the fifth or sixth interview, I doubted my colleague would be missing much. I knocked on the door. It opened and a burly man with a soft gaze greeted me in a thick German accent, “Hello, I’m Herman”.

Herman the German invited me inside and led me into his home office. Against the wall was a treatment table. Adjacent to that was a desk with a large computer monitor and in the middle of the room were two comfortable office chairs. Herman gestured for me to sit down and small talk commenced.

Herman had just returned from a visit to Germany and for the first time in nearly forty years he had visited his childhood home. Positive muttering and a small nod of my head was enough encouragement for Herman to spin his chair around and bring up holiday photos on the large monitor behind him. As he gave me a personal tour of castles, forests, and medieval villages, I started to become anxious. I didn’t have a lot of time and there was a lot of ground to cover. Yet Herman was so obviously pleased to be sharing these personal stories, I feared that interrupting the holiday slide show might sour his mood.

I asked Herman if he had studied in Germany before coming to Australia and with that, he turned his back on the computer and faced me. As Herman talked a screen saver flickered to life on the monitor behind him. Photos of forests and castles that would not have been out of place in a fairytale drifted by. Herman proved to be an insightful and honest interview subject.

After a few minutes of Q&A, the photos of natural beauties gave way to photos of natural beauties of another kind. A lovely brunette wearing just a smile drifted across the screen behind an oblivious Herman, who sat with his back to the screen. The images were like classic seventies centrefold pictures: soft focus, demure poses and wave perms. They were the kind of pictures a nosey younger brother would find hidden in his older brother’s bedroom.

As Herman spoke, brunette after brunette drifted behind him. My mind started to race, there was nothing in any how-to-interview-users blogs or books to prepare me for this. “Hey look, a redhead!” I thought to myself, losing some of my concentration.

I wanted to hit pause but I also wanted to keep the interview going, Herman was a great interview subject. To bring attention to this would cause immense embarrassment to this gentle man. What if he turned around? I didn’t know how much longer I could keep my focus. I have a terrible poker face.

“Hmm, that redhead is particularly well lit.”

When at last the castles reappeared on the monitor, my brain relaxed slightly. I asked Herman to show me an example of how he organised his notes on his computer. He spun around and showed me. I can’t remember much of what happened in the remainder of the interview. As Herman walked me out, I handed him his incentive and he invited me to come back anytime.

I walked to my car and collapsed into the seat. I had just survived a potentially awkward situation and importantly, I had not negatively impacted Herman. The relief was extraordinary. But there was this nagging thought. Had I really done the right thing? What if the well-lit redhead popped up when he is treating one of his clients? Should I have mentioned something? When is it okay to intervene? I don’t know if there is a right answer but as a person far wiser than me recently told me, asking these types of questions is what’s important, not finding the answer.

From ProductTank, video of The Power of Bad Ideas 

A few months back, I spoke at ProductTank SF about The Power of Bad Ideas. They’ve put the video online and I’ve also embdded it below.

Steve Portigal challenges product managers to re-think the idea-generation process by inviting in bad ideas.

In brain-storming sessions, we frequently see two surges in ideas. The first is where the low hanging fruit is identified. The second surge is where more innovative ideas are frequently found. Welcoming bad ideas can be an effective strategy for fast tracking past the low hanging fruit and into innovation.

Steve’s interactive talk encourages product managers to come up with the worst product ideas possible. Not the ideas that are just not that good, but ones that are really, truly terrible. By starting with a bad idea, Steve opens a safe, creative space for ideas sharing. He helps product people to unpack what is good and bad, why and who gets to decide. He encourages us to step away from the binary of good and bad to move around the problem space in a different way. His bad ideas approach also breaks the idea-generation ice – by starting with something terrible, space is opened for all ideas, allowing creativity to flow.

DDD: Link Roundup


It’s been two months since Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries was released. Here’s links to presentations, podcasts and more stuff related to the book.

The Book

Reviews

Podcasts

Interviews

Presentations

Other

Noël’s War Story: Truck Stop

Noël Bankston is a UX Research Lead and Human Factors Engineer at Zebra Technologies, currently living in Queens, NY. She told this story live at the Interaction 17 conference.

“So Jim, what would you like to do for lunch? “My treat!” It was the moment I had been dreading all day, ironic since I am a lover of food. I was trying to sound chipper but I was worn through.

It was 2 pm and I was starving. I was sitting in the cab of a 48’ tractor trailer in Lowell, Arkansas. This was my first “ride along” research trip and I had not come prepared with snacks. I was doing in-depth generative research of the pick-up and delivery process for a freight company and hadn’t known that we don’t have lunch until all the deliveries were completed.

I was also not prepared for the weather as I am from up north and I thought the South would be hot in late May. It wasn’t – it was a constant drizzle and cold. So I was sitting in the cab feeling small and tired in the oversized loaner jacket that the dispatcher had given me. We had been on the road since 8:45 am but I had arrived at the trailer dispatch site even earlier to observe the set-up process. And that should have been fine, because on a normal day, Jim finishes around noon. But today we saw all the exceptions – an unprepared customer, incorrect paperwork, an obstructed delivery dock, and poor routing. As a researcher, it was a gold-mine as I observed where problems occurred and how Jim handled them. But as someone who is mildly hypoglycemic, it meant I was getting hangry. It had been a long morning of climbing into and out of that cab, learning which hand to place where to get the right leverage to pull yourself up as you step onto the step that is only wide enough for half your foot. And I don’t know how many of you have ridden inside of a tractor trailer but it is loud and you feel every bump.

In that moment as I asked about lunch, damp, tired, and hungry, I thought back on the the anxiety I had felt earlier in the day about lunch. A co-worker told me that on his previous ride-along they had eaten a burger from a gas station mini-mart. Even on a normal day that would make me uneasy, as gas stations aren’t known for freshness and hygiene. I knew that this type of research means being available for wherever the subject takes you, but I was really hoping that didn’t include food poisoning.

But at this point, 8 hours from my previous meal and having no idea what part of town we were in, who was I to be picky?

“So Jim, what would you like to do for lunch?”

“I just want a salad. I try to eat healthy.” I gave a huge sigh of relief, accompanied by a rumble of rejoicing from my stomach. It seemed that between the two of us, I would be eating the bigger meal. I found a nearby Mexican restaurant on Yelp. While enjoying the flavor combination of fresh cilantro and lime with nary a fryolator in sight, I realized how I had been making assumptions about “truckers” based on stereotypes rather than letting the research reveal the truth. And those assumptions were also judgments about health and lifestyle. Jim was aware of the health effects of his job and wasn’t going to turn down an opportunity to have a healthful meal, especially when a researcher was paying! One of the reasons truckers eat unhealthy food is both cost and convenience. Truck stops get food fast and are less expensive. Unfortunately, our food system is set up in a way that fresh, whole food costs much more than highly processed, industrially produced food.

I won’t be able to eliminate all my biases or preconceived notions but I can grow in my awareness of them. I have been on many more ride-alongs and other types of research trips since then. You better believe I always have a granola bar with me.

Elizabeth’s War Story: Ramping Up

Elizabeth Allen is a UX Researcher at Shopify, an ecommerce platform based in Canada. She told this story live at the Interaction 17 conference.

A few years ago, I was working at Centralis, a UX research and design consulting firm in the Chicago area. One of our clients was a public transportation agency, and our project involved testing the maps and signage within and between transit stations by accompanying participants as they completed realistic wayfinding scenarios to try to get from station to station and find their correct train or bus.

As part of this testing, my research partner Kathi Kaiser and I included individuals with motor and visual disabilities to make sure they were able to navigate just as well as those who didn’t have these challenges. One participant, Susan, was in a motorized wheelchair, and we began our session with a scenario that had us traveling to a station and accessing an elevated platform where she would wait for a train.

Chicago summers can be very hot and humid, and this was one of the hottest of the year. We were all sweating by the time we got to the station even though it was just a short walk from the coffee shop where we met to start the session. Now, this station had no elevator; instead, outside the station was a very long ramp to reach the platform. This was probably the longest ramp I’d ever seen at a transit station — it had two or three switchbacks just to reach the top!

We started up the ramp, and when we were about halfway up, Susan’s wheelchair started slowing down. “Uh oh”, she said. “I think my battery is about to die. I totally forgot to charge it before I went out, and steep ramps like this always make it run out faster.” Sure enough, a few seconds later, the wheelchair slowed to a halt, completely dead.

At this point, we had to make a decision based on what was best for Susan and for the research: do we end the session early, push Susan’s chair back to our starting point, and explain to our client that we would miss out on gathering valuable accessibility insights, or do we see if we can find a power source and salvage what we can of the session? We explained to Susan that we could either end the session or try to keep going, and luckily, she was still excited about the session and was game to push on — literally.

After wheezing our way up the rest of the ramp, dripping with sweat, we got to the platform and found no electrical outlets in sight. The ticket counter was also closed, but after a lot of roaming around we were able to find the lone janitor. We were very fortunate, because he was extremely kind, and offered to let us plug Susan’s chair into an outlet in one of the back rooms.

This story ends happily. After a half hour or so, Susan’s chair was charged up, and during that time we were able to improvise some interview questions and short scenarios we could talk through with her while we waited. It really helped that we were able to think on our feet and that we had a participant who had a positive attitude and was interested in the session. Overall, we were able to salvage a research session that was difficult to recruit for, and our client was really happy with what we learned.

Why Stories Matter (to the practice of user research)

This post by Sasha Dichter articulates so well what drove me to write Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries – why forwarding a culture of storytelling in user research is essentially to continuing to develop the field.

Storytelling, then, is not simply narrative. It is an opportunity to communicate values in a way that is resonant and memorable, allowing the listener to position herself in the story, see its relevance to her current situation, and then play forward a narrative about her role in the story of now.

How does this happen? It happens through stories in which a human protagonist is presented with an unknown and has to make a choice. At this moment of choice, the listener feels the tension of what might go right and wrong, projects herself into that situation and, in so doing, experiences the values with which the protagonist wrestles.

This is why it our job to find our own stories, to explore the values that move us to act, and to practice uttering words that help others see and feel what we see and feel. This is the work of finding the language to describe the choices we have made and are making in service of our work, so that others can feel the hope that we feel, and so that they can learn to use this hope to deal with their fears, including fear of acting on our behalf.

Five Questions with Steve Portigal

Here’s “Five Questions” with me about war stories, user research, and the O’Reilly Design Conference. Click for the whole thing; Below is a short excerpt.

Why is user research so hard to do well?

I talked about this a bit in Interviewing Users—that the assumption we can just use our social defaults because it’s just “talking to people” holds us back from being better at user research. We have to unlearn a lot of patterns (e.g., sharing about yourself) in order to get to a very different outcome (a good session versus a good hangout). In looking at war stories, I’m digging further into the challenges we face in doing research, and hopefully not stating the obvious but research with other people will have massive elements of unpredictability in it. That means we learn what we didn’t know we didn’t know (and would never otherwise have thought to ask about), but it also means that our attempts to plan and control the process are somewhat foolish (and yet, someone who does research without planning is obviously a fool). There’s an element here of temperament, or worldview, that isn’t so natural for everyone. In some of the stories I’ve gathered, people do everything right, and yet things still go wrong. That’s not a welcome truth.

My 2017 UX Research “tips”

The LA User Experience meetup group asked me for three tips (more like thoughts than tips, I think) for 2017. You can see all the collected tips here.

  1. Research is everywhere. I continue to marvel at the growth of research. Back in the day, people would write to ask me if they knew of any research openings; now they write to ask me if I know of anyone who they could hire for their research position. We shouldn’t get cocky, as demand for research can lead to commodification, degrading research to a tactical, evaluative tool rather than the strategic powerhouse it is.
  2. Research is necessary but not sufficient for innovation. It’s just one of many parts in making business decisions. Research identifies unmet needs but design, technology, service, etc. all figure out how to address those needs. Research assesses solutions but only in certain contexts. Some things can’t be fully evaluated until after they exist (consider the invention of the Post-It, for example). This is an innovation problem, not a research problem.
  3. Harness storytelling for teaching and learning. Stories take us through a process of an experience, from the beginning, to the middle, through to the end. Crucially for learners, they can highlight mistakes and failures as much as successes. And stories can tell it like it is, providing a level of authenticity that more traditionally presented instructional material can’t convey. And finally, we respond emotionally to stories: drama, suspense, pathos, humor all facilitate engagement and end up sticking around in our memory
  4. .

Learning from the comic, tragic & astonishing moments in user research (transcript)


Last week I did an online chat with UX Mastery about Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries. See one snippet below, but please check out the entire transcript here.

crystal: Do you think that approaching the interview with some small vulnerability of your own allows them to be more vulnerable as well and open up and give more insight? And have you found that added insight to often add value to the research?

steveportigal: our own vulnerability – that’s fascinating and I don’t have a clear take on that. I think a shallow reading says being vulnerable means sharing about ourselves and I am mostly against doing that most of the time for most researchers but it makes me ponder what’s a richer more nuanced sense of what our own vulnerability is, if by being still, present, focused, listening, and not needing to make it about us, we might convey some vulnerability. I think it’s meeting people where they are, accepting them where they are and not putting ourself into it. Which – to your point – feels DAMN risky to a lot of people. Set aside your agenda and listen but do so in a productive effective you’re-on-the-job way, so you are balancing different forces and risks.

I dunno, is that ‘vulnerable?’

Stories from the field: An interview with Steve Portigal

Gerry Gaffney interviewed me about Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries (which he contributed to) – and user research in general – for his User Experience podcast.

Check out the podcast on iTunes. Or listen via Gerry’s site (which also features a transcript). Or, listen below.

The idea that some of these ideas are metaphors for life I think is absolutely true and, again, I can sound kind of highfalutin and pretentious here but I think the thinking that I went through in this book is looking at… some of these external factors, right? You know, make sure your camera is ready and you don’t break the cable and you know the sort of “equipmenty” type things that we have to think about. But so many of these are about what do we do when the unexpected happens and acknowledge the unexpected is going to happen and that those are definitely life skills. And I think one of the takeaways that I come back to several times, and I just alluded to it a minute ago, which is know when to walk away. You know and so when you’re in a situation do you keep trying to turn that situation from a failure into a success or do you say “You know what? This isn’t going to work,” and you leave.

15 Questions with Steve Portigal

Today, as part of the Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries roll-out, Rosenfeld Media has 15 Questions with Steve Portigal. Check ’em all out!

6. What’s the story behind how you got into user research? I was working at a design agency that was tentatively experimenting with a new service offering—insights that were “left of the idea” (yes, that was actually how they tried to market generative research work). My putative boss literally stopped speaking to me, and wasn’t putting me on projects (the sort of thing that generally requires talking), so the team doing this research work took me in. In the beginning, they had me watch videos and make notes. Then they let me go into the field and hold the video camera. Eventually I got to ask one or two questions, and as time wore on, I began to lead interviews and then plan and manage research. During that time period Don Norman (or was it Don Knotts?) appeared before me in a dream, clad in diaphanous robes. He marked me with the Sigil of Lamneth and bid me sternly to pursue this holiest of professions. That sealed the deal for me.

What’s New: Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries

doorbells-danger-dead-batteries-cover
My new book comes out today and Lou Rosenfeld has an enthusiastic appreciation and a bit of the back story about the book’s journey.
Read it all here

I dipped into about a dozen of the 60+ field research war stories that make up the bulk of the book. The stories do what stories are supposed to do: engage. And the contributors have been through some experiences that will make you laugh, sweat with fear and discomfort, and—let’s face it—enjoy a bit of schadenfreude. But it’s wrong to see Steve’s new book simply as a compilation of user research war stories. In Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries, Steve comes through: he delivers a broader framework that’s useful for making sense of user research—or, actually, situations with people.

Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries available for pre-order

doorbells-danger-dead-batteries-cover
My new book comes out on December 6!

You can pre-order (with a discount) from Rosenfeld Media (or from Amazon). Also coming soon is an audiobook version! Remember, your review on Amazon really helps drive awareness.

————————————-
Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries
User Research War Stories

User research war stories are personal accounts of the challenges researchers encounter out in the field, where mishaps are inevitable yet incredibly instructive. Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries is a diverse compilation of war stories that range from comically bizarre to astonishingly tragic, tied together with valuable lessons from expert user researcher Steve Portigal.

The stories Steve Portigal knits together here have an extraordinary and immediate intimacy, like listening in on 66 researchers’ bedtime prayers. Anne Lamott says there are essentially three kinds of prayers: help, thanks, and wow! Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries covers the whole range, with humor and wisdom.

Dan Klyn, information architect, co-founder of The Understanding Group (TUG)

See more testimonials

Jakob Nielsen said “Most people are stupid.”

Last night, Capital One hosted an event at their new San Francisco labs. It was a packed house, with food and drink, discussion, networking, and two presentations. Catherine Courage gave – as always – an exciting and encouraging talk on storytelling. Jakob Nielsen talked about, I guess, testing, though he used the phrase “user research” extensively.

Anyway, during the Q&A, Nielsen said “Most people are stupid.” He didn’t misspeak, he said this and he meant it. In his example, if you tested a product with someone who knew the product, they would have a certain performance. If you got someone in off the street “…he would be stupid. [pause, chuckle] Most people are stupid.”

I posted about this on Twitter and got reactions from surprise to an utter lack of surprise, given the source. I don’t know about that. I do think that if you think people are stupid, you shouldn’t be working in user experience and you shouldn’t be given a platform to hold forth. Please don’t invite Jakob Nielsen to speak at your event. This is toxicity we don’t need.

A User Research FAQ

In Patterns in design research, Nick Bowmast looks at one of my recent talks and realizes that the Q&A discussion deals with many of the standard questions he often faces. He wrote up a tersely-worded FAQ based on the discussion. Thanks, Nick!

Q: One on one’s or Groups? A = One on ones. (Don’t say the other F word).
Q: How do you know when you’ve done enough interviews? A = Depends, but 30 is a big number.
Q: How do you avoid bias from the client or in the sample? A = Accept and work with it.
Q: When should we do it ourselves vs have other people’s go out and do the interviews for us? A = Depends, and collaboration can work in many ways. [Also see this – SP]
Q: How do you prioritize all the questions to be able to answer all of them right? A = Work with the client to nail it down.
Q: What would be the right team size in the field? A = Two
Q: Can you use something like Skype or Google Hangouts to interview them? A = Yes, but there are significant tradeoffs.
Q: How to deal with users who just keep on talking in an interview? A = Be polite but firm. Cut your losses if necessary.
Q: How do you go about recruiting people / how do you convince strangers to do interviews? A = Use a recruiter. Respect and honour people’s time.

Improve your Soft Skills at UX Australia

I’ll be in Melbourne next month as part of UX Australia, leading my
Soft Skills Are Hard workshop. I’ve been iterating this workshop for the past 18 months and have been very impressed with the people who have come and worked hard to assess their own goals and to work together to design processes, tools and habits for themselves and each other in order to improve those soft skills. I see that people have found it to be a profound experience that has made a difference in how they think about their work and their careers.

We’ve looked at literally hundreds of soft skills, such as

  • Collaboration
  • Permission to fail
  • Communication
  • Pattern recognition
  • Thinking broadly
  • Critical thinking
  • Listening
  • Focus
  • Respect
  • Coping with ambiguity
  • Visual thinking
  • Managing stress

For the areas that people find most relevant, they’ve developed a set of best practices to help improve that skill. For example,
Be More Patient

  • Give another person benefit of the doubt
  • Practice being patient at home or with friends
  • Listening – give others a chance to speak regardless of if you think they’re right or wrong
  • Breathe, pause mentally before offering your own point of view
  • Acknowledge that there are many ways to do one thing
  • Remember that people need/want to be heard
  • Reference past experiences when having patience has worked in your favor

If you’re around Melbourne at the end of next month, please sign up for the workshop!

Bonus: here’s some more examples from past workshops
Be Patient

Time Management

Compassion

Networking

David Isay on selective memory

Krista Tippett interviewed David Isay for her show On Being. He talked about interviewing his father and his story highlights the gap between what we remember from an interview and what actually transpired in that interview.

DI: I remember that I asked him when we were in the StoryCorps interview, “What are you proudest of in life?” And my memory of that was that he said “the books I’ve written.” And I always teased him. I said, “Dad, we’ve done, whatever, 10,000, 20,000, as time went on, 50,000 interviews, and everybody says their kids. And you, the one person, you said, ‘my books.’” And I just endlessly went after him, and the night he died, I listened to the interview, and I said, “What are you proudest of?” And he said “My kids.”

KT: Really?

DI: Yep.

KT: Was that exchange even in there? What you remember? You just didn’t remember it?

DI. ISAY: Yes, and then he said, “I’m also proud of my books.”

Takeaway: Record your interviews and go back to those recordings — don’t rely on your memory!

Keegan-Michael Key on Improv

When I speak about improv, I point out that despite what you may think, improv is not about chaotically doing WHATEVER BLAH WHOO but rather working with highly-constrained problems, with both axes of freedom and axes of constraint. In this video Keegan-Michael Key talks about this concept in a lovely and evocative way, describing a metaphorical notion of the camera pulling back and revealing more context, and as the performer, looking for (and incorporating) more information beyond what you are given.

Keegan-Michael Key Has the Perfect Metaphor for Improv

(Thanks, Ian Smile)

A “first interview” story

Jennifer Kim talks about her experience in preparing for (or not) conducting her first interviews. She is honest about her mistakes, and what she’s learned. I found myself feeling critical of her general neediness: when a participant doesn’t react well to her unprepared interviewing, she is hurt; when a participant gives her feedback and encourages her, she takes that to heart. It’s her job to make the participant feel good, not the other way around. But that lesson may come later, she’s the rawest of beginners and is revealing her own vulnerability in the experience, and I give her full credit for that strength of character.

RSA Interaction Design

(thanks to Christina Wodtke)

My talk about “How to Interview Users to Uncover Insights”

I recently spoke about How to Interview Users to Uncover Insights the Lean Product Meetup in Silicon Valley. They’ve just posted the video and I’ve embedded it and the slides below.

Steve Portigal on How to Interview Users to Uncover Insights at Lean Product Meetup

It’s a wrap for Dollars to Donuts, Season 2

I just wrapped up the second season of Dollars to Donuts, the podcast where I speak with people who lead user research. Check out all the great interviews this season. Links include transcripts and links for each episode.

An interview about The State of UX Research

I was interviewed by Jen Ignacz of Topp. We spoke about the history of user research (at least how I experienced) and some of my thoughts about the present – and future. Check out the audio and/or read the transcript here.

I remember that we did this project with IBM that was very much like the future of the home PC, so for us that was really, really new and exciting. Maybe a lot of people might be rolling their eyes like yes, we’ve seen that we’ve done that, so that was this watershed moment where we were able to do a sort of an industrial design type of project, but it led with ethnography – it led with rethinking the whole purpose of this thing they were making. And right after that we got approached by a packaged goods companies that wanted to rethink breakfast, and that was the exciting part because their innovation part of the business was getting clients that didn’t look like industrial design clients. It was someone else coming through the door, and that was the moment where I think we thought “this is a real thing” – you know, companies – business is looking into this and we can work on all kinds of stuff. I think that was a huge moment. Fortune, BusinessWeek and other magazines were writing cover stories about ethnography or anthropology, and showing pictures of people in pith helmets or scientists or similar. The conversation turned a lot more serious and specific about how this kind of work was going to help business. I think the work we were getting and we were doing, and this kind of popular press shift, we started to feel like oh, this really is a viable thing for business, a viable service to be offering. We will see products made this way from here on out, so that was kind of the transition.

Grant McCracken on his interview technique and mindset

Another fantastic Grant McCracken post. He conducts a short interview (embedded below) and offers a terrifically insightful reflection on his technique as well the meaning of the overall endeavor. A must-watch/read for interviewers.

Craig Young in the street in SF

Another thing I liked about the interview was the glimpse it gives of city life. In this case, of the invisible distinctions of space that are perfectly clear to Craig and a surprise to the rest of us (if and when discovered by the rest of us). The world is filled with this invisible distinctions. They surround us all the time. The secret of ethnography: keep an eye out. Ask everyone.

Sign up to get blog posts by email

Did you know that you can receive all blog posts by email? Go here to sign up.

Yeah, portigal.com has long had this capability, through Feedburner, eventually bought by Google. It’s still running but it seems that Google has abandoned it. Feedburner emails look something like this

2016-03-22_11-52-15

It’s not even possible to tell if it’s being supported or not; the webpages that support it seem to have been abandoned. So yeah, it runs every night, for now, and sends out postings, but it probably won’t stick around forever.

I would manually migrate Feedburner subscribers to the new Mailchimp list but it’s so broken that even though I can log in, I can’t find the actual mailing list. Support pages show many people with similar complaints.

If you’re receiving posts already, you can do nothing and probably for some time you’ll be fine. But you can also take 30 seconds to sign up here for the shiny new list!

How To Tell If Your Participant Is Faking It

Although How To Tell If Your Participant Is Faking It is mostly about usability testing and unfortunately chooses to frame the participant as “faking” (a nice word for lying) it’s nice to see this level of specific detail around the clues to look for in terms of how people express themselves.

Your participant reflects in the 3rd person. If a majority of the feedback your participant gives includes phrases such as “Some people might…” or “I have a friend who would love this…” or any other reference to someone other than themselves, then you’re probably not getting great data. They’re not exactly faking it or hiding anything, but they’re definitely not giving you relevant data about their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Be sure to clarify whether they mean to really speak for themselves or not.

Listen to Steve on the Getting2Alpha podcast

I was interviewed by Amy Jo Kim for her Getting2Aplpha podcast.

Those transition rituals tell people when they are going to go into an interview, there’s a point at which you’re getting ready, you’re going over there. You’re going from an activity that’s not the interview to an activity that is the interview. Just to take a moment and say, “Okay, for the next thirty minutes, the next hundred twenty minutes, let’s just try to learn about how Joanne makes travel reservations. Let’s just make it about that.” The implicit part of that statement is that we’re not thinking about what meetings we have, what aspirations we have, what sales targets we have to make, what our burn rate for our coders is. We’re really thinking about just looking at this person and their behavior.I think that’s just a way to give yourself a break and just make it easier, not easy, but easier to really think about that experience with that person and learning about them as a complete thing. Afterwards, you can leave and you can go back and pick up your world view and make sense of this and start to triangulate and organize and learn. For those periods of time where you’re with someone to learn about them, just taking that weight of the world off your shoulders and just saying, “Okay, I’m just going to learn about them.” The transition ritual is to consciously articulate that.

Listen to the podcast here or below

Whose Job is User Research?

I was interviewed by Laura Klein and we discussed Whose Job is User Research?

Not every research study requires an expert at the helm. Quite a few products would benefit from having somebody on the main product team who could quickly get feedback or answers to simple questions. “Even a newbie researcher should be able to answer some factual questions about what people are doing or might want to do. They also have the opportunity to reflect on what assumptions they were holding onto that were incorrect,” Steve explains. “You’ll always get more questions to go with your answers, but hoo boy–it’s better than never talking to users and acting with confident ignorance.”There are some questions you’re better off bringing in an expert, though. “The more help you need in connecting the business problem with the research approach and connecting the observations to the business implications, the more expert help you need,” Steve explains.

Check out the whole article.

Make sure you’re still subscribed to Dollars to Donuts

When I launched the new portigal.com just over two weeks ago, there were some changes to Dollars to Donuts. Episodes don’t appear on the blog, instead they are all now on the dedicated podcast page. There are separate feeds for the blog and the podcast as well.

If you subscribe in iTunes ideally the transition was seamless. You should have the last two episodes (Kavita Appachu, Elizabeth Kell). If you don’t have them, please go to iTunes and resubscribe.

Welcome to the new Portigal website!

Today, after about 13 months of work, we launched a brand new website. As always happens, you don’t quite know what’s working until you get it on its feet. If you usually see posts via an RSS reader, will this post show up? I hope so. But what about podcasts? Well, we’ve moved those into a separate space and so they may or may not be showing up as part of your feeds.

And if you used to get posts by email? There is probably a few different ways to do that and we discovered that one of them had been broken for about 4 months — so badly broken that the list of subscribers is gone, etc. Whoosh. So, you’ll want to resubscribe if you like seeing posts every once in a while in your inbox. Does the current subscribe functionality work? Is it turned on?

Anyway, let us know if you find something that doesn’t work as we’re going to keep playing with the details until we get it fully working. Meanwhile, enjoy!

My talk about improv from UX New Zealand

Last year I gave a highly interactive talk at UX New Zealand about improv, creativity and design, entitled Yes, My Tuatara Loves to Cha-Cha. They’ve just posted the video and I’ve embedded it and the slides below.

Steve Portigal @ UX New Zealand 2015

Sketchnotes, from Matthew Magain
Matthew-Magain

and Kim Anderson
Kim-Anderson

Learning from kids interviewing bands

Kids Interview Bands is a series of videos of, obviously, kids interviewing bands. I propose these videos as a lightweight teaching tool for interviewing as it’s curious to see what goes well and what doesn’t.

The different kid interviewers are coming with a set of stock questions which they ask one after another, with practically no followup. So they never become an actual conversation and the amount of insightful revelation is low. But the kids are real, as little kids, and many of the band members respond to them in a real way.

I first came across this interview with Tom Araya of Slayer as an overall bad example, but I found it incredibly charming.

These people have very little in common, and perhaps limited skills in overcoming that gulf, but Araya never talks down to them, he never plays up his persona, he just does his best to connect with them, never forgetting they are children.

In a slightly different vein, I also liked this interview with Pustulus Maximus of GWAR who absolutely stays within the bounds of his horrific persona, but is kind and entertaining with the kids. He manages to work within his character and the context of the interview, and even though he plays a sort of monster, he doesn’t act like one.

In some ways, the limitations of these interviewers (they are just kids!) highlights other aspects that can contribute to a good interview – participants that take on some of the labor of establishing rapport and making that connection with the other person. And even if the kids don’t ask good follow-up questions (or any), their naturalness serves as an invitation to the musicians to meet them in that state.

Out and About: Steve in Brooklyn

I was in Brooklyn in October to teach a workshop at the Delve event. Here’s some of what I saw when I was in town.

wellness

sticky
Hotel housekeeping messages left on the headboard. Have we reached Peak Sticky?

fire
A tempting do-not-touch.

design

gay-storage

fdny
Branding.

A listening bootcamp

ListenUp_logo

Listen Up! is an online program from WNYC to help improve listening skills.

It’s not easy to improve our hearing. But everyone has the ability to become a better listener. Only Human invites you to participate in a listening bootcamp, with guidance from a memory champion, a world-class mediator, actors and improv comics, we’ve got five challenges designed to help you sharpen your listening skills.

Animal Dissonance

giraffe-legroom

United is promoting their copious legroom by suggesting they can accommodate a giraffe. But of course, giraffes (as show in their image) are known for their long necks, not legs. Sure, they have long legs, too, but that’s the primary association. They have big toes, don’t they? Dr. Scholl’s us not going to use them in advertising (unless they come out with a new NECK powder). Giraffe :: Neck.

An opportunity for a clear message but instead it’s an obscure message.

The Designer is Present keynote at Interact 15

I recently presented The Designer is Present as the closing keynote for Interact 15. I adapted a workshop I had given at Fluxible, UX Australia and World IA Day into a shorter interactive talk. Below is the video, slides and a short interview.

Video

Slides

Interview with James Royal-Lawson and Per Axbom for the User Experience podcast

in memoriam: Steve Sato

I was stunned and saddened the other day to learn that Steve Sato had passed away. I had known him as a friend and colleague for many many years. In 2014, Steve contributed a War Story and then got up at my CHIFOO presentation and told his story to the group. It’s a lovely story that I think captures Steve’s humanity as he reveals how life at home grounded him creatively and intellectually no matter how far away, geographically, he was.

Thanks to CHIFOO, we’ve got a short video of Steve’s talk (embedded below) and I’m reposting his story below that.



Finding Mojo In The Moment

We were three days into our 18-day research trip. The clock was ticking and our progress had been frustratingly slow. We had nary an insight to show for our time spent here so far. It was 9 o’clock in the morning and we were already hot and sweaty after having walked a quarter of a mile on the footpath, the only way to a remote village in Uganda. Our team was doing field research on making microfinance more efficient and reliable, so banks and other financial institutions would find it profitable for them to extend their services to include microfinancing. The current system of paper and pencil, traveling back and forth to an office two hours away, and then transcribing notes onto a PC (“sneaker net”) was inefficient and fraught with errors and omissions. Furthermore, what was required was not only an IT system that could span “the last mile” but we had 15 days left to prototype an interaction model that would augment the device. It needed to be a process that the field agents and their clients would trust and adopt without much help. On top of that we had to identify what other not-for-profit and for-profit organizations (e.g., medical, agriculture, manufacturing and so on) would find the field device useful (so we could size the potential market for the device).

I was responsible for the research and the results. I really was feeling the stress and the jet lag and I had heartburn non-stop from the first day here.

We arrived at the village and our team was introduced by the microfinance agent to a group of a dozen women who were her clients. After a few minutes of conversation the women gathered and sat down, with the field agent, on the ground in a large circle. Two researchers stationed themselves behind the agent while the rest of us positioned ourselves around the perimeter of the circle. I turned on the video camera and thought “Whew! We’ve been prepping this for nearly a month and now we’ll finally get to make some interesting discoveries!” But then I spent the next half hour struggling to stay focused, to listen to the conversation and watch the exchange between a woman and the field agent. Then some amount of self-awareness seeped into my head: “The breeze feels so good, gosh! I’m so exhausted, I could go to sleep right now…let me see, it’s 11ish at night in Portland…Ohh! I promised I’d call my wife today!”

Without thinking, I pulled out my cell phone and looked to see if I had a signal. To my surprise I had one bar! By walking away from the group towards a little rise I could get 2-3 bars which was good enough!

It was good to hear my wife’s voice. I closed my eyes while talking with her for about five minutes, like I was only a block away. I felt calm relief return.

But then my eyes popped open, because with the relief came a realization, triggered by my ability to connect to my wife halfway around the world while I’m in the African back country, gazing at a group of women sitting in the grass under the shade of a huge tree, with puffy white clouds against a bright blue sky. It was surreal and so powerful. I experientially understood our mission: to connect the people here to the world in a way that would make their everyday lives better, as was happening to me in the moment. Suddenly I was re-energized and fully present. Throughout the rest of the trip I kept coming back to relive this experience. It kept me energized, engaged and focused, no matter how exhausted I felt. I honestly believe it made a positive difference in what we discovered, what we surmised and in our final designs.

Coming in 2016, a new book about War Stories

warstories-logo

I’m working on another book! It’s Epic Fail: Design Research War Stories, and is based on the War Stories that I’ve been gathering since 2012.

As design researchers, we love stories. At its simplest, our job is to gather stories and to retell them. War stories are accounts of contextual user research (research out in the field) and the inevitable mishaps that ensue. These stories are in turn bizarre, comic, tragic, and generally astonishing. This book will share some of the best stories, examine the patterns revealed by the stories, and articulate the valuable lessons they reveal.

Support the War Stories for SXSW and more!

Watch this space for a big announcement about the War Stories coming up after Labor Day. In the meantime, I’ve applied to speak about War Stories in design research at SXSW. You can help here (whether or not you are planning to attend SXSW) by creating an account, voting thumbs up for the proposed talk and even adding a comment.

We’ve got three recent stories, all from the Kitchener-Waterloo area: Jennifer’s War Story: Keeping the Lights on in Vegas, Julia’s War Story: For Want Of A Shoe and Susie’s War Story: A Sigh Is Just A Sigh. And coming up next month at Fluxible in Kitchener-Waterloo, I’ll be presenting Epic FAIL: Takeaways from the War Stories Project.

This Week @ Portigal

Jennifer’s War Story: Keeping the Lights on in Vegas

Jennifer Pretti is the Manager of the User Experience Design Team at Christie Digital in Kitchener, Canada.

At Christie Digital, we have a very niche population of users. Opportunities to observe them using our projectors are highly coveted by my UX team. In February 2014, we were invited by a good customer of ours, Staging Techniques, to observe their setup for the keynote address at Microsoft’s SharePoint Conference. The event was taking place at the Venetian Hotel, in Las Vegas, and the keynote speaker was going to be Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton!

Three of us from Christie made the trip: me, Chris (my lead industrial designer), and a software developer, Eric. Although I had conducted many user sessions for Christie before, this was the first time I was going on site to observe a live event setup and I wasn’t sure what to expect. My biggest worry was that, even though we made it clear we were there just to observe, I would be asked to answer a technical question or troubleshoot some problem and not have a clue what to say or do.

Setup was to begin at midnight the day we arrived. Working night shifts is very common for projectionists since it’s the best time to see and calibrate the light as other setup crews are already done and out of the way. The thought of staying up for a night shift wasn’t something I was particularly looking forward to, especially given jet lag was going to make it feel 3 hours later. But I hoped a mix of adrenaline and caffeine would do the trick.

After landing in Vegas, we headed down to the Expo Hall to get our bearings. The scale of everything in Vegas is massive and oversized, and the hall was no exception. It was a gigantic space – at least two football fields long and one football field wide – and it was completely empty and bare. Whatever vision the event planners had for the space seemed hopelessly unattainable in the 5 days left before the show.

When we arrived, big transport trucks were pulling into the hall to start unloading the many tons of equipment that would be needed to run the show. It was clear that they were behind schedule already. Trusses and scaffolding needed for rigging the projectors hadn’t yet been built, so we decided to split up, with Chris covering the first night shift, and Eric and I heading to bed to get some much needed sleep.

Eric and I returned to the site early the next morning to relieve Chris. The first few hours of our observation time were slow and uneventful due to continued delays with the truss work, but eventually things picked up, and soon projectors were being powered on and rigged into position. Excitement peaked when one of the projectors failed to power on. I stood poised to capture an epic story of problem solving and error recovery, but the crew just shrugged, taped an ‘X’ on the top of the projector, and replaced it with a spare one. Even after I got in touch with tech support to help explain the error code (highlighting quite clearly that our error messages need a lot of work), it didn’t change their approach. Time is money and using a functional projector was simply the most efficient option. Whatever the problem was, it could wait until they were back in the office to sort out.

It became clear by the end of the second night that the most interesting portions of the setup would be delayed past our planned departure date. The senior projectionist, Pete, pleaded for one of us to stay a bit longer. I think there was mix of professional pride in his insistence, but (happily for us) a realization of the mutual benefit of our presence, observing their workflows and listening to their wishlists. It was on account of his enthusiasm that I agreed to change my flight and stay an extra night. My fatigued body howled in despair. Another night shift? Are you crazy?!

There is no better place to change your sleeping patterns than Vegas. That city looks the same no matter what the hour: there are always people walking around, always a restaurant open, and enough indoor walkways that it could be any time of day. Hotel rooms come equipped with industrial-strength black-out curtains, whose existence I suddenly appreciated in a whole new light (pun intended), as I tried to convince my body that falling asleep at 10 AM was a totally legit plan.

The little sleep I got left me with major doubts that I could keep up a respectable and coherent state of mind for my last night. However, early into the shift, Pete insisted I help him colour match the displays. Colour matching 26 projectors is a very laborious activity that had us whizzing around on a golf cart, playing with light meters, and debating whether one projector was a fraction more magenta than the other. Shifting from observer to honorary crew member made the night fly by and gave me a more rich perspective of how our products are used.

I didn’t sleep until I was on the airplane later that afternoon. I welcomed the rest, but felt a pang of regret for not extending my trip long enough to see Bill Clinton speak. As social media began to light up with pictures of the event, I cheered for Staging Techniques and Christie for a job well done. And smiled knowing that Bill Clinton was walking on the same stage where I had been, just 24 hours ago.

This Week @ Portigal

I know it’s Thursday, but I’ve been on vacation all week, so here’s what’s going on for the remainder of this week

Julia’s War Story: For Want Of A Shoe

Julia Thompson is a Design Research & Insights Analyst at BlackBerry in Waterloo, Canada.

It all started with a simple question from the dispatcher: “Do you want a call when your taxi arrives?” My nonchalant answer: “No thanks, I should be okay.” was the nail in my coffin. This was my first error in a series of cascading mistakes.

The next morning I was heading out-of-country for in-home interviews. That night, in an effort to be as prepared as possible, I called to arrange a taxi for an early morning pickup. I hung up the phone and proceeded to pack my bags. I considered carefully what to pack. I visualised my next few days: what would the weather be like? What would be my mode of transportation? What clothing would be appropriate for the work – casual enough to fit into a home environment and dressy enough to fit into an office environment? I was sure that I had considered all the details. Unfortunately, the most important detail, my alarm, was what I missed.

Satisfied with my preparation, I went to bed, and slept well. The next morning I awoke feeling refreshed. With birds chirping outside, sunlight filled the room. Yet something felt terribly wrong. What time was it? Why was it so light out? I picked up my phone, checked my alarm, and then checked the time. My stomach fell to the floor. My flight was leaving now. Sheer panic overtook me. I couldn’t think straight. I had never missed a flight before. I felt like I was going to throw up. I was paralyzed, I had no idea what to do. I grabbed my phone and called our corporate travel agent. It felt like hours as I waited on hold to ask my pressing questions: Could I still make my interview? When was the next flight? Could I fly out of a different airport instead? The sound of my heartbeat drowned out every noise as I sat there waiting, palms sweating, phone clutched. The agent came back on the line and said there was a flight leaving from another airport in 2 hours. Could I make it there in time? It’s almost rush hour. It’s an hour’s drive with no traffic. What about parking? Customs? Security? If I took the car, how would my husband get to work? On top of all that the agent still wasn’t sure whether there was room on the flight. We decided, together, that I should start driving and I should stay on the line while she called the airline to confirm availability. I jumped in the car, with my phone on the passenger seat and that awful music taunting me as I continued to wait, on hold. I got about 10 minutes down the road when the agent told me to pull over and go home. That flight wouldn’t be mine. I would settle for another flight, hours later, and hours after my scheduled interview.

Later that day, as my plane came in for its landing, I just felt low. I was tired from the emotional rollercoaster of missing my flight, I was anxious knowing I’d have to tell the people I was working with what had happened and I was sad that I had missed out on an interview and the opportunity to see, first-hand, into the life of one of our customers. The only thing saving me was the fact that I was the client and so, even though I missed the interview, it still went ahead as scheduled.

The following day I awoke, in the right place and at the right time, with a better perspective on life. Our local research partner was gracious enough to include me in an interview that day. I was thankful. I was relieved. But now, that meant there would be four of us attending this interview. Two consultants and two clients; two too many. The consultant had called ahead and confirmed with our interviewee that it would be okay if an additional person (me!) attended the interview. Our interviewee was very accommodating and agreed to have all four of us into her home. I was so preoccupied with resolving my own error that I didn’t consider, until later, how the dynamic of the interview would now be affected.

We all got to the interview, we all walked in, we all sat down in the chairs offered to us by our interviewee. As everyone was setting up I started to look around and take note of the environment. I noticed several pairs of shoes neatly arranged by the front door. I looked over at our host, I looked down: bare feet. My eyes darted around the room, I looked down at all our feet. All four of us had our shoes on, laces tied. Bah! We were the worst guests ever. Weren’t we all, as researchers, supposed to notice something so simple but so important?

I spent the next five minutes cursing myself, my missed flight, the totally wrong and overpowering dynamic of four researchers to one customer, and the miss on basic shoe etiquette. I had to shake it off – all the feelings of shame, all the feelings of doubt – and I had to focus. I had to be in the moment, I had to get the most I could out of the interview and I had to show the interviewee the respect she deserved.

It ended up being a great discussion. It was, by no means, a textbook in-context interview, but we had a nice dynamic emerge nonetheless. My story is not one of a single epic fail, but instead of a series of errors with a cascading effect. “For want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost…” Here, we had not a want for a shoe, we had too many.

This Week @ Portigal

Happy August!

  • I’m in Denver doing fieldwork. We’ve already done half of the interviews (fascinating, as always!) and will be finishing up over the next two days. Then I’m back home, doing as much post-fieldwork wrap-up as I can before heading out on vacation, after which I’ll be doing the second phase of fieldwork in DC. Phew!
  • Meanwhile, I’m incubating a number of interesting prospective engagements to follow this, from training and workshops to few different versions of advising to collaborating with another agency on fieldwork in Asia.
  • I’ll be teaching my workshop Soft Skills Are Hard at two upcoming events: in San Francisco at the end of August for UX Week and in London in October for Interact 15.
  • Ten years gone: From August 2005 – Stories about fruit, Herbeau Creations Dagobert Throne Toilet, Wired Glamor
  • What we’re consuming: KD, LaMar’s Donuts, What is Jazz?, Uncle, Doggie DNA testing, MetalCaptcha,

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Howdy, all….

  • The travel is booked. The incentive envelopes are stuffed. The field guide is revised. Now we’re just waiting for the recruiter to fill the slots this weekend and next week. I know it always works out but it’s nerve-wracking having everything but participants.
  • While I wait for fieldwork to kick off, I’m doing the usual mix of prepping for upcoming talks and chatting with clients about future engagements.
  • I’ll be teaching my workshop Soft Skills Are Hard at two upcoming events: in San Francisco at the end of August for UX Week and in London in October for Interact 15.
  • Ten years gone: From July 2005 – Library rhetoric, my rant against the anti-flipchart rant, a visit to Adobe, ABC Stores.
  • What we’re consuming: Jurassic World, Boiling Beijing, Rolling Pin Donuts.

The Insight at Scale track from Enterprise UX

A couple of months ago I moderated the “Insight at Scale” track at the Enterprise UX conference, which featured three presentations and discussion. The videos for each presentation (and our discussion) are linked to below as well as links to the slide decks. There’s also sketch notes for the whole session.

Video
Insight Types That Influence Enterprise Decision Makers – Christian Rohrer, Vice President and Chief Design Officer, Intel Security (slides)

Video
Data Science and Design: A Tale of Two Tribes – Chris Chapo, Operations at ENJOY (slides)

Video
Emotion Economy: Ethnography as Corporate Strategy – Kelly Goto, author of Web Redesign 2.0 (slides)

Video
Discussion

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Welcome to the week!

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A hearty welcome to the week!

  • We’re finalizing a few reports this weeks: discussions with client stakeholders, a review of our client’s existing research and secondary reports, and finally our own secondary reserach. In addition to giving us a lot of big questions to chew on, it’s also informing who we want to talk to for this study and we’ve got a screener almost finalized and ready to share with recruiters for fieldwork in DC and Denver next month.
  • I’ve been waiting for about 3 months for a contract to make it’s way through the corporate purchasing process; we got one document signed last week and any day now we hope to get the next one signed and then schedule a kickoff meeting. Every week I think that that maybe it’ll happen next week, and then…we wait. Still, we’re all astonished at how long it’s taking!
  • We got a new War Story last week from Susan Simon Daniels. Check it out!
  • In London this October, I’ll be at Interact 15 to teach a workshop, Soft Skills Are Hard.
  • Ten years gone: From July 2005 – Facehugger plushie, the end of free pretzels, squid spam.
  • What we’re consuming: Jersey, PACHI, architectural lattice, bamboo.

Susie’s War Story: A Sigh Is Just A Sigh

Susan Simon Daniels is a Senior Design Insights Analyst at BlackBerry in Waterloo, ON.

In September 2012, I was interviewing people who had recently purchased and set up a smartphone. During the interview, I asked the participants to unbox and set up another, new smartphone to see if any usability problems emerged.

One of the interviews was with a male in his late 40s who worked as a translator for people whose first language was not English (I’ll call him “Rick.”) As he unpacked the box that contained the new smartphone, Rick frowned and sighed. I watched silently and noted that a few moments later Rick sighed again.

At this point, the researcher inside my brain was shouting, “Red alert! There’s a problem! There’s a problem!” After a few more moments, I turned to him and said, “Rick, I noticed you’re frowning a bit and you’ve sighed a couple of times. Can you tell me why?”

I waited, fingers poised to capture the fatal flaw that the participant had discovered in the product set up – something so egregious that it evoked a heavy sigh!

Rick turned to me and instead shared a personal story. Both he and his spouse had recently lost their parents. These major life events, complicated by delays in traveling to another continent for funerals and family arrangements, left a lingering sadness that crept up on Rick during quiet moments.

His sigh was just a sigh – not a signal of a defect or usability issue to solve, but a personal moment I happened to witness. We talked for a few minutes about his loss and how he was feeling and then Rick returned to the task at hand and continued to unbox and set up the phone.

We had passed through an awkward moment. I felt I had rudely probed into an open wound. But I had to ask the question. I couldn’t assume the frown and sighs were caused by the product or process. My job was to get to the why. At the same time, by taking a few minutes to let the person share how he was feeling, I was able to give Rick the time he needed to gather himself together and continue with the task at hand.

In the end, Rick contributed by uncovering a couple of areas of improvement for the product. And I found that taking a moment to pause, to just be human beings who shared a bit of sympathy, allowed us to resume the interview with dignity and purpose.

I’m reminded of a verse from the song “As Time Goes By” (music and lyrics by Herman Hupfeld) from the classic war-romance movie Casablanca.

You must remember this
A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh.
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by.

And the fundamental things do apply: never assume and always ask “why?”

This Week @ Portigal

Ugh. The Monday after a long weekend is dislocating. The fact that I stayed up until 2:00 am restoring an errant PC is probably not helping.

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It’s officially summer!

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Monday, Monday, Monday.

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Well, a good day to all!

A new article about what I learned while doodling

I’ve just published What I Learned From 100 Doodles in 100 Days, my first article in a long time. Here’s an excerpt, but check out the whole thing on Medium.

Last November I sat in the audience at the HOW Interactive Design Conference as Jim Krause spoke about “Habitual Creativity.” He talked about breaking out of unconscious habits (e.g., driving to work the same way each day and never really “seeing” what was around you) and creating new habits by taking on new behaviors. At some point during his talk, I made a note that read simply “100 doodles in 100 days project.”

The idea of taking something new and doing it deliberately and repeatedly appealed to me. I was even reminded of other efforts like Rachel Hinman’s 2008 project “90 mobiles in 90 days.”

After making the note, I set the idea aside, eventually deciding to kick the project off in the New Year. I framed the task in a way that was safe for me. No, don’t worry, I’m not drawing, I’m not even sketching. I’m just doodling! Doodles aren’t of consequence, they’re little visuals you do mindlessly in the margin of your notebook to keep your hands busy while talking on the telephone. They aren’t intended to be “good” (whatever that means).

thanks

This Week @ Portigal

Howdy to a sunny Monday to begin the week.

  • I’m back to Boston on Wednesday for one last quick trip. We’re running a day of brainstorming workshops with our client, helping them to think divergently about the different products and services they could create to support their users better. We’re all very excited about it. I’m especially pleased that even though I was supposed to have completed my work a few weeks ago, they extended my contract so that I could be part of these workshops.
  • We just got a greenlight for another project and I expec this week will see a small flurry of contract and schedule activity. Probably right at the same time as another project – one that has been moving very slowly through the approval process – will blossom. It’ll work out, somehow!
  • Tomorrow I’ll be publishing an article about the 100 Doodles in 100 Days project. This is the first piece I’ve written in a very long time; I can’t think of anything that I’ve written in the two years since Interviewing Users came out. I’m looking forward to your reactions.
  • My hosts at RGD recorded last week’s Interviewing Users webinar; as soon as I have the link I’ll post the video.
  • I’ll be returning to Fluxible in September, speaking about War Stories.
  • I’ll be doing the closing keynote at Interact 15 in London this October. Details about a workshop coming soon.
  • A lot of people are asking when Dollars to Donuts is coming back. I’m looking for sponsors who can help defray the costs to produce another season. If your organization can help, please get in touch.
  • Ten years gone: From June 2005 – Campbell’s Soup seed cans, captive airline advertising, John Doe around the world.
  • What we’re consuming: Tetro, Momiji.

Out and About: Steve in San Antonio

A couple of weeks ago I was in San Antonio, where I was one of the presenters and workshop leaders at the Enterprise UX conference. Here are some of my pictures.

sa1
Out the hotel window, before the sun comes up.

sa2
Welcome to the party.

sa3
This toilet was flirting with me.

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sa6
Roasted? Iced? Local language norms or just really fancy catering?

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sa7
Conference breakfasts.

This Week @ Portigal

Happy June!

  • I’m in town this week for the first time in a while. I’ll be working on planning another set of workshops for our Boston folks next week. Yep, I thought I was rolling off that project, but they very graciously invited me to continue so I’ll be back next week.
  • I’ll look for some more info this week on the other projects that are gently and slowly incubating, so that I can make some resource scheduling/planning/etc. for the next few months. It’s an uncertain feeling, teetering on the edge between structure and plans, just trying to roll with it.
  • Meanwhile, I’m networking, including lunch with some Hungarian visitors, and doing some writing, rewriting, and plotting to write!
  • I’ll be doing a webinar about Interviewing Users this week; hope to “see” you there!
  • Ten years gone: From June 2005 – Wet Pain, Pete’s Tofu2Go desserts, R.I.P. Scott Young.
  • What we’re consuming: Let’s Start a Riot, Udupi Palace, Children’s Letters to Frankenstein, Kids in the Hall.

An inflection point for user research: scandal

A user researcher is front and center in a Silicon Valley competitor-workers legal snarl.

One now-former employee, Ana Rosario, was hired by Fitbit as a user experience researcher around April 16 but did not disclose that she planned to leave Jawbone until April 22, the complaint said. On April 20, according to the complaint, Ms. Rosario held a meeting with Jawbone’s senior director of product management to discuss the company’s future plans and then downloaded what the company said was a “playbook” outlining its future products.During her exit interviews, Ms. Rosario initially denied taking confidential information, but she later acknowledged downloading its “Market Trends & Opportunities” presentation, the complaint said.

I don’t know Ana (although LinkedIn shows me I know many people who do know her); I do know people at Jawbone (and probably people at Fitbit). I’m not sharing this to comment on any of the players or the details of the situation itself, but to note at a meta-level that in the trajectory of user research as a business function, it’s grown in prominence to the point where you can pick up the New York Times one morning and see a story like this.

This Week @ Portigal

It’s a holiday Monday!

  • For most in the US, anyway. Me, I’m back on a plane again. Today I’m flying to Boston, returning to the client from a few weeks back. Over the next couple of days we’ll be sharing our initial themes about their different users, and running a workshop with different parts of their organization.
  • On Wednesday, I’ll be part of a session on listening as part of the People Skills for UX virtual event. You can still sign up!
  • I’m playing the waiting game with a number of projects; with one we’ve been trying to schedule a kickoff for maybe 10 weeks. With another, we’re working slowly through the corporate procurement process. With yet another, we’ve submitted a proposal and will hope to get some feedback this week.
  • I was pleased to see this review of Interviewing Users on UX Book Reviews.
  • Ten years gone: From May 2005 – The Original Whizzinator – Pass Your Drug Test!, You pick the best Earthlink employee.
  • What we’re consuming: Mad Max: Fury Road, Schmidt’s, The Terrible Uncertainty of the Thing Described.

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Hello, Monday!

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Greetings to all.

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Happy May!

Interviewing Users: Link Roundup (Second Anniversary Edition)

interviewing-users

Wow. It’s been two years since my first book Interviewing Users was released. Here’s a roundup of links to various bits connected with the book. If you haven’t already, you should buy a copy here! It would be fantastic if you wrote a quick review on Amazon here.

The Book

Reviews

Interviews

Presentations

Other

This Week @ Portigal

And a welcome back to the work week to all.

  • I’m onsite with a client all day today, running a workshop with ten leaders from around the world to dig into how they can better leverage their UX capability in product development. I’ve been interviewing these folks over the past few weeks and I’ll be starting this workshop with what I’ve heard from them, but then structuring the day so they are prioritizing the issues and creating possible solutions together. I’m expecting an intense and rewarding day.
  • Soft Skills is coming up in San Antonio in mid-May, as part of Enterprise UX. I’m pretty excited about this expanded version of the workshop. Read more here and sign up, using PORTIGAL15 for a discount.
  • Next week I’m in Houston to lead a two-day training workshop on user research. I can confirm that I’ve found donut, taco and BBQ options near where I’m staying, too!
  • I am in pre-pre-production on another series of Dollars to Donuts. Right now I’m working on lining up a couple of additional sponsors.
  • This Wednesday I will be answering questions about insights and innovation in Ask the UXpert.
  • Ten years gone: From April 2005 – Bumblebee Entree-Style Tuna, SF cabs get touch-screens for some reason, Design without Reach.
  • What we’re consuming: Top Five, Le Samouraï, Buttermilk Southern Kitchen, House of Lies

This Week @ Portigal

It sure is starting to feel like spring!

  • I’m back from an exhausting and exhilarating week of interviews in Boston. 21 people in 4 days is a more intense schedule than I’d normally plan for but it’s just how things worked out. Back a few days and already the transcripts are pouring in!
  • This week I’m wrapping up conversations with stakeholders and digging into the final details for next week’s workshop (with another organization).
  • The soft skills workshop sold out at Interaction 15 and I’m getting inquiries about running the workshop again in a few different locations. Meanwhile, it’s coming up soon as part of Enterprise UX. Use discount PORTIGAL15 to save when you register for my workshop about Soft Skills coming up in San Antonio in mid-May.
  • I’m finalizing logistics and starting to dig into the detailed content for a two-day training workshop I’m leading for a big corporation in Houston in early May.
  • I’m also planning a program to a really exciting research and strategy project and trying to outline a new article!
  • I will be answering questions about insights and innovation in Ask the UXpert on April 29.
  • Ten years gone: From April 2005 – Budweiser patriotism, Snapple-a-day, portion control packaging.
  • What we’re consuming: We Put a Chip In It!, The Dutch Goose, Silicon Valley, Veep.

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Well, happy Monday to all!

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It’s April, everyone.

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Howdy Monday!

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Happy Spring!

  • It’s one of those weeks where we wrap up a project. I’m not taking the lead on this, but am dipping into the process constantly to see where the presentation is at, giving feedback and other edits, and checking in with the client to see if we’re tracking on their goals. Phew!
  • It’s a short week I take an extra long weekend in wine country this weekend.
  • One project kicked off last week and we’re now setting up interviews on their campus in April and figuring out what we need to be talking about. At the same time, the team is looking for industry experts and doing some secondary research in the space. It’s shaping up to be a great collaboration.
  • Only a few tickets remain for for Moments of Influence, an interactive talk I’m doing with Dan Szuc and Jo Wong of Apogee.
  • I’ve already had a good conversation today about my workshop Soft Skills Are Hard, part of the Enterprise UX conference this May in San Antonio. Please join me and also spread the word!
  • Check out these video highlights from my World IA Day workshop The Designer is Present.
  • I’ve just posted the latest 10 doodles.
  • On Thursday I’ll be listening to Josh Seiden’s webinar Beyond Brainstorming: Create Breakthrough Ideas for Innovation.
  • Ten years gone: From March 2005 – vivid colors for your pet.
  • What we’re consuming: Birdman, Cookie Monster, Life Coach, Enter Sandman, Cowboy Fishing Co..

This Week @ Portigal

  • My agency client is working diligently to get a draft presentation together. I’m helping to shape the insights and implications and to ensure they are well-articulated. We’re in the home stretch.
  • I’m kicking off two projects this week. In one I’ll be guiding a client team as they plan for, conduct, and analyze ethnographic research. In another, I’ll be partnering with a couple of other small consultancies in a project that follows on some work I did with this same client last year. It looks like travel to Boston and Las Vegas will be coming up in the next little while!
  • I’ll also be in Houston in May to lead a two-day user research workshop onsite for a client.
  • Also in Texas in May, I’ll be part of the Enterprise UX conference in San Antonio. I’ll be leading an extended version of my workshop Soft Skills Are Hard. You should join us!
  • Coming up in a few weeks in San Francisco, I’ll be presenting Moments of Influence, in collaboration with Dan Szuc and Jo Wong of Apogee. We’re starting to plot our topics and some exercises as well.
  • Ten years gone: From March 2005 – creaky neighbor car, no sugar – no difference, apple tasting notes.
  • What we’re consuming: Hapa ramen, Chuck Klosterman, Steve’s ice cream.

Steve’s War Story: Giggling and Grunting

I originally posted this in 2006, and revised it slightly for Interviewing Users. I thought it was time to add it to the War Stories archive and so here’s the original version.

As we rang the doorbell, my colleague and I unconsciously straightened, preparing ourselves for that all-important first impression, that moment when our research participant would come to the door and size us up. We waited for a moment, looking at each other as we heard footsteps, mustering a smile as the inside door opened.
“Hello,” I offered, “Are you Brian?”

As I began to state the obvious, that we were here for the interview, he grunted, opened the screen door, and as we took hold, he turned around and walked back into the house. We glanced at each other, and stepped into the foyer. What did we know about Brian? Our recruiting screener told us he was 22, lived with his parents, and his brother, and was employed part-time. The rest would be up to us to discover.

It was 7:30 in the morning and we were taking our shoes off in a strange house. Eventually someone beckoned from the kitchen, and we came in. But already we were out of sync. The kitchen was small, with an L-shaped counter, and a small table for dining. The mother was at the end of the L, working with bowls and dishes and burners on the stove. The father was perched against the counter, while Brian, and his younger brother sat at the table. The father was a small man, while the other three were quite large. The room wasn’t intended for the six of us, so we managed to set ourselves up for our interview in the only place we could; at the far end of the counter, at the far end of the table. We wedged ourselves (one behind the other) on small chairs, pulling our knees in, our paraphernalia of notepads, documents, video cameras, tapes, batteries etc. clutched in close. It wasn’t ideal, but we hoped we could make it work.

But then the real challenge became clear – although Brian had agreed for us to meet and do this interview, he was actively disinterested. We were positioned 45 degrees behind him, in his blind spot. With his physical bulk, he managed to loom over his food in a way that eliminated even any peripheral eye contact; somehow this was something a smaller person couldn’t have done. His brother sat across from him, echoing his posture.

We had recruited Brian specifically, but of course, here we were with the entire family. We pressed ahead, explaining our study, and starting in with our planned questions. Since Brian was the person with whom we had the arrangement, we focused our attention on him. He would not respond, beyond one word answers (which sounded more like grunts), and the occasional glance up to his brother, causing them both to giggle.

My colleague and I avoided looking at each other (it may have not been physically possible, given the tight quarters) for fear of displaying our despair at the situation. Sure, we had arranged this interview, but the cues we were receiving were making it clear the arrangement wasn’t worth much. At this point, we had already woke up quite early to do this interview, so there was no point in giving up. If they changed their mind explicitly, they’d let us know, and we’d leave. Meanwhile, what else was there to do but press on? I asked questions, with very little response. I tried the brother, at which point Brian bolted out of the room for a few minutes, without a word. The brother was only slightly more amenable than Brian, mostly interested in making critical comments about his parents (to Brian’s great grunting enjoyment) as much as provide any actual information.

Indeed, the mother and father seemed not to have been warned that we would be coming; although I directed some of the questioning towards the mom, she reacted with pretty serious hostility, informing us (in the context of an answer to a question) that they did not welcome strangers into their house, and (while she was preparing food) highlighted the intimate nature of food preparation as a symbol, and that was even less open to strangers. The message was very clear.

But again, what could we do? Pressing on, until asked to leave, under the explicit agreement we had made, seemed the best approach. We asked our questions, following up on the information they had shared, listening closely, looking for clarification, offering up as much space as we could for them to talk, all in trying to build some flow and dialog. Even though the message was negative, at least the parents were willing to talk to us. And so, the young men faded out of the conversation, and the interview eventually switched over to the parents. Two hours later it turned out that we had completed an excellent interview with them; they each had great stories about our topic area, and revealed a lot of background about their family, about growing up, about their activities, and even their perspectives on what made the United States the country it had become.

Before we left the house, the mother insisted on cooking up some fried bread fresh and hot for us; admonishing us that “no one comes here and doesn’t get food” – reiterating the intimate nature of food she had mentioned at the beginning, but this time as a compliment rather than a shield.

As soon as we left the house, my colleague turned to me and said “I don’t know how you pulled that off; I thought we were done for and would have to leave.” I was very pleased with how the interview turned out, especially because it began at such a low point, but there was little magic to it. I didn’t try to solve the big problem of the complex dynamic we had walked into; I focused (especially at first) on just the next problem; the immediate challenge of what to say next. I was certainly keeping the larger goals in mind of how to cover all the areas we were interested in, but I was focusing my energy as an interviewer on the next thing. And by working at it in small pieces, bit by bit, the dynamic shifted. As interviewers, we had to compartmentalize the social experience of the event – the extreme discomfort and awkwardness of the early part of the interview, and just stick to our jobs. We didn’t handle the situation that differently than any other interview, and it served as a testament to our approach – listening, following up (and showing that we were listening by the way we followed up), building rapport and trust, bit by bit, until there was a great deal of openness and great information.

Years later, it’s obvious that there are better ways to communicate with the participants ahead of time to screen out unwilling participants. For example, the person who is going to be in the field should always speak live to the person they will be visiting before they day of the interview just to get that person-to-person communication started early, so both parties can get a sense of each other and start to feel comfortable (or agree that it’s not a good fit and move on to someone else). But, given the diversity of people, we will always end up interviewing people who are more or less comfortable with the process, and it’s our job to make them comfortable in order to get the information we are interested in. Doing so may make us uncomfortable ourselves, but with practice we must learn to set aside the social dynamics and focus on the question asking and listening that will make the interview a success.

This Week @ Portigal

  • I’m sitting in on a handful of remote interviews today and tomorrow, following up on some diary studies and getting in our last questions as the data collection phase of this project wraps up. I’m advising the team as they work through an outline of what we’ll be delivering; looking for that shift from an amalgamation of findings to a narrative that points the way forward for our client.
  • Coming up in a few weeks in San Francisco, I’ll be presenting Moments of Influence, in collaboration with Dan Szuc and Jo Wong of Apogee
  • As part of the Enterprise UX conference in San Antonio in May, I’ll be leading an extended version of my workshop Soft Skills Are Hard. Hope to see you there!
  • Out on the town: On Thursday evening I’ll be at an sneak-preview event for IDEO U.
  • Ten years gone: From March 2005 – Lord of the Rings, the musical, A Few Tips to Cope With Life’s Annoyances scented bowling balls, Grapple – grape-infused apples.
  • What we’re consuming: Ai Wewei @Large, Suppenküche, Unbreakable Kimmie Schmidt, New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest.
  • An update on 100 doodles in 100 days

    Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been working on 100 doodles in 100 days. I’ll probably wait for the project to complete before I reflect in more detail but I thought for the last half I’d do a few posts to share the output. Here are the 50s.

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    Facilitation and exercises for creativity and presence

    I run different types of workshops with clients and at events and have built up a number of different activities that invite the participants to have a novel moment and then reflect on it to reveal something potentially profound. I’ve written my current favorites, but welcome suggestions, additions, requests for clarification, and so on.

    1. The Superpower Intro

    • When starting out a group session, everyone introduces themselves in turn, with their name and their super-power.
    • It’s best not to over-constrain what constitutes a super-power. Some will speak about the thing that brings the group together (e.g., work), some will talk about their personal lives, and so on.

    I nicked this exercise from Marissa Louie who used it as a way to kick-off a talk. But you can use this to go in a number of different directions. In my workshops on soft skills, I’ve adopted this warm-up because it often happens that the kinds of things people share as their super-powers are indeed soft skills. It can be a positive way to see all the things that people are good at (actually great at!). Christina Wodtke does a variation where people, in pairs, ask each other for stories about an experience or accomplishment they are proud of, and then tell that person what they think their super-power is.

    2. Doodling

    There are many ways to doodle, but here’s what I’ve been doing as part of my 100 doodles in 100 days project

    • Get a pen and piece of paper.
    • Close your eyes – or look away – and move the pen. Make a scrawl or a squiggle. Don’t try to make anything happen, just get some marks down.
    • Now look at what you’ve got and try to create something out of it. It can be abstract. Or it might look like something. For fun, you might want to draw eyes and a mouth, animal parts (see Dave Gray’s amazing Squiggle Birds exercise).
    • Don’t take too long, but try to think about when the doodle is done.

    This isn’t about producing something good, artistic, or even visually pleasing. It’s about taking an activity that usually is very deliberate, where we are focused on the outcome and trying to do it differently. You can reflect on how it felt to “draw” this way and how you feel about your output.

    3. Storytelling Circle

    This is an improv game played with 6 – 8 people.

    • Get in a circle. If you are doing the game in a larger group, you can make a semi-circle so that the everyone is facing out to the rest of the group.
    • As with many improv games, get three suggestions from the audience. You might ask for a proper name, the name of a place, a household object, something you might find in a purse, etc.
    • The people in the circle are to tell a story (incorporating those elements) one word a time. Go around and around until you are done!
    • Move quickly and aim to have the sentences the group creates come out almost as quickly as if one person was speaking.
    • One trick is for everyone to be ready to start a new sentence. The almost-default of a run-on sentence isn’t much fun to do or to watch.
    • Don’t throw all your story elements in at once, and try to look for the ending to the story.

    I like to do a couple of rounds of this until everyone has gone and then debrief about the experience. What was it like to do this? What were you thinking when you were playing? What did you observe when you were watching?

    There are some common responses when I debrief this activity, but I also hear something new every time.

    I teach an entire workshop about improv (slides). And just for fun, you can see some hilarious improv anti-patterns in this clip.

    4. It’s going to be okay

    • Working with a partner, share something you are worried about. It can be something big or something small.
    • The partner says, as authentically as possible “It’s going to be okay.
    • The first person acknowledges that yes, it is.
    • Then switch roles and repeat the exercise.
    • As a group, talk about what happened.

    This simple exercise uncovers a lot of complex individual stuff. My objective is to just give people a chance to play with the notion of “it’s going to be okay” which is maybe not that comfortable for everyone. But worry takes you away from the present moment, into the future when some unwanted consequence may occur. And I hope that by playing with it, and seeing how it does or doesn’t work for the individual, people may have some power to try this themselves.

    When I’ve led a group through this exercise, some people made it a silly activity (“I’m worried about vampires”), others felt that the response wasn’t sufficient to mollify the concerns they had just given voice to and reported feeling worse, others felt that just expressing the worry gave them some relief, others felt like the exchange was calming. I have been challenged by being asked “Well, what if it’s not going to be okay, like what if it’s cancer?” Of course, the process of coming to grips with death does indeed include acceptance. Oliver Sacks wrote a terrific and touching essay about his own impending death from cancer.

    5. Designer is Present

    • People get into pairs and move so that they are sitting directly across from each other. Their knees shouldn’t be touching but they should be close.
    • Without staring, each pair looks quietly at each other for 60 seconds.
    • Without debriefing or discussing, everyone stands up and moves around for a moment to “shake it off” and then sits down to resume for an additional 60 seconds.
    • As a group, debrief the experience.

    This activity comes from the performance artist Marina Abramovic’s The Artist is Present, a show at MoMA where as part of a retrospective of her career she performed a new piece where she sat silently facing individual museum-goers, all day, day after day, for several months. An excellent documentary about the show is reviewed here.

    I have since learned that you can find versions of this exercise in dance and in couples therapy.

    You can also read more about presence in an article I co-wrote about noticing. For more on this workshop, watch the video and check out the slides.

    6. Reframing Bad ideas

    • Each person is given two sticky notes.
    • On the first sticky note, write or draw the worst idea for a product or service. Something that is dangerous, immoral, bad for business. I often give the example of “candy for breakfast.”
    • Pass the sticky note to someone else. It doesn’t have to be a direct swap, as long as everyone has someone else’s bad idea.
    • On the second sticky note, design the circumstances whereby the bad idea you’ve received becomes a good idea. I’ll offer the scenario where colony collapse disorder has disrupted the food supply enough that children aren’t getting enough sugar through regular sources and breakfast candy is the result.
    • Have people share the idea they were given and the way they successfully reframed it.

    I stole this exercise from Mathew Lincez. I use it in combination with “It’s going to be okay” to illustrate our capacity for reframing and as part of a workshop on creativity called the Power of Bad Ideas (article, slides, video).

    This Week @ Portigal

    Happy March, everyone!

    This Week @ Portigal

    Five Questions with Steve Portigal

    This Friday I’ll be speaking at 18F in DC about The Power of Bad Ideas. The talk will be streamed here.

    In advance of the talk, I answered a few questions about working with clients and planning research projects. Here’s a snippet; more at the 18F site.

    SP: I’m intrigued by the user-centered theater — that is to say, people who have a design goal or a strategic need or a hunger for some insights, but who aren’t open to collaborating on how to accomplish that.

    You often see this with projects where a client wants to understand something enormously complex and nuanced, and they don’t have any budget or time to do so. This is a big red flag. Sometimes, it’s worthwhile having a conversation to see if they [potential client] are open to feedback on their situation and on alternative ways to work.

    In some cases, I’m pleasantly surprised; in many cases, though, I’m usually happy to pass on these projects. The kicker is that many of these folks have often already defined the method they want to use to reach their stated goal. It’s foolhardy to try to help people who have set you up to fail.

    This Week @ Portigal

    • It’s a holiday in the U.S., but I’m using this as a work day to try and get caught up. Last week, with the Interaction conference (and my Soft Skills workshop) and my talk at the Design Writing summit, put me behind.
    • I’m headed to DC this Thursday. On Friday I’ll be speaking about The Power of Bad Ideas at 18F, and on Saturday I’ll be leading The Designer is Present at World IA Day DC which will also be streamed.
    • The agency I’m collaborating with is leading a bunch of remote interviews this week; we started last week (in a moment reminiscent of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, the participant took delivery of a pizza during the interview). I’ll be sitting in on a few more this week.
    • Last week on Dollars to Donuts my guest was Kerry McAleer-Forte of Sears. This week we’ll have our final episode of the first series, so stay tuned! If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, you should review it on iTunes.
    • Out on the town: We’ll be at the first Design Museum San Francisco event on Tuesday night.
    • Ten years gone: From February 2005 – My days as a Ticketmaster niterun operator, Forbes on customer input into product development.
    • What we’re consuming: Dungeness crab deviled eggs, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, The Jinx: The Life and Deaths Of Robert Durst.

    This Week @ Portigal

    • I’m staying up in San Francisco for the next few days. It’s the Interaction 15 conference and in addition to my workshop on soft skills today, there’s a ton of interesting talks and a plethora of people to catch up with.
    • I’m speaking about Beating the Blank Page at The Design Writing Summit this Thursday. It promises to be a unique event and I understand there’s still a few spots left.
    • I was the guest for an AMA (“ask me anything”) in the UX Community on Slack. It was a fun conversation; you can check out a gently edited transcript is here.
    • Maxime Fortelle has a nice writeup (in French) of Why read Interviewing Users by Steve Portigal.
    • Last week we had two new War Stories! One from Jenn and another from Jen!
    • Coming up in May is Enterprise UX in San Antonio. I’m doing an extended version of the soft skills workshop and I’m also a “theme leader” for the Insight at Scale track. I’m enjoying the collaboration with the speakers and expect a really stellar experience.
    • Dollars to Donuts was dark was last week; we’ve had to reset some of the production but we’ll have a new episode on Wednesday. If you’ve been enjoying them, it would help if you give the podcast a rating/review on iTunes.
    • Check out the latest 100 doodles in 100 day.
    • Ten years gone: From February 2005 – Tiger Power cereal unboxing, unfortunate design for USB drive, Crayola food.
    • What we’re consuming: 20,000 Days on Earth, Samovar, Veep.

    Jenn’s War Story: Burns, Bandages, and BBQ

    Jenn Downs is a UX Designer at ShootProof in Atlanta, GA.

    I was out of town with a colleague for a full-day customer visit. While getting ready for the day I burned my thumb pretty badly on my hair straightening iron. It was the kind of burn you can soothe for about two seconds before it makes you roll your eyes back and cry out in pain. We’d planned ahead and given ourselves plenty of time that morning, so we had a few minutes to find some burn cream. I ran down to the hotel front desk to see if they had a first aid kit, but they did not. One of the staff offered me a packet of mustard to soothe the burn, perhaps some kind of southern old wives’ tale. I don’t usually believe in food-on-skin remedies, but I wanted it to work. So I let the front desk guy apply the mustard to my thumb.

    Two seconds later I was again whimpering in pain, so I just filled a cup with ice water and stuck my thumb in the cup. We sped out to a drugstore. We were staying on the outskirts of a college town and there weren’t many places to find first aid items, but we did finally find the one grocery store that was open before 8 am. I bought everything: burn cream, aloe, bandages, you name it. But nothing worked. Nothing but the cup of ice water could stop me from visibly wincing. We were running out of time and had to head to our meeting, hoping for some kind of miracle.

    We found our way to our customers’ office and had to wait for our interviewees to come get us from another part of the building. Fortunately the front desk person was keenly observant and before I could even say anything she’d found a refill of ice water for my aching thumb. And then it was time for the interview. We went in to meet our customers, my thumb fully immersed in the cup of water. We worked for a really creative and weird company and we were visiting a very conservative and traditional southern company, so we were feeling a little out of our element; I thought for a moment that my thumb-on-ice was going to be a disaster, but it was actually a nice ice-breaker (pun not intended).

    Then I spilled the cup of ice water all over their conference room table.

    In that moment all I could do was laugh at myself and let everyone laugh with me and just continue the conversation as I was cleaning up the mess, calmly and confidently.

    It turned out to be a great interview and gave our customers something to joke about with us as we shared a BBQ lunch. Imagine trying to eat ribs with one thumb wrapped up in gauze and burn cream! My confidence through the awkwardness ended up helping them feel comfortable with having strangers in their office all day and we got great information we probably wouldn’t have otherwise. Sometimes you just have to roll with it.

    Jen’s War Story: Bad news turns to couples therapy


    Jen Ignacz is the UX Research Lead at TOPP, a design consultancy focused on helping clients shape future products and services.

    I was conducting in-home contextual interviews about home safety and security behaviours. In the recruitment screener, I had found out that a particular participant had experienced a break-in to her home about a year earlier.

    When I arrived at her home for the interview, her fiancé was also there and ended up participating extensively in the conversation.

    My research partner and I had been with the couple for about 90 minutes and they were obviously feeling quite comfortable; they offered up lots of intimate details about their routines and behaviours and were willing to show us everything and anything. I was pleased that they felt so comfortable with sharing (the woman more than the man).

    Part of my protocol was to understand what happened when people find out about bad news about their home, like a fire alarm going off, a break-in, a water leak, etc. So, after 90 minutes of talking about home safety and security routines, I posed the question: “Now I want to talk about what you do when you get bad news. You mentioned that you had a break-in last year. Can you tell me about what happened?”

    As I was asking, the couple looked at each other and an awkward silence fell over the room as I finished the question. They held each other’s gaze for longer than was comfortable (for us). Their sudden change in behaviour told me I had hit on a sore spot.

    The woman broke the silence, still holding her partner’s gaze, saying “That’s not what I consider bad news. Your child dying is bad news.” Then a whispered “Do you not want to talk about this?” to her fiancé.

    My research partner and I froze as if hoping that by not moving, time could stand still for us while they dealt with this incredibly intense personal moment.

    The couple started to talk about the experience of losing a pregnancy in the second trimester about a year earlier. (I made the realisation when reviewing the recordings that the break-in happened around the same time as the miscarriage, so asking the question the way I did allowed for a connection between events I could not have anticipated). They spoke quietly and mostly to each other, but engaged me more and more in their conversation as they went along.

    As a researcher, this felt way off-topic and I was trying to think of ways to get the interview back on track. But as a human being, I felt the need to let them deal with this issue that seemed difficult for them to talk about. From their conversation, it was quite clear they each were still working through their emotions and likely didn’t speak about it to each other often enough. I wasn’t going to shut down an opportunity for them to make emotional progress just because it didn’t fit anywhere close to my research goals.

    So, I let them talk. And I even guided them to share some feelings with each other. I took on a counseling role; a total deviation from the research plan.

    After about ten minutes, they turned to me and said “That’s probably not what you meant.”

    I was honest with them. I told them it wasn’t the type of bad news event I was thinking about, but the conversation helped me learn more about who they are; their values, morals, and perspectives on life. Getting a better sense of who they are ultimately helps me understand their motives for their behaviours better.

    My response allowed us to carefully ramp back up to the interview protocol. I was very cautious with that transition. I had to ensure that the trust and openness we had established in the first 90 minutes wasn’t harmed by the unexpectedly exposed vulnerability. It didn’t seem to be. I was able to complete the remaining hour of the visit with just as much openness (and gaining just as much insight) as we had before.

    This Week @ Portigal

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    It’s been a while since I posted short snippets around links I’ve found fascinating, and while that means these stories don’t come out of this week’s news, I think they are all are provocative and worth being aware of.

    Marketers change pronunciation in ads to attract shoppers [CBC] – The value of the Z as a cultural indicator when selling products in Canada. Canadian companies remind of their status by highlighting the “zed” while some American companies will create a Canadian-specific ad, replacing “zee: with “zed” (depending on the product and it’s meaning – and cost)

    Because cars are so closely tied to image and identity, it’s very important to get that identity correct when speaking to Canadian car buyers. But in the end, it all comes down to dollars and cents. If the product is low-end and utilitarian, marketers will go cheap and run the U.S. product name, commercial and pronunciation in both countries.

    But when there’s a risk of offending the identity of Canadian buyers of big ticket items, marketers will spend the extra loonies to do a custom version for Canada.

    Threat of Death Makes People Go Shopping [Inkfish] – Here’s a finding that we really don’t want to see in the wrong hands!

    Nothing says “Let’s hit the outlet mall” like nearly being wiped out by a rocket. A study of both Americans and terrorized Israelis suggests that certain people respond to the threat of death by going shopping. Because if it’s your time to go, you may as well be wearing the latest from Forever 21 Michigan State University marketing professor Ayalla Ruvio and her colleagues performed two studies of potential shoppers. The first took place in Israel. Questionnaires were handed out at a community center in a town just one kilometer from the Gaza Strip, during six months of daily rocket attacks there in 2007. The same surveys were distributed in a second town farther from the fighting, where residents were aware of the violence but not in direct danger. The questionnaires were meant to ferret out a few different answers about people. Did they experience post-traumatic symptoms such as nightmares or memory loss? Did they cope with negative feelings by buying things? How often did they return from a shopping trip with items they hadn’t meant to purchase? Other questions assessed how materialistic the subjects were-did they place a lot of value on owning nice things? Israelis who were experiencing daily rocket attacks, unsurprisingly, reported more post-traumatic stress. People who felt more stress admitted to more compulsive or impulsive shopping behaviors. And both these effects (feeling stress and going shopping) were stronger in more materialistic people. For their second study, the researchers used a group of 855 American subjects, meant to be demographically representative of the U.S. population overall. Subjects filled out an online survey that measured their materialism, shopping habits, and how much they thought about their own death, as well as other factors. Once again, for people who were more materialistic, there was a relationship between fear of death and impulse buying.

    Because the more materialistic Israelis experienced more stress, the researchers think “materialism makes bad events even worse.” And when materialistic people feel threatened, they buy things they don’t really want (or maybe can’t afford). The findings don’t only apply to people living in the Middle East. Events that make people fear for their lives can include car accidents, assaults, and natural disasters. Yet Ruvio puts a positive spin on the ubiquity of trauma. “This presents an opportunity for both manufacturers of impulse items and the retailers that sell these products,” she writes. When a severe storm or a military crisis is brewing, she suggests stores put their high-profit-margin items up front where impulse shoppers will see them.

    While retailers may be able to benefit from people’s crises, shoppers themselves won’t. Previous research, Ruvio writes, shows that “most materialistic individuals derive little satisfaction from their consumption activities.” So much for retail therapy.

    Weird T-Shirts Designed To Confuse Facebook’s Auto-Tagging [Wired Design] – The space where conceptual art meets technology can be interesting, where working solutions can be produced to comment on the problem without fully solving it, and yet point the way to a possible future where those problems are addressed this way.

    How to fight back? Just buy one of Simone C. Niquille’s “REALFACE Glamoflage” T-shirts, a series of bizarre, visage-covered garments designed specifically to give Facebook’s facial recognition software the runaround.

    Niquille dreamed up the shirts as part of her master’s thesis in graphic design at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. FaceValue, as the thesis is titled, imagines new design solutions for the near-future, mining the ripe intersection of privacy, pattern recognition and biometrics. The shirts, custom-printed for around $65, are one of three such imaginings–a tongue-halfway-in-cheek tool for pushing back against the emerging trends of ubiquitous, computer-aided recognition. Covered in distorted faces of celebrity impersonators, they’re designed to keep Facebook’s algorithms guessing about what–or more accurately who–they’re looking at.

    “I was interested in the T-shirt as a mundane commodity,” Niquille explains. “An article of clothing that in most cases does not need much consideration in the morning in front of the closet…I was interested in creating a tool for privacy protection that wouldn’t require much time to think in the morning, an accessory that would seamlessly fit in your existing everyday. No adaption period needed.”

    Promoting Health With Enticing Photos of Fruits and Vegetables [NYT] – Bolthouse Farms created a fanciful website that visualizes food-related social media content.

    “It’s not that I don’t have an Oreo every once in a while,” Mr. Putman said. “We just want folks to understand that beautiful carrots have badge value the same way peanut butter, chocolate pie does.” Having badge value means something is interesting enough to deserve a hashtag.

    Bitcoin Beauties promotes use of currency by women [SFGate] – If this provides empowerment to someone, then that’s great. But I don’t understand this at all. It seems like Trending Topic + Nekkid Ladies = something.

    The company’s slogan is “Beauty, Brains, Bitcoin.” Its logo is a sketch of two voluptuous, nude women, posing pin-up style beside the stylized bitcoin “B.” The company website, yet to be completed, is now a photo collage of women, some topless, silhouetted against a beach sunset. Blincoe refers to members as “our beauties.” For Blincoe, there is urgency in staking a claim for women in the highly lucrative world of bitcoin, a crypto currency that by many accounts has the potential to shape the future of how transactions take place and currency flows online. For now, the main function of Bitcoin Beauties is hosting a small-but-growing weekly gathering where women talk bitcoin.

    The Anti-Digit Dialing League [Orange Crate Art] – A mostly-forgotten (and mostly unsuccessful) rebellion against a technological advance. Also see the followup here.

    The Anti-Digit Dialing League was a short-lived movement that arose in 1962 and faded, it would seem, in 1964. Founded in San Francisco, the ADDL opposed “creeping numeralism” and fought a losing battle to preserve the use of telephone exchange names.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Dollars to Donuts: Behind The Music

    My new Dollars to Donuts podcast features a nifty bit of intro and outro music. In the podcast you just hear snippets of the song, written expressly for the podcast by my brother-in-law, Bruce Todd. I’ve long been an admirer of Bruce’s songwriting and playing and overall musical thang, and it was an absolute thrill to have him create a piece of music for me.

    Now you can hear the whole piece!

    Since we’re all about digging into creative processes, here’s Bruce’s explanation of how he developed this music.

    This song came to light through questions and (heaven forbid) assumptions about what Steve was looking for or better yet – listening for. Based on some email conversations and musical examples, I had a rough idea that the music had to be relatively fast-paced, rocking and attention=grabbing. Since Steve had some alternatives there was no pressure for me to actually produce anything and this allowed me to experiment and take a few small sound risks. Most of this recording was completed through digital amplification or direct line inputs which allowed me to work quietly and at my leisure (everything except vocals). Often when recording instruments with microphones you need a quiet peaceful environment which I don’t always have access to in my (non-soundproofed) home studio.

    I began by finding a drum track: a simple upbeat 4/4 rock drum track which I had used on a previous recording (having exported the tracks from a master file and imported to my Tascam DP 32 Portastudio). Then the fun began. Knowing that the end result would be used as a short clip, I laid down about 2 minutes of drums and then pulled out my Fender Telecaster and began to experiment with a riff. This came pretty quickly as it is quite a simple progression in the key of F-sharp. Next, I plugged in my Vox DA5 (5-watt digital amplifier) and located an overdrive sound I liked and added a small amount of delay. I recorded two tracks with the same guitar sound and panned the tracks left and right, which results in creating a thicker overall sound by doubling the part. After the rhythm guitar tracks were completed I worked on the bass part. I ran the bass also through the little digital Vox and added compression which brought out a punchy bass track (this is a discovery I have been using on my other recordings ever since). Once drums, guitar and bass were complete I left the recording for a few days so I could revisit the idea when I was ready.

    Coming back, I wasn’t too sure I liked what I had. If this was a more serious venture I would have probably scrapped the idea. Given that I wasn’t overly convinced that the song idea had much merit I thought I would have my young daughters (Talia 8, Arianna, 4) join me and be exposed to the recording process. Regardless of what the end result was I was sure Uncle Steve would get a kick out of his nieces being involved. Talia has a small electronic keyboard which I plugged into the Portastudio, and I gave her some headphones and had her play along with the guitar, bass and drums. Her first track was a keeper as she found a funny sound and played a part that complimented the space that the guitar riff left. Then Arianna played a part with a toy instrument of hers (in the end this track did not make it on the recording). The girls also helped me do a little vocal improvisation which also didn’t make the master mix but helped me get to the next part of the recording.

    recording-1
    recording-2

    Several days again went by until I felt ready to listen to the song and see what was there and what else I could add. I went back to my guitar and found another overdrive tone which I overlaid with the auto-wah pedal sound setting on the Vox DA5. This was a lucky choice as I think it is what gets the attention of the listener at the beginning of the song. The track is pretty much one big lead guitar riff which from time to time stops and echoes the rhythm guitar tracks. This was a fun part for me as was the final vocal tracks. For the vocal tracks I ran a Shure 57 through the Vox DA 5 flanger setting with a lot of flange and overdrive and experimented by saying “Talk it Out” and by making other weird sounds. I mixed the song and sent it digitally via email to Steve – and to my surprise received a very nice response.

    And that is how Dollars to Donuts found its music.

    This Week @ Portigal

    • It’s a holiday today (MLK day) for some folks in the US. But we’re working today.
    • Last week on Dollars to Donuts, my new podcast with people who lead user research in their organization, I had a great conversation with Alex Wright of Etsy. Another episode drops on Wednesday; you can find them all on iTunes.
    • Video from my talk on Interviewing Users from the HOW Interactive Design conference is now on YouTube and Vimeo.
    • My agency collaboration is going well; their client is doing some interesting work and the research is going to help unpack expectations around a few similar-seeming value propositions. This week they’re planning to start screening for participants across the country who will fill out diaries over several weeks.
    • I’ve got the green light (at least the green light that means let’s begin the paperwork) from a client team to advise them through some in-home fieldwork. I’ll be doing some interviews with experts at the same time, and we’ll all come together and synthesize the results into…something! It’s a really nice group and we’ve been looking for a chance to work together for a few months now.
    • Soft Skills Are Hard, my workshop for Interaction 15 has filled up! Looking forward to the whole conference and to the workshop. I’ll be doing a shorter version for a bigger crowd at World IA Day in DC on February 21.
    • Tomorrow is my rescheduled workshop on improv, collaboration and creativity at GreatSchools in Oakland.
    • Next week I’m doing a lunch-hour session with the UX students at General Assembly. We’re going to talk about the Power of Bad Ideas.
    • Also next week, I’ll be New York to attend the Pro/Design conference.
    • Ten years gone: From January 2005 – Dubious pancake mix FAQ, Titan Probe Drops Into ‘Creme Brulee’-Like Surface.
    • What we’re consuming: Keep on Keepin’ On, Brenda’s Meat & Three, 100 Doodles in 100 Days, Boyhood.

    Video from Interviewing Users talk at HOW Interactive

    I was finally able to get my hands on the video from November’s talk (Interviewing Users: Uncovering Compelling Insights) at the HOW Interactive Design conference. Below is the video both on YouTube and Vimeo (in case you have a preference?). Also below are the slides.

    Interviewing Users: Uncovering Compelling Insights by Steve Portigal

    This Week @ Portigal

    • I’ve just launched a new podcast, called Dollars to Donuts, where I speak with people who lead user research in their organization. You can find it on the Portigal Consulting site, on iTunes, and on Twitter. Our first episode, an interview with Gregg Bernstein of MailChimp, is getting a great response so far.
    • Soft Skills Are Hard, my workshop for Interaction 15 is filling up. If you’d like to be part of it, register for the conference and then sign up for the workshop here.
    • We’ve rescheduled my workshop on improv, collaboration and creativity for the folks at GreatSchools in Oakland to next week, after we realized that the last week was not good for people’s schedules.
    • I’m kicking off a new project this week, working with an agency in more of a creative director role. Well, that’s probably not the right term, but I don’t think we know what it is. Their staff will be doing the heavy lifting but I’ll be around as a sounding board and general guide on fieldwork, analysis and ensuring we’re meeting the client’s goals. Should be an novel and promising way for me to collaborate with some enthusiastic people.
    • Ten years gone: From January 2005 – Ghoulish spam, The Google Pause.
    • What we’re consuming: cheese, Episodes, Len Deighton.

    Epic FAIL: Takeaways from the War Stories project

    Since 2012, I’ve been collecting War Stories, where researchers share the stuff that happens during fieldwork. There are more than 70 stories (start your reading here) and they’ve proven to be a valuable resource for the practice. I’ve been giving a talk over the past few months about the stories and what I’ve learned from the process of curating the stories as well as from the stories themselves. From UX Australia, here’s the audio, the (minimal) slides, and a few sketchnotes.

    If you have a story about an experience you had doing contextual research, please get in touch! We want more stories!


    To download the audio Right-Click and Save As… (Windows) or Ctrl-Click (Mac)


    Matthew Magain, UX Mastery


    Guillaume Hammadi


    Suj

    Join me for Soft Skills Are Hard at Interaction 15

    On February 9 I’ll be teaching a new workshop at Interaction 15 in San Francisco. Entitled Soft Skills Are Hard, it’s a deeper-dive that build the interactive talks I’ve done recently that focus on developing the interpersonal, creative, and cognitive skill sets that are essential in innovative work cultures.

    If you are registered for Interaction 15, you can sign up here.

    Below are the slides and video from an earlier talks. The workshop will focus on identifying individually relevant skills and creating an action plan to strengthen them.



    Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream
    Note: the talk itself starts around 30:00

    Interviewing Users: Link Roundup

    interviewing-users

    Welcome to 2016! The New Year seems a good time to post my occasionally updated roundup of links to various bits connected with Interviewing Users. Of course, if you haven’t already, you should buy a copy here! It would be fantastic if you wrote a quick review on Amazon here.

    The Book

    Reviews

    Interviews

    Presentations

    Other

    This Week @ Portigal

    Happy New Year! It’s been 2015 for a few days, but this is back-to-work day here and for many of you as well, so I think the greeting still stands. Here’s what’s up as we get things back into gear.

    • The semi-stealth project I’ve been working on will launch this week. More to come but here’s a big hint.
    • Please sign up for Soft Skills Are Hard, my workshop for Interaction 15. It’s in San Francisco on February 9 and you can register here.
    • Tomorrow I am teaching a workshop on improv, collaboration and creativity at GreatSchools in Oakland. I’m looking forward to meeting everyone and having a chance to play together.
    • Also this week is circling back with various projects, nailing down schedules for meetings, sorting out invoices and reimbursements, lunch with colleagues, figuring out travel details and generally trying to move forward all the bits and pieces which have been up in the air especially through the holiday.
    • From December, there is now a video for Designing the Problem from Interactions South America (also slides and audio).
    • Ten years gone: From January 2005 – We don’t remember new products, dress up your vacuum cleaner as a bear, bunny, cat or (ironically) maid.
    • What we’re consuming: Lucky Peach, crab rolls, Modern Family, Little Yangon

    The Advantages of Remote Interviewing

    This NYT Magazine profile of author Laura Hillenbrand explores her writing process and considers the ways it has been impacted by her illness. One section of this excellent article had resonance for me around conducting remote interviews, something I’m frequently asked about.

    One hallmark of literary nonfiction is its emphasis on personal observation. But Hillenbrand found that telephone interviews do offer certain advantages. No one appreciates this perspective more than the radio host Terry Gross, who performs nearly every interview on her program, “Fresh Air,” by remote. Gross told me that she began this habit, as Hillenbrand did, by necessity: The cost of bringing a guest to her studio in Philadelphia was simply too high. Over time, she said, she has come to believe that there is intimacy in distance. “I find it to be oddly distracting when the person is sitting across from me,” she said with a laugh. “It’s much easier to ask somebody a challenging question, or a difficult question, if you’re not looking the person in the eye.” Gross also said the remote interview makes it easier to steer the conversation. “I can look at my notes without fear that the interviewee will assume that I’m not paying attention to what they’re saying,” she said. Finally, the distance eliminates nonverbal cues, which can interfere with good quotes. “A hand gesture might be helpful to communicate something to me. It communicates nothing to my listeners.” Hillenbrand, who recorded hundreds of hours of interviews with Zamperini, experienced a similar effect. “I thought it was actually an advantage to be unable to go to Louie,” she said. Because neither of them had to dress for the interviews and they were in their own homes, their long phone calls enjoyed a warmth and comfort that might otherwise be missing. She could pose the deeply personal questions that even her father had trouble answering.

    Designing the Problem, my keynote from ISA14 (now with video)

    I gave a (remote) presentation, Designing the Problem, at Interaction South America a few weeks ago.

    Too often we assume that doing research with users means checking in with them to get feedback on the solution we’ve already outlined. But the biggest value from research is in uncovering the crucial details of the problem that people have; the problem that we should be solving.

    As the design practices mature within companies, they need to play an active role in driving the creation of new and innovative solutions to the real unmet needs that people have. In part, driving towards this maturity means looking at one’s own culture and realizing the value of being open-minded and curious, not simply confident. This is a challenge to each of us personally and as leaders within our teams and communities.

    We’ve got video, slides, audio and sketch-notes. Enjoy!

    The talk is just over 40 minutes and there are two questions (which you can’t hear but which should be obvious enough from my response).


    To download the audio Right-Click and Save As… (Windows) or Ctrl-Click (Mac)

    Sketchnote by Kat Davis (click for full size)

    Kat-Davis-B3KkgEsCcAE2Jjo

    Sketchnote by Thiago Esser
    10802698_389325447886104_12

    This Week @ Portigal

    • I got back yesterday from a fantastic client workshop in Austin and am looking ahead to this holiday week. I’m going to try and gear down over the next few days (which paradoxically means I feel like I have a lot to get done) and hopefully take a step back for the end of the week and some time next week as well. We’ll see.
    • There’s now video for Designing the Problem from Interactions South America (also slides and audio).
    • Just announced: Soft Skills Are Hard, my workshop for Interaction 15. It’s in San Francisco on February 9 and you can register here.
    • Ten years gone: From December 2004 – Bob Dylan Q&A.
    • What we’re consuming: Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken, The Problem Is Not The Problem, Torchy’s Tacos, Frank, latkes, Whip In.

    Building Rapport With Users Is Building Rapport With People

    We use specific techniques to build rapport in user research, but of course those techniques work to build rapport in other situations. Here’s two great examples of rapport in relationships that map quite closely to rapport in fieldwork.

    Caution: Stuffed Shirts Ahead [NYT]

    Instead, miss no opportunity to chat congenially with your new colleagues — lunch, coffee, the proverbial water cooler, whatever. But remember, these conversations aren’t about you. Though you don’t want to seem evasive, avoid leaping into a happy reminiscence about foosball tournaments with your delightful former colleagues.

    Think of the process as the workplace equivalent of politicians’ “listening tours” during the run-up to election season. Don’t ask, “So what’s it like to work here?” or “Do you like it here?” or anything else that requires a point-blank value judgment. Ask neutral questions like, “So how long have you worked here?” Then keep quiet.

    People love to talk about themselves, and if you can signal that you’re actually interested in what they’re saying — and not merely waiting for your turn to talk — most will do it all day long. (One of the oldest interview tricks that reporters use is silence: There’s a human tendency to fill a conversational void, so let the other person do it.) In addition to signaling that you’re going to fit in, you’ll likely pick up useful clues to help you do precisely that.

    It may take a little patience, but you’ll gradually be able to piece together what you need to know about how this new environment works — and who among your new colleagues has the same kind of sensibility as yours. Remember that even if the company is formal and bureaucratic, chances are that at least some of the people who work there are, in fact, agreeable human beings — the kind who like doughnuts.

    5 ways to build a good relationship with anyone [The Week]

    I picked up a copy of an underground indie best-seller called It’s Not All about Me: The Top Ten Techniques for Building Quick Rapport with Anyone. The author, Robin Dreeke, is in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s elite Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program. Robin combines hard science and years of work in the field to offer practical tips to build rapport and establish trust.

    1. Ask them questions.
    2. Don’t be a conversation dictator.
    3. Allow them to talk.
    4. Genuinely try to understand their thoughts and opinions.
    5. Leave your ego at the door.

    Keeping the Humanity in our Technology Work

    A few articles about the practice of medicine echo each other in significant ways, but I share them here as a reminder that all of our work that increasingly relies on technology (e.g., developing digital products) will suffer terribly if we fail to engage the human who thinks, talks, listens and tells stories.

    With Electronic Medical Records, Doctors Read When They Should Talk

    Even if all the redundant clinical information sitting on hospital servers everywhere were error-free, and even if excellent software made it all reasonably accessible, doctors and nurses still shouldn’t be spending their time reading. The first thing medical students learn is the value of a full history taken directly from the patient. The process takes them hours. Experience whittles that time down by a bit, but it always remains a substantial chunk that some feel is best devoted to more lucrative activities.

    Enter various efficiency-promoting endeavors. One of the most durable has been the multipage health questionnaire for patients to complete on a clipboard before most outpatient visits. Why should the doctor expensively scribble down information when the patient can do a little free secretarial work instead? Alas, beware the doctor who does not review that questionnaire with you very carefully, taking an active interest in every little check mark. It turns out that the pathway into the medical brain, like most brains, is far more reliable when it runs from the hand than from the eye. Force the doctor to take notes, and the doctor will usually remember. Ask the doctor to read, and the doctor will scan, skip, elide, omit and often forget.

    Like good police work, good medicine depends on deliberate, inefficient, plodding, expensive repetition. No system of data management will ever replace it.

    Why Doctors Need Stories

    I have long felt isolated in this position, embracing stories, which is why I warm to the possibility that the vignette is making a comeback. This summer, Oxford University Press began publishing a journal devoted to case reports. And this month, in an unusual move, the New England Journal of Medicine opened an issue with a case history involving a troubled mother, daughter and grandson. The contributors write: “Data are important, of course, but numbers sometimes imply an order to what is happening that can be misleading. Stories are better at capturing a different type of ‘big picture.’ ”

    Beyond its roles as illustration, affirmation, hypothesis-builder and low-level guidance for practice, storytelling can act as a modest counterbalance to a straitened understanding of evidence. Thoughtful doctors consider data, accompanying narrative, plausibility and, yes, clinical anecdote in their decision making. To put the same matter differently, evidence-based medicine, properly enacted, is judgment-based medicine in which randomized trials, carefully assessed, are given their due.

    I don’t think that psychiatry — or, again, medicine in general — need be apologetic about this state of affairs. Our substantial formal findings require integration. The danger is in pretending otherwise. It would be unfortunate if psychiatry moved fully — prematurely — to squeeze the art out of its science. And it would be unfortunate if we marginalized the case vignette. We need storytelling, to set us in the clinical moment, remind us of the variety of human experience and enrich our judgment.

    From October 2003, Diagnosis Goes Low Tech

    “This technology has become a religion within the medical community,” said Dr. Jerry Vannatta, former dean of the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine. “It is easy to lose sight of the fact that still, in the 21st century, it is believed that 80 to 85 percent of the diagnosis is in the patient’s story.”

    Yet medical educators say that doctors are insufficiently trained to listen to those stories. After all, there is no reimbursement category on insurance forms for it. It is this lost art of listening to the patient that has been the inspiration behind a burgeoning movement in medical schools throughout the country: narrative medicine.

    The idea that medical students need an academic discipline to teach them how to listen may strike some as farfetched. After all, what should be more natural — or uncomplicated — than having a conversation?

    But the narrative medicine movement is part of an ongoing trend in exposing medical students to the humanities. It is needed, educators say, to teach aspiring doctors to pay close attention to what their patients are saying and to understand the way their own emotions affect their perceptions, and ultimately their clinical practice.

    The basic teaching method is to have medical students read literary texts and then write about themselves and their patients in ordinary language, rather than in the technological lexicon of the traditional patient chart.

    Venerable medical journals like The Journal of the American Medical Association and Annals of Internal Medicine are increasingly publishing reflective writing by doctors, their editors say. And now some medical schools even have their own literary journals. At Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, there is Reflexions; Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine publishes Wild Onions; at the University of New Mexico’s Health Sciences Center, there is The Medical Muse.

    Columbia also publishes a semiannual scholarly journal devoted solely to narrative medicine, titled Literature and Medicine, which is edited by Maura Spiegel, a literary scholar, and Dr. Rita Charon, a professor at the medical school and a founder of the narrative medicine movement.

    This Week @ Portigal

    • Over the weekend we tried to make some sense out of the office space chaos, figuring out what the new layout will be and what furniture we need to get rid of. There’s a long way to go but there’s definitely a sense of progress.
    • I’m working with a client to do a bit of retail observation today, looking at how their products – and those of their competitors – are merchandised.
    • I’m flying to Austin on Thursday to do lead a full-day in-house workshop on interviewing users on Friday. And catching up with a few folks over the weekend as well.
    • From recent talks: Designing for Unmet Needs from Warm Gun (slides and audio), Interviewing Users from HOW Interactive Design (slides, video, Designing the Problem from Interactions South America (slides and audio).
    • Ten years gone: From December 2004 – Company makes clothes for women who prefer masculine style.
    • What we’re consuming: Hobbit Office, TREATS!, Werner Herzog Inspirationals, Baby Sloth Me.

    This Week @ Portigal

    • It may be the time of year, but it sure feels like a busy Monday, right out the gate. So many phone calls and planning meetings to try to get scheduled.
    • I’ve been enjoying my collaboration with a new team in downtown San Francisco, as we help assemble a point of view about design directions to prepare for an internal workshop next week.
    • We’re looking good to wrap up the year with a training session in Austin. People are doing paperwork, I’m hovering over the flight-and-hotel reservation buttons. Also, barbecue.
    • Last week, I spoke about Designing for Unmet Needs at Warm Gun. You can find slides, audio and a sketchnote here.
    • More from recent talks: The HOW Interactive Design slides are here and you can find the video (among several) here.
    • Ten years gone: From December 2004 – Leisurama!, Nike dropping the ‘Goddess’ moniker.
    • What we’re consuming: latkes, Jiminy Glick, dumplings.

    Designing for Unmet Needs, my presentation from Warm Gun

    Last week I spoke at the Warm Gun conference, giving a short talk about Designing for Unmet Needs

    Don’t be surprised if Steve Portigal, author of Interviewing Users, invites himself to your family breakfast or follows hotel maintenance staff to the boiler room. For more than 15 years, he’s led hundreds of interviews that help clients understand customers and turn insights into design opportunities.

    Steve knows that our success depends on letting the unmet needs of our audience shape our designs. Okay—but how do we hit a target we can’t see? How do we design for people who aren’t us? How do we solve for the complexity of those people?

    Dig into the details, ditch the guesswork, and join Steve to engage deliberately with the people we’re designing for. Look at ways to acknowledge the complexity of your users. Offer solutions rooted in the connections you make with people. Get unstuck and discover opportunities for design that adds value.

    Below you’ll find slides, audio and a sketchnote.

    The talk is 25 minutes long.

    To download the audio Right-Click and Save As… (Windows) or Ctrl-Click (Mac)

    Sketchnote by Lexi H (click for full size)

    LEXI-H-B4Crtn5CcAA51R3

    This Week @ Portigal

    • Happy December! I turned over the keys to our second office space. It was a lovely space with good meeting areas and lots of light, but it was just not being used. I feel like it should have been a sad moment, but it was really just a small moment of transition. Meanwhile, our main office space remains overloaded with furniture and boxes. I’ve got a group coming in on Friday and I’m not sure what state it will be in by then, probably the same.
    • I had a great meeting with a new team last week and we put together a plan to help prepare for an internal workshop in the next few weeks. I’m waiting on paperwork to see how and when we’ll move forward.
    • I’m expecting to hear this week if I’ll be doing a training workshop in Austin in a couple of weeks. A new collaboration in a favorite city? I’m hopeful it’ll work out.
    • I’ve been working on both visual and sonic identities for this stealth project I’ve been teasing here. I’ll be working on the content as well this week, but oh, man….I had to buy a bunch of donuts over the weekend and photograph them. This was terrible terrible brutal awful work.
    • I’ll be speaking about Designing for Unmet Needs at Warm Gun this week. Please come say Hi!
    • In case you missed it, from two very recent talks: the slides about Interviewing Users at HOW Interactive Design are here and my new talk, Designing the Problem, from Interaction South America with the slides, audio and sketchnotes are here.
    • Ten years gone: From December 2004 – Val Kilmer Street Meme, Things magazine.
    • What we’re consuming: names of football players, Pixie Donuts, Seiya Sushi, Ewoks are real.

    Today we are thirteen

    13

    Today is the thirteen anniversary of All This ChittahChattah. And since it just about overlaps with Thanksgiving, I’ll once again give thanks for all the enthusiasm and engagement from readers and friends over the years.

    This Week @ Portigal

    • It’s a short week this week, getting as much done as I can before Thanksgiving. If we can work out the paperwork today, I’ll be spending tomorrow working with a new client to explore their very immediate design and business challenges and seeing what we can get done before the year wraps up.
    • Last week I spoke at HOW Interactive Design about interviewing users. I’ve heard great things about how helpful the talk was and the slides are online here.
    • Over the weekend, I delivered a new talk as a keynote at Interaction South America. It’s called Designing the Problem, and the slides, audio and sketchnotes are here.
    • Coming up this week is the 13th anniversary of All This ChittahChattah. That’s a lot of blogging!
    • Ten years gone: From November 2004 – Grotesque consumerism, Nissan Lets You Tell Better Stories, Kreskin Offers Services to N.J. Governor.
    • What we’re consuming: Dungeness crab, Olive Kitteredge, Fog City, exuberant Goldens.

    Designing the Problem, my keynote from ISA14

    Although we couldn’t make it down to Buenos Aires for Interaction South America, thanks to the magic of Skype I was able to present Designing the Problem at over the weekend.

    Too often we assume that doing research with users means checking in with them to get feedback on the solution we’ve already outlined. But the biggest value from research is in uncovering the crucial details of the problem that people have; the problem that we should be solving.

    As the design practices mature within companies, they need to play an active role in driving the creation of new and innovative solutions to the real unmet needs that people have. In part, driving towards this maturity means looking at one’s own culture and realizing the value of being open-minded and curious, not simply confident. This is a challenge to each of us personally and as leaders within our teams and communities.

    Below you’ll find slides, audio and sketchnotes. I’ll repost when the video go up. Update: it’s here.

    The talk is just over 40 minutes and there are two questions (which you can’t hear but which should be obvious enough from my response).


    To download the audio Right-Click and Save As… (Windows) or Ctrl-Click (Mac)

    Here is my huge head during the Q&A segment (image via Juan Marcos Ortiz)

    juan marcos ortiz B3EU_zyIYAAXKue_425

    Sketchnote by Kat Davis (click for full size)

    Kat-Davis-B3KkgEsCcAE2Jjo

    Sketchnote by Thiago Esser

    This Week @ Portigal

    This Week @ Portigal

    This Week @ Portigal

    • We’ve decided to consolidate our office space and so I’ll be spending time in the next few weeks going through the accumulated tech gear, paperwork, books, furniture and office supplies, getting rid of what we don’t need any more and moving stuff around to create a more streamlined and comfortable workspace. It’s overwhelming but necessary.
    • Sign up for my Interaction South American workshop on Interviewing Users.
    • In early December I’ll be speaking at Warm Gun. Use the code SPKWARM to save $150.
    • My Brussels photos are now all uploaded, here.
    • Out on the town this week, I’m hoping to go to this BayCHI event featuring Frank Yoo, the head of design at Lyft.
    • From the blog last week, When A Food Truck Is Not A Food Truck.
    • Ten years gone: From November 2004 – Maybe name is not destiny, then?, eBay tries to harness warm fuzzies, Elevator Pitch Essentials.
    • What we’re consuming: iPhone 6, The Roaring Twenties, roof sealant, Grilled octopus with bacon tempura, USB enclosures.

    When A Food Truck Is Not A Food Truck

    Now you can have all the positive attributes of a food truck (adventure, deliciousness, speed?) without the inconvenience of having to actual go to a food truck. Here’s some examples I’ve seen recently where an individual restaurant is named like a food truck but is definitely not a food truck.

    slicetruck
    Slicetruck explains themselves this way

    I like to try and remind people that we are actually a restaurant and not a food truck. We named it Slicetruck because we started with a pizza truck and just couldn’t think of a new name for the store. You should try naming a pizza place. Very difficult to find something no one is already using and real easy to fall into the lame trap of throwing some meaningless Italian name into it or a “papa” or “mama” into the name.

    taco-truck
    The Taco Truck tells us

    In 2009 we launched our very first truck in New Jersey…So far we’ve opened stores, kiosks, carts, and trucks in NY, MA, and NJ.

    At least they each have trucks in their history, although it makes for a confusing name, what with their not being trucks.

    This Week @ Portigal

    When your participant repels and scares you

    Embedded above is a fantastic and disturbing episode of Love + Radio. Nick van der Kolk and Noah Morrison visit Jay Thunderbolt, who upon beginning the interview, aggressively reiterates his demand for payment (not possible for public radio, which Jay knew). Noah ends up going on a liquor run instead, as Jay offers him a pistol or Kevlar vest. Jay never stops insulting the interviewers, and stories of violence abound; indeed at one point he points a gun at Nick’s head. Meanwhile, they are interviewing Jay about the strip club he runs out of his house.

    Yikes. This sounds like some of the War Stories, doesn’t it?

    I don’t know what is going through Nick’s head as he’s doing this interview, but as I listen I find myself strongly repelled by Jay. And while the interview here is edited, so we don’t know all that happened, but Nick never reveals discomfort or lets Jay’s obvious provocations get to him. His patience and tolerance create room for Jay’s story to come out, and while Jay is not an appealing individual, you begin to understand and accept him as he is. Well, I did. Your experience may vary.

    Nick finally responds to Jay’s taunting at the end, when he asks Jay “Do you think you understand the way I feel about you?” and Jay admits that he doesn’t. It’s a powerful moment in an intense interview.

    Interviewing Best Practices from Stephen Colbert

    The first episode of Working (a new podcast) features Stephen Colbert explaining in great detail the process of creating The Colbert Report. The entire episode (listen here) is really good process stuff (creativity, collaboration, finding the story, media firehose, working under pressure) but I want to call out the section about how he prepares and uses the questions for interviewing his guest, as it’s is quite consistent with what I wrote in Interviewing Users.

    And then I read the two sheets of questions that the writers have come up, what their ideas are. I usually pick 10 or 15 of those. But I don’t look at them. I don’t look at them until right before I go over [to the set], and then I read them over once again in front of my producers to get a sense of, oh, this is how my character feels about this person.

    Come show time…I take them out and I go, oh, yes, these are the questions I chose. And then I try to forget them and I try to never look at the cards. I just have a sense in my head of how I feel. And the cards are in front of me, but I try not to look at them at all. I’m pretty good. Maybe I look once a week at the cards. I put my hand on them, so I know I have them if something terrible happens, but as long as I know what my first question is for the guest I kind of know what every other question is, because I really want to react to what their reaction to my first question is.

    And I usually end up using four of the 15, and the rest of it is, what is the person just saying to me? Which makes that the most enjoyable part of the show for me. Because I started off as an improviser. I’m not a standup. I didn’t start off as a writer, I learned to write through improvisation, and so that’s the part of the show that can most surprise me. The written part of the show, I know I can get wrong. You can’t really get the interview “wrong.”

    This Week @ Portigal

    • I am actually doing okay after a week with Google’s Gmail and Calendar, and Evernote. I’ve dipped my toe in cleaning up more than a decade of digital detritus but that is a long road.
    • It’s a shortened week here as I host visiting family and take a long weekend.
    • This week I’ll be chatting about Interviewing Users with the Denver UX Book Club.
    • I’m one of the coaches for MVP Design Hacks and I’ll be taking questions in a session this week. I am very curious to hear what the participants are working on and where they have questions.
    • Here’s my pictures from Berlin.
    • I’ve alluded before to a stealth project; it’s still stealthy but I will tease by say I’m starting to set up interviews.
    • Coming up next month, I’ll be speaking about user research at the HOW Interactive Design Conference in San Francisco.
    • Ten years gone: From October 2004 – Pumpkins and pie.
    • What we’re consuming: Kale and Chard, Buzz Ballz, coconut mojitos, Transparent.

    This Week @ Portigal

    • I decided to make some changes to my tools, some of which I’ve relied on for more than 10 years. I had been using Notes in Outlook to jot down whatever and syncing them to iOS Notes. I was also using Outlook for my calendar, synced of course to my iPhone calendar, via Google Calendar. I was asked why and I couldn’t answer. So I am using just Google Calendar on the computer, synched to my iPhone. And I shifted to Evernote on both the computer and the phone, although I haven’t done more than move the notes over. I haven’t tried living with it, adding, editing, finding. I also had to say goodbye to Eudora, a long-obsolete email client. I’m planning on living with Gmail (which is where Portigal email comes into anyway) and seeing if that will work for me. But meanwhile I had to figure out how to get my 13 years of email into Gmail. Far too boring to go into here but it’s been a few days and I’m still syncing – e.g., uploading all this email to Gmail. Most terrifying is the realization that between Notes, emails and files on my computer, I’ve got tons of thoughts, articles, sketches for blog posts and other mental detritus that I’d like to go through, extract the bits worth saving and organize them. What set of rabbit holes I’ll be disappearing into!
    • Check out our new War Story, The Hidden Persuader.
    • I’m one of twenty folks who shared a best practice or tip in 20 Tips for Selling UX to Clients.
    • I’ll be chatting about Interviewing Users with the Denver UX Book Club next week.
    • Ten years gone: From October 2004 – Restless Leg Syndrome.
    • What we’re consuming: Business Live-Action Role-Playing, Peasant’s War Panorama, cab sav, Temple of the Dog 8-bit, We Are The Best!, Ebba Grön.

    Patricia’s War Story: The Hidden Persuader

    Patricia Colley is an experience designer and the Principal of Creative Catalysts in Portland, OR.

    In 1984, I was 23, and working for a market & social research firm in San Antonio, Texas. They sent me down to McAllen to collect voter opinions on the upcoming national elections. McAllen is a sleepy little town near the bottom tip of the state, just a few miles from the Mexican border, mainly populated with low-to-moderate income Hispanic families.

    I was on my second day of door-to-door polling, asking voters their opinions on policy matters, and their thoughts on the state and presidential candidates. The work was progressing well. As usual, I was getting a high rate of interview completions, with lots of useful data. After four years of working in market and social research, I was quite confident in my neutral, non-threatening “aw shucks, I’m just one of you” act, and its ability to deliver great results.

    But my confidence was shaken when I met Maria, a shy housewife in her early 30’s.

    It was about 4 pm on a warm, dry Thursday afternoon when I knocked on the door of a modest, well-kept ranch house in a suburban section of McAllen. Maria opened the door part way. She was half-hiding behind it, sizing me up like a rabbit peering through tall grass at a coyote in the distance…curious, but poised to flee.

    Me: “Hello, my name is Patricia, and I’ve been sent here by (XYZ Research) to gather public opinions on the upcoming elections.”
    Maria: “Oh, hi.”
    Me (turning on the charm): “May I ask you some questions? Don’t worry, I’m not selling anything!”
    Maria: “Uhh, sure, I guess?”&
    Me: “Great, thanks! This won’t take long.”

    Wide-eyed, Maria flashes a shy smile before her jaw slacks again. This one’s cagey, I thought to myself, but I’ll get her talking.

    Me: “Now, thinking about (Candidate X), what comes to mind?”
    Maria: “Uhh, I don’t know? Is he a good guy?”
    Me (shrinking): “Well, I really don’t have any thoughts on (Candidate X). Besides, my bosses didn’t send me all this way to talk about my opinions. He wants to know your opinion.”
    Maria: “I don’t know. He seems okay?”

    Now, I don’t think Mary is incapable of forming opinions. I suspect she’s simply never been asked to share her thoughts about such important things, so far from home. And she may never be asked again. But on this day, I was determined to make her opinion count.

    Me: “Well, you’ve heard of him, maybe seen him on TV?”
    Maria: “Yes.”
    Me: “So, what did you think of him? Is he someone you would vote for?”
    Maria: “Um…(pause)”

    Her eyes darted across my face, scanning every crease and twitch, searching for clues. Those big rabbit eyes begged mutely for help. I stared back, apologetically. I took a few slow breaths, trying to ground us both, so she might relax into talking more naturally. Each time she hesitates, I carefully repeat the question, altering the wording and inflection to make them sound as simple and benign as possible.

    Me: “Really, we’re just interested in what you think. Whatever you think is fine. Do you think you’ll vote for him, or not?”
    Maria: “Uh…yes?” (seeing no reaction from me) “No?”
    Me: “Okay, that’s fine. Alright. Now, thinking about (Issue A), is that important to you? Do you think it’s good or bad?”
    Maria: “Uhh…I think it’s good?”

    The back and forth went on for several minutes. I’m trying to go completely neutral and void of any emotional expression, but my contortions only intensified the awkwardness. The interview was in free-fall. I was failing miserably to collect any genuine responses from Maria. A hot wave of panic washed over me. How can I get this back on track?

    In that moment, I just had to let go.

    I quit fighting it, and fell back on connecting with Maria as a person. As Maria answered my questions, I began riffing on her responses, affirming and adding detail to them. While trying not to reveal my personal opinions, I offered supportive words and gestures to elevate everything she said, so that she might open up and elaborate. Eventually, she did relax, and her answers flowed a bit more freely.

    Me: “So, what about the presidential candidates?”
    Maria: “I guess I’ll vote for (presidential candidate B).”
    Me: “Great! Is it because he is for (issue B)?”
    Maria: “Oh, that’s good. Yeah, (B) is good for us.”

    Although Maria was warming up to me, I felt I was way off book. It seemed impossible not to sway her answers. Whatever I wrote down, I feared it might be swept away by the slightest shift in body position, or an eyebrow lift. Well – at least she was talking, I told myself.

    Finally, we got to the end. Walking back to my car, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. The hardest interview I’d ever done was over. I went out for a well-earned drink and a tragicomic debrief with my co-workers.

    Sometimes you just get a dud subject, and it is what it is. But something about that 15-minute exchange with Maria struck a deeper chord in me. As I drove out of town, troubling questions lingered. What is the value of a skewed interview? Was this the only time I’d failed to be impartial? Or, had this been happening all along, in more subtle ways? How can I ever know that the data I’m collecting is pure?

    Maria taught me two important things that day.

    1. People make stuff up as they go along. And, we can’t always see the flaws in self-reporting.
    2. The observer effect is unavoidable. Interviewers shade their work in unpredictable ways.

    I’m as diligent as ever about delivering valuable insights through my research. But ever since that incident in McAllen, I draw my conclusions with a fuzzy border, in humble deference to flawed inputs and shadow projections, on both sides of the clipboard.

    This American Life on selling your idea

    Alex Blumberg has a podcast about his journey to start a podcast-related business. A recent episode of This American Life included an excerpt from this podcast (called StartUp), in which Blumberg is half-heartedly pitching his idea to investor Chris Sacca.

    They talk for a while, and Alex is having difficulty in explaining his idea and what he’s asking for.

    Alex Blumberg: So it’ll take a million and a half dollars, I think. And–
    Chris Sacca: Take out the “I think.”
    AB: Yeah. It’ll take a million and a half– I’m looking for a million and a half to $2 million in seed-stage funding.
    CS: No, no, no, no, no.
    AB: Yeah.
    CS: You were looking for a very specific amount of money.
    AB: I’m looking for– [LAUGHS NERVOUSLY]

    Finally, Chris decides he’s just going to show Alex how to pitch his idea and he very masterfully riffs a confident and coherent bit of persuasion. It’s certainly worth listening to, but here’s the excerpt from the transcript.

    Hey, look, can I get two minutes from you? So here’s the thing. You probably know me, producer of This American Life, been doing it for 15 years. You know it’s the most successful radio show, top of the podcasts in iTunes, et cetera.

    So here’s the thing. I realize there’s a hunger for this kind of content out there and there’s none of this [BLEEP]. It’s just a bunch of jerk [BLEEP] podcasts. Nothing’s out there.

    Advertisers are dying for it. Users are dying for it. And if you look at the macro environment, we’re seeing more and more podcast integrations into cars. People want this content. It’s a whole new button in the latest version of iOS.

    So here’s the thing. Nobody else can make this [BLEEP]. I know how to make it better than anybody else in the world. And so I’ve already identified a few key areas where I know there’s hunger for the podcast. We’ve got the subject matter. We’re going to launch this [BLEEP]. I know there’s advertisers who want to get involved with it.

    But here’s the unfair advantage I have. Because of what I’ve done in my past careers with This American Life and with Planet Money, people are actually willing to just straight-up pay for this stuff. And I’m not just talking about traditional subscriptions. I’m talking– we did this T-shirt experiment at Planet Money where we got $600,000 coming in, where people actually gave us money to buy a t-shirt with our logo on it as part of the content. It was integrated directly. And I know we can replicate that across these other platforms.

    So here’s what we’re doing. We’re putting together a million and a half dollars. That’s going to buy us three, four guys who are going to launch these three podcasts in the next 12 months. We think very easily we could get to 300,000, 400,000 net subscribers across the whole thing.

    With CPMs where they are in this market right now, I know on advertising alone, we could get to break even. But as we do more of this integration, we get people texting in to donate to this stuff, buying some of this product, doing some of these integrated episodes, I know that we’re going to have on our hands here something that will ultimately scale to be a network of 12, 15 podcasts. The audience is there. They want it. Nobody else can do it like we can. Are you in?

    It’s so painful to hear Alex stumble and when Chris takes over, I felt a sense of relief and a certain excitement, to hear an idea presented in a way that was designed to engage and persuade. This is a valuable skill in many aspects of professional life, especially when we’re in the business of sharing ideas. The superlative example in this podcast is quite inspiring.

    The relevant section starts at 19:21 in the embedded widget below.

    This Week @ Portigal

    • I’m mostly over my jet lag and back to work after a couple of weeks in Europe. This week is all about following up: active proposals for this year and next, inquiries from teams looking to work together, deferred networking meetings and more. I’m excited, but the to-do list is a long one.
    • I’ve got a War Story almost ready to post, with just a bit more info required before I post it. Look for it in the next day or two!
    • Just announced – I’ll be speaking at the Warm Gun conference, December 4 in San Francisco.
    • Just announced #2 – I’ll be doing a workshop and a keynote presentation at Interaction South America, this November in Buenos Aires.
    • Ten years gone: From October 2004 – Roomba precursor offers discount just for telling a friend.
    • What we’re consuming: Ramen Dojo, East Side Gallery, Walker Evans, Stadt Land Food Festival.

    Interviewing Users: Link Roundup

    interviewing-users

    It’s been well over a year since Interviewing Users came out. Below is a roundup of links to various bits connected with the book. I’ll republish this occasionally with accumulated updates. If you haven’t already, get your copy here! And if you have, it would be great if you wrote a brief review on Amazon here.

    The Book

    Reviews

    Interviews

    Presentations

    Other

    This Week @ Portigal

    This Week @ Portigal

    People Have The Power, Says Tech

    I saw this BitTorrent billboard in San Francisco last weekend.
    bittorrent
    Its specific message is opaque, telling us only that people are greater than servers. Hopefully we knew that already, but now we know that BitTorrent knows that too, via this techno-corporate version of a spray-painted cri de coeur. (Looking online for the image, I found the above on BitTorrent’s blog where it may refer to some peer-to-peer alternative to peer-to-cloud product, but that’s as far as I got).

    The New York Times carried this full-page ad for PayPal yesterday.
    paypal
    Beginning with the constitutional We The People , the copy culminates with their new slogan, a graffiti-rendered People Rule.

    Maybe there are humanists at both these organizations who are indeed passionate about the people they are trying to serve, but it’s hard not to be cynical about these corporations co-opting the language and aesthetics of rebellion and independence to persuade us to adopt their particular technology product versus some other. More than anything, it looks as if the tech industry is trying (yet again) to humanize its image.

    This Week @ Portigal

    This Week @ Portigal

    • It’s fantastic to have this week and next week without any travel.
    • Beyond just a general gathering of wits, I’m focused on laying the groundwork for a new program, details to be revealed down the road. As well, I’m doing networking meetings and phone calls with colleagues and conversations with prospective clients, laying groundwork for the short- and medium-term.
    • Also coming up in a couple of weeks, I’m doing a workshop about synthesizing field data at EuroIA in Brussels (to be followed by a fun side trip to Berlin).
    • Ten years gone: From September 2004 – Cream puff heaven.
    • What we’re consuming: PizzaHacker, the life cycle of a catchphrase, Go For Sisters, Agony Wagon.

    This Week @ Portigal

    • I’m sitting in the airport lounge, waiting for my flight from Sydney back to San Francisco. It’s Tuesday here, and a holiday Monday in the US. I left my AirBnB in Hobart at 4:00 am to get a flight to Melbourne and then to Sydney. I’ll be spending a good couple of days just trying t recover from a wonderful trip – a great conference with a successful workshop on mindfulness and a well-received talk about the War Stories. A recording is coming soon.
    • One last reminder/request for comments (and votes) here for my proposed War Stories talk at SXSW.
    • This weekend, I’m doing a full-day workshop on user research at UX-STRAT in Boulder.
    • Ten years gone: From September 2004 – Why not adopt a Wild Horse or Burro?.
    • What we’re consuming: Picklemouse Corner, Lincoln’s Rock, Little Rivers Dark Lager, Museum of Old and New Art, hot chocolate, Julius Popp’s Bit.fall.

    This Week @ Portigal

    I can see my house from here!

    • I’m en route to Sydney for UX Australia. I’m very excited to be speaking about presence and mindfulness in my workshop The Designer is Present, and War Stories in my talk Epic Fail. The country is lovely, the people are excellent and the breakfasts are superb. I’ll be taking a day trip to the gorgeous Blue Mountains and then visiting Hobart in Tasmania very briefly, before heading home early next week.
    • Last week was Seattle, with Dan Szuc, where we did a workshop and a talk with IxDA Seattle. I spoke about soft skills and my slides are here.
    • Please comment (and vote) here for my proposed War Stories talk at SXSW.
    • After Australia, I’m doing a full-day workshop on user research at UX-STRAT in Boulder and a half-day workshop about synthesizing field data at EuroIA in Brussels. Spread the word as there is still room in both workshops.
    • Ten years gone: From August 2004 – SF discovers Nanaimo Bars, Verizon adds fees to see your bill, Team America and Thunderbirds.
    • What we’re consuming: dim sum, a big-ass warm cookie, Park Chalet, Austin Powers.

    Steve on Tuesday #TechHour

    I was on Kitchener’s 570 News technology radio program yesterday, invited by the great folks from Fluxible to speak very briefly about user research. I’m on about 15 minutes in. It starts with a rousing discussion of UX’s role, where companies are doing some unpleasant things in the name of “improving the user experience.”

    To download the audio Right-Click and Save As… (Windows) or Ctrl-Click (Mac).

    This Week @ Portigal

    I’m taking today off to hang with my family visiting from Vancouver. But here’s the story for this week

    • Tomorrow I’m flying up to Seattle. I go from the airport directly to co-host a workshop with Dan Szuc and then share the stage with him for a talk the next night. The workshop is waitlisted but there may still be room for the talk. Details here. I’ll also have the chance to meet up with other friends and colleagues in town, and maybe grab a donut or two.
    • I’ll be making my first appearance on AM radio in decades, as part of Tuesday #TechHour, along with the folks from Fluxible. I’ll be talking about UX and interviewing users.
    • I’ve proposed a talk at SXSW about the War Stories (a talk I’ve given at CHIFOO and coming up at UX Australia). It’d be great if you could VOTE for it! Please!
    • This weekend I’m leaving for Sydney for UX Australia, where I’ll be leading The Designer is Present workshop and as I mentioned above, doing a presentation about the War Stories.
    • Also coming up in a few weeks, I’m doing a full-day workshop on user research at UX-STRAT in Boulder and a half-day workshop about synthesizing field data at EuroIA in Brussels (to be followed by a side trip to Berlin, just for fun).
    • Ten years gone: From August 2004 – Exorcist: The Beginning, The Hairiest Man in All of China.
    • What we’re consuming: Paul Rand, Saul Bass, Happy Taco, Klean Kanteen, Lemos Farm.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Greetings from Southern California

    Overcoming bias and developing empathy

    Here are two interesting articles that feed right into the themes of my workshop, The Designer is Present, happening at the end of this month at UX Australia.

    An Appeal to Our Inner Judge is about how biases – judgements we make quickly about others – are natural but can be overcome. The excerpt below comes at the end and is applicable to many things, not the least of which is becoming a better user researcher.

    Recognize and accept that you have biases. Develop the capacity to observe yourself in action and to notice when certain people or circumstances serve as triggers.

    Learning to slow down decision-making, especially when it affects other people, can help reduce the impact of bias. This can be particularly important when we are in circumstances that make us feel awkward or uncomfortable.

    No Time to Think considers our always-on culture and the reluctance we have (as a result?) to be in the off position and (ulp!) alone with our thoughts. In the quoted part below, from the end of the article, it makes the case for what I’m aiming for with the workshop; that presence and mindfulness are essential for the work that many of us are doing.

    Studies suggest that [a lack of presence] impairs your ability to empathize with others. “The more in touch with my own feelings and experiences, the richer and more accurate are my guesses of what passes through another person’s mind. Feeling what you feel is an ability that atrophies if you don’t use it.”

    This Week @ Portigal

    Just another manic Monday!

    Don’t put your garbage here! Please!

    sleep-study

    I encountered this box recently at my local medical office. It’s a squat white bin with a wide black opening near the top. It looks a lot like a trash bin. Obviously I’m not the only person that reacted that way, because they’ve tried desperately and ineffectively (with EXTRA SIGNS as they so love to do in healthcare) to communicate that. There are three signs (see the orange pointer) telling you what the box is for (dropping off sleep study equipment) and two signs (the purple pointer) telling you what it’s not for (it’s not for garbage).

    That’s five different signs, only two of which even vaguely cohere with each other (the red tape), all requiring English. The net effect is chaotic. There’s no empathy here; each message acts as if it’s the only one, without awareness of the others.

    And still – the thing looks like a garbage bin! That message is loud and clear and no amount of signage will get around that. But the staff who have to pick the garbage out of there have no control over the bin’s design and so they are left with their default tool: signage.

    I wonder if they could do better if they went further, such as painting the white surface and/or the black flap to more strongly shift the meaning. Or by having a sleep study device (which comes in a little carrying case) or at least a large icon near the opening. And a garbage bin nearby. The tactic would be to communicate more visually and directly what stuff (sleep study devices, trash) goes where and not rely on words. Until then, they can expect more trash.

    See previously Signs to Override Human Nature? as well as other writing about post-design.

    Contextual research from a bygone era

    While listening to This American Life I learned about Roger Barker, a psych professor who turned the small Kansas town of Oskaloosa into a laboratory in the late 1940s.

    Barker was one of the most extraordinary — and least known — figures in the history of psychology. Shortly after he became chair of the KU psychology department in the late 1940s, he relocated his family to Oskaloosa to observe and gather data about the residents who lived in the town, population 725.

    At that time, psychological research was primarily done in laboratories. “It was the era of running rats through mazes to understand human behavior,” he said. “Barker said you won’t learn about any real human behavior in a laboratory. If psychologists want to understand human behavior in the real world, they must enter the real world.”

    More from this article

    Among Barker’s more unusual efforts was a 1951 paper he co-wrote under the title “One Boy’s Day.”

    It chronicled 14 hours in the life of a local boy with the pseudonym Raymond Birch . He was 7 when Raymond’s parents allowed the Midwest Psychological Field Station to record his every movement, according to Sabar’s book:

    7:00. Mrs. Birch said with pleasant casualness, ‘Raymond, wake up. …’
    7:01. Raymond picked up a sock and began tugging and pulling it on his left foot. …
    7:07. Raymond turned to his dresser and rummaged around among the things on it until he obtained a candy Easter egg for his dog.

    The notations, archived at KU, track Raymond on his walk to school. He finds a baseball bat in the grass and swings it, accidentally striking a flagpole.

    “This made a wonderful, hollow noise,” researchers wrote, “so he proceeded to hit the flagpole again.”

    Barker eschewed academic prose and wanted his charges to record any telling, prosaic detail.

    Through the 1950s, Oskaloosans grew accustomed to the sight of a child being shadowed by a note-scribbling adult. In published papers, this was the town of “Midwest,” in keeping with the scientific practice of shielding the identity of the subjects being examined.

    Barker’s work differed from other scholarly studies of places such as Muncie, Ind., (Middletown) and Candor, N.Y., (Springdale) in at least two ways.

    First, it focused less on class and politics and more on the relationships that made kids feel comfortable.

    Second, Barker’s family settled into Oskaloosa as a permanent home. Roger and Louise continued to live there until their deaths, Roger’s in 1990 at age 87 and Louise’s in 2009 at 102.

    While Barker used many methods, the part that struck me was his belief that simply documenting in exhaustive detail the ordinary activities throughout the day would somehow provide some additional insight. What would Barker have made of today’s era of personal analytics, data smog, quantified self and beyond?

    Smart stuff that seems dumb

    Watch and laugh as Stephen Colbert takes on the Vessyl smart cup. While the company’s video patiently explains the features, their benefits and the design rationale, Colbert calls out the ridiculous jargon (e.g,. “real-time” is not something novel for people in their daily lives which of course take place in real time) and – most devastatingly – the lack of a compelling use case.

    This is the barrier all Internet-of-Things things will have to overcome – so what? Why does it matter to me that I can do this with that and with my iPhone? This recent review of Belkin’s Smartphone-Controlled Crock-Pot – a product that is currently shipping from a major manufacturer – says that it” feels more like a solution in search of a problem.” While the crock-pot isn’t as ridiculous (as it’s presented without the overblown ego), it shows just how immature today’s products are.

    I recommend these companies aim their products at the hobbyist/maker users who will figure out what they might actually be good for and otherwise keep them in the lab until they are compelling to regular people.

    [Disclosure: I bought a smart light bulb via Kickstarter a while back. I can change it to any color or brightness using my iPhone. I also have to use the smartphone to turn it off and on (properly) which takes about 35 seconds. I just put it back in our “light bulbs” box in the closet.]

    What we eat and what we trash

    There’s no end of photography projects documenting an ordinary aspect of life, across diverse individuals, with the hope of throwing some light on who we are and how we live now. Or how others live. It’s art with the frisson of anthropology. Here’s another two in the same vein, each looking at different elements of our consumption.

    Dinner in NY by Miho Aikawa looks at people having dinner, in New York (hence the clever title).


    couch
    mushroom

    Also see Dinner in Tokyo and read more at Slate.

    With no nod to naturalism, Gregg Sega shoots portraits of people surrounded by 7 Days of Garbage.

    one
    two
    three

    Also see the fascinating project frogdesign did back in 2007, where staff blogged about the trash they found themselves accumulating throughout a regular week, and read more about Gregg Saga’s project at Slate.

    This Week @ Portigal

    A top of the week to everyone.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Hello y’all!

    The veneer of empathy

    From this article about newsroom practices at USA Today

    For Social Media Tuesdays, the staff must act as if there is no other way to get their articles except through sites likes Facebook and Reddit. That means USA Today’s journalists diligently place each of their famously punchy, graphic-rich stories onto various social media platforms. The purpose is to get them thinking like their readers, who increasingly get news through their Twitter feeds instead of the paper’s front page or home page.

    “Think like your reader” is a generous framing as it highlights empathy, and who wouldn’t want their company, their products, their staff to be more empathetic? In fact, trying to get attention through social media is an exercise in manipulation (see Harry McCracken’s analysis/history of the “restore your faith in humanity” flavor of linkbait). That’s not empathy.

    I’m not sure if this distortion was introduced by the reporter directly or whether they simply took what they were given at face value. Either way, that’s poor journalism (which is ironic in an article about the challenges facing the newspaper industry).

    Now, the idea of taking what you know how to do and setting it aside, as a creative constraint, is a fabulous approach, like something from Oblique Strategies (See more about Brian Eno, one of the creators of Oblique Strategies, in this great article about his approach to art and creativity).

    This Week @ Portigal

    Good Monday morning to all!

    Ugly Yet Yummy

    From the New York Times comes this story about Fruta Feia, or Ugly Fruit, a cooperative in Lisbon that has found opportunity through a combination of economic pressure and reframing conventional norms for food appearance.

    There is a market for fruits and vegetables deemed too ugly by government bureaucrats, supermarkets and other retailers to sell to their customers. A third of Portugal’s farming produce goes to waste because of the quality standards set by supermarkets and their consumers. Fruta Feia buys the unwanted food at about half the price at which producers sell it to supermarkets. It has quietly subverted fixed notions of what is beautiful, or at least edible.

    Take pictures (of food that) lasts longer

    burrata

    Insanely delicious burrata small plate, from Alden and Harlow in Cambridge, MA

    On one hand this is just another article about the hype that social media more easily enables, but on the other hand, it draws the (perhaps spurious) conclusion that since so many diners are taking pictures of restaurant food (and posting the pictures online), that restaurants are designing food for photographic appeal first and for taste a noticeable second.

    Cameras that can capture and transmit images in an instant are being used to photograph food that is meant to hang out indefinitely in suspended animation. Parceled out on a slate tile and pitilessly accessorized with leaves, crumbles, froths and sauces (set with emulsifiers so they never break down), even a charcoal-grilled steak would be as cold as a bologna sandwich. And this is what now passes for great, or at least significant, cooking. But great food is rarely static. As soon as it leaves the kitchen, it’s changing. In general, it’s getting worse. The soufflé is sinking. The arugula is wilting. The color of the steak excites us because it’s deeply browned, and we know that toasted, roasted, seared and caramelized surfaces mean deep flavors. But cameras hate brown food.

    Again, I’ll suggest this is not necessarily true, but it serves to remind us of unintended consequences, and at the scale of social media, we are seeing more of this special type of unintended consequences, where we create with the consumption in mind. The media consumption used to be a consequence, but perhaps it’s becoming the primary design target. As consumers, we learn how to participate in experiences so that they can be documented and shared (and earn those addictive likes) and as producers, those that create those experiences, we are learning how to stage them so that they can be more easily shared and earn addictive likes (and valuable cash rewards as well). Public speaking in easily-tweetable soundbites or food-plating in easily-instagrammable bites; either way it all feeds the beast.

    Kayfabe and narrative frameworks

    deadman

    “Original Deadman” t-shirt, street market, Bangkok, 2006

    I just learned the word Kayfabe. It describes the artificial story elements in professional wrestling. Beyond any discussion of the fights themselves (long dismissed as fake), kayfabe refers to the everything else that is fake, such as the feuds and rivalries. The word is probably a Pig Latin-esque version of “fake” (where by avoiding saying “fake” outright, it’s now a codeword to keep the fakery discussion only among those in the know).

    Here’s more, from the above Wikipedia article

    Many storylines make use of kayfabe romantic relationships between two performers. Very often, both participants have other real-life relationships, and the “relationship” between the two is simply a storyline. However, more than once, kayfabe romantic relationships have resulted either from a real-life relationship, such as between Matt Hardy and Lita, or ultimately developed into a real-life marriage (e.g., Triple H and Stephanie McMahon, who married in 2003, more than a year after their kayfabe marriage ended).

    Whoah. Layers of meaning and truth and piled onto other layers of implication and lies. My brain feels like I’ve been pummeled with a roll of quarters. Layered conceptual devices are challenging enough, but there’s also interest in breaking kayfabe

    To have certain non-fictional elements weaved into a storyline. They might be staged to look real, meaning that a real truth is being spoken, but are part of the script to make the rivalry look authentic or personal, and to make the feud much more interesting.

    That’s some efficient use of a narrative framework. When you go outside the framework, you still have story (and meaning).

    If you find this difficult to parse, join the team. At least having some labels (kayfabe, breaking kayfabe) make it easier to discuss.

    Related: Canon, the defined world (characters, events, history, etc.) of a story. Especially notable in science fiction, with complicated story lines, detail-oriented fans, and franchises with sequels and prequels galore. Previously about Star Trek’s sprawling fan-driven post-TOS canon, and the person hired by Lucasfilm to maintain continuity as the Star Wars canon guru.

    Related: Retcon is the portmanteau word for retroactive continuity, where a new story element is introduced that changes our understanding of previous facts. I would include It Was All A Dream (e.g., Dallas) as the laziest version. It can also be ironic as well as convenient, such as having Klingons in Star Trek explain their differing physical appearance over the various series (obviously the result of new production designers as well as budget and makeup technology) as part of the race’s own history. Many more examples are here.

    David’s War Story: Let it Bleed

    David Hoard is an interaction designer and here he shares his second story.

    Years ago we were re-designing a device to cool a patient’s blood during open heart surgery. This protects the body during the procedure. The client arranged for us to witness a heart operation, and we were pretty excited about that. My only concern was that I would faint from seeing blood.

    Research day came and we headed to a nearby hospital, prepared to be serious, professional researchers. A nurse helped us gown up and get ready. I was expecting the operating room to be a sober technical environment, and I saw that was true. The equipment was stainless steel; the walls and floor were blue-green tile. I anticipated that this would be an orderly collection of findings.

    But as soon as the surgery team started to come in, the vibe changed. The nurses chatted. The anesthesiologist joked. The patient, a man in his late fifties, was casually whisked in on a gurney.

    The nurses chatted with the patient as they put on the anesthesia mask and he drifted off to sleep. They slathered him with a brown antiseptic wash. It made his skin look like a basted turkey, and I thought “He’s just another piece of meat to them.”

    Then things really got started. The surgeon came in and straight away had the nurse hit the music. The sound of the Rolling Stones filled the O.R. The jokes and banter increased. The technician operating the blood cooling machines set to work and we tried to stay focused on that. But it was futile.

    When the patient was sufficiently chilled, they set to work with a powered saw and cut open his sternum. They were ripping a person’s body open, and they did it while talking about sport scores.

    They pried the chest cavity open and prepared for a bypass procedure. They took a vein from the man’s leg that would be used as a new artery for the heart. “How you doing back there?” came the question from the surgeon. “Good!” we replied, and I realized I wasn’t woozy at all. It was all too fascinating.

    It was at that moment that the most surprising thing happened. The surgeon said “How do you like this?” as he put his hand down in the chest and lifted the beating heart up and out. The music thumped, the heart pumped and the surgeon gave us a wicked grin. He knew full well he was holding the patient’s life in his hands. But at the same time, it was all in a days work for him. No big deal.

    After completing the bypass, they finished their work and stapled the man up. The surgeon cleaned up and zoomed off to something else important. Before we knew it our research session was over.

    As for our actual goal of observing blood-cooling machine, we did gather information about that, but the bigger lesson was in understanding the true nature of our users. We expected one-dimensional experts and we saw three-dimensional humans.

    My work on projects like this has taught me that experts are simply regular humans with a specialized job to do. Help them be smarter, help them be more successful. But don’t forget the human underneath that needs ease of learning, ease of use and help preventing errors. Humans don’t want to devote 100% of their brainpower to your product. They need to reserve some for cracking jokes and singing with the music.

    When your research goes in an unexpected direction, go with the flow and let the Stones play. You might learn something more meaningful than your original plan.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Hello, summer!

    Ari’s War Story: Chicken Run

    Ari Nave is Principal at The King’s Indian.

    My very first field research was in the north of Ghana along the Volta River north of Keta Krachi, trying to unpack the usage rights and other factors that enable the sustainable use of a common pool resource (in defiance of the tragedy of the commons).

    The research was hard. I was isolated, lonely, and physically drained. No one in the village spoke English. They spoke primarily Ewe and I was communicating through an interpreter. I had a feeling that I was missing a lot of nuance and detail with the interpreter and had several discussions with him about my concern.

    I was also sick as hell of eating fish stew with fufu or gari. For one thing, it was spicy as hell…so spicy that at every meal I had these convulsive hiccups. This hilarity may have endeared me to my host, but the diet was monotonous.

    I had spotted guinea fowl wondering around the village. I asked my host family about it and they just laughed and said they are wild animals.

    So I set my mind to catch one. That evening I watched as the guinea fowl hopped up a tree in the village. They used the same tree each night and seemed to jump up in a predictable pattern.

    The next evening I was prepared. I had a long string for my trap. I tied a slip knot on one end and placed the snare on a protrusion of the trunk that was chest-height, a pivotal step on their journey up the tree.

    The string was about 50 feet long and I ran the length straight to another tree that I hid behind.

    The folks in the village just laughed at me, which they seemed to do with great frequency. But I was determined. Patiently, I waited.

    As dusk fell the fowl made their way up the tree. When the third bird was on the spot I yanked as hard and fast as I could, while running in the opposite direction. And I had the little bastard. He flapped his wings and I reeled in the string, and soon had a plump guinea fowl in my hands. My host and all the other villagers came running at the commotion and now stood with jaw agape as I proudly displayed my bird.

    I asked my host to put the bird in a basket and put a big rock on top to keep him secure. It was too late to cook them so I ate my mind-alteringly hot fish stew but with a content mind, thinking about the fowl I was going to eat for dinner the next night.

    I woke up refreshed and optimistic. I gathered up my notebook, camera and tape recorder and headed out, but first stopped to gloat at my catch. To my dismay, it was gone. I shouted and my host came running over. “He has escaped in the night,” he explained by way of my interpreter. No way, I thought. The boulder was still on top of the basket. Someone stole my bird. When I voiced my opinion to him he shook his head and simply repeated the claim.

    That night, I executed my hunt again, with equal success. This time, a larger group came out to watch my escapades and were equally surprised both by my technique and success. Again, I place the bird in the basket, this time adding another large rock on top.

    The next morning, I woke with foreboding. I jumped out of bed and checked the basket. Stolen! I was pissed off. My host tried to placate me but I was having none of it. Arrogantly, I told him that I was going to complain to the head of the village. My host shook his head. He waved to me to follow him.

    We walked toward the center of the village where the elder lived, ironically where the guinea fowl often congregated. Before we reached his compound, my host swooped down and picked up a guinea fowl with his hands! Of course I had tried this many times when I first got the notion to eat one, but ended up running around like a fool. He lifted the wing of the fowl and I could see a colored ribbon. “Each bird is owned by a family,” he told me. “There are no wild birds here.”

    So I had captured a bird that was someone else’s property. I was confused as he had earlier told me they were wild animals. In the end, it turned out that he never thought I would be able to capture one, nor did he understand why I wanted to capture one. When I explained that, while I loved the fish stew, I wanted to expand my eating horizons, he laughed. “Just buy one from the neighbor and my daughter will cook it for you.”

    So that afternoon I bought a fat guinea fowl and the daughter of my host prepared the most delicious ground-nut stew with him. To this day, I crave that stew. It was unlike anything I had before and better than anything I could have imagined. Although, it was still insanely spicy.

    I felt a bit idiotic about the entire episode and it only reinforced to the folks in my village how odd I was. But it had one positive side-effect. People realized how little I understood about even the basics of their lives, and they began to be much less assumptive about my state of knowledge.

    Note: A similar recipe is here.

    Facing Your Fears: Approaching People For Research

    intercept

    I’ve always found intercepts – where researchers stop people on the street and ask them to participate in a quick study – to be challenging. (I also prefer to have longer interactions with people and even have them prepare for those research conversations, but that is a bit outside the point here). In Facing Your Fears: Approaching People For Research Carolyn Chandler breaks that challenge down into many pieces and addresses each of them. It’s a wonderful article because it gets deeply into the specifics and considers the mindset we bring to the activity and how to reframe that, in many different ways.

    Rejection is people’s number one fear when approaching strangers. Hearing no has always been difficult, whether it’s a polite no or an angry no followed by a rant. Either way, it stings. Your response to that sting, though, is what matters. How do you explain the rejection to yourself, and does your explanation help or hurt you?

    Martin Seligman, one of the originators of positive psychology, conducted a study in the ’70s that gives insight into the types of mindsets that make people feel helpless. Seligman found that those who exhibit long-term “learned helplessness” tend to view negative events as being personal, pervasive and permanent. In other words, if a person is rejected, they might rationalize that the rejection is a result of their own failing, that everyone else is likely to reject them as well, and that they can do nothing to lessen the likelihood of rejection.

    When you prepare to approach someone, consider instead that, if they say no, they aren’t really rejecting you, but rather rejecting your request. It’s not personal. Maybe they’re in the middle of something, or maybe they’re just not in the mood to talk. The rejection is fleeting, and the next person might be perfectly happy to participate.

    This Week @ Portigal

    I’ve been on the road for the last four weeks and am pretty happy to be around for the next few weeks.

    • Last week with the Grand Rapids IxDA was great. We had a really exciting workshop about developing soft skills. You can see the slides here and the video here (it starts around 30:00).
    • I’m wrapping up the first draft of a strategic plan for a client, looking at how they can incorporate insights into their next iteration of their offerings.
    • I’m looking for some spare cycles to go through a few War Stories that have come in recently. Keep your eyes open and let me know if you have your own story to share!
    • Ten years gone: From June 2004 – $300 toasters.
    • What we’re consuming: The Master, MadCap Coffee, Grand Rapids Brewing Company, onion-rings-on-a-stick.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Greetings from the road!

    This Week @ Portigal

    Well a good day to you all! I’ve been home for about a week and now it’s time to hit the road again!

    Carol’s War Story: Driving Force

    Carol Rossi is the senior director of user experience research at edmunds.com.

    Since Edmunds.com is an auto website we spend a lot of time hearing about how people shop for cars. A couple of years ago we ran a shop-along study where we conducted in-home interviews to both understand car shopping behavior and simultaneously screen people we may want to go with on test drives to dealerships. I always take someone else with me when running interviews – a designer, product manager, exec, etc. – so they get first-hand exposure to real car shoppers.

    This time I had the head of editorial with me. The Edmunds editorial team has a long-term fleet of cars so they can write about car ownership. My colleague tells me that he’ll drive and we’ll take one of the fleet cars. We meet in the lobby and he walks us over to a $100,000 red BMW. Not what I typically show up in to interview somebody who is probably shopping for a Honda.

    The interview is in Hollywood and although it’s only 10 miles from our office this is LA so we drive up Santa Monica Blvd for like an hour. We find the address and it’s not in the best part of Hollywood. There we are with this six-figure car. Eventually we find a parking spot that looks relatively safe and walk to the building.

    We use the callbox and are buzzed into the building. We look for the apartment and realize it’s in the basement. We’re greeted by our interviewee, a middle-aged guy who’s described on the screener as a self-employed writer (like much of the population of Hollywood). The apartment is the tiniest living space. It really looked more like a one-car garage. The air was stuffy, there was a unique odor that was somewhere between musty and dusty, there were no windows open and no A/C, with carpet that had maybe never been cleaned. I started to hope the allergy attack I was sure was coming happened after we were finished. The apartment was overstuffed with piles of papers (screenplays?), VHS tapes, and posters of independent movies (including one with a woman in bondage gear who we later discover is his wife). Although we’d normally want to capture anything descriptive of the scene, to avoid distracting the product team who would watch the video later we had to position the camera to keep the poster out of the shot.

    We’re chatting and after a few minutes our interviewee’s 35-year old wife comes out with a baby. The wife is some kind of Hungarian model (think of a European version of Gisele Bündchen). The guy turned out to be really nice, educated and articulate, but also clearly not at all someone likely to test drive a car at a dealership. Basically he hates cars, rides his bike everywhere, is trying to get off the grid but needs a car now that there’s a baby, and says he’ll buy some used car that’s parked on the street with a sign in the window.

    Was this interview all for naught? From the first moment through the end I wasn’t sure. You always learn something new, so even though this guy did not meet our criteria for people likely to buy a car at a dealership we certainly got exposure to a type of shopper we knew theoretically existed but hadn’t yet encountered (“the eccentric car hater”).

    I’ve seen homes like this (and worse) but after the interview we walked outside and my colleague couldn’t unload fast enough. He’d never seen a living situation like that. In rapid succession he declared (out of concern for our safety) “When we first walked in I thought it was a trap – I was looking for a way out” but then (out of concern for the child’s health) repeated several times “They have a baby in there!!” And then he began to express his concern for my safety “Do you go on these interviews alone?…You take a guy with you, right?”

    After this emotional decompression, we jumped back into the ostentatious Beemer and drove down Santa Monica Blvd., away from the unknown of the ethnographer’s life to the predictable comfort of our office…until the next interview.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Happy Monday from the road.

    • Today and tomorrow I’m in Cambridge meeting with stakeholders. I’ve really enjoyed my initial conversations with this group and imagine I’ll be learning a huge amount about their objectives and their cultural and technical barriers.
    • There are still tickets for our June 20th in Brooklyn. It’s going to be an interactive session about Soft Skills for Design and Innovation. Come on down!
    • June 24th in Grand Rapids, the IxDA chapter will be hosting me for a very similar session (with a slightly catchier title): Soft Skills are Hard. Looking forward to it!
    • Coming later this week is another War Story, now in near-final draft form. If you’ve got a story you’d like to share, please let me know!
    • Ten years gone: From June 2004 – The truth about toast, Yahoo’s storage error (also here).
    • What we’re consuming: Multnomah Falls, Cocodonuts, Tasty n Alder, Powell’s City of Books, The Americans.

    Young students do “fieldwork” to learn about others

    In For Lessons About Class, a Field Trip Takes Students Home very young children are exposed to the homes and possessions of others. The thrust seems to be about class, but to me it seems like establishing an early model for empathy as well. The notion that other people are different from you seems foundational and it’s exciting to see this being addressed experientially. Check out the slideshow for the worksheets and debrief sessions!

    Some of us have more toys and bigger homes than others. We all have a lot in common, but there are certain things that make us unique, too. Let’s talk about those things and celebrate them, even. This is not standard prekindergarten curricular fare, but it’s part of what the 4- and 5-year-olds at the Manhattan Country School learn by visiting one another’s homes during the school day. These are no mere play dates though; it’s more like Ethnography 101. Do classmates take the bus to school or walk? What neighborhood do they live in? What do they have in their homes? Over the last several weeks, I tagged along to find out. The progressive private school considers the visits to be one of the most radical things it does. “We knew we needed to talk about social class,” said Lois Gelernt, the teacher who came up with the idea. “It was opening up a can of worms, but if we were never going to talk about who we are and where we come from, the sense of community wasn’t going to be there.”

    This Week @ Portigal

    It’s June! For me, June is travel month…

    This Week @ Portigal

    Hello to a short week.

    Rachel’s War Story: Research, in Sickness and in Health

    Rachel Shadoan is co-founder of Akashic Labs, a research consultancy that leverages hybrid methodologies to create rich and accurate portraits of users.

    It was my first field assignment out of school. Okay, technically it wasn’t my assignment–a contractor would be conducting the interviews, and I would be along to observe and record. But I’d spent the previous two years and six months in a lab writing code, so I would take what I could get. To say that I was excited would be an understatement. I was stoked.

    Plus, I’d get to fly to California! I’d be on an honest-to-goodness business trip! It was going to be great.

    It certainly started out great. In the shuttle from the airport to the hotel, I counted citrus trees. Citrus trees! Growing in the ground! In people’s yards! And no one seemed shocked by this! Of course, I had plenty of time to count those trees, as we crawled through traffic for hours. But the weather was glorious and I, like it, was ebullient.

    Things began to look dicey, however, when I met the researcher I would be working with. She was a smart, gregarious woman, who also happened to be sick. Very sick. Down-a-bottle-of-Nyquil-and-sleep-it-off-for-a-week sick.

    Rest and recuperation, unfortunately, were luxuries we could not afford. The project was on a tight timeline and already behind. At least one of the interviews we had planned had been rescheduled once. Stakeholders across three organizations were chomping at the bit. It was, in the melodramatic way of business schedules, do or die.

    And so we did. We pre-gamed with Thai food, guzzling tom yum soup for its sinus-clearing properties before returning to the hotel for an early-to-bed. The following morning we set off, my compatriot fueled by a powerful cocktail of cold medicine and espresso, myself running mostly on nerves and the delicious feeling of being free of my cubicle confines.

    Still, we felt uncomfortable bringing sickness into the homes of our participants. “Give us your insight, and we’ll give you the plague!” is not the most enticing slogan a researcher could come up with. We tried to minimize risks. I shook hands with the participants; she abstained. She positioned herself as far away from them as their living rooms and rapport-building would allow, with me, a human note-taking buffer, in between. We strove not to be vectors of disease.

    Given the circumstances, the first two interviews went well. But after hours of driving hither and yon across the north Bay Area, in traffic that I would have avoided navigating even with a clear head, my partner’s energy was flagging and the cold medicine wearing off. She tossed back an emergency booster of DayQuil in a Starbucks parking lot and we steeled ourselves for the final interview. It was perhaps more disorganized than the first two interviews, but we muddled through together.

    And then, as the sun sank below the side of the endless freeway, it was over and we were once again untroubled by the inflexibility of a corporate system that put us in the ethical quandary of whether to conduct field work–or work at all–while ill. We parted ways at a BART station. She headed home to collapse into a restorative, cold-medicine induced coma; I went in to the city to spend a few days basking in the glow of more-or-less-successful fieldwork.

    My basking didn’t last long, of course. In no time at all, I had a cold.

    Jon’s War Story: Of Speed and Strip Clubs

    Jon McNeill is the Principal of Hunter.

    Relatively early in my career, as I began stepping out and leading studies on my own, I was in Miami Beach doing ethnographic interviews with participatory “drive-alongs” for a luxury car brand. It was the last day in town, and I, with client in tow, had three 3-hour interviews scheduled that had to get done before we could fly out in the morning, the last one being scheduled for 9pm. This last interview was with Kenny, a guy who was actually supposed to be interviewed earlier in the week, but had to cancel because his yacht broke down and he was stranded for the day on a small island off the coast. We hear a lot of different excuses for non-participation, but that was a new one.

    My client and I get through our first two interviews that day at around 8, hop back in the rental car, and start the trip to interview 3, feeling hungry and tired, having missed dinner. I called Kenny to confirm that we were coming, in case he was on another island. He answered in an energetic but distracted tone: “Yeah, laying out the drinks right now. We’ll get in the car, go get some speed, and come back and I’ll give you whatever you need.” Click.

    “Speed? Oh no. Who is this guy? He must mean going fast, in his car,” I thought to myself.

    I warned my client that we might have a live wire on our hands, but that we’d just go get the interview that we needed and then grab a bite.

    We arrive to the address to see Kenny out front, waiting for us. “My wife is putting the kids to bed right now,” he told us, “so I’d rather not go in just yet and disturb them. Why don’t we get in my car, do the drive, go get a beer, and then come back and do the interview thing?”

    We usually did the drive-along as the last part of the interview, but as intrepid researchers, going with the flow is what we do best! Plus, at this point in the day, a drink sounded pretty good. My client and I nodded our agreement and squeezed into Kenny’s convertible: me riding shotgun, and my client folded into the tiny backseat area, holding the camcorder.

    As soon as I buckled my seatbelt, Kenny hit the gas and I saw the speedometer jump up to 110 mph. I looked back at my client, white knuckled and – like a champ – rolling video on the whole thing.

    We rocketed through a number of dark, mostly empty Miami streets. I was disoriented but loving the way the car gripped the pavement as we took turns in high gear. Just as I was wondering why he was choosing to take us to a bar that was so far from his home, I noticed a police cruiser waiting at a stop light ahead of us. Either Kenny didn’t notice, or he wasn’t worried; we flew through the intersection, still doing over 100.

    I flashed on how the rest of the evening might unfold: sirens, mug shots, bailing my informant out of jail… but the cruiser didn’t even give chase. I think the officer knew he wouldn’t catch us.

    Finally we pulled into a large parking lot, full of expensive cars, in front of a small oblong building. Two huge bouncers stood out front.

    Kenny turned to us and said, “Welcome to the best all-black strip club in Miami Beach!” and headed for the entrance before I could fully process what that meant. My client’s mouth was agape.

    Neither my client nor I are what you might call “strip club people”. He had been telling me about how he and his partner were remodeling their house into a real mid-century modern masterpiece. As I looked down at myself, I saw with dismay that the polo shirt I was wearing kind of made me look like the guy on Blue’s Clues.

    Since this experience, I’ve heard stories of researchers obliging their clients by taking them to strip clubs, all in the name of client services. And Miami’s relationship to strip clubs did seem to be more casual than other parts of the country, because a few of our other participants had mentioned in passing eating lunch or getting a drink at a strip club. But I was mortified – this was not something I was anticipating. Yet at the same time, I felt cuffed: I knew we had to get this interview checked off, and I didn’t feel like I could demand that we return to his home without ruining our chances at building strong rapport.

    I turned to my client and said, “I am so sorry. If I had any idea that he was taking us here, I wouldn’t have agreed. But at this point, I’m worried about insulting him; so let’s just go in, have a quick drink, and head out.”

    My client, a saint, shrugged and said, “This is just what happens when you do ethnography, right?” Right.

    The bouncers patted us down and we walked inside. Not having a depth of experience in this area, I had to take Kenny’s word for it being the best of its kind in Miami. Kenny was already at the bar, waiting with our drinks.

    “So, what do you want to know?” he asked me, as he handed me a beer.

    I struggled to remember my protocol questions, and we talked for about five minutes before Kenny excused himself to go to the bathroom. I looked over at my client and we both made a silent acknowledgement that we were done with our beers and ready to go.

    Just then, Kenny came back with a stripper on his arm. He turned to my client: “Hey, I bought you a lap dance.”

    My client’s face went white. The room began to spin. My client tried to politely decline.

    Kenny, confused, said, “No, she’s great, I’ve had her before!”

    My client politely declined again, and suggested Kenny go for it.

    Kenny asked him, “What is it? Are you married?”

    “No.”

    “You have a girlfriend that would disapprove?”

    “No.”

    “Well, then, what is it?”

    My client started stumbling over his words, trying to come up with a firmer excuse. Then Kenny laid down his trump card.

    “Look, man, I’m doing this because everyone thinks you’re cops. You’re white, clearly not having a good time, and if you don’t do this, they’re probably going to take us outside and beat us up.” He waited for my client to answer.

    My client looked at me the way survivors of a shipwreck must look at the person holding a life preserver. To my shame, I looked away.

    My client, resigned, was led back to a private room. I turned back around in my seat and started processing all that had happened: my conversations with my client, some of the things he said that I hadn’t caught at the time, his answers to Kenny just then… and it all suddenly clicked for me, with a sickening certainty.

    Kenny handed me another beer and said, “You know, I think your colleague might be gay.”

    “Yeah,” I told him, “I just figured that out myself. But what you don’t know is he’s actually not my colleague, he’s actually my client. You just gave a private lap dance to my gay client.”

    I felt ill. Kenny started laughing.

    “That’s really funny, man. That’s really funny.”

    I think Kenny really felt badly about the whole thing. After my client returned, we left and Kenny took us out to dinner at a kitschy piano bar owned by an old gay friend of his. We all laughed and told stories about crazy things that had happened to us in our lives, and at the end, without us knowing, Kenny paid for everything.

    The night ended back at Kenny’s house, in front of a literal parking lot full of his Audis, Porsches, and huge SUVs. He was a fantastic informant, and helped me craft the recommendations for the brand based on his interview.

    The car ride back to the hotel was pretty quiet. “Strange night, huh.” I said. My client nodded his head.

    We shook hands at the hotel elevator and said goodnight. That was the last time I saw him – he wasn’t at the final presentation, and I heard that he had left the company not too long afterward.

    At the end of the study, we sent him a client satisfaction survey, which was standard practice for us at that time. To my shock, it came back straight 10s. My client was a saint.

    Unlike many of the other War Stories, this doesn’t paint me in the best light – mistakes were made, character flaws became apparent. But in some ways, the ability to realize that you’ve made mistakes and are flawed is one of the things I treasure most about anthropology — ever since my Intro to Anthro college courses where I began to learn about the long, illustrious line of mistaken and flawed anthropologists who came before me. In fact, often those mistakes and faux pas were the keys to unlocking some heretofore hidden cultural truths. And I think that night was no different, although I don’t think the cultural truths that were unlocked for me were necessarily about luxury automobiles.

    I can’t see myself getting into the same situation now – there were at least two inflection points that night where today I would have directed things differently – but it could be that going through that experience together, the three of us, led to a deeper connection and (eventually) a successful interview. It certainly led to a War Story.

    Doug’s War Story: Knock-knock! Who’s there?

    Doug Cooke is founder of Tinder, a research consultancy focused on people-centered innovation.

    In a recent research and strategy project focused on defining a new global platform for a medical device, our research plan required us to shadow clinicians and others as they used existing devices in the “context of care.” With minor issues like HIPAA protecting patient privacy and other security issues at big urban hospitals in the US, our team decided that conducting research in Europe provided a better opportunity to understand these devices and their users.

    Planning started with all the usual steps: multi-day client sessions to assess the domain, issues and problems; auditing reams of client data and documents; becoming familiar with competitive products, etc. We developed a research protocol that went through many rounds of revision with a large, multi-location client team, arriving at a clear understanding of relevant and important user issues. We developed screening criteria for participating medial institutions. Pilot studies were run at US hospitals. Months of preparation were spent in making sure our research team was fully prepared to bring back insights and perspectives that would help define the next generation global respirator platform. Ready, set, on to Europe!

    Our first stop was a hospital in Wales. They had lined up the appropriate people for us to shadow and interview, including department heads, physicians, and medical techs. We spent two days shadowing, probing and gathering, and everything worked according to plan. Wahoo!

    At our second stop in London (hauling two large model cases that would not fit into London’s very spacious cabs), we arrived at the check-in desk and ask to see Dr. Smith (or so we’ll call him). Upon arrival at his department wing, we learned that Dr. Smith was not in. Even more concerning was that Dr. Smith was out of the country at a conference and had not let anyone else know we were coming. After speaking with a few more people, the answer was “Please come back at another time when the doctor is in.” Ouch! In spite of all the planning, effort, and resources to get here, a few uncooperative people were about to jeopardize our research program.

    How could this happen? Well, I ignored one of my primary rules: never let the client take on a critical path item that could endanger the project’s success and my firm’s reputation. Specifically, because of the difficulty of gaining access to the right people and institutions, and extremely high cost if we were to use a traditional recruiting process, our client took on the responsibility for arranging our visits to hospitals through Europe. Few clients understand the level of effort needed to screen, schedule and triple-confirm each participant. When the “research gig” is complex and requires the participation of a number of people carefully choreographed in a short time, it is essential to have a dedicated, experienced resource to make that happen.

    We made it all work in the end. With no Dr. Smith and an apparent dead end, we literally started on-the-spot networking, walking up and introducing ourselves to doctor after doctor until we had made some friends that would grant us two days of access in the ICU and ER. It worked out in the end, but presented unforeseen delays and stress to an already pressure-filled project. Painful but constructive outcomes, nonetheless.

    The rest of the trip in Germany and Italy presented various levels of preparedness on the part of hospitals we visited. Some hospitals were planning on hosting us for our full two day itinerary and some were expecting only a few hours meeting (which we were able to extend by turning on our best charm).

    I have always been a very careful planner and can fastidiously orchestrate research logistics. I know what it takes to gather user insights. But the lessons learned from this European research foray is a clear reminders that whenever I can, I must control the recruiting and scheduling process. I hope to never again knock on any unsuspecting doors.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Greetings.

    • I’m hoping to put the wraps on my talk about War Stories (coming up at CHIFOO next month) today and tomorrow.
    • One of the clients I’ve been coaching is presenting their findings to their executive team on Tuesday and then on Thursday I’m going to lead a workshop where we’ll translate their findings into a diverse set of business activities, and then prioritize them into their next steps.
    • Have you registered for my workshop on synthesizing user research at EuroIA?
    • Have you signed up for my workshop exploring mindfulness and presence at UX Australia?
    • And a reminder that I’ll be looking for any internal training gigs near Brussels and Sydney later this year.
    • Ten years gone: From May 2004 – That freaky Ball Park Franks “girthy” ad, Google “serves up” some awkward ads for a story about infected barbecue..
    • What we’re consuming: The White Diamond, Cafe Gibraltar, Star Wars Burlesque, canine acupuncture, Nash the Slash.

    Chauncey’s War Story: Secrets, Security and Contextual Inquiry

    UX architect Chauncey Wilson shares a rather scary story about permissions gone missing.

    In the 1980s, I worked for about 7 years at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) as a usability engineer. My group was led by John Whiteside, who pushed to make usability a serious discipline informed by metrics, fieldwork, and lab studies. The method of contextual inquiry was developed in our group by John, Karen Holtzblatt, Sandy Jones and Dennis Wixon. We did a lot of fieldwork to refine our methods and inform product teams about how to improve their products.

    During my tenure at DEC, I set up a set of interviews with a major client who must still go unnamed. The client did military research and used some of our products. I got clearance to interview people at the site with the caveat that all videos, tapes, and notes would be surrendered when I left. I would analyze the data at their site and do a presentation about my findings, leave all data, and not discuss any details of my interviews. I got to the site early in the morning and signed in at the front desk. In those days, we had 8mm video cameras as our primary tool for field interviews. I had permission from the senior security chief to videotape the screens and record sound for 5 different users of our DEC products. I started setting up my equipment for the first interview and about the time I got to mounting the video camera on a tripod, three really large security guards with weapons blocked the exit to the office and asked me what I was doing (“I’m here doing some research for DEC”), then they grabbed my equipment and took me to a holding area and proceeded to interrogate me. I said that I had sought permission and had an agreement with the chief security officer – but that agreement was not to be found.

    My name had been on the visitor list and the people I was interviewing vouched that I had set things up with them, but there was no clear approval for videotaping. I asked if they could contact their security chief, but he was on a vacation in the Virgin Islands. While they called and left messages for him, I spent a few hours in the holding area (you might call it a “cell”) concerned that I might go to prison. Though it took a while, they did catch up with the security chief and took me back to the cube where I had started my set-up and let me continue.

    I spent a week at this site and noticed that the guards walked by and checked in on me a lot. Every night when I left during the week, they had me empty my pockets and remove every item from my briefcase. On Friday, I put together a report and presented to an audience of very serious people who asked no questions. I left all the data, submitted to my final contraband search and left the most bizarre field visit of my entire career.

    The global watercooler

    walking-dead

    Sorry about the picture quality, but I grabbed this image quickly. I was in Surry Hills, Sydney, Australia. A streetcar is went by and with an advertisement for The Walking Dead. Underneath the title of the show, the poster reads “Same day as the U.S.”

    The value proposition here is that viewers can be part of the global conversation, taking place on social media. If you can’t see episodes of a popular show until days or weeks or months later (as has been the case for secondary markets) then you missed out on the party and it’s already spoiled.

    Granted, with global time zones, this is not a fully synchronousexperience (but then neither is viewing in the U.S., with a three-hour breadth), but this is a fascinating sign of the times and more evidence that Water Cooler TV is still important.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Happy happy Monday!

    • The week has begun well, with news that a client has accepted our proposal to help them with planning a research program to support a wide-ranging strategic initiative. Looks like a trip to Cambridge, MA is coming up soon to kick this off.
    • We posted two great War Stories last week, from Steve Sato and Gerry Gaffney. I’m working away on the plan for my upcoming War Stories talk at CHIFOO next month.
    • It’s a ways away but I am excited about teaching a workshop on synthesizing user research at EuroIA and on developing an understanding of presence at UX Australia. I’d love for people to sign up earlier, rather than later, for these workshops because it really helps with planning logistics (and finances).
    • Given that I’m going to be in Sydney in August and Brussels in September, it’d be great to line up a training or consulting gig vaguely in and around there. If your European or Australian firm might benefit from working with me, please get in touch to talk further.
    • I’m attending the Core77 Conference next month in Brooklyn. Will I see you there?
    • Ten years gone: From May 2004 – A website about someone famous is not the way to reach someone famous, John Maeda’s Simplicity Design Workshop, Green Tea Caramel Corn
    • What we’re consuming: Benedict Cumbercats, Neil Young’s String Theory, Louie.

    Gerry’s War Story: Right to be Wrong

    Gerry Gaffney runs the UX consultancy Information & Design in Melbourne. He publishes the User Experience podcast and is current director of publications at UXPA.

    I was researching, with my colleague Patrizia Bordignon, how people thought about and dealt with home renovations.

    One of the methods was a diary study (“cultural probe”), and we had carefully recruited – or so we believed – a small set of participants with whom we would work for several weeks.

    Warning bells sounded fairly early with one of the participants, who showed up very late for the initial briefing. These things can happen, so we ran a separate briefing session for him, gave him his kit of reporting materials (camera, diary and so on) and sent him on his way. Let’s call him Mr. W.

    Three days after the briefing we telephoned each of the participants. It’s a good idea to do this to remind people about their commitment, to redirect as necessary, and to address any issues that arise. All our participants were on-track, with the notable exception of Mr. W, who seemed somewhat evasive in his answers.

    At the end of the first week, we visited the participants. Again, this is good practice; it’s an opportunity to see how the data is being gathered, and what changes might be needed to the process. We also use that opportunity to make a part-payment to the participants, which can serve as a nice motivation.

    We were delighted with what we saw. Participants had kept bills and receipts, photographs and magazine clippings, they showed us their renovations or their plans, and we were confident that we were getting plenty of highly relevant data.

    When we visited Mr. W’s house, however, it was evident from the first moment that his home was different. The front gate didn’t work properly and the hinges squeaked, the garden was unkempt and the house gave an overall sense of dilapidation. Inside it was a similar story. Every room was in dire need of immediate restorative work, but none was evident. I felt a tad depressed as we drank tea from cracked mugs and listened to Mr. W list the things that needed to be fixed.

    Mr. W was not an enthusiastic renovator. His house represented a series of urgent and necessary tasks, none of which had been tackled.

    It looked like we would collect no useful data from Mr. W, and as we traveled back to the office we talked about our disappointment and reexamined our recruiting strategy.

    However, as we moved into data analysis, we found ourselves referring quite often to Mr. W, and gradually came to realize (no doubt this should have been obvious earlier) that Mr. W’s world was in fact directly relevant to our project. While the enthusiastic renovator was undoubtedly a key consideration, the unenthused or reluctant could also present great opportunities. Their needs and goals were different, their attitudes were different, and the way that we would design for those characteristics was different.

    In many ways, in fact, Mr. W was an ideal participant specifically because he didn’t fit our expectations. He challenged the underpinnings of the project, and made us examine our design decisions in a much more rigorous fashion.

    I often reflect back on this experience when I’m doing user research, and I specifically watch out for negative reactions and experiences, because they can often teach us things that we might not otherwise learn.

    I still believe it’s important to recruit carefully, but perhaps we should be more open to the idea that the “wrong” participant is sometimes precisely the right one.

    Steve’s War Story: Finding Mojo “In the Moment”

    Steve Sato is the Principal at Sato+Partners, a customer-centered strategy and stakeholder-centered organization design consultancy.

    We were three days into our 18-day research trip. The clock was ticking and our progress had been frustratingly slow. We had nary an insight to show for our time spent here so far. It was 9 o’clock in the morning and we were already hot and sweaty after having walked a quarter of a mile on the footpath, the only way to a remote village in Uganda. Our team was doing field research on making microfinance more efficient and reliable, so banks and other financial institutions would find it profitable for them to extend their services to include microfinancing. The current system of paper and pencil, traveling back and forth to an office two hours away, and then transcribing notes onto a PC (“sneaker net”) was inefficient and fraught with errors and omissions. Furthermore, what was required was not only an IT system that could span “the last mile” but we had 15 days left to prototype an interaction model that would augment the device. It needed to be a process that the field agents and their clients would trust and adopt without much help. On top of that we had to identify what other not-for-profit and for-profit organizations (e.g., medical, agriculture, manufacturing and so on) would find the field device useful (so we could size the potential market for the device).

    I was responsible for the research and the results. I really was feeling the stress and the jet lag and I had heartburn non-stop from the first day here.

    We arrived at the village and our team was introduced by the microfinance agent to a group of a dozen women who were her clients. After a few minutes of conversation the women gathered and sat down, with the field agent, on the ground in a large circle. Two researchers stationed themselves behind the agent while the rest of us positioned ourselves around the perimeter of the circle. I turned on the video camera and thought “Whew! We’ve been prepping this for nearly a month and now we’ll finally get to make some interesting discoveries!” But then I spent the next half hour struggling to stay focused, to listen to the conversation and watch the exchange between a woman and the field agent. Then some amount of self-awareness seeped into my head: “The breeze feels so good, gosh! I’m so exhausted, I could go to sleep right now…let me see, it’s 11ish at night in Portland…Ohh! I promised I’d call my wife today!”

    Without thinking, I pulled out my cell phone and looked to see if I had a signal. To my surprise I had one bar! By walking away from the group towards a little rise I could get 2-3 bars which was good enough!

    It was good to hear my wife’s voice. I closed my eyes while talking with her for about five minutes, like I was only a block away. I felt calm relief return.

    But then my eyes popped open, because with the relief came a realization, triggered by my ability to connect to my wife halfway around the world while I’m in the African back country, gazing at a group of women sitting in the grass under the shade of a huge tree, with puffy white clouds against a bright blue sky. It was surreal and so powerful. I experientially understood our mission: to connect the people here to the world in a way that would make their everyday lives better, as was happening to me in the moment. Suddenly I was re-energized and fully present. Throughout the rest of the trip I kept coming back to relive this experience. It kept me energized, engaged and focused, no matter how exhausted I felt. I honestly believe it made a positive difference in what we discovered, what we surmised and in our final designs.

    The personal commitment required for truly immersive research

    Alice Goffman’s ‘On the Run’ Studies Policing in a Poor Urban Neighborhood [NYT] describes a sociologist who commits deeply to truly immersive fieldwork. At one level this simply reminds us of the differences between academic and industry work, but beyond that it surfaces just how personally demanding it is to deeply engage in a culture, requiring us to forgo much of ourselves (In Interviewing Users that’s Check Your Worldview At the Door) in order to understand the people we are interested in (Embrace How Other People See the World).

    Ms. Goffman comes from a home where intensive fieldwork was something of a family business. Her father, the eminent sociologist Erving Goffman (who died when she was a baby), posed as an employee of a mental hospital for a year to research his 1961 study, “Asylums.” Her mother, Gillian Sankoff, is a sociolinguist at the University of Pennsylvania who has done studies in Papua New Guinea and French Canada; her adoptive father, the sociolinguist William Labov, also at Penn, has done pioneering field research on African-American urban vernacular, among other subjects.

    Ms. Goffman, who grew up in the Center City neighborhood of Philadelphia, said she took her first field notes as a teenager, recording observations about the Italian-American side of her family in South Philadelphia. By her sophomore year at Penn, she had moved full time to a mixed-income African-American neighborhood and was hanging out on a tough strip, fully immersing herself in local culture.

    She abandoned her vegetarian diet, listened only to mainstream hip-hop and R&B, and adopted local “male attitudes, dress, habits, and even language,” as she puts it in a long appendix, describing her research methods. While drugs, and drug selling, pervaded the neighborhood, she did not use them, she writes, partly because “it hampered writing the field notes.”

    By her own account, she lost most of her college friends, and struggled to complete her non-sociology requirements.
    It may sound “absurd” now, Ms. Goffman said of her extreme immersion. “But I was trying to take the participant-observer approach as seriously as possible.”

    It can be hard to square the very ordinary-seeming academic who recalls her teenage affection for “My So-Called Life” with the young woman of her startlingly confessional appendix, which ends with a moving account of a close friend’s death in a shootout.

    Insights into Internet-era blue- and white-collar work

    Here are two amazing pieces that expose a great amount of detail about very different types of jobs that are specific to the Internet era. We learn about who is doing the work, what the work is like and what the culture is. There’s so much rich detail in both that I am not summarizing or drawing conclusions but simply pointing you to them for listening/reading.

    399400066_af8ec28547_z
    (Jerry Bowley/flickr)

    Brown Box is a a RadioLab piece about the order fulfillment centers that companies like Amazon and others use. The reporter gets a job in one of these places and describes the physical and emotional toil (although she meets some who really like the work). While you might imagine the way items are stored in those warehouses is incredibly ordered, she describes how it’s essentially random, while “pickers” who are preparing an order carry a handheld device that directs them item after item to each holding bin at random locations through the warehouse, counting down the seconds it has calculated for them to reach the next item. That sounds so stressful!

    It used to be, when you ordered something on the Internet, you waited a week for it to show up. That was the deal: you didn’t have to get off the couch, but you had to wait. But in the last few years, that’s changed. Now, increasingly, the stuff we buy on the Internet shows up the next day or the same day, sometimes within hours. Free shipping included. Which got us wondering: How is this Internet voodoo possible?

    A fleet of robots? Vacuum tubes? Teleportation? Hardly. In this short, reporter Mac McClelland travels into the belly of the beast that is the Internet retail system, and what she finds takes her breath away and makes her weak in the knees (in the worst way).

    Also: a written story by Mac McClelland about the same experience.

    code-horror
    Programming Sucks is an intensely hyperbolic piece that digs into the state of the art for developing computer code.

    For example, say you’re an average web developer. You’re familiar with a dozen programming languages, tons of helpful libraries, standards, protocols, what have you. You still have to learn more at the rate of about one a week, and remember to check the hundreds of things you know to see if they’ve been updated or broken and make sure they all still work together and that nobody fixed the bug in one of them that you exploited to do something you thought was really clever one weekend when you were drunk. You’re all up to date, so that’s cool, then everything breaks.

    “Double you tee eff?” you say, and start hunting for the problem. You discover that one day, some idiot decided that since another idiot decided that 1/0 should equal infinity, they could just use that as a shorthand for “Infinity” when simplifying their code. Then a non-idiot rightly decided that this was idiotic, which is what the original idiot should have decided, but since he didn’t, the non-idiot decided to be a dick and make this a failing error in his new compiler. Then he decided he wasn’t going to tell anyone that this was an error, because he’s a dick, and now all your snowflakes are urine and you can’t even find the cat.

    So no, I’m not required to be able to lift objects weighing up to fifty pounds. I traded that for the opportunity to trim Satan’s pubic hair while he dines out of my open skull so a few bits of the internet will continue to work for a few more days.

    How not to solicit customer feedback

    comments

    Seen at a busy lunchtime eatery in San Mateo. The comment card box is placed right above the full garbage bin. No comment cards or pencils on hand, so perhaps this is just a vestige that they haven’t bothered to remove. But abandonware always makes you look like you just don’t care and in this case the visual association between “we value your opinion” and “food waste” is not appealing. Greatly appreciated? I doubt it.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Happy May! Hope you had a lovely May Day, Star Wars Day, Cinco de Cuatro and Cinco de Mayo!

    • Last week was the first anniversary of Interviewing Users. I posted a summary of links, resources, podcasts and more.
    • While I’m waiting to hear about a number of interesting proposals out there, I’m doing a big push with blogging. It’s a gift to always have more to write about than time, but it’ll be fun to clear out the top layer of the backlog at least.
    • We had a new War Story last week. I’ve seen a good first draft of another new one that hope to be able to post soon. If you’ve got a story it would be great to share it so get in touch!
    • On the subject of War Stories, I’m digging into the preparations for a new talk about the War Stories, coming up at CHIFOO next month (and at UX Australia later this year.
    • On the town: I’ll be at the Designing Innovation panel on Wednesday night. Maybe I’ll see you there?
    • Ten years gone: From May 2004 – Classic concert companion, Starsky and Hutch art installation, Fun Facts!
    • What we’re consuming: dogs and shag, mezcal, Zepparella, Rolling Pin Donuts.

    Happy Birthday to Interviewing Users: Link Roundup

    interviewing-users

    It’s been one year (wow!) since Interviewing Users came out! Hooray! Below is a roundup of links to various bits connected with the book. I’ll republish this occasionally with accumulated updates. If you haven’t already, get your copy here! And if you have, you should write a brief review on Amazon here.

    The Book

    Reviews

    Interviews

    Presentations

    Other

    Can you engineer empathy (as part of learning to code)?

    images

    From Engineering Empathy [Re/code]

    Dev Bootcamp, an intensive nine-week coding program in San Francisco’s South of Market district, offers a unique “Engineering Empathy” curriculum. About 30 students stood in pairs and spoke to their partners simultaneously: You don’t respond to email fast enough. Why are you checking Twitter — nothing important happens there. You’re too old to be here. You’re faking it. You don’t know how to develop. You have no career. You’re the worst pair partner. Your accent makes you hard to understand. You’ll never get a programming job.

    When the cacophony finally subsided, many of the would-be programmers were in tears. Some were holding hands. One man sat down and put his head in his hands. “My superego runs on a disappointment platform,” he said to the room.

    The culture of tech (male-dominated, sexist, entitled and so on) has become even more visible as of late. Even the parodies of Silicon Valley, such as HBO’s Silicon Valley, face criticism for not being inclusive enough.

    So I’m a bit stuck on how to parse this particular example. Of course it’s good that people are given the chance to develop empathy! I’ve been teaching designers about presence and mindfulness (and will be doing so again later this year at UX Australia). Perhaps it’s just how the writer took something earnest and presented it out of context, thereby making it look ridiculous (in other words, like a scene from Silicon Valley).

    I suppose things can be both wonderfully beneficial and hilariously ridiculous at the same time (see rock music or romance, for example). I’ve taught a lot of workshops where you if walked in without context you’d wonder what the hell is going on. I feel trepidation (because I can’t tell how whether this is authentic or just a put-on) but I really want to recognize this as a good thing.

    Erik’s War Story: (Don’t) Go Toward The Light

    Erik Moses is the Director of Research and Insights at Product Development Technologies in Lake Zurich, IL.

    Not long ago I was on a project where we were tasked with understanding current practices in BioPharma labs. Overall the program was a huge success and we uncovered critical new insights for our client, which is always rewarding. But that is not what this story is about. This story is about my iPad.

    As a researcher, I admit to having a bad memory. I am a dedicated note taker. I love my notes and can’t do much without them. A few months before this, I had begun using the iPad as my main tool for data capture in the field, moving on from my old friend the pen and paper.

    For one of our site visits we were in the Midwest at a notable university lab. We were there for the day, courtesy of our client’s long-standing relationship with this lab. That is to say, we were welcome guests. Part of the process we were observing involved a lab technician processing images in a darkroom. At one point during our visit, the PI (Principal Investigator), who was our client’s main point of contact and with whom they had the relationship, invited our group into the darkroom to understand how the process continued in this environment. Of course, I brought my iPad.

    Our group piled into a cramped university darkroom to find not only the PI, but also a few other technicians from the lab processing portions of their project. It was dark in the darkroom, so the only thing I could see was the soft red glow of dark room-specific lights.

    The PI began the demonstration, while we tried not to impede the movements of everyone else in the darkroom. At some point, our participant said something very interesting that caught my attention. I thought “Hey, this is a must-have insight I need to remember!” and so I opened the cover of my iPad.

    Immediately, I hear a technician behind me exclaim “Wha-what? Oh, great!” While I now recall hearing this comment just like it was yesterday, at the time I was so focused on capturing this important piece of information, I did not put it together that the technician was referring to the blunder I had just made.

    After noticing a tremendously bright light in this room of black, only then did my mind stitch together the visual information of the bright light with the auditory cue of the mumbled comment. In a matter of seconds I realized what I had done.

    While afterwards the PI ignored the incident and the session continued for the rest of the day without another incident, I felt horrible and was flustered for some time. Reflecting on it today, I still feel flustered. I like to imagine that I didn’t mess up that technician’s experiment that much, perhaps only by hours but given what I know about that group and the process, in my heart I know I ruined at least two days’ worth of hard, time- and event-specific work.

    Because of this incident I am now very careful in the field, perhaps to the point of being overcautious, often times wrapping my arms around my iPad to physically tell myself to be mindful of my actions. Learn from my experience: remember, don’t (immediately) go toward the light!

    This Week @ Portigal

    Hope things are as sunny where you are as they are here…

    • I spent the first half of today helping our client with a synthesis session. We made it through two transcripts and they’ve got another 11 to do on their own, so they have some work ahead. But it was really fun, really interesting and quite valuable in pulling out some themes and opportunities. I’ll meet with them next to help with a presentation and run a design workshop afterwards, probably in a few weeks.
    • If you missed last week’s well-received 32 Awesomely Practical UX Tips virtual seminar, you can still get the recordings. Use the code 32UXTIPS for 32% off!
    • I’ve got a great slate of catch-up calls and lunches this week. It’s something I find so helpful and enjoyable and I’m glad to have the chance to do it right now as projects wind down and others are still winding up.
    • Ten years gone: From April 2004 – Academics examine Wal-Mart for clues to our culture, Reuters consent.
    • What we’re consuming: Ferrell’s Donuts, Fargo, a rant about design, Fastball’s The Way, improv as life advice.

    Listen to Steve on the UX Discovery Session podcast

    DS-LOGO-FB-Final-300px

    I was interviewed by Gerard Dolan for the UX Discovery Session podcast. In 30 minutes we spoke about my twisted educational career path, the Interviewing Users book, some products and services I’m struck by and my fantasy of putting on a UX conference devoted to soft skills. You can listen to the interview below, or here (where Gerard has included a nice set of footnote-links).

    To download the audio Right-Click and Save As… (Windows) or Ctrl-Click (Mac).

    Be a rock star, just like…Spider-Man?

    spidey rock star

    This designed-by-committee advertainment highlights three benefits, speed, agility, reliability – the third probably not top-of-mind when we think of the web-slinger. And as if this cross-promotion for the USPS Priority Mail and Spider-Man (well, Spider-Man 2) wasn’t ridiculous enough, these qualities will make you a rock star. Just like the US Postal Service. Or Spidey.

    What?

    That’s it. “Rock star” is officially over. Meaningless. We’ve known this for a while, but this is too far and we must all agree to stop it immediately.

    Listen to Steve on Wise Talk

    Insights

    I was interviewed by Sue Bethanis for Mariposa Leadership’s Wise Talk show. In an episode titled The Art of Interviewing Users we talked about how to see and notice in a different way, being aware of our own filters and biases, and constantly rediscovering what the problem you are trying to solve really is. You can listen to the interview below, or at Wise Talk.

    To download the audio Right-Click and Save As… (Windows) or Ctrl-Click (Mac).

    This Week @ Portigal

    Greetings to all!

    • We’re onto the final tiny steps to wrap up this long project. Last week’s sessions highlighted some real challenges in moving innovation through the organization and I know that my direct clients have some more work to do. I’ve put together an iteration of our final presentation that hopefully will help everyone understand the path we’ve gone down – the questions we were tasked with and the ways our research addressed those. For now, I’m waiting to hear that this is satisfactory for concluding this phase of work.
    • I’ve got my single transcript in hand will be combing through it this week in preparation for facilitating for a new client next week.
    • We’ve got another new War Story! Check out Seeing Ourselves As Others May See Us. I hope to have more soon (hint hint hint).
    • On Friday I recorded a conversation with Gerard Dolan for his UX Discovery Session podcast and before the weekend was up he had posted it! Check out our 30-minute chat.
    • More to listen to: the recording from last week’s Wise Talk about Interviewing Users is here.
    • This week I’ll be one of several speakers at Rosenfeld Media’s day-long virtual event, 32 Awesomely Practical UX Tips. Use the code STEVE for 20% off!
    • I’m taking time this week to drive down to meet with a design team we worked a lot with about 4 years ago and see if there are opportunities to collaborate again. I’m also having lunch with a few different colleagues around the area to catch up and share ideas and stories.
    • Ten years gone: From April 2004 – Astro Boy currency, Wacky warning labels.
    • What we’re consuming: Philz Coffee (suburban version), Aaron Sorkin’s QSR drama, renovacation, Chinatown Sartorialist, Silicon Valley, focus group horror, dog treats (inadverently!).

    War Story: Seeing Ourselves As Others May See Us

    Here we break with tradition and present a story anonymously, to mitigate against mortification of those involved.

    Twenty something and fresh out of my MA program I obtained a little consulting job which I completed from afar. The company mailed me a video camera and interview guide and sent me out to discover what people think of dinner food. I was to recruit people who would participate in a video recorded dinner we share and an after-dinner interview. I was instructed to send footage back to the company with the camera along with notes and analysis.

    My first interview was with a man about my age who ate convenience foods. He was shy and awkward with me as I was with him. When I got there I set up the tripod and attempted to build rapport beyond our obvious discomfort. In an effort to focus only on him as he opened a can of soup and poured it into a casserole dish I spent very little time adjusting the equipment. He prepared soup-in-a-dish dinner and we ate together and then I went through what was left of the interview content. Perfect recruit for “convenience food eater,” and I was off.

    Later at home I looked back at the video to make sure my notes are correct and to complete a partial transcript. To my surprise and immense embarrassment I realized that I set the camera up so that the composition includes only one thing in the foreground completely obscuring the participant’s head. It was a close-up view of my right breast – interrupted only occasionally by my arm each time I raised the fork. The entire dinner and interview video contained nothing more than this view. I had never met the employer or the team in person but I reluctantly packaged up the camera and my notes and sent them away without a word. Later they mention that their view of this video inspired quite a few laughs around the office. Oops.

    This Week @ Portigal

    The weeketh beginneth, all!

    Lindsay’s War Story: Sexism in the City

    Lindsay Moore is an independent design research and strategy consultant from Colorado.

    We were in New York City, on day four of a three-week fieldwork trip. We had had some bumpy interviews the first few days, including a participant who clammed up because her husband was in the room, another who wasn’t comfortable showing us any of the software processes she had been recruited to show us, and a third with whom the conversation was like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, with us hanging on for dear life. But I was finally starting to settle in to the interview guide and was feeling positive about what we were learning. Plus we were getting a great apartment tour of Manhattan!

    We were accompanied on each interview by a rotating member of the client team so that they could all experience the research firsthand, and this day was our first with a particular team member. Our morning interview had gone fairly well, but I could tell our client partner was having some trouble staying in the background, as she was used to more actively managing her interactions with customers.

    We walked in the door for our afternoon interview, and I made some small talk, saying something like “How is your day going so far?” to our participant, who was an older gentleman. He answered that it was going much better now that we three pretty girls were there, but that it would be even better if we didn’t have clothes on. I experienced a shocked moment of “Did he really just said that???” and took a sidelong glance at my client to see her reaction. She had one of those impenetrable customer service masks of politeness on her face. I tried to shake off the comment and proceeded into the interview.

    For the first 30 minutes, I found myself utterly unable to manage the flow with the participant, who would physically turn towards the client to answer my questions, and then turn back to me and say “You understand?” The interviews were about financial behavior, and he made it very clear that he thought I wouldn’t be able to follow what he was saying. Meanwhile, in an effort to be polite, engaged and responsive with her customer, my client was unintentionally making it worse. I realized I needed to gain some kind of credibility and after the umpteenth “I don’t know if you would understand” I told him that I do have some financial background and that I was following just fine. After that I was much better able to lead the interview and he engaged directly with me. Still, for another hour and a half he continued to condescend and make inappropriate/sexist comments (The number of times he suggested we “girls” go shopping at Bloomingdales after the interview? Five. What he wanted us to buy? Blouses.)

    After leaving the interview I was hopping mad and said to my client and my colleague that I couldn’t believe what we had just experienced. They agreed but felt like we had still been able to uncover great information in the interview. They also thought that sometimes older men are just “like that” and that I shouldn’t let it get to me. I was bothered but decided to let it go. The interview had been uncomfortable but not unsafe, and the client was pleased with what we had learned. As an interviewer, wasn’t I supposed to be able to set my own emotions aside?

    When revisiting the transcripts and coding the interview data, it really became clear to me that I was not overreacting to what we experienced. It was blatantly bad. Still, what should we have done? When I’ve related the story to other friends and colleagues, they’ve said that we should have left the home after the initial no-clothes comment. I want to agree on principle, but I also know that if I never allow myself to experience something uncomfortable, I’ll miss out on the richness and depth that is a part of this kind of work. What I do know is that it’s okay to share and talk about our own emotional responses to difficult research situations and that doing so is an important part of self-care for researchers. In the future, I will also make sure to have a plan in place with my fieldwork partners for when — and how — to end an interview, so that it’s not a process we need to invent in the moment.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Howdy April. Hopefully it’s spring for you if you live in a spring-in-April part of the world.

    • The key objective for this week is to wrap up the deliverable document for this project. That means I’m working in PowerPoint, trying to actually craft an articulate statement that succinctly expresses the details of what we saw – and why that’s relevant to our client. I took some time this week to make sure that I left paper (and Microsoft Word) and got into PowerPoint – it’s always gratifying to be in the deck, even though the ideas are still sharpening. I’ve got a bunch of diagrams to draw, oh and the details of a workshop to plan. I know that by the time I get on an airplane Sunday morning we’ll be all set, but it really requires focus.
    • I think it’s on hold this week while my main contact is on holiday, but last week I started consulting with a team who have already conducted their own fieldwork to help inform a pretty significant strategic directive to open up new lines of business.
    • I’m so grateful for Cati’s review of Interviewing Users on Amazon.
    • There’s some tantalizing possibilities for great collaborations for our next project. Conversations this week will tell us more about what is happening next.
    • Coming up on April 17, I will be the guest on Mariposa Leadership’s Wise Talk, where the topic will be The Art of Interviewing Users. You can register here. I hope to hear from you!
    • I helped judge two categories (Effective In-House Team and Work Environment for Digital Practitioners: In-House) for the Design for Experience awards.
    • I enjoyed listening to this podcast with Kerry Bodine, not the least for the amazing shout-out she gives to Interviewing Users at 15:45.
    • I’m still waiting for confirmation but possibly I’ll be leading a session on interviewing at SF Civic Design Camp this Saturday.
    • I’ve posted all of my photos from my trip to Australia and New Zealand.
    • On the town this week: On Tuesday, I’ll hope to make it to BayCHI to hear Michael Kronthal talk about building empathy at Yahoo.
    • Ten years gone: From April 2004 – Mourners honor chickens killed in wake of bird-flu outbreak, Faith Popcorn overrated, Parade of 1000 Samurai, So that’s who likes those robot dogs.
    • What we’re consuming: Frances Ha, Google Night Walk, Inside Llewyn Davis, Walking backwards through Tokyo.

    Interviewing Users: Link Roundup

    interviewing-users

    Interviewing Users is now available. Get your copy here!

    Hi! If you’ve read the book and found it beneficial, it would mean a lot if you would contribute a brief review on Amazon here.

    It’s been eleven months Interviewing Users came out! Below is a roundup of links to various bits connected with the book. I’ll republish this occasionally with accumulated updates.

    The Book

    Reviews

    Interviews

    Presentations

    Other

    It’s the sharing economy all the way down

    When things start getting really silly, you know you are in a bubble.

    A San Francisco startup called Breeze is renting brand-new Toyota Priuses to people who want to drive for Uber and Lyft. There is huge demand from people who don’t own cars to be part of the ‘ride-sharing’ economy,” said CEO and co-founder Jeff Pang. Breeze now has 25 cars, all fully booked by drivers who answered its Craigslist ads or heard about it from friends. “We don’t buy outright as that’s a capital-intensive, asset-heavy model,” said co-founder Ned Ryan. Instead, Breeze rents the brand-new vehicles from an unnamed partner in the automotive space.

    Yes, Breeze rents cars from their source, then rents them out to people who don’t own their own cars who then rent out their unused vehicle capacity to people who also don’t have cars but need rides.

    Someone has been watching too much Portlandia.

    This Week @ Portigal

    It’s the last day of March…

    • I’m in the office on a Monday morning for the first time in forever. I’m not planning any travel for about two weeks, which is quite nice
    • I’m looking at a huge stack of transcripts from the last few weeks of fieldwork, reading through them and marking up bits and pieces that will accrue into key takeaways for my client. We’re planning both a presentation and a follow-on workshop and although there’s a ton to do to get ready for it, I’m really looking forward to it.
    • Assuming the paperwork goes through, I will be starting a small project coaching a team through the synthesis and ideation process for some research they’ve already done.
    • I’m also talking with a few different organizations about work in the US and overseas. That means some time to spend in conversations, planning projects, writing proposals, reaching out to my network of contractors, and so on.
    • I spend a lot of time last week (as frequently happens) coaching people through various stages of their own practices. So it’s nice that this week that a colleague and friend will be kicking off a project helping me look at Portigal Consulting at this stage of its existence (since 2001!) and consider how to evolve and grow.
    • I’m hoping to hear today or tomorrow about a near-term conference workshop slot overseas. I will certainly announce here if we decide to go forward.
    • On the town this week: On Friday, I’ll be hearing Kristian Simsarian talk about Meaning First: Let’s Humanize Technology.
    • Ten years gone: From March 2004 – Cameron Crowe archive, Wrecked Exotics, Goodbye Googie, Family Circus Decon.
    • What we’re consuming: Kathleen Hanna, Men Oh ramen, Malia and Me, Lee Moses.

    Advice for early-career designers

    Last week I spoke at a fundraising event (Let’s talk design and help a kid with cancer) organized by Jorge Baltazar.

    Glen Lipka, employee #1 of Marketo gave the first presentation, with advice about interviewing for a job in UX. In many ways, it was an object lesson in empathy, as he illustrated many ways that applicants fail to understand the mindset, goals or expectations of the person interviewing them. He described reviewing a portfolio with illegible yellow text over a gray background – but that he’s more focused on what transpires when he asks the applicant about it. A bad design choice is something he might expect in a less-experienced designer but the ability to explain a design choice and especially to acknowledge that a design decision could be improved was really what he was looking for. Some of his points are well-captured in How to Pass My UX Designer Phone Screen and his deck is here.

    Aynne Valencia is a design strategist. She presented a “field report” from a number of conferences she’d been at in the last while (I remember IxD14, SXSW and some others in Europe), looking at the trends in interaction design that were here now, coming soon, and further out. Some examples included Brad the emotional toaster, and Berg’s Cloudwash. I couldn’t find her slide deck, either, but she continues to document the things she’s seeing on her blog.

    Christian Crumlish, the Director of Product at CloudOn, spoke about what makes a great designer, acknowledging that he’s not a designer at the moment and further unpacking the challenging nature of trying to speak to such a big topic from one person’s biased point of view. Meanwhile, he identified three qualities

    • Breadth: Having creative pursuits outside of design that you can uses as sources of inspiration. His ukelele is an example of something he does for fun but will occasionally provide a surprising new perspective or framework. You can read a bit more on this same theme in my review of Debbie Millman’s How To Think Like A Great Graphic Designer
    • Passion: Apply everything to your work, or refocus on new work if your passions leads you there.
    • Restlessness: Never being fully satisfied and always looking for something new or better.

    Finally, with some prompting from Glen, he played and sang a bit of “Satellite of Love” on his ukelele.
    photo1_425

    I was the last presenter. I gave an overview of my own crazy career path (see Disciplinarity and Rigour? My keynote from the 2008 Design Research Society conference and then offered the following thoughts and suggestions

    • Network. Do it online, but do it in person as well. LinkedIn is good for a soft intro, but find people and talk to them. Take a long view about your career and your relationships that are part of that career. Be authentic. Be interested. Don’t think about what people can do for you or you can push people away.
    • As you go out and speak to people, take the approach of prototype and iterate. Figure out your story, your objectives, what you have to offer and your strengths by talking them through. Use informational interviews to live practice of what you have to say and how you want to say it.
    • I can’t really back this up but I suspect that in one era, you’d be told to get a job in an agency because that’s where the good design was happening; and then in a subsequent era you’d be told to get a job inside a corporation because that’s where the design work really was, and then people might be telling you to work in a startup because (although not always the case) startups were really making design part of their thing, and now it doesn’t seem like terrible advice to do your own startup. Given the tools that are available for small teams to design, develop, build and deploy significant pieces of technology whether it’s the App sSore or AWS or whatever, it seems open to almost anyone now. Personally, I never really wanted to make a thing once I discovered facilitating others to be making a thing.
    • Look for your advantage in moments of upheaval. Design is changing; industrial design is really suffering, firms and agencies are suffering, teams are downsizing; UX is increasingly important but where the jobs are and what they entail keeps shifting.
    • There’s also something with increasingly alternative forms of education. Jon Kolko used to teach at SCAD and then he went and started his own school – the Austin Center for Design. Jared Spool is in the process of starting a school in Chattanooga – the Unicorn Institute. These people are seeing the gaps between the jobs that need to be filled and the people that are trained to do them and they are trying to address that. Even if you aren’t seeking education yourself, there are patterns emerging and it’s worth your while to keep an eye on it, keep trying to make sense of it, and keep trying to connect what you are passionate to do with what the opportunities are
    • For me, career has been struggle in various forms all the way along. It’s great to have the benefit of time because then you can have hindsight. Struggle might be another way of saying that it’s about finding the next challenge and pursuing it, because the ground doesn’t stay still beneath your feet. There are plenty of rewards along the way; and the struggle sucks the most in the early days; it is suckiest when you are at the bottom of the Maslow pyramid and are concerned with survival not spiritual fulfillment. Over and over again I keep being reminded that no one will come and hand it to you. I keep waiting to be discovered and given a magic solution but really it’s about moving forward in small ways.

    Thanks to Jorge for organizing this and the speakers for some really compelling talks.

    The album will certainly sell out and the band already has

    Back in October, I blogged about the We Buy White Albums project (where artist Rutherford Chang opened a retail outlet that stocked only the Beatles’ White Album)

    He’s taken a precious object that is also a ubiquitous commodity and created a very traditional experience that highlights both aspects. As archaic as the original object is, it has managed to hold onto a good chunk of it’s (non-monetary) value over the decades. It’s a somewhat retro-futurist idea, that we have retail set up to deal with one item and one item only, decades later.

    The combination of art/music/commerce/context/ubiquity gets a totally different spin (oh yes I did) with the Wu-Tang Clan’s plan to sell just one copy of their new album.

    The Wu-Tang Clan has decided to release an album specifically to be a rarity. Only one copy of “The Wu – Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” – a 31-track double album that the band has worked on quietly for the last six years – will be pressed. It will be “available for purchase and ownership by one individual only.” The plan is for the album to first make a tour of festivals, museums and galleries and tickets would probably sell for $30 to $50.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Well, howdy hi!

    • I’m headed back later today from a fun long weekend in wine country. Ah, back to reality after some good socializing and eating and drinking!
    • Fieldwork is done! Logistical hell aside, it proved to be very interesting and provocative. The next order of business is to put together the topline summary of the themes and patterns that we had just with the experience of the fieldwork. The deeper dive will come later on, but for this week, we’re all meeting to talk about what we think we heard and what we think it meant. This interaction will really be helpful for guiding the synthesis that comes immediately after.
    • Since I’m actually around for most of this week, it’s networking time, with a lot of calls and other meetings with people I’ve been trying to connect with for a while.
    • I’ve been chatting with several people about different talks and presentations near and far-flung between now and the end of the year. I’ll announce each of them when they go live.
    • Ten years gone: From March 2004 – Swoops, there it is?, Pleix films, Crossing buttons don’t really work, I am Asian, The magnetic-hook bra is here.
    • What we’re consuming: Snacklemouth, Pinot Grigio, bad service, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, Dr. Katz.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Greetings friends!

    • Later today I’m flying home from Up To All Of Us in North Carolina. And that’s my only flight this week. It’s been a crazy few weeks with a number of trips separated by 12 hours or so. Looking forward to at least a few days at home (before taking a long weekend with some friends up in wine country).
    • Along with some other local design-type folks, I’m giving a short talk this week at a fundraiser. If you can come out and support the event on Thursday, that’d be great. I’m donating a copy of Interviewing Users as well.
    • With the big project, this week there’s at least one site visit in San Francisco and maybe another one elsewhere. It’s hard to book these, but it does keep a lot of people’s schedules up in the air waiting to finalize them. At that point, it’ll be a wrap for the fieldwork and we can start diving into what we’ve heard more intensively.
    • Two recent reviews of Interviewing Users: from Tammy and Lan. If you’ve read the book please write your own short review as it makes a huge difference for the book’s sales and general awareness. Thanks!
    • Ten years gone: From March 2004 – Foreclosure fear selling, George Foreman’s inspirational musical offering, Gadgets from history.
    • What we’re consuming: Chuck’s, chocolate-chip rice pudding, Meat Raffles, North Carolina Museum of Art.

    Bringing the reframe to cookies

    It’s time for a cookie post, isn’t it? Grab yourself one or two and settle in.

    This video is brilliant. It takes the familiar trope of the manufacturing-process video, plays it backwards, and then constructs an overarching narrative that makes sense of what we’re seeing.

    How It's Unmade - Oreo Cookies

    The Oblique Strategies offer a set of provocations that can help with a creative or problem-solving block. This video shows an effective use of one of them: reverse.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Well, hello!

    • I’m getting on a plane to Minneapolis in a very short time. Last week’s fieldwork was very interesting but the whole experience was really hampered by poor communication, a challenging recruit, oh and poor communication. Day by day, I didn’t know what – if anything – was happening the next day and so I wrapped up each day by booking another hotel room for that night. Certainly a draining experience. And while I was pretty clear I couldn’t do this two weeks in a row, I really only found out Thursday afternoon what’s happening Monday. Indeed, it’s still in flux, but it’s not possible – within the scope of the project we negotiated – to make a bunch of last-minute trips around the country. This aspect of things feels tense, but that may just be the exhaustion.
    • I’m a good chunk of the way through posting my pictures of Australia and New Zealand to Flickr. There’s about 275 pictures up there now, and definitely a whole bunch still to come.
    • Later this week, I’m off to Up To All Of Us, a retreat type of event that I was invited to go to. I like the people and the energy but I’m honestly unsure what it’s going to be like and what I’m doing. I took a deliberate leap of faith when signing up, feeling the need to broaden my connections into less familiar places – but now I’m having to deal with that leap.
    • Ten years gone: From March 2004 – Blood dichotomy, the worst salesman in the world, The bento – a scrumptious expression of love.
    • What we’re consuming: House of Cards (Season 1), Douzo Sushi, Global Entry.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Happy March!

    This Week @ Portigal

    Here comes the end of February – 2014 is racing along.

    • Our project schedule may be in jeopardy which is the kind of thing that makes me worry. We already lost a week to getting our hospitals scheduled and I haven’t heard much since then (except that they expect it to be difficult). The team is pretty busy with a number of other efforts (specifics unknown to me) so even getting a response to my request for a quick check-in is a challenge. I’m eager for us to start learning but there’s a huge logistics hurdle that needs to be overcome.
    • Really looking forward to an internal corporate summit I’m going to be part of, probably in April. From what I’ve heard so far it should be a pretty exciting event.
    • On the town this week, I’ll be at Arrogance in International Research this Wednesday in San Francisco.
    • Ten years gone: From February 2004 – Franchise Zeitgeist, Pickle Paraphernalia, Li’l G n’R.
    • What we’re consuming: Enough Said, EQ3, Hangman Jury, Tara’s Organic Ice Cream.

    You say hello, they say goodbye

    mflogo

    More news about technology eating its predecessors:

    Moviefone is shutting down its phone-in ticketing business to focus on its app, according to Jeff Berman, president of BermanBraun, which runs the declining movie ticket service. “The call-in service has been in pretty steady decline… Our customers are much more interested in our award-winning app, and we need to invest our resources in the future, part of which involves a major reimagining of Moviefone.” This weekend, callers were informed that the service would soon go silent. Once a dominant force in the world of movie ticketing and listings, the service is best known for the voice of “Mr. Moviefone,” provided by founder Russ Leatherman, that greeted callers.

    It’s part of the human condition to see things go by the wayside. In many cases what is lost is replaced by something that is better. A dial-in voice-based movie-listing service is hardly the best solution available to us, and the usage numbers for Moviefone show that. So it’s disappearance makes sense in terms of utility (and business). But with many of these disappearances, what we might mourn is the cultural loss (yes, Moviefone was an element on Seinfeld), recalling the affection we have for the familiarity, even considering it as tradition. Sometimes this collective sense of loss is enough to produce an outpouring that convinces a company that there’s a good-will business case around preservation. While I don’t expect that here, these occurrences are common and are interesting to look it through the lenses of function, business and meaning.

    Full story

    Sometimes I feel…

    Back in 2012, this video appeared on YouTube, with disc drives playing Soft Cell’s version of Tainted Love (did you know it was a cover?).

    Floppy Music | Soft Cell - tainted love (13 fdd + 1 hdd)

    This sort of thing does go back decades; some folks got an IBM 1403 printer to play pop songs in 1970 (check out the actual songs here).

    In a delightful twist, Marc Almond of Soft Cell recently came across the video, and decided to add his vocals to the disc drive music!

    I’m reminded of when Gotye created his own remix (on YouTube) of the ubiquitous covers (also on YouTube) of Somebody That I Used To Know.

    Platforms like YouTube enable the collapse of the separation between consumer and producer and it leads to interesting and surprising outcomes. These small examples highlight the disruption that is occurring today.

    One way to recruit in-home research participants

    Credit card issuer Capital One isn’t shy about getting into customers’ faces. The company recently sent a contract update to cardholders that makes clear it can drop by any time it pleases. The update specifies that “we may contact you in any manner we choose” and that such contacts can include calls, emails, texts, faxes or a “personal visit.”

    Yep, that’s how you get willing research participants – add it to the Terms of Service! Sure, I’m kidding; that’s not really what this article is about (it’s about the credit-card company claiming rights to repossession for non-payment). Still, this ups the creepy ante for visiting customers and makes the trust aspect of recruiting participants just that much harder.

    Full story

    Changing lives in the developing world

    From this article

    WIRED: What innovation do you think is changing the most lives in the developing world?
    MELINDA GATES: Human-centered design. Meeting people where they are and really taking their needs and feedback into account. When you let people participate in the design process, you find that they often have ingenious ideas about what would really help them. And it’s not a onetime thing; it’s an iterative process.

    So great to see this.

    Take a moment to consider the 1%

    The image above, accompanying an article about private jets, reveals a privation so unimaginable it may shake you to your very core. Yes, that’s the personal UI that the elite are forced to use during their painful time aboard. The ultra-elite no doubt have other people who are paid to look at (ugh!) and touch (aieee!) those buttons while puzzling through gnomic instructions. But the regular rich are just like us, I suppose.

    Update: Nathan Shedroff says that’s just for the “wannabe” 1% and the state of the art is here. IMHO still “ugh” but at least current-generation-of-technology ugh.

    This Week @ Portigal

    I’m back to 90% of normal health today, after a long week of general confusion and extended napping. I was fortunate that we cancelled last week’s Boston trip in the face of a tremendous snowstorm.

    • We did last week’s kickoff over WebEx. It was a disappointing not to be in the same room as everyone and put faces to names, but they closed their office due to the storm and most people called in from home anyway. I’ll finish up meeting with the final project stakeholder today. The next big step is to line up the hospitals we’ll be visiting and despite having weeks of lead time, the team is feeling pretty nervous about being able to pull it off. We’re supporting them with some best practices about how to ask for a site’s involvement.
    • Networking this week includes offering some coaching on writing a book, and strengthening my own connections with folks I can pull in for projects.
    • I’m involved in some early planning conversations for speaking at a really interesting internal corporate event.
    • On the town this week, I’m looking forward to seeing a presentation on Design Thinking from Julie Baher this Thursday in San Francisco.
    • Ten years gone: From February 2004 – Chagall at Costco, AOLiza, Found Typography.
    • What we’re consuming: True Detective, Allman Brothers Band, ramen.

    This Week @ Portigal

    I’m recovering from flu which appeared in the last day of my trip, leading to an excruciatingly fevered/chilled day of overseas travel and a weekend of confusion and general self-pitying. Even without that, having some culture shock returning to the familiar.

    • I’m off to Boston later this week to kick off a new project. Really looking forward to getting to know the organization as it seems we’re all excited to be working together. Eventually, we’ll be looking at IT and administrative processes in hospitals and doctor’s offices, but this week is all about the planning.
    • Among the myriad messages that show up when you’re away from the office is one from our newish, supposedly user-friendly service-dedicated webhost, with some arcane request to make some technical adjustment I have no idea how to do that. So I’ll suppose I’ll be sorting that out!
    • Ten years gone: From February 2004 – The remarkable photography of Brian Ulrich, Supersize your movie collection, Top 10 earworms.
    • What we’re consuming: Monteith’s, Mac’s Beer, Bintang, Bircher muesli.

    This Week @ Portigal

    It’s a short week here as we’re off on vacation by the last half of the week. I’ll update here upon our return, but it’ll be quiet for a couple of Mondays.

    Announcing: Pro Bono Management/UX Consulting for Small Businesses

    In collaboration with Sarah Rice, we are pleased to announce the launch of our pro bono management/UX consulting service aimed at small businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area.

    We’re looking for small business owners who are interested in growing or who are feeling “stuck.” Using what we’ve learned in years of consulting, we can help you think about what’s working, what to improve, and how you can go about making those changes.

    With one or two short sessions at your offices or at ours, we can help you clarify business goals, look for ways to improve your customer’s experience, prioritize strategic objectives, identify tactical next steps and so on. Each consultation will be customized to you and your business needs.

    As part of the process, we’ll document and share some of your story to raise awareness and inspire others.

    If you’re a small business in the SF Bay Area and you’d like to know more, please get in touch with us! Email WeCanHelp@seneb.com or phone 408-315-8961.

    About Sarah and Steve
    Sarah Rice is principal of Seneb Consulting, a solo consultancy helping companies of all sizes understand and influence customer behavior. Past clients include Microsoft, eBay, PayPal, Princess Cruises, Yahoo! and NetApp.

    Steve Portigal is founder of Portigal Consulting, a boutique agency that helps companies to discover and act on insights about their customers and themselves. He’s also the author of Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights.

    Survey or Proselytizing?

    This religious pamphlet appeared on our doorstep, asking a difficult question – Can the dead really live again? – and giving the prospective convert three choice

    • yes?
    • no?
    • maybe?

    I couldn’t help but think of a survey that would ask you to force your thoughts about a complex issue into some easily-summable categories. Sadly, the rest of the pamphlet did not include any skip logic, where religious content was presented differently, depending on how one responded to this provocative lede.

    thedead

    This Week @ Portigal

    It’s a gorgeous January day in Northern California. I feel very lucky!

    • I’m kicking off the week drowning in administrivia: sending out 1099 to last year’s contractors, paying the next installment on this year’s taxes, dealing with a missing automated bill payment to our landlord and so on. It’s gotta be done but yuck.
    • There is some fun administrivia though: time spent getting ready for a possible office share with a local designer who is interested in one of our unused desks.
    • Last week was really dominated by chatting with a number of prospects, outlining project plans, creating documents, talking through approaches and schedules. This week begins with…waiting. Although I’m sure that’s going to get a bit zany before too long.
    • We ended last year as an agency of one, and so we’ve begun this year by reaching out to our network of collaborators in order to create just a bit more formality around an informal aggregation. This week will be a lot of conversations with people about the details of working together.
    • I’ve started a fun collaboration with a local colleague and will be announcing that here very soon!
    • On the town: I’ve been invited to dinner with a delegation of design executives from China. I’m not sure what it’s going to be about but will find out!
    • On Thursday, I’ll be teaching a workshop about Interviewing Users at Code for America!
    • Here’s my 5-minute talk about The Power of Silence, newly posted from last year’s Fluxible conference.
    • Ten years gone: From January 2004 – Phase 3 is Profit!, The Sim Mafia.
    • What we’re consuming: The Happy Taco, StarStruck, Modern Family, Steal This Episode.

    Flavor Combination

    lock

    The Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Pint Lock is a simple enough product – a locking mechanism for a standard pint of ice cream. But along with its functionality comes a measure of social performance that’s worth a brief closer look.

    The idea is humorous (one side of the lock has the slogan “I’m terribly sorry, but there’s no ‘u’ in ‘my pint'”) – but in that humor is a gentle reminder to everyone that Ben & Jerry’s is precious stuff, worth protecting.

    As far as security goes (the ice cream is in cardboard, after all), I’m reminded of what a research participant told me once. When walking around the perimeter of his fast-food franchise, he said “A lock only stops an honest person.” His point was that any security can be broken with some amount of force, and the role of the lock is to make it clear that you aren’t welcome. Social norms keep most of us from bypassing that lock. So while we might pop open the ice cream and take a spoonful or two of our coworker or roommate or partner’s Chunky Monkey, we’re probably not going to cut through the package and make it obvious. So while this lock won’t stop a ravenous freezer rodent, it will protect your ice cream from most of your regular dessert-craving cohabitants.

    It’s great design in that it considers the functionality in its cultural context. If they built this by spec-sheet (as one might with a bike lock, say) they would miss the point entirely.

    Thanks, Mom!

    This Week @ Portigal

    Happy 2014! I took yesterday off, driving from Vancouver to Seattle, then flying home from Seattle to San Francisco. Of course, a “day off” is a relative term, since I spent much of the travel dealing with scheduling meetings, having pre-meeting check-ins, and so on. Anyway, today we’re back!

    Portigal year in review, 2013

    It’s time to sum up some of the noteworthy writings/happenings of the year. Let’s get to it!

    All those years ago: 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008.

    Where Credit Is Due

    card
    Magnises is a new sort-of-credit-card that evokes an ultra-elite black card. It’s not actually a credit card, though. As they describe it

    Each Magnises member carries our distinctive metal membership card, which extends and enhances their pre-existing credit or debit card, and provides perks, benefits, and access to numerous high-end brands. Upon admittance, Magnises will construct a card for each new member. Magnises will then extend the magnetic signature from the member’s personally owned credit or debit card onto their new Magnises card.

    Yep, that’s right. You get a metal card that looks like a credit card but simply has the credit card data copied onto it – from the credit card you already own. While there are perks, no doubt, with this card, it is not actually the thing it denotes. It’s merely a gussied-up package for the quotidian plastic in your wallet (well, maybe not your wallet, if you are reading this it’s unlikely you are cool enough to qualify).

    As a species, our ability to create meaning out of almost nothing – and then charge money for the performance of that meaning – is astonishing.

    For more, see

    Magnises Black Card Has Its Privileges (Well, Sort Of) [NYT]

    Serving Up Carrots

    A very small social experiment, more something to reflect on rather than proof of anything.

    The Petite Syrah café in the Riviera city of Nice, has implemented a new pricing scheme. “A coffee” will set you back €7, according to the sign, while “a coffee please” is a little more affordable, at €4.25. If you want keep your expenses down, and stay friends with your local barista, however, the best option is “Hello, a coffee please,” which will only cost you €1.40.

    Manager of the Petite Syrah, Fabrice Pepino, told The Local: “It started as a joke because at lunchtime people would come in very stressed and were sometimes rude to us when they ordered a coffee. Although Pepino admits he’s never actually had to enforce the price scheme, he says he has noticed a difference in his customers’ behaviour. “Most of my customers are regulars and they just see the funny side and exaggerate their politeness,” he said, adding “They started calling me ‘your greatness’ when they saw the sign. But people are more relaxed now, and they’re smiling more. That’s the most important thing.”

    The framing here is important: there’s a reward for the behavior the business wants. It’s not a punishment for failing to adhere to the rules (e.g., surcharge for being a dickhead: $3.00) – even though it’s the same thing economically, behaviorally it’s entirely different. It’s the carrot versus the stick.

    As well, the outcome is less about adherence to the rules and more about the increased mindfulness about a detail of the interaction. We’d need to come back and see what happens after the regulars attenuate to this change, but the empowerment that the rules produce as a consequence is quite enticing.

    Also see previously: A silly (?) coffee pricing scheme at Tim Hortons.

    The Future of the Book, you say? [2013 edition]

    Reading ahead
    In 2010, we conducted a public-facing study about the future of books and reading, called Reading Ahead. We raised many fascinating questions including the design implications for the digital book experience: which elements of the traditional experience should move forward and which should be left behind.

    Looking at the issue a few years later is the New York Times, with Out of Print, Maybe, but Not Out of Mind

    Some functions of physical books that seem to have no digital place are nevertheless being retained. An author’s autograph on a cherished title looked as if it would become a relic. But Apple just applied for a patent to embed autographs in electronic titles. Publishers still commission covers for e-books even though their function — to catch the roving eye in a crowded store — no longer exists.

    What makes all this activity particularly striking is what is not happening. Some features may be getting a second life online, but efforts to reimagine the core experience of the book have stumbled. Dozens of publishing start-ups tried harnessing social reading apps or multimedia, but few caught on.

    Much of the design innovation at the moment, Mr. Brantley believes, is not coming from publishers, who must still wrestle with delivering both digital and physical books. Instead it is being developed by a tech community that “doesn’t think about stories as the end product. Instead, they think about storytelling platforms that will enable new forms of both authoring and reading.”

    This Week @ Portigal

    The year is winding down and over here it’s periods of frenzy alternating with chunks of extreme slow.

    Out and About: Steve in New York

    Last week I was in New York to speak with two groups at SVA and at IxDA (also to see the city, eat desserts and hang with friends). Here’s some of the pictures I took during my trip.

    photo1
    “I Know A Guy, Inc.”

    photo2
    The New Colossus by the Bruce High Quality Foundation, public art at Lever House that references the ubiquitous labor action inflatable rats.

    photo3
    Blue by Anish Kapoor at MOMA, chock full of subtlety.

    photo4
    DO NOT WALK THRU ELEVATOR.

    photo5
    The Strand Book Store unloading some similar titles about the women behind the men of the sea.

    photo6
    Hyperlocal.

    photo7
    Papa Moozi

    photo9
    A mini-Jurassic Park seen as street art around sidewalk greenspace.

    New York previously: Summer 2013, 2011

    This Week @ Portigal

    This is the 100th of these updates. No, we won’t be pausing to reflect, just simply making note of it.

    • Just about every week has its own flurry of business-development activity, whether it’s the all-engrossing minutiae of setting up phone calls or the ominous waiting-to-hear-back; I have for the most part stopped reporting on it here and I’ll all say this week is that there’s a particular end-of-year-budget flavor that is emerging. As always, we’ll see what happens.
    • Out-and-about this week: I’m looking forward to seeing Leah Buley and Scott Berkun speak at BayCHI on Tuesday. I’ve never seen either of them present before! Also, on Wednesday, I’m going to see Barry Katz speak about The Amazing, Incredible, Unbelievable History of Silicon Valley Design. Hope to see you at either event!
    • Ten years gone: From December 2003 – Headvertising, The Availability of Mr. Potato Head.
    • What we’re consuming: pretzels in milkshake form, Broadchurch, Art Spiegleman, donuts, Paul Cadmus.

    This Week @ Portigal

    It’s December! We’re in the home stretch for 2013. Also, it’s CyberMonday, a fact which Facebook reminded me of today, sending a notification to the Portigal Consulting page with the helpful advice to “write a post about it.” Gee, thanks.

    Interviewing Users: Link Roundup

    interviewing-users

    Interviewing Users is now available. Get your copy here!

    It’s been seven months Interviewing Users came out! Below is a roundup of links to various bits connected with the book. I’ll republish this regularly with accumulated updates.

    The Book

    Reviews

    Interviews

    Presentations

    Other

    Today we are twelve

    12

    Today is the twelfth anniversary of All This ChittahChattah. And since it overlaps with Thanksgiving, I’ll give thanks for all the feedback and encouragement I’ve received for this blog in those twelve years. Hooray!

    Steve interviewed about Best Practices For Interviewing Your Audience

    interviewing-users

    Interviewing Users is now available. Get your copy here!

    I spoke about Interviewing Users with Connie Malamed for the eLearning Coach podcast. Listen at the link, or below.

    WE DISCUSS:

    • The impact that interviewing has on the product and the designer
    • The places in a design/development cycle where user input is needed
    • Skills needed to become good at interviewing users
    • What you’ll need to unlearn
    • The best attitude to have while interviewing
    • How to think about and manage “reticence”
    • Techniques to reinforce learning about the interviewee
    • How to plan for an interview
    • Tips for asking good questions
    • Ways to record interviews

    This Week @ Portigal

    I’m technically off today, spending today and yesterday in LA for a short birthday trip to see the Turrell retrospective at LACMA and eat delicious food. It’s a short week otherwise, with Thursday (and sorta Friday?) as Thanksgiving.

    This Week @ Portigal

    I’m back from a relaxing week in Hawaii and plowing through email, catching up, trying to figure out what is going on.

    Steve quoted in “Digital Products Flunking User Test”

    I was interviewed by CruxialCIO about how companies can design and redesign digital and mobile products that engage rather than frustrate. The article (Digital Products Flunking User Test) is broken across three tabs (SituationSolutionsTakeaways) and the quotes from me appear on the second two tabs. FYI, the pages are a bit slow to load.

    Remember the precedents. While copying competitors isn’t necessarily advisable, it doesn’t make sense to design, for example, a fly swatter that you use by swinging a string around with the flat swatter piece attached to it. People expect a stick at the end. “You can’t fail to acknowledge that there are precedents out there,” says Portigal.

    “There’s some history about how customers are going to expect something to work. Everyone is a consumer so in an enterprise situation, we bring in expectations about how something should work.” If people expect that swiping left or right, double clicking, or other gestures will have a certain outcome, the lack of that outcome will be confusing. After Apple came out with the iPhone, for example, it became quickly clear that when consumers wanted a smartphone, they expected something fairly similar in form factor and function to the iPhone.

    Grant McCracken’s brilliant “Ethnography, a brief description”

    Eloquent awesomeness by Grant McCracken

    The object of ethnography is to determine how the consumer sees the product, the service, the innovation. Often, this is obscure to us. We can’t see into the consumer’s (customer’s, viewer’s, user’s) head and heart because we are, in a sense, captive of our own heads and hearts. We have our way of seeing and experiencing the world. This becomes our barrier to entry. Ethnography is designed to give us a kind of helicopter experience. It takes up out of what we know and lowers us into the world of the consumer.
    Ethnography is a messy method. In the beginning stages, we don’t know what we don’t know. We don’t know what we need to ask. We are walking around the consumer’s world looking for a way in. Eventually, as we ask a series of questions, we begin to see which ones work. We begin to collect the language and the logic the consumer uses. And eventually, we begin to see how they see the world.

    The method is designed not to impose a set of questions and terms on the discussion, but to allow these to emerge over the course of the conversation. We are allowing the consumer to choose a path for the interview. We are endowing them with a sense that they are the expert. We are honoring the fact that they know and we don’t. (Because they do!)

    Eventually, we end up with a great mass of data and it is now time to stop the ethnography and start the anthropology. Now we will use what we know about our culture, this industry, these consumers, this part of America to spot the essential patterns that make these data make sense. ”Slap your head” insights begin to emerge. ”Oh, that’s what their world looks like!” “That’w what they care about!” ”This is what they want!”

    And now we begin to look for strategic and tactical recommendations. Now we can help close the gap between what the consumer wants and what the client makes.

    Creative collaboration with jerks

    d_school_the whiteboard_Yes and_vs_that sucks because_

    I love this great post by Margaret Hagan that looks at a few different ways to deal with a “Yes, and…” collaboration when your partner won’t play by those rules, falling back on “that sucks” a little too often. She suggests three different approaches, which I’ve spun as follows

    1. Redirect – go off on your own or find other people to interact with and bring that good stuff back to the collaboration
    2. Respond – challenge those that challenge you with their stinky negativity
    3. Reframe – do all the design activities you like, but don’t describe them with code words, eliminating one particular generator of pushback.

    There’s much more to be said about all of these, but Margaret’s simple post and lively illustrations are a good bit of inspiration

    The dangerous power held by the interviewer

    A recent episode of This American Life tells a fascinating and horrifying story of a murder confession gone wrong. The story is a reflection from the retired detective who seems to have sincerely believed the woman in question to be guilty. He realizes in his reflection that he was open to hearing what fit his theory and dismissed information or cues that didn’t support his theory (this is known as confirmation bias). This is a real concern for people doing user research who have preconceived notions about people, their behavior, their desired solutions, etc. One tactic is to develop greater self-awareness and learn to hear your own biases and assumptions.

    Even more disturbing in this story is how the suspect began to provide details of the crime that supposedly only the person who committed the crime would know. In fact, this woman who would want to clear her name, responded to the questioning by shifting to please her interrogator, looking to provide the “right” answers. While the police didn’t realize it, she was picking up clues from the documents they were showing her and presenting them back as if it was her own knowledge. She wasn’t trying to confess, she was trying to succeed in answering the questions, even though it was significantly against her own interests. This is also a crucial concern for user researchers, where participants will want to please them and will work hard to figure out what “pleasing” looks like. The way you ask questions (e.g,. “Do you like doing it this way or would you rather have it happen automatically when you enter the store?”) has a tremendous influence in how they are answered.

    The New York Times offers this summary

    He tells about a woman who confessed to killing a man. She knew insider things like that the victim was wearing his wedding ring when he died, and that his credit card had been used at a People’s drugstore and a Chinese takeout place. Case closed.

    A few weeks go by, and it turns out the woman has a strong alibi. Charges are dropped.

    Years later, with the case still officially open, Detective Trainum went back to the file because he still suspected that the woman had gotten away with murder. He discovered that he and the other detectives accidentally videotaped the whole interrogation — not just the confession. That’s when he found out how an innocent person could know unreleased details of the killing.

    At one point during the interrogation, they were trying to get her to admit to using the dead guy’s credit cards, and said, isn’t that your signature on these slips? And they showed them to her. So she read the name of the drugstore and the restaurant.

    At another moment, they showed her the crime scene photos. In one, the left hand of the corpse was prominent. You could see the wedding ring.

    So they had accidentally fed her all the incriminating details that she returned to them in the confession.

    Inauthentic customer stories

    We received a pamphlet from RIMADYL, a doggie painkiller. It included this lovely testimonial from “Ronnie Beck.”
    successstory

    I could almost track my transitions from belief to disbelief to appalled as I read it. What on earth is going on in that company that anyone thinks that this blatant lie is acceptable? Among the pictures of happy canines frolicking in park is this pile of poop. Egregiously bad corporate communications.

    Also see On Authenticity, published in interactions back in 2009.

    Interviewing Users: Link Roundup

    interviewing-users

    Interviewing Users is now available. Get your copy here!

    It’s been six months (whaa???) since Interviewing Users came out! Below is a roundup of links to various bits connected with the book. I’ll republish this regularly with accumulated updates.

    The Book

    Reviews

    Interviews

    Presentations

    Other

    This Week @ Portigal

    It’s Fall-Back Monday. What the heck time is it?

    Stories fuel listening

    StoryCorps vehicle
    StoryCorps is “an independent nonprofit whose mission is to provide people of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives.” And they’ve just turned 10. Founder Dave Isay reflects

    It was about a year into this thing when I began to, I think, fully understand the power of this very, very simple idea and decided to devote the rest of my life to building it into something that I hope eventually in this country moves the needle on getting people to listen to one another.

    Yes, that’s right, an organization that is nominally about getting people to tell stories is really seeking to improve listening. Storytelling has that power; it leads to listening. The fuel for listening isn’t silence, it’s stories.

    Steve interviewed for UX Magazine

    logo

    When I spoke recently in Los Angeles I was interviewed by Luke Swenson of Media Contour.

    The interview has been published on UX Magazine.

    When should our clients invest in user research?

    There are two things that you should watch for that can indicate it’s time. One is when you realize that you don’t know the answer to an important question. For instance, maybe you’re not sure who you’re targeting with a product or service. The second one is more difficult: it’s when you believe you have the problem already solved but you’re operating without any type of humility—you’re believing your own hype, so to speak. You’re making assumptions without any facts or evidence to back up those assumptions.

    Does The Dog Die?

    Does The Dog Die_



    Here’s a site that aims to address a single specific need. Does The Dog Die? helps helps viewers avoid (presumably) distressing pet violence in their film diet. While it’s far from exhaustive, it lists a number of films, and codes them as follows
    Does The Dog Die legend



    The site is simply an alphabetic list of titles, each coded with the appropriate legend.
    Does The Dog Die3_



    Clicking in to a title gives slightly more detail – “an explanation which will only contain spoilers relevant to the fate of pets (and occasionally other animal characters) in the film.”
    DDD---Invasion-of-the-Body-

    Cut the bowling scene if you want to make it big

    In the 90s, conceptual artists Komar and Melamid used focus groups and opinion-polls (then-current tools used in politics) to identify the best attributes of a painting, then created works that matched those criteria.
    perfect

    So why not apply something similar to film? The New York Times tells us all about it (although this is more about correlating with sales data than opinion data, it pursues the same conclusion – without irony here – that a combination of the right elements assembled together will create a successful whole).

    A chain-smoking former statistics professor named Vinny Bruzzese has started to aggressively pitch a service he calls script evaluation. For as much as $20,000 per script, Mr. Bruzzese and a team of analysts compare the story structure and genre of a draft script with those of released movies, looking for clues to box-office success. His company, Worldwide Motion Picture Group, also digs into an extensive database of focus group results for similar films and surveys 1,500 potential moviegoers.

    “Demons in horror movies can target people or be summoned,” Mr. Bruzzese said in a gravelly voice, by way of example. “If it’s a targeting demon, you are likely to have much higher opening-weekend sales than if it’s summoned. So get rid of that Ouija Board scene.”

    Bowling scenes tend to pop up in films that fizzle, Mr. Bruzzese, 39, continued. Therefore it is statistically unwise to include one in your script. “A cursed superhero never sells as well as a guardian superhero,” one like Superman who acts as a protector, he added.

    Oh um hey there Awkward Chatbot

    Awkward Chatbot

    While our collective techo-optimism leads us to expect – and create – technology-driven experiences (say, bots) of all types that represent our best selves. But to be more realistic we need to consider a wide range of interaction styles. Enter Awkward Chatbot, a site that effectively simulates the disengaged, ineffective and well, awkward, interactions that characterize instant messaging.

    earlier

    You: Do you have anything to tell the readers of All This ChittahChattah?

    Chatbot: are you like mad at me or something lol

    Sigh.

    The Shape of Food and Other Things (To Come)

    A provocative survey article on Edible Geography explores the form that food (specifically Chicken McNuggets and cheese) is presented in.

    It’s a safe bet that McNugget morphology tells us something important about the sensory framework through which we experience the world. Within the constraint of basic economic considerations (shapes that can be made on the same line and ship well), the bell, bow-tie, ball, and boot are sculptures made by our mouths-ubiquitous, finely-tuned artifacts that reflect by our increasingly sophisticated understanding of human sensory perception.

    Early in my career we talked a lot about how digital technology was changing the range of possibility. Form didn’t have to follow function. Industrial designers could make digital cameras (an example early project where we grappled with the form factor for the device and the metaphor/mental model for the software) look like anything.

    Apple’s original QuickTake 100 camera took advantage of that freedom.

    It was not a successful product; the form (and it’s lack of traditional camera references) was certainly not the only reason, but that product might represent some of the most extreme of early experimentation. Now our digital cameras look pretty much like the film cameras they’ve fully displaced. At the same time, revolutionary (e.g., digital) products can seen as making culture (e.g,. cell phones as the new concert arena lighter) as much as reflecting it.

    The story of the Lytro camera, more recently, suggests that it too is trying to introduce a revolution into a staid category (the aforementioned digital camera), and it’s form announces that it’s somehow different.
    lytro

    I can’t help but assume the packaged and processed foods people have a lot more data and a much more refined (if you will) understanding of what forms connote and how they motivate. If they are speaking to our liminal behaviors and our reptile-brain sensory processing then they are able to use that to their advantage when other forms of design can’t, at least not yet.

    The Color of Money

    money
    A report from a University of Guelph study explains that

    People are more likely to spend dirty, crumpled currency and hold on to new bills. [But] in social situations, people reach for new bills even when they have older higher-denomination currency on hand.

    Researcher Theodore Noseworthy explains

    We tend to regard currency as a means to consumption and not a product itself. It should not matter if it’s dirty or worn because it has the same value regardless. But money is a vehicle for social utility, and it’s subject to the same inferences and biases as the products it can buy.

    This suggests some design opportunities for digital money. I recently tried Square’s new service that lets you email cash to anyone (US only). The user experience was so minimalist and utterly delightful – and such a change from the dirge of PayPal (even without the frequent frustrations). If I’m sending someone an experience as part of sending them money, the quality of that experience may be something to consider (also, it’s free; also it’s a good experience for me as the sender).

    What Data Can’t Do

    heads
    Heads, Oakland’s First Friday, June 2013

    I do love this NYT Op-Ed (What Data Can’t Do) from David Brooks, especially

    Data struggles with context. Human decisions are not discrete events. They are embedded in sequences and contexts. The human brain has evolved to account for this reality. People are really good at telling stories that weave together multiple causes and multiple contexts. Data analysis is pretty bad at narrative and emergent thinking, and it cannot match the explanatory suppleness of even a mediocre novel.

    Of course, the qualitative narrative data is still data. It’s mostly the kind of information I work with. Perhaps it’s easy to conflate data with Big Data and succumb to the notion that if the approach to Big Data is limiting, then the approach to data in general must be limiting. But data is data – it’s what we use, in whatever forms, to inform and inspire and drive decisions.

    The ethnographic research community is looking at the increasing reliance on quantitative data in business and questioning their role. Rich Radka proposes a “Yes, and…” mindset in this posting, no doubt one of many we’ll be seeing, as our business culture (and culture overall) evolves.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Hello, week!

    • From a Monday point of view, it seems like this is a week for writing. I’m holding for a bunch of different clients and while their different planning processes stretches out, it’s a good time to dig into stuff that’s been brewing for me.
    • portigal.com should be all set. I think I’ve found all the weird formatting issues that didn’t move over properly. I also updated several hundred rotten links although there will always be more.
    • Ten years gone: From October 2003 – Flashmob tipping point, TERMINAL BAR: the film.
    • What we’re consuming: Touchez pas au grisbi, Oh! Sweet Nuthin’, The Midnight Coterie of Sinister Intruders.

    We Buy White Albums

    The We Buy White Albums project, earlier this year from Rutherford Chang is pretty fascinating.

    Chang has collected over 650 first-pressings of the Beatles’ White Album. He considers the serialized first-press, an edition running in excess of 3 million, to be the ultimate collector’s item, and aims to amass as many copies as possible. Over the course of his Session, Chang will create an archive, listening library, and anti-store to house and grow his collection of the Beatles’ iconic record.

    Chang will create a record store that stocks only White Albums. But rather than selling the albums, he will buy more from anyone willing to part with an original pressing in any condition.

    I like how he’s taken a precious object that is also a ubiquitous commodity and created a very traditional experience that highlights both aspects. As archaic as the original object is, it has managed to hold onto a good chunk of it’s (non-monetary) value over the decades (writing as someone who doesn’t own, has never owned, and will likely never own the White Album). It’s a somewhat retro-futurist idea, that we have retail set up to deal with one item and one item only, decades later. And more generally retro, asking what album in the last two decades could you imagine doing this with thirty years hence? Is the White Album relatively unique in being the touchstone it represents? The way we produce, market and consume pop culture has changed. What would Chang do in 2043?

    Out and About: Steve in Kitchener-Waterloo

    I was recently in Kitchener-Waterloo (for the first time in over 20 years) to speak at the marvelous Fluxible conference. I had a little bit of time to walk around and take some pictures. Here are my favorites.

    IMG_1602
    Lots and lots of tea

    IMG_1593
    Oh noooooooo!

    IMG_1594
    Downtown beautification.

    IMG_1596
    Bathroom paper towel dispenser no longer has rubbish below, instead has a badly worn note pointing you to the new solution.

    IMG_1598
    Someone in this area is scent-sitive.

    Out and About: Steve in LA

    Recently I was in LA to speak at IxDA Los Angeles/LA UX Meetup (see more here). Here’s some of the photos from my time in Southern California.

    IMG_1642
    The Wall Project is made from the largest section of the Berlin Wall outside of Germany, with original and added imagery.

    IMG_1645
    In a dystopian-LA moment, I filled my rental car with gas only to find the pump had some ridiculous software error and wouldn’t generate a receipt, giving me a message to see the cashier. There was no cashier as the “store” part of the station was gutted and loosely under construction. The unhelpful signage gave a non-working phone number – no matter what variation of the scrawl I tried. And what good would it do to call for a receipt? I was on my way to the car rental place and I needed a receipt in my hand.

    IMG_1648
    The holes where monitors used to be.

    IMG_1649

    IMG_1637
    Excitement over a mail chute denied; it definitely does not work.

    IMG_1638
    IMG_1639
    IMG_1640
    Exterior, Beverly Hills.

    Out and About: Steve in Tampa

    Two weeks ago I was in Tampa to lead a workshop for a client. I had a bit of time to explore the area – here are some of my photos.

    IMG_1688
    The ritzier area of St. Petersburg, with huge houses and huge trees.

    IMG_1691
    Salt-and-pepper tofu at the Yummy House China Bistro. This place was good and rivaled Chinese food I’ve had in San Francisco.

    IMG_1692

    IMG_1696
    Shampoo Me.

    IMG_1675
    Houston donut fave, thanks to an airport layover.

    IMG_1677
    Not sure I’m as excited about the elevator upgrade as the hotel wants me to be.

    IMG_1682
    God hates swag.

    IMG_1683
    Parking at the Dali museum.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Greetings from the San Francisco Bay Area!

    • I’m staying local this week, which is a bit of a relief, after several weeks of airplanes and hotel rooms.
    • It looks as though portigal.com was moved to its new host without significant downtime for the website or our email. Phew! There’s some weird formatting things we keep finding on older blog posts, and I’m sure various other gremlins will crop up so if you see something, say something!
    • Out on the town this week, I’m looking forward to Kim Erwin’s presentation about Communicating the New, her new book (where I’m one of a diverse group of interviewees).
    • Ten years gone: From October 2003 – Knee Defender, Brand Names for Kids.
    • What we’re consuming: Cinematic Titanic, Mori Point, Margaret.

    Out and About: Steve in Minneapolis

    I was in Minneapolis earlier this week to speak at the MIMA Summit. I hadn’t been in Minneapolis since 1999, so I took a little bit of time to explore – here’s some of my photographs.

    IMG_1713
    IMG_1704
    City icons: Charles Schultz hails from Minneapolis, as did Mary Richards.

    IMG_1712
    Who needs the Kuik-E-Mark?

    IMG_1739
    Create your Turkey Masterpiece! Who could resist, when inspired by those nothing-short-of-masterful pieces?

    IMG_1719
    Inspiring earnest words populate a downtown garden space.

    IMG_1726

    IMG_1716
    No smoking or dipping. No, that’s not an ashtray, it’s a tin of tobacco. You can tell because it’s got the word “tobacco” written on it, pretty much the mark of failure in icon design.

    IMG_1736
    ATMS are increasing featuring mirrors as safety devices, letting you see whose coming up behind you. This takes it one step further, with a video monitor performing the same function. Is that creeping-featurism?

    IMG_1718
    Marquette Plaza, constructed somewhat like a suspension bridge.

    IMG_1741
    Not related at all to Chevron. Really?

    IMG_1709
    Sawing you in half daily. At Sever’s. Really?

    IMG_1729
    Mill City Museum

    This Week @ Portigal

    Greetings from Minneapolis!

    • I’m in Minneapolis this week to speak about Interviewing Users: Uncovering Compelling Insights at the MIMA Summit. Looking forward to the local cuisine and of course meeting up with some cool people.
    • We’ve moved the webhost for portigal.com so that will likely impact when this gets posted, and perhaps some other things. Fingers crossed that all goes smoothly.
    • As I dig more into the different collaborations and other engagements that are on the table right now, I’m excited and intrigued.
    • Back home, looking forward to meeting up with Lou Rosenfeld to talk about the various doings we’ve got going. Or the goings-on we’re doing. Either way.
    • Ten years gone: From October 2003 – KFC is healthy?, ACME products.
    • What we’re consuming: Butcher & the Boar, Hell’s Kitchen, The Sense of an Ending.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Greetings from Tampa!

    • I’m in Tampa for a few days to teach a workshop at Wolters Kluwer. I’ve got about 24 hours to explore and sample the local cuisine and then diving into working with this team on their research skills.
    • There’s are seven different prospective projects floating around right now; some are speculative and won’t ever become actual prospects, others will take their own time to fully emerge, and so it goes. We’ll see what happens.
    • In case you missed it last week, we tried a new format of group post at Rosenfeld Media (dubbed the QuickPanel) with our first effort discussing the challenges when Launching a Healthcare Exchange with No User Testing.
    • Around town this week, there’s a meetup in Menlo Park this Friday for design researchers. There’s no website so ping me if you want details.
    • Ten years gone: From October 2003 – General Mills Cereal Adventure, Sinkems: Dissolving Toilet Targets.
    • What we’re consuming: Shipley Do-Nuts, Crossfire, The Salvador Dali Museum, Bo’s Ice Cream.

    From my Los Angeles presentation on Interviewing Users

    I had a wonderful trip to Los Angeles last week so speak at a combined IXDA Los Angeles/LA UX Meetup event. They gave me a really warm welcome (including a pint of cold Ben and Jerry’s ice cream all to myself) and the at-capacity room was filled with enthusiastic and thoughtful folks who contributed to an interesting discussion.

    Here are the slides

    And the video

    Also, an alternate video is here and highlighted tweets are here.

    Interviewing Users: Link Roundup

    interviewing-users

    Interviewing Users is now available. Get your copy here!

    It’s been five months since Interviewing Users came out! Below is a roundup of links to various bits connected with the book. I’ll republish this regularly with accumulated updates.

    The Book

    Reviews

    Interviews

    Presentations

    Other

    Let’s talk about death, baby

    death

    Curious to come across Death Cafe.

    At Death Cafes people come together in a relaxed and safe setting to discuss death, drink tea and eat delicious cake. The objective of Death Cafe is “To increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives”. Jon Underwood founded Death Cafe in 2011 based on the work of Swiss sociologist Bernard Crettaz. Bernard offered ‘Cafe Mortels’ in Switzerland and France. Jon was already developing a project to get people talking about death and immediately knew that Bernard’s vision clicked with his.

    Searching on my zip code, I found (within a large-ish geographic radius) 7 events in the next 6 weeks and 3 that just passed. I can’t speak to the attendance levels or quality of the events but this strikes me as a notably well-established movement.

    The Death Cafe site is one of the projects by Impermanence, “a not-for profit social enterprise that undertakes innovative work around death and dying.” Seems a challenging but wide-open area for innovating.

    This Week @ Portigal

    All hail the beginning of the week!

    • No travel for me…well, until this weekend, when I head off to Tampa to teach a workshop at Wolters Kluwer next week.
    • I’m in wait-and-see mode about a number of projects (including two that would be very interesting collaborations); last week was the week where I tried to close the loop on a pile of projects that urgently entered wait-and-see mode back in August. One of them was defunded; another team decided to hire rather than outsource; the last is not returning my emails. That’s how it goes!
    • On Wednesday I’m heading over to Berkeley to lead a session on analyzing user research data with the New Product Development class at the Haas School of Business.
    • I’ve got a few colleagues in town this week and have plans to meet for catching up, networking, and general talking-about-everything. I’m expecting some good inspirations.
    • Ten years gone: From September 2003 – Bad Toon Rising.
    • What we’re consuming: Pusher, Felina,
      Ristobar.

    From Fluxible, The Designer is Present

    I had an amazing time at Fluxible, and was so happy to have the opportunity to debut a brand new workshop, The Designer is Present.

    The notion of presence is a critical idea for those of us in user experience. At the risk of sounding like Yoda, presence is tied to self-knowing. During ten years of writing, lecturing and coaching on “interviewing users”, many of the questions that Steve Portigal receives are about controlling or influencing another person’s behavior. Yet these interactions with others are really about ourselves, what’s inside us, who we are.

    In this workshop, you’ll tap into a new level of personal authenticity to unlock a powerful boon. Together, we’ll explore this point of view and participate in a range of exercises to learn more about these ideas – and about ourselves.

    The experience was a compelling one for all of us. I can not wait to do this workshop again (so hopefully someone will arrange for that to happen before too long). Taking a cue from Marina Abramovic (as well as performance and couples therapy), we tried an exercise where people gazed silently into the eyes of another person for 30 seconds. Which felt like an eternity, especially when done a second time. Everyone in the group was crazy brave and willing to try anything I asked of them, and even better was willing to really share honestly what these exercises revealed for them.

    At other points we did a simple improv exercise (something I deal with a lot more in Yes, My Iguana Loves to Cha-Cha) about “accepting offers” – essentially one person waits on stage while another approaches and says something like “Hi, I’m a baker and here’s a loaf of bread.” The initial actor responds with “Thanks, I’ll go get some butter!” or something else relevant, and then walks offstage. That’s it – all we did was a series of saying “yes” to other ideas; ideas we couldn’t plan for. Even that simple and silly activity produced a lot of powerful reflection.

    We also explored how reframing (especially bad ideas into good ones; something I deal with more extensively in The Power of Bad Ideas) can help with keeping us in the moment and not letting catastrophizing whisk us away.

    It seemed that these ideas had a real impact; several speakers were present and reflected on the workshop in their end-of-event summaries the next day. Konrad Sauer even shared some of his experience in a blog post:

    Steve then asked us to turn to the person beside us and for 30 seconds, stare into the other persons eyes. We were all strangers and the experience was amazing. After the exercise, we were asked to describe the experience. Most people had a strong sense of discomfort – this was an incredibly intimate thing to do with someone let along with someone we did not know. Many people found strategies for dealing with the discomfort – to focus on a single feature on the persons face – usually to avoid the eyes. Some people laughed, some people looked away. Some people paid attention to their breathing, the noises outside. But we all observed that we had made a much deeper connection to that person sitting across from us. Throughout the rest of the conference, whenever our eyes re-connected, it felt like seeing a very old friend again and there was a an immediate re-connection. That is how one of the other speakers described it and I think he was bang on. It was very cool.

    I put together a reading list with various podcasts, websites, articles and more. You can check it out here.

    Finally, I’ve embedded the slides below (although they are really only a pointer to the experience we all shared together).

    This Week @ Portigal

    How is your Mondaying?

    • A week with no travel! Last week I was in Toronto and Los Angeles. In addition to my LA UX talk (which was recorded) I also gave three interviews, so I’m hoping to have plenty to share soon (as well some videos from Fluxible). Here’s some of the tweets from the hugely successful presentation in LA.
    • I’m already underway with reconnecting with people after having been away. I’ve got two interesting prospective projects to plan for, including one collaboration with a thought leader I really admire but have never got to work with. I’m lunching with a colleague of a colleague to hear what they are up to and try to answer some of their questions. And so on.
    • Out and about: I’m planning to see Janice Fraser speak this Wednesday. And Friday, I’m off to see the Mr. Show reunion.
    • Ten years gone: From September 2003 – Awkwardly inappropriate Craigslist help-wanted ad.
    • What we’re consuming: Balmy Alley, Hop Dogma Brewing Co., Milky Edwards, Breathing Light, Musso & Frank.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Greetings, people!

    Interviewing Users: Link Roundup

    interviewing-users

    Interviewing Users is now available. Get your copy here!

    It’s been (just over) fours months since Interviewing Users came out! Below is a roundup of links to various bits connected with the book. I’ll republish this regularly with accumulated updates.

    The Book

    Reviews

    Interviews

    Presentations

    Other

    This Week @ Portigal

    It’s September in Northern California and that means the weather is insanely gorgeous! Summer is finally here.

    • I’m doing the last bit of preparation for my new workshop The Designer Is Present, to be held at Fluxible this weekend. Participants have a short homework exercise, there’s A/V and other logistic details to be worked out, and I need to finalize a 5-minute talk I’ll be giving to the entire conference. I leave very early Friday morning. Meanwhile, Max and Brody are featured in a promotional video for Fluxible, which you can see here.
    • I’ll be speaking to the Rome UX Book Club (via G+ Hangout) on September 18.
    • My presentation at the LA UX Meetup on September 19 is full and they are now taking names for the waiting list.
    • Out on the town this week, I’ll be seeing Marina Abramovic at City Arts and Lectures and hoping to drop in on the book launch party for Erika Hall’s Just Enough Research.
    • Ten years gone: From September 2003 – Bernard Manischewitz dies.
    • What we’re consuming: Post Street Creamery, Alex Karpovsky, Rust and Bone.

    The interviewer’s dogs are present

    I worked with Max and Brody to put together this video (see below) for promoting the upcoming Fluxible conference. I’ll be leading the first-ever instance of a new workshop I’ve put together called The Designer Is Present, in which we’ll look at the essential need for self-knowledge in user experience and play with some exercises to unlock it in ourselves.

    The interviewer's dogs are present

    This Week @ Portigal

    Happy Labo(ur) Day!

    • I’m spending much of this week in Vancouver, visiting family.
    • I’m wrapping up the details for The Designer Is Present, to be held at the end of next week. This is a new workshop and I’m crazy excited for it.
    • I just arranged to lead a day of training at a client’s site in Tampa next month; I haven’t ever been to Tampa so looking forward to having a bit of an explore beforehand.
    • I’ll be speaking to the Rome UX Book Club (via G+ Hangout) on September 18.
    • I’ll be speaking about Interviewing Users at the LA UX Meetup on September 19.
    • Ten years gone: From September 2003 – Donut branding.
    • What we’re consuming: Open Canvas, Anatomy of a Murder, Food Cart Fest.

    Steve interviewed for UIE Book Corner

    interviewing-users

    Interviewing Users is now available. Get your copy here!

    I spoke about Interviewing Users with Adam Churchill for UIE Book Corner. Listen at the link, or below.

    The transcript is here.

    Adam: What do you think people are going to do differently after reading this book?

    Steve: I think the book sets people up-it sounds maybe a little trite, but let me try to unpack it a little bit-it sets people up to really hear the people they talk to, their users, their customers, their target, to really hear where they’re at and to understand what’s important to them, as opposed to sort of hearing what we want to hear.

    And so this is where I said earlier there’s some philosophy, and there’s some tactics. And the tactics come from the philosophy. I think this is what I’ve seen lacking in practitioners that I meet with over the years, is that it’s sort of easy to ask questions or even ask questions well and hear what people are telling you.

    But the broader approach, which is to understand people’s world as it’s organized and kind of structured and labeled from their point of view-it never matches either the frameworks that we have going in or the architectures of tools that we’re providing.

    So to take that kind of deeply, completely user-centered approach and understand what the user’s building up their world out of, how they think about it and feel about it and talk about it, I mean, that’s what starts to be where you get towards excellence types of user research.

    So that’s not what everyone’s always going to do. That’s not always what the objective is, but I think-I’m hoping that this will start to open up people to be able to do that, to have that kind of be baked into their approach to users. It’s not just collecting responses to questions but really grokking where they are coming from and how they’re operating.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Hello, Monday…Monday, hello!

    • UIE has posted our “Book Corner” podcast here. It’s a fairly concise conversation I had with Adam Churchill about – you guessed it – Interviewing Users. Check it out!
    • I’m recording another podcast this AM and will post the details once it goes live, presumably in a couple of weeks.
    • My key focus this week is to flesh out my upcoming workshop – The Designer Is Present – at Fluxible next month.
    • At the same time, I’m hoping to get some update on a few projects that we proposed, as well as nail down a few more details about some upcoming workshops and speaking events.
    • Just announced: I’ll be speaking at the Los Angeles UX Meetup on September 19. Topic is currently being voted on!
    • Ten years gone: From August 2003 – Global Ouches, The Seven Clown Commandments.
    • What we’re consuming: gluten-free watermelon, soy milk ramen, demising walls, pizza-pizza-pizza.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Top ‘o the week, my friends.

    • I’m in San Diego today to wrap up this project that I’ve been so focused on. We’ve got a session today that is part presentation and part workshop. The that came out of the analysis is really interesting and has huge implications for this team’s current opportunities – and those still to come. I know my main contacts are really excited about it.
    • I’m spending the rest of the week at UX Week in San Francisco. On Wednesday I’ll be teaching Interviewing Users: How To Uncover Compelling Insights and otherwise attending the event. Let me know if you’re going to be there!
    • Interviewing Users was reviewed in QRCA (Qualitative Research Consultants Association) Views Magazine. The entire issue is here or read the review as a PDF here.
    • Thanks to John Ruberto for his review of Interviewing Users on Amazon.
    • Ten years gone: From August 2003 – Waterbed history, New Jersey Blob.
    • What we’re consuming: Little Nepal, fatberg, baby panda and mom, John Le Carre.

    Interviewing Users reviewed in QRCA Views Magazine

    interviewing-users

    Interviewing Users is now available. Get your copy here!

    George Sloan has reviewed Interviewing Users in QRCA (Qualitative Research Consultants Association) Views Magazine. You can see the entire issue of the magazine here or read the review as a PDF here.

    From an experienced researcher’s point of view, Interviewing Users is confirmation of the skills you have developed over the years, written from a research professional’s point of view. From a corporate researcher’s point of view, this book is strong armament to bring the design team into the research process with actual users, rather than thinking that they (as product users themselves) know all the issues involved.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Howdy, there, Monday!

    • This week is heads down wrapping up this recent project. I’ve read through most of the transcripts and have some ideas of emerging patterns and what those mean for the client’s strategic opportunity. Over the course of the next few days I’ll do the last transcript and start collating and synthesizing what I’ve heard, and then put that into a document. We’ll review a draft on Thursday to make sure that we’re on the same page.
    • I’m trying to set the tone for myself going heads down, I’ve taken some professional events (a webinar, a book launch party) off my calendar to make sure I focus. Also hoping to step back from social media a bit as well.
    • Thanks to Chris Poteet for his new review of Interviewing Users on Amazon.
    • Next week I’ll be teaching Interviewing Users: How To Uncover Compelling Insights at UX Week in San Francisco.
    • Ten years gone: From August 2003 – Mini Kiss, Olsen Twins Fight Plaque, Towel Amnesty Day.
    • What we’re consuming: Schmidt’s, The Decalogue, Alejandro Escovedo, The Dictator.

    John’s War Story: An Ethnographic Encounter with Occupy Wall Street

    This story (told live at our New York book launch party) comes from John Payne of Moment Design.

    “Mic Check, Mic Check!” he said with some authority as he jumped up on the planter. “Mic Check, Mic Check!” The crowd quickly repeated. “Security team needed near the information tent,” he continued. The crowd again repeated. “This is an emergency!” he added a bit more emphatically. This time when the crowd repeated they paid a bit more attention to the words they were saying. At that moment, I realized that I had just brought 25 people to one of the unstable locations in Manhattan, and none of them had signed a waiver.

    In the fall of 2011, I was asked by the IxDA to give a series of workshops on ethnography and its relationship to design. By the time we had settled on an agenda and a date, the Occupy Wall Street movement had emerged, and their occupation of Zucotti Park was in full swing. It was a risky choice of research site, but what’s an ethnographer to do? We were off to Zucotti Park, or as the occupiers had renamed it, Liberty Square

    Prior to our arrival in the park that morning, I had led the group through some background-key principles for participant observation, selected methods we were to try out together-and divided them into small working groups. It had been a quick preparation, but I was certain once we arrived, we’d have a once-in-a-lifetime observational experience. What I hadn’t fully considered was the possibility of imminent danger. We had just split up into teams… and that’s when the Mic Check happened.

    The incident that spawned the call for security was an altercation in front of a brightly decorated tent on the north side of the park. The teepee-like structure was wrapped in a blue tarp with panels of silver heat reflective material. It was one of the more flamboyantly decorated tents, flying several flags and calling lots of attention from passersby.The occupant, an older man, had recently moved his tent partially into in a flowerbed because of the overcrowding and lack of space. As one of the few remaining open patches of ground, flowerbeds had been off limits until now.

    Another man, from the south side of the park, was violently removing the teepee from the flowerbed when security arrived. Luckily, the quick intervention of the volunteer security force cooled the situation down. The incident ended shortly after it had begun with no injuries to anyone, my students included. Once I had checked that everyone was safe, my ethnographer’s instincts overcame my fear and I approached the teepee’s occupant. His name was David. He had been in the park since September 17th, day one of the occupation. I had found my respondent. He was visibly shaken, but as we spoke he let me in on a perspective that most non-occupiers would never be exposed to.

    What this experience taught me is twofold: 1) Anticipate the unexpected: We weren’t sure what we would find in Zucotti Park that day, but being open to the moment gave us a glimpse of something rare-a very human perspective that stood in contrast to the stereotype that OWS had become in the media. And 2) Take advantage of your opportunities: In our case it was the last such opportunity we would get. Our visit took place on November 12th. The occupiers were evicted two days later.

    For more of what John learned from his visit, check out his blog post about their time with OWS.

    Out and About: Steve in Portland/San Diego/Denver

    Last week I hit three cities, doing workshops and fieldwork; in hotel rooms, airports, homes, restaurants and the like. Here are some of my photos from a very busy trip.

    help
    Hotel restaurant point-of-sale user interface. So many amazingly awful things here. The help button is labeled “HELP!!!!!”; Cobb Salad (I’m sorry, Fiesta Cobb) is $12.00?

    raisins
    Without raisins? Now with extra raisins!

    kiosk
    There used to be a baggage kiosk. Now there’s just a sign.

    dancing
    I found Jonathan Borofsky’s “The Dancers” in downtown Denver to be vaguely unsettling.

    wall
    Controls removed for your convenience.

    Steve interviewed in UX Matters

    uxmatters

    UXmatters has just published their interview with me. Here’s a snippet; please see the whole thing here.

    Jeff: Someone reading the unassuming title Interviewing Users might at first think that you’ve written an impersonal reference book. While there are sample documents and practical tips aplenty, there are also what are almost philosophical passages that refer to the self-control and mindfulness that a successful interviewer must cultivate. For example, you explain how to accept awkward situations and “check your world view at the door.” Do you feel that the many years you’ve spent practicing these skills professionally have bled into your interactions away from work?

    Steve: Your question makes me happy. I think that was something I could bring to the book that might take it beyond a catalog of tips and tricks. The work that I’ve done and the opportunity that I’ve had to reflect on it over many years has given me a richer perspective. And you’re right, it comes down to a lot of fundamentals about who we are and how we deal with other people. I don’t mean that one can literally replicate the interviewer persona in every context-and to an introvert like I am, that would be a horrible idea-but what you’re saying is right on. My work has given me a lot of tools with which I can look at myself in other kinds of settings-both in social settings and in other kinds of professional settings. That’s obviously not the thrust of the book, but it’s there for the taking if you want to reflect a little bit on who you are, how you interact, and how that can inform your design work, your creative work, and so on.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Last week was fieldwork, hotels, restaurants, airports, rental cars, conference rooms, facilitation, teaching and much much more. I’m glad to be home!

    • But later today I’m on a plane again, heading off for a multi-event day with clients where we’ll have stakeholders debrief from their observational research homework, share some of what we heard in the field last week, set up an interactive exercise with participants who are coming in to meet with us, and then debrief. All before dashing back to the airport to come home, just over 24 hours later.
    • Meanwhile, I’m working with another organization to nail down the best approach for a new project, balancing what will give us the amount of insight we need with an approach that will engage their design team. I’m surprised at some of the constraints but hopeful we’ll find something that strikes the right balance. Last week I said here that I was pretty sure I knew what the program would look like. Guess not!
    • I will be joining UX Book Club DC by Skype this Wednesday for a discussion of Interviewing Users.
    • I will be at Twitter (in person) on Thursday for a Fireside Chat.
    • Thanks to Amber DeRosa for her new review of Interviewing Users on Amazon. You should post yours!
    • Look for a new War Story later this week.
    • Ten years gone: From August 2003 – Self-reporting meets TMI, Tokyo Bob Dylan, The identity of Internet Guy.
    • What we’re consuming: The Bridge, dinner at a Lexus dealership, Zoomies, Root Down, Children’s Hospital Season 3.

    Interviewing Users: Link Roundup!

    interviewing-users

    Interviewing Users is now available. Get your copy here!

    It’s been three months since Interviewing Users came out! Below is a roundup of links to various bits connected with the book. I’ll republish this regularly with accumulated updates.

    The Book

    Reviews

    Interviews

    Presentations

    Other

    This Week @ Portigal

    This week is a three-city week (and I’m not counting home!)

    • Today I’m in the Pacific Northwest as part of a full-day professional development retreat for designers, marketers and others. Tonight I’ll fly to Southern California for a second session with another part of the organization.
    • On Wednesday, I head over to another organization nearby, to meet with stakeholders and try to uncover their competing – and not previously articulated – visions for an area of technology and user experience development.
    • As soon as that meeting is over, that team is heading to the airport to fly to Denver. We’re in Denver doing fieldwork through Saturday, when we’ll all return to our homes.
    • I’ve been having some really interesting conversations about our next piece of work. It never pays to count chickens etc. etc. but I’ve got an idea what we’ll end up doing and it looks really exciting.
    • UX Booth has published a two-part conversation I had with Maish Nichani of Pebble Road. In Part 1, Maish interviews me. In Part 2, I interview Maish.
    • I was interviewed by Joe Dager for his Business 901 podcast.
    • Ten years gone: From July 2003 – End times, Clickety-click.
    • What we’re consuming: Electric 13, Tasty n Sons.

    Interviewing the Interviewer – Steve Portigal talks with Maish Nichani

    index

    UX Booth has published a two-part conversation I had with Maish Nichani of Pebble Road.

    In Part 1, Maish interviews me (excerpt below). We explore a few aspects of the research process, including how a project plan is negotiated.

    MN: What is an appropriate response to give clients who insist on specifying aspects of your research methodology?
    SP: Whenever a client approaches me and has already specified the approach we should take with their study, that’s usually time for a conversation. Sometimes teams create a research plan as a stake in the ground when what they actually want is feedback and a recommended approach. Sometimes, though, their plan is a good one, and we might just suggest one or two changes to see if they are amenable. I can’t count the number of times I’ve received a detailed request, exclaimed “what?!” and then had a really excellent conversation to better understand the reasons behind it. Obviously, no one should take a project where they don’t believe the method is going to produce results. An examination of a prescribed approach is one of the first tests of (the potential for) good collaboration.

    In Part 2, I interview Maish (excerpt below). We talk about how to improve the organizational learning user research.

    SP: If you could wave a magic wand and create any kind of tool or artifact to support the research process, what would it be?
    MN: Research is really all about creating new knowledge and the more people who have access to that knowledge, the better. Currently, our research findings and insights are all locked up in (what Karen McGrane calls) “blobs.” We need it, instead, to be “chunked” (as Sara Wachter-Boettcher says) so that it can travel more freely and be mixed and mashed up to create, again, new knowledge. I don’t know of any existing project or initiative but I was thinking about using a schema (like what is already available on schema.org) for research findings. That way anyone writing up research findings could use the same markup and then search engines and specialist apps could read and move those findings more efficiently.

    This Week @ Portigal

    It’s my first five-day week in three weeks; There’s a lot going on and I’m going to need it!

    • Fieldwork starts soon so there’s many details to be sorted out. The recruiter is working but it’s still a bit of a waiting game to see how easily we’ll see participants getting set up. I’ve still got some travel to Denver to book. There’s a homework exercise to finalize and send out to participants and introductory calls to be scheduled. I’m still hoping that I’ll be able to speak with stakeholders but I’ve asked a few times and meanwhile the window is rapidly closing. I’ll be putting together incentive packets and consent forms. Oh, and yeah, what exactly are we going to do with these folks? I’ll be getting the field guide and any exercises together.
    • I’m working with another organization on an internal development day they are having next week in two cities. I’ll need to work out my final presentation and details of the exercises in the next few days.
    • There’s a few interesting projects that we’re in discussions for and so I’m waiting for more details on what they’re trying to do and some feedback on the ideas I’ve already shared to see if the programs make sense for us.
    • This week I’ll be involved in three completely different public presentations. On Tuesday I’ll be part of a panel about Design-led Innovation, on Wednesday I’ll be presenting The Power of Bad Ideas at IxDA Silicon Valley and on Thursday I’ll be doing Design Research Fireside Chat. Phew!
    • Registration is now open for The Fluxible in Kitchener, ON. Come and be part of my new workshop, The Designer Is Present.
    • Ten years gone: From July 2003 – Many photos of Jakob Nielsen, South Dakota Dinosaurs.
    • What we’re consuming: Chocolate Lab, Guess Who/Rush/Tragically Hip postage stamps, Finally, Did You No Wrong.

    Innovation is evolution not revolution

    While The Internet killed (the perception of) Innovation is most definitely hyperbolic, this take on our culture of accelerated expectations and escalated promotion is worth a read. Do you agree that innovation is made of many long series of evolutions – not revolutions?

    Tech news is saturated with the equivalent of “Sears and Roebucks redesigns catalogue” and “Zenith to improve knobs on radios.” We mistake updates to Facebook or some new feature on the iPhone for a business trying to innovate. The PR departments of these big consumer-facing tech companies try to cloud out the rest of the news cycles. Those tweaks represent a business trying to compete – not innovate. Those are not the same things.

    Even though its confluences can cause rapid shifts in technology, innovation is made of many long series of evolutions – not revolutions.

    Take the good ol’ microprocessor. You’d be hard pressed to find a technological developments in the last century that’s more important. Critics of today’s progress love to point at it and say, “Why don’t we have moments like that anymore?” Yet it took decades, a century even, of research to finally put the workable technology in practice.

    But what did the public see? They saw companies like Fairchild Semiconductor put it all together and come out of nowhere to dominate the industry (for a while).

    This Week @ Portigal

    I flew back yesterday from a long weekend in Michigan to visit family (and some friends!)

    • Our new project is underway. We’ve been doing the administration stuff like setting up a purchase order and iterating the details of the project plan and then lining up recruiters to find participants. This week I’ll be finalizing the screeners and launching the recruit, chatting with stakeholders, and starting to think through the fieldwork details.
    • I’m meeting with a new team at a previous client to get a demo of something they are developing. They aren’t happy with the info they are getting from surveys and focus groups and so we’re going to talk about how we can help them get the insights that will inform where they take this.
    • I’m also scheduled to chat with another organization, where the UX group is eager to get alignment around the vision for their product, while they face challenges to their market dominance from nimbler yet less robust competitors who are creating excellent user experiences.
    • The fantastic Alissa Walker reviewed Interviewing Users here for the Designers and Books Notable Books for July.
    • Also check out recent Amazon reviews for Interviewing Users: Lena Blackstock, Angela Colter, Lisa Renery Handalian
    • I’ll be part of a panel organized by TiE Silicon Valley. The panel is about Design-led Innovation and will be held July 23 in Santa Clara. I’ll be meeting with the organizers and other panelists this week to start planning.
    • Also coming up: I will be doing a Design Research Fireside Chat at Yammer on July 25 and presenting about The Power of Bad Ideas at IxDA Silicon Valley at Yahoo on July 24.
    • Out-and-about: I’m hoping to make it to Nerd Night where the topics are Yeast, Science Beer Tasting, and Games User Research – Oops – sold out!
    • Ten years gone: From July 2003 – Small market sodas, Roger Dean’s house.
    • What we’re consuming: Newsreaders, Dragon’s Milk, Michigan blueberries, Pae White, pretzel chicken.

    User research self-reporting in the YouTube era

    Pizza in JAPAN (embedded below) is a charming video by some Canadian students living in Japan. It’s the type of self-reporting I would love to see more of when I do researcher with users. In the easygoing video they walk through the whole experience from ordering online to the tasting. The young women offer pretty basic but helpful compare-and-contrast commentary. There are tons of YouTube videos showing just how crazee things are in Asia; this isn’t trying for that, it’s just such a nice explanation from someone in a new culture about that culture, speaking back to their home culture.

    I’m curious if an increasing fluency with digital tools mean that we can start to expect this level of quality in self-reporting from engaged, creative research participants. Self-reporting is of course limited to what respondents decide to share with you; it’s always going to be incomplete but I see this wonderful example as very encouraging. Check it out: look for the little Japanese mannerisms and marvel at the experience these girls are having.

    This is What PIZZA in JAPAN is Like 🍕

    The art of the interview

    Here are two insightful takes on the art of interviewing, from two different sources.

    First, Ira Glass is interviewed by Jacob Weisberg (the short video is embedded below). Glass explains how he helps people feel comfortable sharing with him by bringing himself into the conversation (a technique I’m not so keen on for user research, although I’ve seen some people be successful with it). He also reveals that what is edited out of the broadcast interviews are tons of clarification questions, where he’s following up to understand the sequence of events, or the different people involved in the story, etc.

    Second, How to Listen makes a good case for the authentic personal elements that we ourselves bring to our interactions with interviewees.

    Dr. Mason had a simple method of getting me to begin. He would lean slightly forward, all the while maintaining eye contact and then when he got my attention, he would nod. I will never forget that nod; it was a signal that he was with me and I could safely express myself about whatever was on my mind, but I realize now that he was controlling the conversation. A cursory nod encouraged. Elongated ups and downs, (and the raising of eyebrows!) symbolized agreement.

    This is the first lesson for writers – or anyone – who conducts interviews: If you want someone to talk, you’ve got to know how to listen. And good listening is a surprisingly active process. The interviewee is your focus of attention; you are there to hear what he says and thinks, exclusively. When I say, “interviewing,” I am talking from the perspective of a narrative or creative nonfiction writer. Interviewing for news is somewhat different; reporters usually know, more or less, the information they need to unearth. The writer of narrative, by contrast, is often seeking the unknown – the story behind the facts. You won’t always know the story until you hear it; your job as an interviewer, often, is to keep your subject talking.

    This Week @ Portigal

    How ya don’, Monday? It’s another short week for me as I head to Holland, MI on Friday for a family long weekend.

    • I expect in the next few days to finalize the work plan for our next project, evolving a product vision. I’m excited to get going on it!
    • Already scheduled for this week are a number of catch-up meetings with friends, former clients, colleagues, potential collaborators and the like. I expect a few more such “meetings” to emerge as the week unfolds.
    • Later this month I’ll be speaking at IxDA Silicon Valley about The Power of Bad Ideas, so I’ll be revising and updating that talk in preparation.
    • I’ve been working from home more than usual as of late, dealing with (or avoiding dealing with, depending on how you see it) our new dog Max’s separation anxiety.
    • Ten years gone: From July 2003 – same great Jacks taste, Tom Green’s dogs.
    • What we’re consuming: Once Upon A Time In America, Mr. Show recursion #1, Mr. Show recursion #2.

    Lowrider: Take a little trip and see

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    Image from documentary film South American Cholo

    The New York Times, in Lowrider Culture Spreads to Brazil and Beyond, offers up yet another astounding example of globalization meets enthusiast-culture.

    The spread of this seemingly distant subculture, with Brazilian followers calling themselves “cholos” and cruising around in their low-and-slow automobiles, is raising eyebrows here in South America’s largest city. Some who cannot afford to buy vintage cars and customize them into lowriders simply roam São Paulo’s labyrinthine streets at the helm of bicycles accessorized with high-rise handlebars and banana seats.

    Even when they just strut around in oversize khaki shorts and white muscle shirts, they speak to something larger: the global fluidity of conceptions of ethnicity, identity and style, propelling a street culture once so closely tied to the borderlands of the United States and Mexico well beyond its birthplace.

    Interviewing Users: Link roundup!

    interviewing-users

    Interviewing Users is now available. Get your copy here!

    It’s been two months since Interviewing Users came out! Below is a roundup of links to various bits connected with the book. I’ll republish this regularly with accumulated updates.

    The Book

    Reviews

    Interviews

    Presentations

    Other

    We Might Do A Show Called “We Might Swear”

    Dave Gray and I are experimenting (e.g., we deliberately did not overthink or even plan) with a new show called We Might Do A Show Called We Might Swear. We did it live as a G+ Hangout (that anyone can watch live, and send in comments, etc.. Our first episode featured guest Chris Reimer and we talked about social media addiction, entrepreneurship, production pop culture, the writing process and a fair amount more.

    The video is embedded below

    We might do a show called we might swear!

    This Week @ Portigal

    Happy Canada Day!

    • It’s a short week, with a mid-week holiday (which for some will be an extra-long weekend) it’s hard to anticipate the rhythm but we’ll figure it out.
    • I’ll be chatting with a prominent design graduate school to see if there’s some possibilities for me to work with their students.
    • I’ve got a proposal out for a really fascinating bit of research, where our client has already developed a tremendous amount of insight around a new paradigm. Our task will be to try and refine that understanding and point towards the design vision.
    • I’m also waiting to hear about a couple of different internal workshops and presentations for different design teams.
    • Check out some of my thoughts about Interviewing Users on Huffington Post.
    • Last week was the premiere episode of We Might Do A Show Called We Might Swear, with Dave Gray and featuring guest Chris Reimer. More coming soon, maybe.
    • I’m being interviewed for a podcast about Interviewing Users; I will post when it goes online.
    • I’ll be dropping in via Skype to UX Book Club Philly for their discussion of Interviewing Users.
    • Ah, hardware entropy. I had a monitor just wipe out, out of the blue, and now there’s problems with the NAS; I think one of the drives has gone bad. It’s always something. We won’t even get into all the software glitches, syncing problems, updates that break things, etc. etc.
    • Ten years gone: From July 2003 – Cupholder Central, The Gyros Project.
    • What we’re consuming: Artists Who Are Known For One Thing, Connecting – Trends in UI, Interaction, & Experience Design, Hair Apparent, The Dirk Diggler Story.

    Can’t Lose What You Never Had

    Thrifty really blew it here. Out of the blue, I get this email containing some good news.
    Congratulations! You've earned a FREE rental day through Blue Chip Rewards!   You'll receive your Blue Chip Rewards certificate in three to four weeks at the address listed in your profile.   To redeem your free day, book online at Thrifty.com or call 1-800-THRIFTY and present your certificate at the counter.   Keep earning free days! You'll earn another free day certificate after 16 more rental days.   Enjoy your free day and thank you for choosing Thrifty!


    And then shortly after that comes this bummerific communique.
    Dear Valued Customer,  This morning you received an email from us offering you a coupon for a free rental day through Blue Chip Rewards. Unfortunately, this offer is not valid. You will not be able to book this offer online and you will not be receiving a coupon in the mail. Please disregard the email you received. We're very sorry for any confusion our eagerness may have caused.  If you have any questions regarding this email, please contact Customer Service at bluechip@thrifty.com. We sincerely appreciate your understanding in this matter. We value you as a customer and we look forward to saving you money down the road.   Thank you for choosing Thrifty.

    The customer-pleasing standard seems to be to stand behind mistakes that benefit the customer because of the disappointment (or worse) than results when you take back something you offered. While I was unlikely to ever claim the windfall from the first email, the crappy feeling the second email left me with is something that will stick around.

    Did all those avatar changes impact SCOTUS?

    brodyequals
    Now that we’ve heard from the Supreme Court, we can look back on all the involvement we had, what with updating our profile pictures on every social media service. This article Scientific American (Will changing your Facebook profile picture do anything for marriage equality?) is a really terrific deconstruction of influence. The explanation here of prescriptive norms vs. descriptive ones is very instructive.

    One of the big ways that the people around us exert these influences is through the use of norms, those messages that we send out about what’s acceptable, appropriate, and-well, normal. Descriptive norms simply describe the way that things are, whereas prescriptive norms offer a mandate about how things should be. For example, if I said that most college students go to class wearing jeans and sweatshirts, that would be a descriptive norm. If I said that you should wear jeans and a sweatshirt in order to fit in, that would be prescriptive. Quite possibly the most important takeaway point from all of the research that’s been done on norms is just how powerful descriptive norms can be. When people try to change behavior, they often focus on prescriptive norms, telling people what they should do. We often underestimate just how strongly we respond to what other people actually do.

    On Huffington Post – An Interview with Steve Portigal

    Check out An Interview with Steve Portigal

    Q. What’s the difference between this type of research and something like focus groups?

    A: When interviewing people we arrange to meet with them in their own context: at home, at work, at the park, in the car; wherever the thing we’re interested in is happening. We’ll be with them and maybe some of the other people you would find in those settings. People behave differently in their own environment and there are details of those environments that turn out to be relevant but we could never plan for. The organized pantry reveals something about how they approach the apps on their device, the room full of the father’s previous generations of PCs tells us about the son’s rejection not only of specific devices but also a whole approach to what it means to own devices.

    Q: How important is empathy for organizations?

    Empathy seems to be a hot term right now. Developing processes that include empathy is wonderful and it can really help teams rally around solving the problems that people have rather than the problems they want to work on. You hope that there’s an overlap but not always. Maybe this points to what school of innovation you’re from; you may want to be a few steps ahead of the people who will be your customers but you do need to be thinking about where they will be headed.

    Empathy, meanwhile, is only the first step. Having a good sense of how people feel can instill the desire to do the right thing for them, but it doesn’t tell you what that right thing is. Empathy is not the same as understanding a highly nuanced, unarticulated, latent problem space. That’s the hard work.

    Raffaella’s War Story: A hot day in a bank

    Raffaella Roviglioni is a UX designer at usertest/lab. In this story she experiences, like the title says, a hot day in a bank!

    I like planning for fieldwork as much as carrying out those plans. But if there’s one lesson I learned from my experience it’s that no matter how well you think about any detail in advance, there’s always room for problems.

    During a current project with a nationwide bank the client agreed to conduct a round of interviews with employees from four different offices located between Rome and Milan.

    The day of the interviews in Milan I got an early train. I was aware of the long day in front of me: four interviews in two different offices with the lunch break to be spent moving from one office to the other.

    I was fully equipped with laptop, backup recording device, spare batteries, charging chords, pens, paper, water and even some food for an emergency. I thought I covered every possible glitch or obstacle given the context. After all, I was going to a bank: can you think of a more predictable, comfortable and reliable location? I couldn’t.

    It was an unusually warm day of June. The temperature was above 38°C (100°F) and after the first two interviews my coworkers and I were heading to the second location, on the look-out for a quick lunch on the go. We walked from the underground to the bank for a few blocks and when we arrived everyone was pretty flushed. All I could think about was the relief of a air-conditioned office where I could start breathing again and conduct the last two interviews.

    The came the surprise of the day: the air conditioning was out of order! Meanwhile, the two employees were waiting to be interviewed so we simply sat down and started with the first one.

    I had memorized the guide in order to concentrate better on the interviewee without having to look at it, but during the first fifteen minutes I had serious problems concentrating. The heat was unbearable, humidity was close to 90% and my coworkers were panting all the time. I had to exercise some yoga breathing to calm down and try to detach myself from the uncomfortable situation and be able to focus on my task. I managed to get through the interview pretty well, then we moved to the second employee’s office.

    He started telling us a lot of interesting information that didn’t come out in the previous interviews but at that point we were completely burnt out. It was really hard to follow up with him. Every question that came out of my mouth seemed nothing like clever to me. Luckily for us, the employee was pretty enthusiastic about the topic and basically conducted the conversation himself, giving us a number of significant insights despite our minimal interaction.

    Usually the toughest field work has to do with reluctant participants or with poor planning. In this case, it was certainly not so, but still it was very hard for me to get to the end of the day. I guess those last insights were literally hard-earned!

    Out and About: Steve in New York

    I spent a few days in New York last week for the book launch event, also just taking some time to explore, walk around the streets, take pictures, meet with folks, eat interesting food, go to the museum, and so on. Here’s some of my observations from the trip.

    IMG_2451
    I posted about this hippo truck one of the last times I was in New York. I thought it was a tremendous coincidence or just that way that noticing something helps you notice it again (and taking a picture helps you notice it again even more); indeed I saw the same truck in the background of an indie film I watched right after I got back. Well, I’m told by my New Yorker friends that this company’s trucks are extremely common.

    IMG_2510
    Party supply trucks, hippo or clown, are common in Manhattan.

    IMG_2480
    Tomáš Gabzdil Libertíny’s The Honeycomb Vase “Made by Bees” – what he calls “slow manufacturing”, he built a scaffolding in the shape of the base and then had the bees build, over the course of a week, the vase, finally removing the frame and leaving behind a vase, made by bees.

    IMG_2483
    The typographical conventions brands have to deal with when associating their own brand with those of social networks. I’m not sure it’s entirely successful here to have the Gothic-style typefaces with the contemporary supporting brands of Facebook and Twitter.

    IMG_2487
    I like the very clear description of the equipment requirements, except for the strange use of the acronym “PPE” (I’m assuming personal protection equipment). I guess all industries are subject to their insider shorthands.

    IMG_2496
    A scene from the future?

    IMG_2500
    A really awful piece of “public art” juxtaposed with the much more appealing and authentic graffiti, seemingly an inspiration for the forms used by the “art.”

    IMG_2502
    IMG_2508
    IMG_1397
    IMG_1398
    IMG_2492

    War Stories, Live (New York Edition)!

    After the great experience in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, I was pretty excited about last week’s Interviewing users book launch party in New York. We had a ton of food and drink and pudding and donuts and cupcakes. We gave away 20 free copies of the book, had the second-ever live War Stories.

    In New York, none of the storytellers had written for the War Stories series here; so even though they obviously have been telling these stories at various points in their careers, this was a first for all of them. I’m so appreciative they trusted me enough to take the risk. I think they really pulled it off (and was gratified to hear feedback from people through the evening and afterwards on Twitter).

    Portigal-NYC-Launch-sm-19
    courtesy of Glen Jackson Taylor

    Our storytellers:

    • Tammy Sachs, founder and CEO at Sachs Insights, described some surprisingly erroneous racial presumptions about mothers versus their children.
    • Whitney Quesenbery, an independent consultant, related the insightful mishaps when trying to show a demo to visually impaired users.
    • Miles Begin, co-founder of the Design Gym, told us about a drastic failure to build rapport in a healthcare setting.
    • John Payne, Principal at Moment, shared a story about trying to do fieldwork- as part of an IxDA event with 25 participants – at Zuccotti Park during Occupy Wall Street. You can read more about this on the Moment blog (part 1, part 2, part 3)

    Thanks to Rosenfeld Media for donating 20 books for both this party and San Francisco, and Allan Chochinov and SVA Products of Design for hosting us. And of course, thanks to everyone who came out and had a good time!

    More pictures (courtesy of Glen Jackson Taylor – thank you!) follow

    Portigal-NYC-Launch-sm-04
    Portigal-NYC-Launch-sm-05
    Portigal-NYC-Launch-sm-17
    Portigal-NYC-Launch-sm-21
    Portigal-NYC-Launch-sm-24
    Portigal-NYC-Launch-sm-26
    Portigal-NYC-Launch-sm-28

    This Week @ Portigal

    Greetings!

    • I’m back from an excellent few days in New York City. MOMA, the Highline, lots of fun foods and of course the New York book launch party for Interviewing Users. More to come on all of that.
    • While he won’t make his official debut in the office space itself until Wednesday, I’m enjoying getting to know Max, our new-to-us Queensland Heeler!
    • I’m being interviewed for a short podcast this week about Interviewing Users and will post when it goes live.
    • I’m working on two different online Q&A article thingies which I hope to get finished and maybe even posted this week!
    • I’ll be speaking to designers, researchers and others at IDEO SF this Friday, as part of their Design Research speaker series.
    • Also scheduled are meetings about future research projects (a new vision for an established product), an in-house conference day at a global corporation, a speaking gig at a pretty huge marketing conference and sharing perspectives on getting the word out for a new book.
    • On the town this week: I’ll be at the “Connecting” Film and Panel Discussion on Tuesday and the Pinterest Loft Warming Party on Thursday. Will you be there?
    • Ten years gone: From June 2003 – new features not being adopted because they don’t work
    • What we’re consuming: Claes Oldenburg’s Mouse Museum, Karlssonwilker, Eisenberg’s Sandwich Shop, City Bakery, Harlan Ellison, Ippudo New York, Eataly.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Oh, hai, Monday! What can I tells ya?

    I, For One, Welcome Our New Robot Interviewer Overlords

    From Wired, comes These Adorable Robots Are Making a Documentary About Humans. Really.

    Created by artist and roboticist Alex Reben for his master’s thesis at MIT, the BlabDroids are tiny, adorable robotic cinematographers who will be filming interviews at this week’s Tribeca Film Festival in New York as part of the the film festival’s transmedia Storyscapes program. At least 20 BlabDroids will zip around to attendees-they’re self-propelled via motorized wheels- and ask them often very personal questions like, “Tell me something that you’ve never told a stranger before,” “What’s the worst thing you’ve done to someone,” and “Who do you love most in the world?”

    Each droid carries a digital camera, a speaker that asks a series of pre-programmed questions to ask whomever it encounters and a button to be pushed to prompt new queries.

    “We plan to give the robots to some interesting New Yorkers,” filmmaker Brent Hoff, who is working on the BlabDroid project with Reben, said in an email to Wired. “Hopefully Anthony Weiner and some Broadway types.” The robots, which are very adorable and voiced by a 7-year-old boy, are intended to test the theory of MIT computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum’s “ELIZA effect,” which found that people are inclined to anthropomorphize computers and thus engage emotionally with artificial intelligence. Although this initially lead Weizenbaum to worry about AI’s potential to manipulate, Reben and Hoff have created the BlabDroids to appear comforting and non-judgmental, and to capture meaningful interactions with their subjects.

    This is a fascinating experiment. I’d love to see the results, as well as the raw footage and of course to get to talk to someone about their experience being interviewed like this would be very interesting. Similar to Interviewing without questions, eye contact or rapport, the notion of freeing up people from human interactions in order to liberate them to reveal more deeply is a curious (and certainly valid) idea. No doubt the clips will be great; people are pretty interesting and curious, so pointing a camera at them will be entertaining.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Arise, Sir Week!

    War Stories, Live!

    war2

    This past Monday was the Interviewing Users book launch party. It was a fantastic good time. The room was filled beyond capacity with people happily diving into yummy beer, wine, snacks and desserts. We gave away 20 free copies of the book, and had the first-ever live War Stories.

    It was fascinating to see how these stories, originally written for the web, changed when told aloud to an engaged crowd. Each storyteller seemed somewhat surprised that their stories produced laughter, with several folks beginning by disclaiming “I’m not going to be funny” only to produce that reaction from the group. Real human stories that involve screwups, frustration, surprise and conflict can be funny even if it’s not something we wish on anyone else. There’s a humor of recognition and also the humor that comes from the way a story is told. And they all did a great job at telling their stories, not a skill to be taken for granted. I was so impressed!

    Our storytellers:

    • Kelly Braun, Senior Director, User Insights and Analytics at Walmart.com who told Pictures are language independent, about shooting fieldwork video and inadvertently getting the money shot.
    • Diane Loviglio, CEO & Co-Founder at Share Some Style told Interrupted Interview, a reminder that participants are part of larger systems that we don’t have insight into when we’re recruiting them.
    • Consumer insights professional Carla Borsoi told A dirty diaper sitting in the mud, where she encountered the outlier that illustrates a greater truth.
    • Tom Williams, Principal of Point Forward dispensed with his original story (Go With the Flow) and instead told a (richly detailed) story about an interview we did together in 1998!

    Also in attendance were War Stories contributors Jon Innes (Beware of Trap Doors), Rachel Wong (Subject Matter May Be Inappropriate) and Vanessa Pfafflin (DDoSed in Vegas).

    See also Susan Dray’s take on what the body of War Stories has revealed for her.

    war1

    photos courtesy of Tom Williams/Kate Edgar

    Ethnography of Elevator UX

    Check out An uplifting experience – adopting ethnography to study elevator user experience (on Ethnography Matters). I love that someone has done (and shared) a study like this.

    A few years ago a leading elevator design and manufacturing company gave me the task of examining how people experienced and interacted with elevators. The scope included everything from hall call buttons, to cabin interior design and perception of technical design. When given the brief, the artistic director noted country specific design features (or omissions) and even mentioned that there may be observable elevator habits I would want to take note of. Then, on our bidding a corporate-academic farewell she added that I might want to consider the psychology of the surrounding architectural environment. With that, I was left with a long list of to-do’s and only one method I could think of that would be capable of incorporating so many factors – ethnography.

    I’m reminded of Elevator Pitch (PDF) our 2011 article in interactions that considered different types of elevator user experiences and mused about the implications for approaching design problems.

    Michael’s War Story: All About Face (Sichuan Adventures)

    Michael. B Griffiths is the Director of Ethnography for Ogilvy & Mather, Greater China.

    I’m in Sichuan province, at a small town called Anxian. I’m with a US film producer and a Chinese research assistant. We are documenting lower-tier city lifestyles in terms of the human condition as well as how people consume. We’ve just finished up our morning session with a man who shared emotional stories about the impact of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.

    We were operating in two groups, doing home visits at different sites. It was time to pick up the other team from the town center and head off to Mianyang, our next destination.

    But the other team called in late. There was a problem. The primary informant’s mother had returned home and reacted badly to their presence. While we didn’t have the details at this point, it seemed that the team could not easily leave the field site. On the phone, I could hear an intense argument in the background.

    I had the driver park up around the corner from the site. The junior member of the team came round to meet us, shaking her head and heaving with frustration. Apparently the situation in the home had turned nasty and the senior member was trying to deal with it.

    The primary informant, aged nineteen, had not told her mother about our research, although she had given us her formal consent. And now her mother was furious with her daughter for not seeking permission, and worse, she suspected us of being cheats or swindlers. We later learned she had been the victim of an identity-theft crime in similar circumstances.

    An hour and more passed without a resolution. It seemed ridiculous that we were wasting so much time on this. Could we not just explain the situation, apologize for the inconvenience, and leave? I was inclined to intervene in person but various team members advised that a foreigner’s presence might exacerbate an already inflammatory situation.

    Another phone call came through-

    The argument was by now on the street outside the home. The mother was ferociously lashing out and forcibly preventing the senior team member from leaving. Concerned for her safety, I advised that she run around the corner and come over to the car – the site was only 30 meters away.

    Once in the car, I proposed that we just leave. We had done nothing wrong, and were increasingly sure this fractious episode was symptomatic of a pre-existing tension between the mother and daughter. Right?

    Right! So, let’s hit it, driver!

    We sped off in the direction of the Mianyang highway.

    As we cut through the breeze with the sun in our faces, the team members answered rapid-fire questions and shared their perspectives as they eased themselves out of the tension. We thought we were home free.

    Not by a long shot.

    Not long had passed before our phones started to ring. Representatives of the local recruitment agency with which we had partnered were with the enraged mother and phoning to ascertain our whereabouts. This was the agency who had recruited the daughter for our research and I wondered why it seemed beyond their capacity to handle the communication deficit.

    We agreed that our overall objectives demanded that we press on with our schedule. Too much time had been wasted and we were quite clear were we stood in terms of our legal agreement with the informants; the local recruitment agency were better placed and, as we saw it, obligated to resolve any misunderstanding about our identity and purposes.

    As solution, we agreed that the rest of the team would switch off their phones while I would use my phone to call the recruitment agency bosses we dealt with back in Shanghai headquarters. Better to have just one channel of communication open rather than several at the same time.

    This we did, but before any intervention could be launched our driver started to get the same calls from the local recruitment agency. One of our team took the call on the driver’s phone and tried to explain our position on the situation and that we just wanted to continue with our schedule. The agency had also helped us plan for further research in Mianyang and Chengdu, so they were well aware of our tight schedule.

    If only the situation could have been so simple! Our driver insisted on keeping his phone switched on since this made him available should his employer need to call. Presumably alerted by the local agency representatives, the driver’s employer did call and insisted he return to Anxian at once. We were unwilling to return with him since we were sure that the two hour return journey would be followed by further time wasted on senseless arguing. Could the situation not be resolved via the proper channels?

    Unfortunately, the driver’s open line of communication meant that he could be contacted by people other than his boss. He began to get calls from an unfamiliar number over and over again.

    Perhaps the driver should switch his phone off too!?

    Then the real shock came.

    What? The Public Security Bureau was on the phone? The mother had called the police before we had left. We had left the mother baying for our blood in the street and now the police had arrived to find us gone!

    Things went rapidly downhill from here, as arguments erupted about what to do next. Returning to the site would not be an option, the local staff felt, since we would get in trouble for leaving the scene. My explaining things to the local police would not help either, they felt, since the police would not “take my side” because I was a foreigner. Any interaction with the police was bound to be long and protracted anyway, and there was also some notion about market researchers needing to obtain local police permission in advance, which the local recruitment agency had neglected to mention!

    Tempers flared and leadership was called for. But leadership on this project was the same woman who got into the argument with the mother in the first place. She now called her father in a panic!

    The idea that the police were actually pursuing us over this seemed ridiculous but it was very real. We were still driving up the highway away from Anxian, and with visions of flashing blue lights at every intersection it felt like we were on the run from the law.

    It was decision time: the driver had to return to Anxian and could not avoid answering his phone when the police called. We asked him to pull in at a remote roadside restaurant and unload our bags. He would remain with us to get some lunch; it was late afternoon already. Then he would return to Anxian and his boss would send an alternative driver to take us onto Mianyang.

    We ate a meal and for a while believed the heat in the situation had burned itself out. I called in to update our superiors. Apparently, the bosses at the recruitment agency were starting to get a handle on it. There was still disagreement about our next move, but at least the police were not calling us every few minutes. They were probably having lunch too.

    With our phones all back on and the driver gone, the police began calling us directly. Several hours had passed since the original incident and the mother’s demands had become more specific: she wanted the tapes we had recorded in her home. This presented a problem for our research and our film producer was particularly against this: his movie would be incomplete without these tapes. Moreover, even if we returned the tapes to the mother, she the professional format meant she wouldn’t be able to play them.

    Our conversations thus became more practical and technical as the police sought to broker a mutually satisfactory solution to the problem. An agreement was struck whereby the majority of the team would proceed to Mianyang while two personnel would return to Anxian with the tapes and play these for the mother at the local police station.

    It was well into the evening when we arrived in Mianyang, about the same time as our team representatives arrived back in Anxian. After a torrid day, they had to sit and play through the entire 4 hours of footage for the purposes of the mother’s verification. With the police there with her, she gradually adjusted herself to the idea we were not crooks or foreign spies and found a way to climb down from her rage whilst saving face.

    Exhausted, we spared a thought for the daughter who was probably going to get the raw end of whatever remaining anger could not now be justifiably directed anywhere else. Our analysis of the film footage revealed a wealth of insights into a specific tension between the daughter’s almost angelic nature and her mother’s oppressive, almost ogre-ish nature. It appeared our fieldwork had exposed an underlying tension after all.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Well, hello, Monday and hello, June!

    • I’ve been icing down a keg and gathering party supplies, a box of giveaway books, the catering order and much much more for tonight’s book launch party in San Francisco. My sister Cheryl surprised me last night, flying in from Vancouver to join in the celebration. I’m so excited to see everyone tonight!
    • If you’ll be in New York on June 19, come to the NYC book launch party.
    • I’m scheduled to record another podcast interview this week; I’ll share the details once it goes live on the interwebs.
    • Have you read Interviewing Users? I’d love it if you posted a review on Amazon!
    • Portigal.com got hacked last week and we were down for several days. Maybe you missed Lena’s War Story? Or this bit about a major cultural shift in a healthcare organization, through an empathic exercise?
    • Ten years gone: From June 2003 – branding musing, Rubberific.
    • What we’re consuming: Old Jerusalem, Mexican chocolate egg cream, mysterious car fluid drippings, Tchoupitoulas.

    Pleasure Principle

    limon

    In 2009 I wrote about my visit to Jimmyjane, a company that designs non-crappy vibrators and scented candles and the like. While claiming to evolve intimacy, they lacked any point of view on either the mechanical or the emotional aspects of sexual and sexy.

    I’m excited to learn about another company, Minna Life who say they are “bringing user experience innovation to the pleasure product space.” They have one product already (Ola) and are raising funds on indiegogo for another (Limon).

    It’s hard to trace the source of their “innovations” – which might just be cool features (or at worst, feature-creep) such as change-how-hard-you-squeeze-to-change-how-hard-it-vibrates, highly multi-purpose form, and recordable vibration patterns.

    What’s very cool, specifically with Limon, is that there’s a video that includes people discussing what they like about using it (no, it doesn’t show them using it!) and the text of the site includes quotes from “early testers.”

    My initial reaction (e.g., from looking at their site) is that Minna Life is making incremental improvements in their category. Of course, how hard is it to recognize innovation? I’m not a user of these products, so what do I know? Does an innovation have to smack you in the face (if you will)? Do you look at it and immediately understand how it changes everything about how you have been going about a behavior? Or does it sneak in the back door (if you will), arriving in a recognizable form but ultimately enabling something dramatically new? I remember thinking that the iPad was just a comically large iPhone. While I can’t say what in fact it turned out to be, it so clearly was not that and has indeed proven to be something dramatic.

    At worst, a company in this category is taking a user-centered and creative approach. At best, there’s a perspective about facilitated sexuality that will bring significantly new experiences to the world.

    Lena’s War Story: The Researcher and the Banana Thief

    Lena Blackstock (@lenacorinna) recently graduated with a Master’s in Design Ethnography from the University of Dundee, Scotland. She is currently a Creative Contextualiser at Point-Blank International in Berlin.

    While getting my Master of Design Ethnography at the University of Dundee I was able to dive head first into full-on ethnographic research projects with actual clients. We were asked to do research on self-service usage in Scotland. After the first few interviews and shop-alongs I met one of my last participants in a nearby coffee shop. Initially she was only going to do an interview but then agreed to also do a shop-along the next day. She offered to invite her roommate along, which was especially interesting as I was trying to understand more about how groups use self-service technology. I jumped at this opportunity.

    I met the participant and her roommate in front of a large grocery store in town and we moved through the aisle as they stocked up on groceries for the week. They were sharing a cart throughout the shopping trip but when we came up to the self-service checkout area, they each took out their groceries and separated them on the checkout counter. They each managed to navigate through the self-service process without any major glitches (aside from the occasional “unexpected item in bagging area”), even with the loose fruits and vegetables they had to weigh and scan.

    After the shopping trip we went back to their home and I wrapped up with a few informal questions to get feedback on their experience during this shopping trip. As I was finishing my last questions my participant’s roommate said something that caught me by surprise. I asked them about any issues they may have encountered during scanning or weighing items at the checkout, and almost as an afterthought, she mentions: “Well no, not really-but you can trick those machines when you weigh stuff, you know? For example, when I buy bananas, like today, I hold them up a bit when I weigh them so that the machine only charges for a smaller amount than it really is.”

    Yikes! Had I just gotten myself into one of those ethical dilemmas that we had talked about in Uni? I had unintentionally captured a self-service banana thief. In one of our previous modules, we had conversations about dealing with these dilemmas, but those were theories. I was now in the real position of having to make a choice as a researcher. Should I stay true to the data and include the information in the final report for the client, even if I didn’t directly observe it or ask for it? And what about the fact that the banana thief wasn’t even the actual participant whom I had recruited, but her roommate? Does that make a difference? On the off chance that the client wants more details on this fact, how will I handle this? Surely I have to hold true to the confidentiality agreement with the participants, right? Or should I just leave that one tiny bit of information out of the report? Is it really that important to the report if I wasn’t asking for it? But what if this piece of information, which got me into this conundrum in the first place, is actually pertinent to the research project and addresses some of the client’s challenges and pain-points?

    In addition to these concerns, I also had to work within the University Ethical Guidelines. And as an ethnographer-in-training, I had to make a decision on how to handle this information. Not only this once, but from this point forward if I was going to go out into the world and work as a researcher. I realized this was as good a time as any to ask myself: What kind of values am I going to live by as a researcher?

    In this case, I chose to include the findings in my report and stay true to what I observed. I made a very conscious decision that no matter what, I would not share the confidential information of my participant. In the end the client was happy to hear the ‘real story,’ as it confirmed some of the security issues of this technology that they were suspecting. Now, would I make this same decision the exact same way in a project today? I can’t say. Many factors play into the decisions we make as researchers and often, we have to rely on some sort of gut feeling. But encountering this situation at the beginning of my ‘life as an ethno’, forced me to internalize the challenges and to make a choice.

    Most research projects have their own version of a ‘banana thief’, an unexpected observation or something overheard, something that challenges our approach, our assumptions and our moral code for conducting research.

    In the end, my chance encounter with the self-service banana thief didn’t provide me with answers for future encounters, but presented a first instance to ask myself questions and to begin shaping my personal approach to research. And that is a good start.

    Rethinking Everything About What You Do For Customers

    kiss

    Rebecca Mead’s New Yorker feature The Sense of an Ending describes some really dramatic (and successful) reframes in care for dementia patients. There’s a number of profound shifts in how the caregivers describe their role and in the kind of experience they seek to deliver for the patient (and their family). The whole article (linked above, but subscribers only) describes those shifts and the cultural and organizational efforts to get there. I’ve included just a portion here

    One of the first things Alonzo did, in 1998, was to ask an aide who was born in Vietnam to talk to staff members in her native tongue. “It was the only language I could find that nobody else could speak,” Alonzo recalled. “So we had her tell us very sweetly, in Vietnamese, what she wanted us to do, and we couldn’t understand her.” The staff had to become attuned to the woman’s nonverbal cues.

    On another occasion, Alzono underwent a public bed bath, in front of the entire staff, of twenty-seven. She didn’t allow herself to move her limbs, and behaved as if confused. Afterward, she was able to describe the nature of her discomfort, and staff members analyzed their own activity in light of it. “Let me tell you, it sucked – it was incredibly uncomfortable,” she told me. Staff members then spooned food into one another’s mouths and brushed one another’s teeth, in order to be on the receiving end of activities that they performed for their charges every day. “You can find how threatening it is to have something touch your mouth when you have not brought it to your own lips,” she said.

    In the most radical experiment, the staff wore adult diapers. “That was kind of life-changing for everybody involved,” Alonzo told me. “We all recognized just how uncomfortable it was to sit in a wet brief. Some of our front-line staff, who really wanted to know how bad that felt, did not change them for a couple of hours.” Previous may residents had been dressed in diapers, as they tend to be in a majority of nursing homes. Not long afterward, aides decided to stop the practice with most residents, instead taking them to the bathroom fifteen or twenty minutes after mealtimes. This made residents happier while making the staff’s jobs easier, because they no longer had to change people who were agitated.

    There’s a rich tradition of participating in the experience our customers are having (see this great war story about an adventure in an “old age simulation suit”) and what feels like an increasing mention of empathy. I really like how this story highlights not so much the ergonomic or functional task aspects that are revealed but how this drives to revisiting the fundamental ideas of how the institution conceives of the patient experience it provides. I also like the full-on simplicity of the approach, the people who do this stuff to others now try it themselves and talk about it.

    See also Richard Anderson’s blog post from this week about reframes in general and in healthcare specifically.

    This Week @ Portigal

    It’s the Tuesday of a short week so there’s the pressure of fewer days to accomplish weekly goals, balanced against the glee of fewer days til the weekend!

    Winners of the Usabilla Q&A contest

    On the Usabilla blog, I answered reader’s questions about Interviewing Users. The best questions won a free copy of the book. Check out the questions, answers and winners here.

    Elise: What are your best tips for handling low-energy / quiet interviewees? I wonder if my extroverted body language is making them shut down more! Also, I have R&D team members who love to be involved in customer-facing activities. What’s worked for you in training teammates in user interviewing?

    Interview with Steve, now in Spanish

    The interview I did for Ethnography Matters is now available in Spanish.

    Steve Portigal es el fundador de Portigal Consulting, una firma que ayuda a los clientes descubrir y actuar sobre nuevas ideas acerca de s?? mismos y de sus clientes. A lo largo de su carrera, ha entrevistado a cientos de personas, incluyendo familias que toman el desayuno, el personal de mantenimiento del hotel, arquitectos, m??sicos de rock, los entusiastas de la dom??tica, comerciantes swaps de incumplimiento crediticio, y los radi??logos. Su trabajo ha informado del desarrollo de los dispositivos m??viles, sistemas de informaci??n médicos, equipo de m??sica, envases de vino, los servicios financieros, intranets corporativas, sistemas de videoconferencia, y accesorios para iPod. Tiene su blog en portigal.com/blog y tweets @steveportigal.

    Ethnography Matters: En primer lugar felicidades Steve. Estamos muy emocionados de tener una copia de tu libro. Antes de profundizar en las cuestiones concretas, queremos saber lo que te motiv?? a escribir este libro?

    Steve Portigal: Thanks! He querido escribir un libro desde que era un ni?±o peque?±o. Sin embargo no me imaginaba que ser??a la no-ficci??n! Un mont??n de gente en la experiencia del usuario y el mundo del dise?±o han sentido la necesidad de un buen libro sobre esto y mi nombre apareci?? como el autor que necesitaban ver algo al respecto. Yo hab??a estado hablando con Rosenfeld Media mientras escrib??a algo, pero parec??a un compromiso de enormes proporciones. Pero cuando los compa?±eros est?°n pidiendo esto, resulta muy convincente!

    Thanks to Luis Lopez Toledo for doing this!

    What the Bieb Means, or Embrace Pop Culture

    Earlier this year I gave a talk entitled Skill Building for Design Innovators. One of the “muscles” I encouraged people to develop was embracing pop culture. This led to a fascinating discussion when one person dissented and others jumped in with their own perspective. And of course, Justin Bieber was our placeholder example of pop culture. So I was gratified to see this article in the New York Times: Justin Bieber and Today’s Youth.

    One reason Mr. Bieber has captivated our attention, beyond his talent and charisma, is that, alongside Mark Zuckerberg, he is the paragon of the millennial celebrity. Born in 1994, he has hardly known a world without broadband Internet, smartphones, social media and digital imagery (and, yes, public apologies by celebrities through those same conduits). He has exploited – and been exploited by – these tools to great effect, currently ruling the Twitter roost with more than 36 million followers. That’s a lot of people for anyone, let alone a teenager, to have direct access to with a thoughtless swipe of his iPhone.

    And because Mr. Bieber is so ambitious and enterprising, he can also be considered an emblem of the overscheduled, future-oriented Generation Y striver. Instead of regimented piano lessons, soccer practice and SAT classes, the entertainer has committed himself to the steady, if largely self-directed, cultivation of singing, dancing and interview skills since he was 12.

    Thus, the gleeful reaction by some to Mr. Bieber’s misbehavior may connect to two directives imposed upon children today: the need to overprepare for the demanding and perilous world of work, and the loss of innocence that preparation entails.

    When we laugh at his “meltdown” – one that many of us would have suffered much sooner in our teenage years had the global press hounded us, had we put in 16-hour workdays, had millions of dollars rested on our shoulders – we are doing more than merely relishing the downfall of a formerly squeaky-clean (Tiger Woods) moral crusader (Eliot Spitzer) who has a few irksome personality traits (Anthony Weiner). We are channeling our cultural anxiety over the ways we have corrupted and effaced childhood.

    Pattern-recognition is crucial for sense-making

    interviewing-users

    Interviewing Users is now available. Get your copy here!




    theartofscientificinvestigation


    Excerpting from a great post…The Art of Observation and How to Master the Crucial Difference Between Observation and Intuition [Brain Pickings] – Highlights from a 1957 book by Cambridge University professor W. I. B. Beveridge come from the era of the scientific method but are broadly applicable to creative, innovative, design-thinking approaches to problem solving.

    Ultimately, Beveridge argues that the art of observation depends on developing the capacity for pattern-recognition, which in turn relies on a broad pool of networked knowledge that allows you to spot the piece that doesn’t fit: “In carrying out any observation you look deliberately for each characteristic you know may be there, for any unusual feature, and especially for any suggestive associations or relationships among the things you see, or between them and what you know. – Most of the relationships observed are due to chance and have no significance, but occasionally one will lead to a fruitful idea.”

    This Week @ Portigal

    After a weekend of working in the yard I’m stiff and creaky on Monday, each keystroke of this update requiring a supreme effort (well, maybe I exaggerate just a bit).

    Harry Dean Stanton and Silence

    interviewing-users

    Interviewing Users is now available. Get your copy here!



    hds
    At SXSW this year we saw Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction, a moody and elliptical portrait of the actor. Despite the filmmaker being a long-time friend of his, Stanton is evasive and mercurial, seeming more earnest when performing music for the camera than in answering questions about his parents or his relationships with women. On more than one occasion, the subject doesn’t respond and just stares off or at the camera or the interviewer. And the interviewer stays quiet for a surprisingly long time.

    There was a Q&A after the screening, so I asked the filmmaker about what she thought about the power of silence (for in addition using silence in the interview, they also chose to leave those silences in the final film). She told us “I just wanted to see what would happen, and to see the boundaries of being uncomfortable.”

    I found this fascinating; in Interviewing Users I describe a scene from Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man where the director uses silence to gives space for an astonishing and revelatory moment to occur. In this case, “nothing” happened. Of course, as the director reminded me, the “nothing” that happened with Harry Dean Stanton was still something; it revealed a lot about the subject and changed our own experience in hearing his story.

    It’s further illustration of the power of silence, even when it doesn’t pay off in the obvious manner and bring something out, it’s still bringing something else out!

    Empathy begets empathy

    interviewing-users

    Interviewing Users is now available. Get your copy here!



    In Chapter 1, I argue that in addition to gaining valuable information through interviewing, the process also builds empathy which in turn increases our overall capacity for empathy.

    Marc Maron (describing his journey with the WTF podcast), in this Rolling Stone interview, says the same thing in his own way.

    But once I started talking to people, I evolved a capacity I never had before, which was to be an empathetic listener. I still step on people a lot, and I interrupt them with my own bullshit. But I was a better person. I was humbled.

    Also0 see yesterday’s Maron example here.

    Marc Maron on listening

    interviewing-users

    Interviewing Users is now available. Get your copy here!

    About a year ago, Marc Maron (comedian, host of the WTF podcast, and an example in Interviewing Users) was on Chris Hardwick’s Nerdist Podcast. They got into a discussion of interviewing, touching on listening-builds-empathy, the pressure on the interviewer to keep talking and choosing to interrupt.

    MM: It’s one-on-one, we’re in a garage, it’s cozy, and I’m pretty much a too-much-information kinda guy and I’ve learned how to listen. I don’t know when that happened. I’m happy it happened but -when I was a kid I grew up with a bipolar father so there’s some part of me that’s wired to emotionally connect with very charismatic volatile people and throughout most of my childhood I would always be attracted to crazy homeless people that walked around where I used to work at this restaurant. I always wanted to hear their stories. I always liked people that were funny and large personalities because I’d been sort of diminished by my father’s brutality in terms of his emotions. And I just find for a long time there I was bitter, and I was “Aw fuck, everyone was out to get to me” and defensive and I’d gotten very cynical and now because of the podcast I’m very empathetic. When I listen, there are times when I’m about to cry, or where I’m so engaged in the story that I’m just happy when -wow I’m into this.

    I think that is just my own curiosity, the way I’m wired but I’m very happy that’s happened. I like to listen to people.

    CH: It’s something that I certainly I wish I did more sometimes, I’m always like-NO DEAD SPACE, NO DEAD SPACE – always gotta keep talking

    MM: I think that’s natural, I do that..Some people criticize for me on my podcast that I occasionally interrupt too much, it’s because they’re not used to listening to interviews the ways I do. A lot of times I interrupt because I get nervous if people are doing some – if someone is a public personality, they’ve got their story, you know, and I can sorta tell when like I’m not the first one to have heard this story, sometimes – it’s happened with Anthrony Bourdain specifically because I wanted to connect with him, but he speaks in public a lot and I listened to part of his interview on Joe Rogan, one because I wanted to see what kind of person he was in conversation and I knew there was a couple of points that he clearly hit regularly so when I heard him start those I was “Yeah, but what about-” I tried to get around them only because I wanted to see if I could get-I ended up getting something different, it was good, it was good. But I’m sorta aware of that stuff. You?

    CH: I try to be aware of it, but I also try to keep the conversation going and a lot of times if I’m talking with someone and this is why I don’t do phone interviews because I need to see people, I can tell they are close to finishing a thought and I just don’t want any of those moments where like-if you listen to this podcast you will never hear a [pause} “So-.”

    Alicia’s War Story: Don’t hate on a tinkler

    Alicia Dornadic is a design researcher in the San Francisco Bay Area.

    Going to someone’s home for the first time to interview them, especially in an unfamiliar culture and language, can be awkward. Showing up with two researchers, a cameraman and a couple clients in tow – all of whom are over-caffeinated and in need of a bathroom break – can make for a circus act. These were three-hour long interviews, too. So, despite our best efforts to arrange feeding and peeing times before getting to the person’s home, we usually all had to pee at some point during the interview. But our translator was the absolute queen of tinkling. The first day I was understanding. “Maybe she’s sick or nervous,” I thought. She would take two to four breaks during each interview, which left the rest of us smiling and pointing at things dumbly, trying to make conversation in her absence. By the end of the week, my patience was shot. I was ready to strap some adult diapers on her. I would glower at her every time she asked for water, tea, or a soda. “Really?” I thought, my eyes on fire, “Should you really be having that?” I’m not proud of this. But I couldn’t help being annoyed.

    Finally, karma came to bite me on the ass. It was at the end of a long interview at the end of a long day, and I broke down and asked if I could use the restroom. Our host pointed to it, and I stumbled inside, missing the 2-inch step down into it. There wasn’t a lot of light in the bathroom, and it was cluttered. I couldn’t find a switch. But no matter. I go. I reach for the toilet paper, and BOOM! CRASH! I take down the entire metal toilet paper rack off the wall, and it crashes onto the tiled floor. It was too dark to see how to fix it, so I had to come out and explain what I had done and apologize. Not only that, but my explanation and apology had to be translated! Translated and explained to two researchers, a cameraman, a couple of clients and our participant. It ended up not being a big deal, but I was embarrassed. And I felt guilty for all my negative thoughts towards our translator. As much as I was annoyed at our tinkler friend, at least she didn’t break anything.

    Steve interviewed by Denise Lee Yohn about Interviewing Users

    I was interviewed by Denise Lee Yohn – we chatted about interviewing, insights, innovation, iPods and probably some other words that start with the letter i.

    Listen at the link or through the widget below.

    To download the audio Right-Click and Save As… (Windows) or Ctrl-Click (Mac).

    Susan Dray on War Stories

    In Lessons from the Front Line, Susan Dray reflects on the impact the War Stories have on her as a researcher.

    These war stories are at times inspiring, at times comical, but always interesting. As I have followed them, I have increasingly been figuring out ways I might be able to use them with teams, clients and students. For example, I might share a selection of them of them to give a new team some sense of what to expect when we go into the field together. In addition, when I teach at the Technological University of Panama next year as a visiting Fulbright scholar, I plan to use these stories to help give students a better idea of the variety and nuance of ethnographic work. War Stories are rich not just in data but also in terms of technique, and they have made me think about my own experiences in the field.

    Thanks to Susan for such a thoughtful and heartfelt piece, and to Core77 for publishing it!

    This Week @ Portigal

    Howdy Monday and Monday-accessories:

    Body language changes you inside

    interviewing-users

    Interviewing Users is now available. Get your copy here!

    In Chapter 2, I talk about how body language (see good and bad examples here and here) not only signals that you are listening to your interviewee, it also signals you to listen better. I based on this on some writing by Malcolm Gladwell (in Blink, but originally in The Naked Face) about how our physical self can induce changes in our emotional selves.

    Now there’s more research to back up that claim. From this WSJ article

    Researchers are finding that wearing a smile brings certain benefits, like slowing down the heart and reducing stress. This may even happen when people aren’t aware they are forming a smile. The work follows research that established that the act of smiling can make you feel happier. Frowning also may have a health effect: Preventing people from frowning, such as with the use of Botox, can help alleviate depression.

    “You can influence mental health by what you do with your face, whether you smile more or frown less,” says Eric Finzi, a dermatologic surgeon and co-author of the study on frowning.

    Bonus: the article includes this compelling image, explaining “Holding the sticks in the mouth activates the same muscles we use for smiling.”
    chopstick-smile

    Interview with Steve posted on Ethnography Matters

    Here’s an interview with me at Ethnography Matters. We talked about the book, the writing process and other aspects of how interviewing users is playing out in the corporate world.

    EM: How much heterogeneity is there between companies / clients? Are there any broad typological characterizations of companies and their attitude towards user research? Does this inform different ways of delivering research results, different ways of “talking to” these companies?

    SP: There are no doubt dozens of frameworks (see for example, Jess McMullin’s Design Maturity Model on page 142) for characterizing the organization. But let me throw out a new one: in the Passover Haggadah there is the example of the four sons. One wise, one wicked, one simple and one who does not know how to ask a question. The wise son asks to have all of the history, insight and other findings explained to him. We’re encouraged to explain everything to him. The wicked son separates himself from the issue by asking why it’s important to you. We’re told to tell him why it’s important to us (and not persuade him that it should be important to him). The simple son doesn’t even focus in on the issue and just asks “What is this?” so we’re to give him the headline. We’re told to approach the son who doesn’t even know how to ask a question and take the initiative to explain things to him. And one scholar writes about a fifth son who isn’t even in the room and it’s up to us to seek him out and give him the lowdown.

    Sure, it may be a bit forced but it’s not hard to see those sons as archetypes of individuals, departments or entire workplace cultures. Whatever your framework is, you obviously need to understand the specifics of who you are dealing with and have a range of approaches for responding. All of this stuff with people (be they clients or research subjects) is messy and I’m not so comfortable with pre-emptive categorization and its resultant tactical choices.

    Thanks to Tricia Wang and Jenna Burrell and everyone else at Ethnography Matters for a great discussion.

    Grant McCracken’s foreword for Interviewing Users

    Grant McCracken has posted his fantastic foreword to Interviewing Users.

    This is a wonderful book. Steve can teach us how to improve our ability to penetrate other worlds and examine our assumptions. Ethnography has suffered terribly in the last few years. Lots of people claim to know it, but in fact the art and science of the method have been badly damaged by charlatans and snake oil salesmen. Let’s seize this book as an opportunity to start again. Let Steve Portigal be our inspired guide.

    Excerpt from Interviewing Users on Core77

    core77-logo

    Core77 has posted an excerpt from Interviewing Users.

    From my introduction to the excerpt:

    I’ve talked to a lot of practitioners about their own experiences in doing fieldwork and often they try to address challenges when they experience the symptoms, but that’s usually not the right time. Consider this analogy: if you have insomnia, the best solutions are not those that you roll out at 3am when you can’t sleep. To effectively counteract insomnia you have to make specific choices during the day, before you go to bed. Doing research with people is the same thing and ideally you approach this sort of work with a well-defined perspective that will inform all of the inevitable detailed, specific, tactical problem solving.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Voila les deets:

    • Interviewing Users is out! Huzzah! There’s been lots of enthusiasm and already some good feedback!
    • Core77 has posted an excerpt here.
    • I’m doing a few interviews for the book. Look for them to start showing up online in the next couple of weeks.
    • You’re invited to the Interviewing Users launch party, June 3 in San Francisco. And stay tuned for info on the New York party, too!
    • Don’t forget about the free webcast next week.
    • Some good networking on hand for this week, catching up with people and talk about their businesses, careers, goals and of course mine.
    • Ten years gone: From May 2003 – Why Calvin Pees, Bugs and Daffy for Landmine Awareness.
    • What we’re consuming: Little Yangon, Black Blizzard, Teddy Bear.

    Interviewing without questions, eye contact or rapport

    interviewing-users

    Interviewing Users is now available. Get your copy here!

    Here’s a really interesting project about How People Talk to Themselves in Their Heads.

    He would ask them to wear a microphone headset attached to a digital recorder and speak aloud their thoughts as he followed closely behind with a camera. He would not be able to hear what they were saying…[The] videos are simultaneously naturalistic and as objective as possible. In the lab, in front of a researcher, people are often reluctant to reveal exactly what they are thinking. Writing a diary of inner speech is somewhat more private, but many people find it annoying to regularly drop everything and make an entry; sometimes it’s difficult to remember what one was thinking about even minutes earlier. In Irving’s videos people are living their lives more or less as usual, walking and talking to themselves as though they were unaccompanied. Of course, people who are not completely comfortable with the scenario sometimes speak into the microphone as though trying to entertain someone else. And getting people’s inner speech on tape captures only linguistic forms of thought, neglecting the kind of thinking that happens in images and scenes, for example.

    The notion that unfettered, deeper self-exploration and self-expression can come when not interacting with the interrogator – to the point here of nearly eliminating the interrogation entirely – evokes the (I presume mostly obsolete) approach to therapy where the patient does not face the therapist.

    I find the videos compelling (and voyeuristic to the extreme). Check out the other videos at the link – the ones that take place without the strolling seem more like a diary and less like a peek into the stream of consciousness. But for each of them, see if they pass the sniff-test for you: is the person talking the way they are because of the experiment (they know they are being recorded; they feel they need to come up with something to say, they are aware of their own “voice”, etc.) or is it really getting as deep as the researcher claims? I was mostly convinced but a sliver of doubt remains.

    In the research we do, we make no claim of naturalism; we certainly want to direct and influence what is being shared, and we build rapport to facilitate openness and honesty. This approach isn’t likely to be appropriate for us, but it’s certainly provocative to look at the output of an opposite approach – where the interviewer is effectively absented and rapport is not a consideration.

    Overture, curtain, lights!

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    Today Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights is finally released! I’m so excited; last night was like the night before my birthday (or at least the way that felt when I was a kid).

    I’m grateful for all the enthusiasm and am looking forward to people’s thoughts when they’ve had a chance to read and digest and reflect.

    Bad Idea: Let’s Eat At McDonald’s

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    Great stuff about bad ideas in this post from Jon Bell. First, an everyday application

    …when we’re trying to decide where to eat for lunch and no one has any ideas. I recommend McDonald’s.

    An interesting thing happens. Everyone unanimously agrees that we can’t possibly go to McDonald’s, and better lunch suggestions emerge.

    It’s as if we’ve broken the ice with the worst possible idea, and now that the discussion has started, people suddenly get very creative.

    Then he applies this principle to creative work.

    I call it the McDonald’s Theory: people are inspired to come up with good ideas to ward off bad ones.

    The next time a project is being discussed in its early stages, grab a marker, go to the board, and throw something up there. The idea will probably be stupid, but that’s good! McDonald’s Theory teaches us that it will trigger the group into action…Say, “This is probably crazy, but what if we.-“

    The article is short and direct and makes the point so well. This is an area I’ve been exploring over the past year or so (see article on Core77 here and slide deck from SXSW here) and it’s great to see others doing so as well.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Greetings at the head of the week!

    Out and About: Steve in Baltimore

    During last week’s trip to Baltimore, I had just a little bit of time to explore. Here’s what I saw:

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    I had a really delicious meal at The Food Market in the hip neighborhood of Hampden, but I did snort with laughter when they brought over what I thought was going to be a beet salad.

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    Have we hit Peak Experience (and not in the Maslovian sense) when donuts are reframed as experiences? Closing the loop on my last visit to the area, this was a total disappointment. Disappointing donuts and a weird experience. Fractured Prune was located in an Italian restaurant but I could not figure out where the donut counter was. It turned out to be shared with the restaurant. I had to ask two people once I was actually in this little restaurant where the donuts were. There’s no familiar visual cue of shelves of donuts, since all are made-to-order. I did have nice chat with a fellow patron who told me they were great donuts. I didn’t let him see me leave the half-eaten ones sitting in the bag on the picnic table outside. Not good.

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    Street art in Hampden.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Hello Monday!

    Tom’s War Story: House Rules

    Tom Wood is one of the partners at Foolproof, an experience design firm based in the UK.

    About 10 years ago I was trying to understand online poker playing behaviours on behalf of a gaming company. We’d recruited for a study across their various target segments, but the hardest to find were the high-value, semi-professional players. They prized their anonymity and guarded their playing secrets.

    One of the respondents I did find was a part-time property developer, part-time drummer, but his passion was poker. He was close with players from the city’s professional soccer team who were happy to lose large amounts of money in order to pick up skills in poker: an important accomplishment for the professional sportsman in the UK.

    The interview did not go well at first. The respondent was a regular online player but his behaviour when using the subject site was stilted and he seemed so disengaged that I began to worry that he was out of his depth online. Eventually I decided to reframe and go back the beginning of the discussion, where we had talked about his usage habits on his regular site. This time, because he was getting more relaxed in my company, I suggested doing this by watching him play. The key behaviour this revealed was how he found a table he wanted to join. This involved simultaneously watching a large number of games in progress – an almost incredible skill. What he was studying was the weaknesses of the players at the various tables: their inexperience, bravado, impatience, petulance. His whole demeanour changed, and I had a feeling like being a naturalist watching a lion selecting the impala that it is going to turn into lunch. Compelling but horrifying at the same time. It was clear that the subject site I’d asked him to use had poor affordance for this important process, but because it was a basically unchivalrous activity he had been guarded about discussing it.

    This change in tack got me this and other insights which informed our design advice. And resolved me never to take up poker.

    Most experience design folk enter the field because they understand that they themselves don’t have all the answers. I’m fond of this story because it was when I properly realised that I didn’t even have all the questions. I suspect that this job made me a better researcher, and certainly made me approach certain types of work in a completely different way. At Foolproof we always preface our discussion guides with words to the effect that the discussion guide is just that, a guide – and that we reserve the right to take any approach we need to in order to meet the research objectives.

    Elaine’s War Story: They call me Mister

    Elaine Fukuda is a design research consultant from California.

    I admit I don’t have a lot of experience with children but the opportunity to shadow a patient through an entire day’s hospital visit was one to not pass up. The patient being 13 years old added another layer of consent and assent, a mythical ethnographic research unicorn of sorts.

    The goal of shadowing was to understand the experience of the entire visit from start to finish, through multiple provider visits, labs, tests, and the waiting times in between. I met the patient and her mother as they were pulling into the parking garage and started the day with a scan. During the next two hours she patiently laid in a claustrophobic tunnel, and did everything as asked, from changing positions ever so slightly, holding her breath for 30 seconds at a time, and breathing at a specific pace.

    Having fasted since the previous evening, she was ready for lunch but wanting to get everything done before their provider visit, she and her mom decided to get a blood test done before lunch.

    We arrived in the pediatrics department and her mother stood in line to check in while I joined the patient in the waiting area. After a few minutes, a volunteer came over for what I felt was a break in our somewhat awkward small talk.

    The volunteer was a kind elderly man with a book cart offering free books for patients to take home. The patient, tired from the scan and possibly feeling out of place in the bright and cheerful pediatrics environment shrugged and said there wasn’t anything she liked. Determined, the volunteer took out a “magical coloring book” which colored itself with a flip of a page. She was still not impressed.

    Then came the pièce de résistance. From the cart the volunteer pulled out a heavy woven rope and introduced the patient to his friend, Mr. Stick. Mr. Stick had a magic ability you see, with a grand gesture he could become taut. In order to turn back into a rope, the patient was instructed to ask, “Mr. Stick, will you go down?”

    The shade of red across the teen’s face had long passed lobster and she and I stared at each other in disbelief. Her mother was still in line across the way, and as the adult I felt responsible but conflicted on what to do. Surely the man had no idea what he was implying? Being a very good sport, she complied and sure enough Mr. Stick fell limp.

    But the volunteer didn’t stop there. He turned to me, holding the middle of Mr. Stick, now back in its rigid state. He asked me to tell Mr. Stick to go down, which I did. Nothing happened. The volunteer said I must say “please”, which I did. And again nothing happened. He then said, “I guess Mr. Stick doesn’t go down if you’re not a child.”

    “Hey, I think they’re calling your name,” I quickly said to the patient. And with that we escaped the somewhat creepy, but good intentioned volunteer.

    “That was awkward,” she said.

    It wasn’t until after the blood test and during lunch that we were able to debrief and talk about the encounter with the volunteer. I was afraid the mother would be upset that I hadn’t intervened sooner. She was shocked but laughed, wondering if someone could really be that clueless. As I started to explain what had happened, the patient (who been sitting right next to the volunteer) interjected:

    “No, its name was Mr. Stiff, not Stick.”

    Me: “Oooh, that’s even weirder.”

    Mother: “I’m really curious how you’re going to write this up.”

    Ilona’s War Story: First Stop the Bleeding!

    Ilona Posner is a User Experience and Usability consultant with more than 25 years of experience. In this story, she is challenged in different ways to leave her participants in relatively good shape.

    Around the year 2000, homes with internet service were rare. AOL was plastering the planet with CDs that promised free internet. Modems were uncommon and expensive. Online access usually required a modem card installed inside a computer case by a service technician, at a significant cost. My client, the largest Internet Service Provider in Canada, was redesigning their Self-Installation Package for its DSL service; today this would be called a DIY kit.

    The goal of our research project was to evaluate the customer experience. It entailed contacting customers who had just ordered the package, interviewing them about their order experience, and asking to visit their homes to observe the installation of the hardware and setting up the service. We visited many homes and observed people with diverse technical experience trying to install this package. The success rate of the customers completing this self-installation within our allotted 2 hours was very low. We had to suffer silently watching their ordeals: searching among numerous papers and user manuals that accompanied the package for the correct documents and locating the required identification codes; mixing up phone and internet cables; moving their furniture so that the provided cables would reach their destinations; and trying to explain their problems in repeated phone calls with technical support. In some cases, after observing them struggle for 2 hours and realizing they were incapable of completing this task unaided, we felt so sorry for them that before departing we completed the installation process on their behalf. We felt bad that they would have to spend additional days waiting, making additional phone calls to arrange for a technician’s visit, and dealing with the additional costs of assisted installation. That way, we also were able to witness their excitement and gratification of getting online; for some it was their first time.

    I clearly remember one participant who actually was able to successfully complete the installation, and it “only” took him 1.5 hours to do it. He was a male in his early 30s, technical writer by profession. His PC had 32 MB of RAM, and was running Windows 95. He already had a modem but was switching to this new High Speed Service. He had to remove the internal ISA modem card from his PC tower in order to install the provided Ethernet card. He was more confident and comfortable at this task than most of our other participants. While our camera rolled, he confidently skimmed documents and manuals, even when they were different manuals from the devices he was dealing with at the time. He opened his PC without difficulty. He proceeded to remove the internal modem card from deep inside his PC case. In the process, he cut his hand on one of the sharp internal edges of the metal case. His hand started to bleed! Blood got on his hardware. We had to interrupt our observations to assist him in stopping the bleeding.

    After completing our research, we redesigned the package. We reduced the number of documents and numbered each one for easy reference (unfortunately, this simple and usable solution only lasted until the next rebranding exercise conducted by the marketing department, who did not inherit our design rationale). We rewrote the instructions, using beautiful visuals. We also included a special highlighted warning, “Please be careful when opening your computer case, there are many sharp edges inside.”

    I wonder if anyone ever noticed that warning message.

    This Week @ Portigal

    In the US, it’s Tax Day. Happy, er um, whatever…

    • If you run a small business, depending on how it’s structured, it can be a very different tax process. Personally, I don’t receive a salary, so I don’t pay income tax every two weeks. That means my income tax is calculated annually and paid in advance, in quarterly payments. Those are usually some significant-sized checks to be throwing down. It’s further complicated by each year’s actual income determining next year’s estimations but because things fluctuate (the economy, the size of the staff, etc.) then those estimates can be way off. Good times!
    • I’m off to Baltimore early tomorrow morning. I’m part of an event for the McCormick Design Advisory Panel, intended to spark some conversation – and planning – about how design and insights can drive innovation. I’m looking forward to hearing the team talk about their challenges and how they can address them.
    • I’ve received first drafts of two new War Stories. Look for those later this week.
    • Ten years gone: From April 2003 – The Life Cycle of a Wash Rag, Obituary: Anita Borg.
    • What we’re consuming: Jason Becker, La Strada, Stairways of San Francisco, The Urges.

    Loss of Context III

    From New York Times Corrections for April 7, 2013 comes another demonstration of a) the importance of context in understanding what interview respondents are saying and b) the necessity of an actual recording of what was said.

    An accompanying feature transcribed incorrectly a comment from Callie Khouri, creator of the television drama “Nashville,” about what she would put on her Easter playlist. Khouri said she would include music by Pops Staples, the late patriarch of the singing family the Staple Singers. She did not say she would include “pop staples.”

    I share a story of how this confusion can easily happen in fieldwork in Conversational Layers and have some other examples from the media in Loss of Context I and Loss of Context II.

    This Week @ Portigal

    It’s a deceptively sunny Monday, despite overnight high-winds that brought the power down in my neighborhood. A strange time of year, indeed!

    Innovation commoditization reaches a new low

    Earlier this week I stayed at a Marriott hotel. When I checked out, they were unable to get me a bill. My room service from 2 hours earlier was not in the computer. The clerk tried to raise someone on the walkie-talkie but it was to no avail. They offered to email it to me, but 36 hours later as I prepared to submit my travel invoice to my client, I still didn’t have the bill. I explored the website, dealt with several different types of support, and it still took another 12 hours to get the bill!

    Today comes the inevitable customer-satisfaction survey. With the audacious subject line Help us innovate your experience at Marriott hotels.

    innovate

    Besides the horribly ugly phrasing (“innovate your experience”?) how hard must they be kidding here?

    Someone has hypothesized that escalating the language of the invite they can increase their response rate, but outright lying is really not the way to start the dialog.

    Customer satisfaction surveys are not a way to innovate. Sure, it’s possible that this type of tool could uncover unmet needs, but those are going to be the needs that they already know about, right? Honestly, when have you ever taken a corporate customer satisfaction survey that has done anything but treat you like an idiot? This sort of tool is only used for ass-covering, at best, and at worst for one group to preempt any negative feedback that might go to another group that oversees or funds them.

    The word innovation has become a meaningless catch-all for any sort of improvement and here Marriott stoops even lower, using it as a proxy for any sort of customer interaction, despite the low likelihood of any change or improvement resulting.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Hey-ho!

    • I’m about to get on a plane to San Diego where I’ll be leading a full-day workshop on planning user research, interview techniques, and synthesizing data into new opportunities. I’ve worked with many of these folks before so I’m looking forward to seeing them all again.
    • The book is at the printer! It should be available in about three weeks! You can sign up for notification here.
    • Despite (or maybe because of) my low expectations, last week we had another new War Story, from Kavita Appachu. More are coming, but who can say when?
    • More networking meetups this week. It’s always great to connect with real people that I only know from the Internet!
    • Ten years gone: From April 2003 – Hey is a bad word, Patti Smith, urine games, Hindi casting call.
    • What we’re consuming: The Clock, dextromethorphan, Craft & Commerce.

    Kavita’s War Story: Managing money, oh joy!

    Kavita Appachu shares her story about uncovering emotion where she hadn’t expected to find it.

    Finance has never been my thing, and where possible I leave the chore of managing my finances to others. That changed somewhat a few years back when I started working for a company that makes financial software, specifically tax software. This threw me right in the middle of people’s financial lives.

    What I had not realized was that while the task of managing finances may be very functional, everything else related to money and taxes is at its core very emotional. I have lost track of the innumerable times participants have poured their hearts out as they describe how they manage their finances, from the twenty-something who referred to her mom as ghetto, or the hulk of a guy who rattled off the choicest of expletives for his ex-wife. The one story that has stood out in all this is about a mom, wife and editor in Seattle.

    On a rare sunny day, we pulled up to a community of condos with well-manicured yards. We rang the doorbell and my fellow researcher and I were greeted by our participant, who welcomed us into her very tastefully done home. There were pictures of the kids, family vacations, sporting events. It seemed like a happy home. The kids were at school and our participant had the morning off so she had decided to catch up on her finances, specifically her investments. We talked about the members of her household, her husband’s job, her job and their approach to financial planning. She was concerned their savings were not going to be enough for retirement and the kids’ education.

    She had all her papers spread out on the dining table beside her laptop. We observed her going through the process of logging into both her and her husband’s 401(k) accounts, monitor her mutual funds and stocks and even place a sell order. Nothing out of the ordinary…and then she broke down in tears.

    We were a little taken aback. She had a helpless look on her face and kept sobbing and muttering that woman, that woman. We calmed her down and then asked her if she wanted to share what was bothering her. She told us that as part of her husband’s divorce settlement from his earlier marriage he was required to pay for her stepchildren’s college. That was making a deep hole in their pockets and she was unable to save for her own children’s college education, take vacations or save for retirement. She hated the ex-wife and held her husband somewhat responsible for giving in to the ex-wife’s demands. She avoided tracking finances if she could because it was a painful reminder of her dire situation.

    That was my aha moment. I had known all along that personal finances are very closely entwined to one’s life, but this really brought it home: personal finances are a mirror of your inner joys, sorrows and insecurities.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Welcome to the week

    • I’ve been down for the count for at least a week, with coughing fits and overall unwellness. I may have turned a corner but am trying to keep things quiet for now.
    • The book is at the printer! It should be available in about four weeks! You can sign up for notification here.
    • Last week we had a new War Story, the first one in quite a while, from Whitney Hess. I know there are more out there (someone mentioned to me at a workshop last week that they’d be working on one!) but I am not expecting anything this week.
    • There’s a few folks I’ve been putting off for weeks or even months for a chance to meetup/catch-up. Looks like this is the week!
    • Ten years gone: From March 2003 – Hussein Translator Used Fake Accent, Kiss French Horn.
    • What we’re consuming: Ramen Parlor, Fat Kid Rules The World, expectorant, The Flat

    Out and About: Steve at SXSW

    Recently, we spent the week in Austin at SXSW. Here’s some of the observations and other highlights from the time there.

    Anne encountered the Uncanny Valley with this video-projection-on-a-human-shaped-cutout.
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    In one session, I sat behind a cyborg.
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    Ridiculous marketing language abounds.
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    A cafe made use of physical “Like” buttons next to posted artwork. The LCD counter increments each time someone clicks the button. Curious to see interactions specific to the virtual world being replicated in the physical world. See here, previously.
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    The Frito pie is made from a bag of corn chips, where the bag is ripped open and topped with chopped onions, meat, sauce and cheese.
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    One really has to wonder about how complex everyday technology use can become. Even though Austin is fairly tech forward, this sign in the convention center is beyond ridiculous.
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    Gourdough’s used to be just an Airstream that served the biggest donuts you’d ever seen, but now they’ve opened a proper restaurant. Most if not all of the main courses (e.g., friend chicken) feature a donut.
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    Live music, including the Waco Brothers and Ian McLagan.
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    And of course, there were mascots.
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    Whitney’s War Story: Stories of War

    Whitney Hess is the author of Pleasure & Pain, and the founder and principal of Vicarious Partners, an independent consultancy specializing in strategic user experience. She believes empathy builds empires.

    I interviewed Holocaust survivors. Four words that still send shivers down my spine. Their stories were meant to shape my research; they ended up shaping me.

    It was the project of a lifetime. I was asked to conduct user research for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum with web design agency Happy Cog. Together we identified several constituents of the Museum to explore: visitors, students, teachers, scholars, activists, volunteers, donors…and survivors. Survivors of the Holocaust. I would be performing the interviews, crafting personas, and reporting on findings to the Museum’s executive board.

    As a rule, when I engage with a research participant, I, Whitney Hess, cease to exist. It is a skill I have honed over many years of conducting research. I don’t get hungry, I don’t get tired, I don’t have to pee. I shed my beliefs and my assumptions and my identity. My only need is to listen. My only purpose is to absorb – with total objectivity.

    Would it be possible then for me to objectively study Holocaust survivors? I am a Jew.

    At first I told myself that being Jewish somehow qualified me to understand their stories and empathize with their pain. Then I feared that I would get so emotional that I wouldn’t be able to make it through an interview.

    I was wrong on both counts.

    I had the honor and the privilege of interviewing seven survivors – from Germany, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland, Slovakia, and Great Britain – all volunteers at the Holocaust Museum in varying capacities. Some interviews were in person at the Museum, others were over the phone. They shared their stories of survival, and they shared their feedback on the website. Both extremes were just as relevant. I listened with reverence and I asked probing questions. I was so busy taking it all in, I didn’t have time to feel anything about it. I was working.

    When it came to crafting personas, I started with the teachers and students, moved on to activists and scholars, and eventually I could postpone it no longer – it was time to review my findings from the survivors.

    Reading back through my notes and the interview transcripts, I maintained my composure. I kept reminding myself, You have work to do. But in a moment of weakness, I allowed myself to listen to a recording. And then another. Day became night and I was still listening. They recounted the abuse they’d endured, the brutality they’d witnessed, the family they’d lost…it was so raw, so real. I let myself go. I cried, bawled. For what they had overcome, for themselves, for their families, and for me.

    In the end, I decided not to create a persona of a survivor, and my teammates and clients understood my reasoning. Their stories were unique; they could not be merged.

    Instead I gleaned a few key quotes, to convey the essence of the individuals. What they had to say changed my whole perspective on what we were doing and why we were doing it. Their message had to be heard. I had to share it. I got to share it.

    And it changed everything.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Happy Monday fellow humans,

    • It’s the first day back in the office after a while. SXSW was its usual combination of overstimulation, socialization, inspiration and meat. I’ve come back with a unappealing cough that I hope recedes before the next time I am actually meeting with people in the flesh.
    • While I’ve repeatedly referred to the conclusion of a project with some small document revisions, I was honestly a bit surprised to see another round of revision requests arrive in my inbox, while this project was for all intents and purposes completely done weeks and weeks ago. I’ll hope to be closing it of with some finality today.
    • My other refrain, especially as of late, has been about the final steps for my book. My last and final (?) task is to proofread the whole thing as they plan to go to printing on March 20!
    • Later this week I’ll be at Mozilla to lead an Interviewing 101 workshop.
    • Ten years gone: From March 2003 – early forays into online social networking (for business)
    • What we’re consuming: 20 Feet from Stardom, Politicians In My Eyes, Tern P9.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Welcome to the week, everyone.

    • It’s a nice lull between larger projects, which works out well as I’m spending the week in Austin at SXSW. I gave my presentation on The Power of Bad Ideas over the weekend (slides, sketchnotes); it went really well and now I’m free to enjoy Austin – friends, beer, delicious food, crazy marketing stunts, music, comedy and movies. It’s already been an inspiring few days!
    • I just approved the last illustration for my book and so I really think this is the home stretch. My part is essentially done, which is a relief!
    • Ten years gone: From March 2003 – World’s Smallest Film Festival
    • What we’re consuming: Maron, Second Bar + Kitchen, Harry Dean Stanton.

    Steve interviewed by Tomer Sharon

    steve-and-tomer

    I was interviewed by Tomer Sharon (as part of his incredible series of interviews for It’s Our Research). Our conversation ranged from about why it’s hard for people to do user research, the collaboration between agency and clients, and how to think about organizational and stakeholder challenges as design problems.

    The 22-minute video is embedded below.

    Steve Portigal It's Our Research interview

    This Week @ Portigal

    It’s a March Monday, everyone….

    This Week @ Portigal

    Happy Monday, folks!

    • I’m on a plane now, exhausted but exhilarated. Chicago was snowy and cold but we completed a full set of interviews with fascinating and inspiring people. The team in SF also met with an equally wonderful set of folks, so we are wallowing in stories and thoughts and emergent themes. We’re diving right into analysis, expecting transcripts to be coming in – and divided up – very soon.
    • This week I’m giving an improv presentation to kickoff the creativity at Walmart’s Global UX Summit. Hopefully I’ll be able to catch up with my friends who are attending the event.
    • Some great progress on the book – I’ve seen initial PDFs and have been making corrections, meanwhile working on the introduction, finalizing imagery, arranging for a foreword and filling in the other details as the plan is to go to the printer in a few short weeks.
    • On Friday I’m wrapping up the week with a full-day training workshop on interviewing and synthesis.
    • Ten years gone: From February 2003 – The Rolling Stones use WiFi
    • What we’re consuming: La Scarola, The Americans, Uber Taxi.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Welcome to the week. It’s a holiday for some today but here we go…

    • Back into the field we go. We’re interviewing people at various career stages both locally and in Chicago (where I’ll be through the end of the week, hopefully not freezing my fingers off). The team is curious and enthusiastic and we’re excited about spending so much time with them and their customers.
    • A fieldwork week is pretty all-consuming so not much else to report; I’m looking ahead to next week’s improv presentation at Walmart’s Global UX Summit and to leading a full-day training workshop on interviewing and synthesis.
    • Ten years gone: From February 2003 – crazy in-flight experience, Google buys Pyra
    • What we’re consuming: California Academy of Sciences, Tom and Jerry theme song, Evil Homer.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    I gave a talk recently where I advocated for the importance of being aware of pop culture; this led to an interesting conversation (where not all parties agreed with my proposal). This set of quickies is dedicated to pop-culture-specific examples of note.

    ‘Les Misérables’ and Irony [NYT] – While I haven’t seen (and don’t plan to see) this movie (the stage show was enough for a lifetime), this analysis of the film’s cultural performance (and why that may explain it’s appeal to some) is pretty wonderful.

    The key to what is intended by these technical choices was provided for me by Hooper himself when he remarked in an interview (also printed in USA Today) that while “we live in a postmodern age where a certain amount of irony is expected, [t]his film is made without irony.” Irony is a stance of distance that pays a compliment to both its producer and consumer. The ironist knows what other, more na?Øve, observers do not: that surfaces are deceptive, that the real story is not what presents itself, that conventional pieties are sentimental fictions.

    The artist who deploys irony tests the sophistication of his audience and divides it into two parts, those in the know and those who live in a fool’s paradise. Irony creates a privileged vantage point from which you can frame and stand aloof from a world you are too savvy to take at face value. Irony is the essence of the critical attitude, of the observer’s cool gaze; every reviewer who is not just a bourgeois cheerleader (and no reviewer will admit to being that) is an ironist.

    “Les Misérables” defeats irony by not allowing the distance it requires. If you’re looking right down the throats of the characters, there is no space between them and you; their perspective is your perspective; their emotions are your emotions; you can’t frame what you are literally inside of. Moreover, the effect – and it is an effect even if its intention is to trade effect for immediacy – is enhanced by the fact that the faces you are pushed up against fill the screen; there is no dimension to the side of them or behind them; it is all very big and very flat, without depth. The camera almost never pulls back, and when it does so, it is only for an instant.

    Netflix to Deliver All 13 Episodes of ‘House of Cards’ on One Day [NYT] – I’m intrigued by how technology affords shifts in media consumption and then how those shifts inform the content of the media itself.

    Netflix will release a drama expressly designed to be consumed in one sitting: “House of Cards,” a political thriller starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright. Rather than introducing one episode a week, as distributors have done since the days of black-and-white TVs, all 13 episodes will be streamed at the same time. “Our goal is to shut down a portion of America for a whole day,” the producer Beau Willimon said with a laugh. “House of Cards,” which is the first show made specifically for Netflix, dispenses with some of the traditions that are so common on network TV, like flashbacks. There is less reason to remind viewers what happened in previous episodes, the producers say, because so many viewers will have just seen it. And if they don’t remember, Google is just a click away. The show “assumes you know what’s happening all the time, whereas television has to assume that a big chunk of the audience is always just tuning in,” said Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer.

    Muzak, Background Music to Life, to Lose Its Name [NYT] – Do we mourn when a derided brand goes away? The awful experiences that brand promised us – and perhaps much much worse – still seem to be on offer. I will shed no tear.

    The Muzak name – long part of the American vernacular, if sometimes as the butt of jokes – will be retired this week as part of a reorganization by its owner, Mood Media. The company is consolidating its services under a single brand, Mood, thus eliminating the Muzak name…”We have a team of music gurus, visual specialists, sound and scent-tech experts,” Mr. Abony said. “We develop compelling, consistent experiences that connect our clients with their customers. The new brand signifies the integration of the company.”

    This Week @ Portigal

    Here’s the deal for this week…

    • Last week we had a couple of great days with our client team concluding our project with a presentation and then a subsequent workshop. It was great to see them off and running with putting the insights and opportunities into action – or at least exploring the boundaries of what that might be. I’m pleased with how it went but also eager to check it off the list as fully complete; meanwhile it’s those last few bits and pieces that need be defined and then completed before I get my wish!
    • I’m with a team of researchers, product managers, designers and others today, leading a full-day training session on gathering insights from users and translating those into paradigm-shifting opportunities. I’m sure we’ll all be completely exhausted by the end of the day but hopefully exhilarated as well.
    • Our newest project is starting to take form as we introduce ourselves to recruits, confirm calendars, and oh yeah, meet with the team to finalize the field guide. Then, it’s fieldwork time coming right up!
    • Ten years gone: From February 2003 – Mr. Mitt
    • What we’re consuming: Burning Love, cheeses of the world.

    Out and About: Steve in Toronto

    I was in my old hometown of Toronto last week for Interaction13. Of course, I did spend some time wandering and (shivering and) taking pictures. The Flickr set is taking shape here but meanwhile some faves for you are below.
    REAL PEOPLE ARE LIKE THIS!

    Homeless memorial

    What is dangerous?

    Bash Back

    Sushi Dry Cleaner

    Evan Penny

    Tree

    Donuts

    Steam Whistle

    Gretzky

    Cold

    Guys

    Power

    This Week @ Portigal

    Welcome to Monday. Here’s the week:

    • Time to wrap this thing up: Tuesday we deliver a final presentation and Wednesday we lead an ideation workshop to help translate the opportunities into possible design and product solutions. It’s been a long time on this project so it’ll be good to close it up.
    • I’m teaching a full-day workshop next week so I’ll be putting the finishing touches on the material later this week. The audience for this class are part of a much larger effort to infuse a culture of innovation inside a leading technology company and I’m eager to be supporting that.
    • We’re getting ready to go back into the field on a new project that is in the middle of logistics (travel planning, statements of work, Google Doc coordination) but will soon be dominated by content.
    • I’m back from a successful if freezing week in Toronto running the Student Design Challenge at the Interaction13 Conference. Check out our winners: Bethany, Mani, , Soon and Ari. They all did an amazing job and I think found the experience really valuable. Also in Toronto, I spoke about Skill Building for Design Innovators at TorCHI.
    • Ten years gone: From February 2003 – World’s Worst Farmer, Jim Spagg’s body parts.
    • What we’re consuming: The Mindy Project, Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Restaurants Turn Camera Shy [NYT] – While on one level this is a story about shifting norms, where an emerging behavior is deemed rude and disruptive. Where it is or not is another question, not really explored here. But there is at least one example of finding alternative ways to address the need rather than just banning what is considered wrong.

    But rather than tell people they can’t shoot their food – the food they are so proud to eat that they need to share it immediately with everyone they know – he simply takes them back into his kitchen to shoot as the plates come out. “We’ll say, ‘That shot will look so much better on the marble table in our kitchen,’ ” Mr. Bouley said. “It’s like, here’s the sauce, here’s the plate. Snap it. We make it like an adventure for them instead of telling them no.” Mr. Bouley is setting up a computer system so that diners can get digital images of what they’ve eaten before they even get the check.

    ‘Friends’ Will Be There For You At Beijing’s Central Perk [NPR] – While in the west the show might be a somewhat-beloved artifact of a decade past, in another part of the world, the possibility for a different meaning is ripe. Perhaps, as the article suggests, this somehow embodies freedom that young Chinese are yearning for?

    Tucked away on the sixth floor of a Beijing apartment block is a mini replica of the cafe, orange couch and all, whose owner Du Xin introduces himself by saying, “Everyone calls me ‘Gunther’ here.” Indeed, he is a Chinese version of cafe owner Gunther from the show, down to his giddy passion for Rachel (the character played by Jennifer Aniston). “I’m crazy about Friends,” Du says. “For me, it’s like a religion. It’s my life.” The extent of Du’s Friends obsession is clear on entry to Beijing’s Central Perk. The level of detail is scary: same window, same doorway. People sitting on the orange sofa are watching TV – reruns of Friends, naturally. The cafe only serves snacks mentioned in Friends, and the menus are even annotated.

    The Role of Anecdotes in Science-Based Medicine – An imperfect but perhaps illustrative analogy to user research, about the relationship between stories and what some may call “proof.”

    Here are two limiting factors in how anecdotes should be incorporated into medical evidence: The first is that anecdotes should be documented as carefully as possible. This is a common practice in scientific medicine, where anecdotes are called case reports (when reported individually) or a case series (when a few related anecdotes are reported). Case reports are anecdotal because they are retrospective and not controlled. But it can be helpful to relay a case where all the relevant information is carefully documented – the timeline of events, all treatments that were given, test results, exam findings, etc. This at least locks this information into place and prevents further distortion by memory. It also attempts to document as many confounding variables as possible. The second criterion for the proper use of anecdotes in scientific medicine is that they should be thought of as preliminary only – as a means of pointing the way to future research. They should never be considered as definitive or compelling by themselves. Any findings or conclusions suggested by anecdotal case reports need to be later verified by controlled prospective clinical studies.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Here’s the scoopage for us

    • Our largest project is wrapping up. Beth is working on finalizing a document that turns our insights, a-has and visual models into a story that points towards next steps.
    • I am in Toronto this week for Interaction13, specifically the Student Design Challenge. Check out the amazing jurors who will be reviewing the student work, and the generous set of prizes that folks have given us for the winners.
    • While in Toronto I’m speaking at TorCHI (a group I helped found in the mid-1990s) about Skill Building for Design Innovators. Join us!
    • Ten years gone: From January 2003 – Putzmeister
    • What we’re consuming: Steam Whistle, Evan Penny, Momofuku.

    This week @ Portigal

    Happy short week (if you took Monday off; else: Happy Tuesday)…

    • We’re focusing on what our synthesis has revealed and moving from findings to implications, asking ourselves “so what?” as we shift from the messy walls of re-organized stickies to written documents. This is some heavy brain work.
    • I’m at PayPal on Wednesday, speaking about User Research for Mobile at their UX Summit.
    • Last week we published war stories from Cordy, Marta, and Rachel. I’m not expecting anything this week.
    • I’m heading to Toronto for the IxDA Student Design Challenge (part of the Interaction 13 conference); this weekend is the masterclass; check out the great jurors and the incredible prizes!
    • Ten years gone: From January 2003 – Exotic meats, jargon-inflected customer support
    • What we’re consuming: Snackle Mouth, Mr. Show, Diavolo Pizzeria, RiffTrax.

    Marta’s War Story: On confronting judgment

    Marta Spurgeon plays the roles of design researcher, innovation capabilities consultant, and sometime photographer at Doblin in Chicago.

    I was fresh out of the Peace Corps. Somehow, through an educational background in photography and videography and a unique set of personal contacts, I landed myself in a contracting gig at a design strategy firm. It turns out this was the perfect place for me. It makes sense that all roads led here, though I wouldn’t have been able to characterize it at the time. My experiences on that first project would solidify both my approach to ethnographic-style research and my interest in innovation in the business sector. The techniques and tasks associated with international development share some remarkable similarities with those we utilize in business innovation and design strategy.

    In our Peace Corps training, we were encouraged to “do nothing” for the first 6 months of our service, to just sit with the host-country nationals in their day-to-day activities, observe, ask questions. And indeed, most of my Peace Corps experience was composed of these moments of quiet observation, learning about a culture so foreign to me as to ultimately challenge my beliefs about my own. Many of us are familiar with this participant-observer stance as one of the foundations of ethnographic study. It requires us to put aside pre-conceptions and biases, to embrace the other as a credible expert despite the legions of difference between us. In both international development occupations as well as strategic design efforts, this anthropological approach to learning about the people we’re designing for is the foundation of an often ambiguous process to create and launch new concepts that will be adopted by those-or people like those-whom we’ve studied, and ideally help them improve their lives.

    Though I certainly had more casual experience doing this as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I was on my first professional foray into ethnographic-style user research. Our team was learning about people’s experiences using medical devices in the home. At this point, we had spoken with a couple dozen medical practitioners in their professional settings and patients in their homes. We were on our final interview of the study. My role had been to photograph and video the interviews, take notes, and generally to follow the lead of my teammates who were directing the session. But for this final interview, my colleagues asked if I’d like to conduct the conversation, and I took them up on the opportunity to lead my first formal in-context interview.

    We drove to a relatively remote location in Connecticut to see a middle class family of two parents and three boys. Two of the boys had an immune condition that required them to pump medication for one to two hours every two weeks. The parents had decided that rather than stigmatize or de-vitalize the process of the boys’ drug infusion, they would celebrate it by joining together as a family for a pizza party and movies on Friday night. This celebration was in full-swing as we entered their home.

    It was a lively atmosphere. It turned out this wasn’t just a family of five; they lived with a menagerie of animals in their small home-cats, dogs, birds, rabbits, reptiles, and guinea pigs, bringing their total number to between 20 and 30 inhabitants. We were introduced to the guinea pigs and shown the rabbits. Everyone was supremely generous and inviting. They gave us a little tour, encouraged us to get comfortable offering us food and drink several times. Cats snuggled up beside us, intermittently disrupting our video equipment or the conversation, while birds squawked in the background. Comfortable and confident amongst one another, this family moved freely and raucously around me and my two colleagues, us all a bit squished onto too few pieces of furniture for all eight of us humans.

    The parents graciously answered our questions about their children’s health and their medical needs, as the boys played video games and watched cartoons energetically, occasionally peppering the conversation with commentary or a boisterous request for attention-“Watch this! Watch!” They showed us how they hooked up the medication pumps, from prepping their sons’ skin to inserting the needles, demonstrating how it all worked. Father proudly brought out two large toolboxes full of medical supplies that they took along whenever they got in the car. He had come up with the idea of creating toolkits for the supplies they needed to be mobile. The interview continued successfully, if a bit disordered, given all the different activities happening. Not at any moment were they embarrassed or ashamed of the boys’ condition or the things they had to do to treat it. To them, this was just their life.

    And when we finally all said goodbye, and the door shut behind us, I think all three of us researchers breathed a small sigh of relief. Truthfully, it had all been quite chaotic, though we had done our best to take it in stride. But our last interview was complete, and we got into the car, heading toward New York to fly home the next day.

    Driving along, one of my teammates offhandedly said, “Well, I don’t think we learned anything useful from that. That scene was a complete mess! What a waste of time.” This somehow infuriated me. Sure it was intense, chaotic, indeed a less tidy environment than might be desired. They had more animal friends than a small farmer might. The lifestyle this family lived was obviously busy and disorganized. Certainly they had some health problems, probably some difficulty making ends meet, and a shortage of square footage for all of the living things in their home. But they also clearly loved one another and were just doing the best they could to live full, healthy, enjoyable lives. I may have been totally green and unfamiliar with utilizing this research practice for new business innovation, but I knew it wasn’t our place to judge, whether we approved of their lifestyle or not.

    I was so angry. Never one to hold back, I told this teammate exactly what I thought. That these people had generously and openly invited us into their home so that we might learn about how they live, how they experience their medical conditions, how they interact with these essential medical devices. Whether we found their lifestyle appealing or disgusting, it was valid. Their experiences were real, and we were there to learn about them. It was unfair and totally inappropriate to judge them, and it missed the entire point of what we were there to do. I said all this, I’m sure, not nearly as eloquently as I say it now, and likely with less respect than my colleague deserved as he had more experience and knowledge on the subject than I did. He actually took it relatively well all things considered, and we remain friends today despite the words exchanged on that trip.

    But I’ve found this to be one of the formative moments of my career-a moment when I expressed with passion and understanding just exactly what our purpose was there. And I’ve found similar sentiments coming to my lips again and again (with increasing grace and respect, of course), as I’ve had to remind most often clients but sometimes colleagues why we do this work. For an hour or two, we go into the home of a stranger, with a respect and appreciation for the validity of each individual’s experience. We must practice empathy, reserving judgment, allowing ourselves to stand in the other’s shoes, understand how he lives, why she does what she does, what they want to achieve, what makes that hard for them. So that in the end we might create better solutions that help them do it and make theirs and other people’s lives better and healthier. Sometimes we just have to remind ourselves.

    Cordy’s War Story: A Crisis of Credibility

    Cordy Swope (Twitter) describes himself as either a Design Researcher with Grey Hair or a design researcher with grey hair.

    IDEO. NYC. Early 2010.

    I had been summoned from Europe to lead a project about the future of education in the US. At IDEO, there is a well-established a code of ethics for site visits. This code takes extra measures to protect the privacy of informants – especially their identities and contact data. IDEO also has sensible, street-smart guidelines for fieldwork in sketchy environments. In previous jobs, I had seen a situation in which two of my female design researchers had to go to remote, sparsely populated parts of the Midwest and visit big, burly, smiling men who stored every conceivable power tool in their dungeon-like tornado cellars.

    There is never a shortage of people in NYC though, and recruiting there offers many delights. For instance, NYC is one of only several places where it is possible to recruit for impossibly specific profiles like: “Seeking 3 single dads who have volunteered with their children at a local charity organization within the past 2 weeks, and who also must struggle with their own gender identity and make at least $150K/year.” In the Tristate, if you are one in a million, by definition there are at least 22 of you.

    Our recruiter used Craigslist for most projects and straightaway found us one of our targets: a working mother who had successfully completed a BA online while still raising a family. I had a new team and my associate design researcher was an eager, empathic and articulate ethnographer doing her first project at IDEO. We headed out to Inwood in Brooklyn for our first site visit, hoping to get insights from this working, baccalaureate mom.

    During the ride, I played the senior mentor guy, offering advice about doing ethnography “in a design context.” We arrived at the address in Inwood, an obscure part of Brooklyn that looks like a sad, dilapidated part of Queens that in turn, tries to look like a nondescript suburb in Long Island. We were buzzed into the building, walked up to a door and were greeted by a large woman with a curly red mane of hair. Her name was “Roberta-but-call-me-Bert.”

    She let us in. The apartment was dim. It smelled of litter box mixed with burnt Dinty Moore beef stew that Ramon, Roberta-call-me-Bert’s husband had overheated on the stove. The dingy plaster walls were covered in old shopping lists, written in a mangled scrawl that suggested vaguely menacing pathologies and personality disorders suffered by their author.

    The sofa we sat on smelled of cat piss, and the living room offered up no pretense of ever having been cleaned. We sat up straight, made eye contact in that standard, pious, non-judgmental manner that earnest ethnographers often adopt. We began the paperwork. We were offered water and politely declined.

    I asked her about work, family, free time; all of the perfunctory questions before we got into her BA experience. Since I was the seasoned professional, I led the discussion, “Tell me a story about your favorite class…”, “Did you make friends with your classmates?”, “Do you still keep in touch?” Since my associate was taking notes, I focused on keeping the discussion moving and letting Roberta-call-me-Bert lead us to all sorts of exciting insights.

    The trouble was, she didn’t.

    “Oh, I don’t remember much about that class,” she said about her favorite statistics course she took just before graduating 18 months ago. “Yeah, I pretty much kept to myself, because I had to work and raise a family, you know?” I nodded my head earnestly.

    I began asking her questions about change: “Do you view your daughter’s education differently now since you got the degree?” “Not really,” she said, as her daughter ate ice cream from a container while watching a YouTube video about dog fighting.

    We eventually went on our way. Once out the door, I was about to launch into the debrief. Since I was the experienced one, I was going to teach my associate a simple, time-honored 20 minute structure I often use for debriefs: Interesting Behaviors/Motivations and Drivers/Problems and Frustrations/Opportunities.

    I noticed that she was grimacing.

    “What’s wrong?” I asked.

    “That was a waste.” she replied.

    “What do you mean?” I asked.

    “She lied, she never went to college.”

    I was gobsmacked.

    And she was absolutely right.

    There were no interesting behaviors. There were no drivers or motivations. There were no problems or frustrations. There were no opportunities.

    There was no diploma. It was “packed away somewhere.”

    We returned to the office. Another colleague was leading a project in men’s fashion and desperately trying to recruit shop-along dyads of couples in their 40’s and 50’s where wives selected the husband’s clothes. She said they had already recruited one couple on Craigslist and that her name was Roberta from Inwood, Brooklyn.

    This Week @ Portigal

    It’s almost the ides of January! It’s c-c-c-old and we’re thinking about what’s ahead for us this week.

    • We’ve got foamcores full of sticky notes from last week’s client workshop. Now we’ve got a few more interviews to review and then we’re going to start putting together our big themes and getting them written up for an upcoming presentation.
    • I’m putting together a talk for a Silicon Valley firm’s UX retreat. Much of the material is new for me so right now I’m outline mode, trying to organize thoughts, examples, and points of view.
    • Last week we published five War Stories (Daria, Prasad, Jen, Ryan, and Valerie) and this week already we’ve got one from Rachel. We’ll have one tomorrow for sure, and we’ll see what the rest of the week brings. Interested? Let us know your story!
    • In the community this week is the QRCA local chapter meeting. Beth will be there. Will you?
    • Ten years gone: From January 2003 – Infiltration, music industry upside
    • What we’re consuming: The Staircase, banchan, Django Unchained.

    Rachel’s War Story: Subject Matter May Be Inappropriate

    Rachel Wong, an independent design researcher and strategist, recalls a particularly revealing study participant.

    I was working at a design firm, doing a quick photo diary study. The user segment we were studying were young X-Games-types, e.g., risk-takers and thrill-seekers. We were trying to get inspired by their mindset and approach to life. This was back in the days when Polaroids were commonly used in fieldwork studies for people to document aspects of their lives in context. We gave each participant a photo diary kit, which included a Polaroid camera, film, and prompts on sticker labels. They were asked to use the prompts to inspire their picture taking, and then to affix the corresponding prompts to each photo. The prompts for this study were open-to-interpretation statements like: “This gets me excited” or “This is a relief.”

    One of the guys I’d recruited for the study was an acquaintance whom I’ll call Bobby – a shy, sweet, young guy big into skating. I was so happy he agreed to participate. A week later I dropped by his house to pick up his completed kit. “Thanks, it was fun,” he said earnestly, and I gave him his incentive and thanked him.

    As soon as I was home I reviewed Bobby’s photo diary and did a double take when I saw that for one of the photos Bobby had documented himself in the act of sex with an anonymous partner, associated with the prompt: “This feels good.” For a Polaroid, the photo had an impressive amount of detail, in close-up no less.

    Suffice to say, this was much different than the average photo diary entry and shocked and entertained my project team the whole next morning. As I posted all the photo diary responses in a large grid on foamcore, I struggled with whether to include the illicit photo in my display. We ended up turning it around, and then hiding it away when the client came for a meeting.

    But when I think about it now, I realize Bobby was communicating something about his life approach that was powerful and honest. It makes me wonder how much we edit our study participants’ responses in light of work appropriateness, and even how many of our study participants edit their own responses, shielding their most real opinions in exchange for what they think we want to hear.

    So, thank you Bobby for giving me an ounce of your truth, though I wasn’t really equipped to handle it. And I’m glad it was fun.

    Valerie’s War Story: Rank order

    This story comes to us courtesy of Valerie Green, Research & Strategy Manager at Teague.

    I was recently working on an air freshener project. It’s important to note at the onset that I live in Seattle, enjoy fresh air most of the year, and don’t favor perfumes or fragrances in my home. So it was already a bit of torture to go into three homes a day over the course of a week and smell all these strong, artificial fragrances. Most participants used multiple air fresheners in the home, and they would spray the air fresheners multiple times during the interviews. As the lead interviewer I would of course participate, sniffing the air appreciatively when they exclaimed how much they loved the scents.

    The types of people who use air fresheners in their home like to create welcoming home environments, so most of the homes we visited were nicely kept up and relatively organized. Nancy’s (not her real name) home was a different story. We walked into a wall of stink. At first I wasn’t sure where it was coming from, but shortly after the interview started Nancy told me her three small dogs were indoor dogs (as if there is such a thing). In this case, it meant that they peed and pooped indoors. That’s when I noticed a pee pad in a corner, while other people on the interview noticed some poop indoors. I figured this would be a short interview.

    The saddest thing is that Nancy, like the other participants, talked about wanting her home to smell good for herself and guests, and how much she loves air fresheners! It would have been incredibly awkward and inappropriate to say anything, so I kept my mouth shut and just nodded in affirmation…

    Curating Consumption

    More observations and stuff that Beth and Steve have assembled over the past few weeks.

    Can’t get there from here
    sorry
    This is such a fundamental usability issue I have to think there’s something wrong with my iPad or the Kindle app. Which operation is not supported? Buying this book. That’s right…click on that inviting little link down there that says “Buy Now” and get this error. Okay, this is Amazon taking a swipe at Apple (“Mo way you’re getting 30% of our revenue for something on the Kindle!”) But I’m not sure the average user will get that. They’ve helpfully provided another link for me: “What? That Buy Now link that should take you to iTunes to purchase this book doesn’t work? Goodness! Well, how about you See details for this book in the Kindle Store!” Nope – no mas. That operation isn’t currently supported either. So two lovely, juicy links tempting me to buy this book with no way to act [Conceptual sidenote: This would be an ideal design for many vices if they could tempt you but never give you the ability to follow through…the beer that can’t be opened, or the hermetically sealed chocolate bar]. I imagine there’s a product team somewhere at Amazon scratching their heads wondering why sales aren’t tracking but see an astronomical number of clicks on their buy links.Hint: we users will keep clicking thinking we must be doing something wrong, thinking “surely both buy options aren’t dead ends”. When we realize that they are, we get frustrated and take our own stand, in this case simply not buying. /BT

    Two is better than one?
    soap
    In nearly every bathroom I’ve been in (in the US at least) there are at least two soap dispensers – one in use and the other over to the side like yesterday’s newspaper. They’re in all shapes and sizes, usually one (like this one) is discreetly attached to the sink while the other is mounted proudly on the wall. I’m guessing it was aesthetics that sold the sleek little bar peeking from the counter top, I just wonder how long it took for the folks who had to crawl under the sink and refill it to put up a silent revolt – leaving people to pump furiously at one sink, then another then another, to no avail – before management broke down and put the one on the wall. /BT

    Too soon or too late?
    gang
    Gangnam Style is the global sensation that ever your parents know about. I imagine the restaurant owners protest-too-much denial of cashing in on a (no doubt fleeting) trend by pointing to the district in Seoul over the song. But then why is the clucky poultry mascot doing such a distinctive little dance?

    Update (June 2013) – Church’s Chicken in Canada is doing something similar (thanks, Mom!)!
    /SP

    The remote control that gives you a lecture in virtue
    patience
    In a hotel in Melbourne, the staff have clearly become tired of people complaining. Sure it’s partly about delayed gratification but it’s also a well-understood usability problem when feedback is slower than we expect. If the elevator call light doesn’t go on, you’re going to hit it again. But the warm-up for hotel televisions is its own flavor of usability hell. Will the set turn on? Will an LED change color? And how quickly? Apparently this particular TV set is so far off of expectations than the solution was a lovely sticker appealing to your sense of decency. Whatever, that’s a multiple of 8 seconds I’ll never get back again. /SP

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    What It’s Like to Experience New Technology After 25 Years in Jail [Gizmodo] – From a Quora thread to a Gizmodo post (and there may be a book deal happening?) here’s a real edge-case user type, someone with almost no exposure to current technology.

    Prior to my release from prison, I gave considerable thought to a technology strategy. My wife was used to using Microsoft products, but everything I’d read indicated that Apple products offered a much quicker learning curve. On the day she picked me up she handed me an iPhone 4S. During my first week of liberty, we purchased a MacBook Pro and iMac desktop system. I hoped they would all work seamlessly together. But since my wife wasn’t as comfortable with the Apple products, she insisted that I load them all up with Microsoft products so she could rescue me when I had problems. I’ve had a lot of problems coming up to speed with simple tasks like email, or synching all of my computers together. I’ve also had a problem remembering all of the passwords she assigned to me. I keep arguing that we should use only one password, but that only brings forth her arguments on the dangers of identity theft. Since I met many men in prison who served time for identity theft, I trust that my wife has a point.

    The Improbable is the New Normal [The Technium] – What are the consequences of spectacle fatigue (and I don’t mean your eyes and nose feeling sore)? And what does that mean for those who intend to entertain us (say, film and television) with more traditional content? (via Kottke)

    The internets are also brimming with improbable feats of performance — someone who can run up a side of a building, or slide down suburban roof tops, or stack up cups faster than you can blink. Not just humans, but pets open doors, ride scooters, and paint pictures. The improbable also includes extraordinary levels of super human achievements: people doing astonishing memory tasks, or imitating all the accents of the world. In these extreme feats we see the super in humans.

    Every minute a new impossible thing is uploaded to the internet and that improbable event becomes just one of hundreds of extraordinary events that we’ll see or hear about today. The internet is like a lens which focuses the extraordinary into a beam, and that beam has become our illumination. It compresses the unlikely into a small viewable band of everyday-ness. As long as we are online – which is almost all day many days — we are illuminated by this compressed extraordinariness. It is the new normal.

    To the uninformed, the increased prevalence of improbable events will make it easier to believe in impossible things. A steady diet of coincidences makes it easy to believe they are more than just coincidences, right? But to the informed, a slew of improbably events make it clear that the unlikely sequence, the outlier, the black swan event, must be part of the story.

    Overthinking It subjects the popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn’t deserve – There’s a lot of things being overthought on the site. This example is one of at least two posts (first, and second) where Law and Order episodes were put into a database and then analyzed and analyzed.

    Over the entire run of the show, more than a third of all the episodes ended in Guilty verdicts, while another third ended in plea bargains. 80% of episodes ended in solid wins: either Guilty verdicts, plea bargains, or implied victories. That’s not too shabby, considering that the actual NYPD has a homicide clearance rate of about 50%. (Although you have to figure Law & Order isn’t meant to represent every case these detectives investigated; in 20 seasons, I don’t think there was a single murder that didn’t result in an arrest.)

    (UPDATE 12/10/12: One of the commenters on Reddit has pointed out that the “clearance rate” has nothing to do with convictions, only arrests. In that case, Law & Order’s clearance rate would be nearly 100%, since even in the rare episodes without a trial somebody usually gets arrested. I guess I’d know this stuff if I had watched The Wire.)

    The Fake Shows from Arrested Development are Now Listed on Netflix [Paste] – I love seeing fake products and brands treated like real ones. Reminds me of the in-production Newsreaders, a fake news magazine TV show that originally aired as a special episode of the parody Childrens Hospital (which also had fake promos for NTSF:SD:SUV::, leading to that becoming a real show as well.

    Next spring, Netflix will premiere the highly anticipated and currently in-production fourth season of Arrested Development. Along with the rights to the show come the rights to all of the shows within the show, and to tide fans over until next spring Netflix has featured fake listings of Scandalmakers, Wrench, Boyfights and more. There is no actual footage to watch-the links just take you the Arrested Development season one page- but it’s pretty funny seeing the summaries and poster photos listed on Netflix like they belong to actual shows. Also listed are Les Cousins Dangereux, Girls with Low Self-Esteem: Newport Beach, Families with Low Self-Esteem and Mock Trial with J. Reinhold.

    Ryan’s War Story: Enthusiasticus Interruptus

    UX Reseacher Ryan DeGorter relates a familiar uncomfortable scenario, finding himself in the field with a colleague who isn’t quite on board with the whole listening thing.

    Our UX Research team created a program called “Coffee with Customers” where we conducted interview sessions with our customers over a hot brew. It not only allowed us to take a step back from the daily grind, but gave the chance for others in the organization to be involved in the process. With this particular coffee and research session, I took along a product manager “Bob”.

    Prior to the coffee session, I walked Bob through the interview style, and provided him a rough sketch of how the interview would flow. Bob was particularly interested in gaining insight on how people use social applications, so I worked those into the discussion guide. The research session started at 10am, so I picked Bob up at 9am to give ample time for one last review with Bob. I explained that I would like to be the one to lead the interview in order to maintain flow of the discussion. However, if he had a question to ask, he should try to remember to start the question with Who, What, Why, How or When.

    It was a wintery day and Bob and I arrived at the coffee shop shortly before 10am. It was quite crowded as we did an initial scan for the participant “Kevin”. A few minutes later Kevin arrived. During introductions it was clear Kevin was a bit tentative about the session. When we were ordering coffee and muffins, it was difficult to start a conversation with him. Nevertheless, we found a table where we could sip our coffee and chat. Since Kevin was clearly nervous, I spent a little longer making small talk in hopes of trying to remove the awkwardness. We chatted about the weather, and how Waterloo [Ontario] never seems to get a proper winter anymore. Before long, we had a stronger rapport with Kevin, so we dove right into the interview.

    I started with questions like “Where did you buy your smart phone?” and “What was your thought process for choosing that one?” Kevin continued to open up and was providing us good detailed information. He gave us very clear stories about why he chose this particular phone, what he enjoys about it as well as points of frustrations. All this time my partner Bob was sipping on his slightly cooler coffee and taking it all in without writing any notes. It was as if this was his normal daily routine and this interview was like every other research session he has done before.

    As we delved deeper into Kevin’s usage patterns, we moved on to the topic of social applications. I asked Kevin to walk us through why he uses Facebook and Twitter and asked him to show us how he did this on his smart phone. Bob shuffled his chair closer to Kevin so he too could observe Kevin’s actions. Kevin confidently swiped through the Twitter application, explaining his rationale for following certain friends. At this point there was a sudden interruption which caught both Kevin and me by surprise. Bob leaned in even closer to the device and pointed to the screen as if it was his own phone. “Do you do it like this?” Bob asked “Um…I don’t think so.” Kevin replied hesitantly. Bob then suddenly grabs his pen, hunches over the table, and with both arms on the desk, furiously writes on a piece of paper, acting as if he needed to catch every word that was coming from Kevin’s lips. I felt like everything started going to go in hyper speed as I was no longer the pilot of this interview. I could not make out what Bob was actually writing, but he obviously had some specific answers that needed to write down personally. I tried to ease the tension Bob’s action had created, saying “That’s great that you use the application that way, what else do you do on this phone?” I tried to convey to Kevin that he was not being tested and that we instead were just seeking inspiration and understanding. Although I tried to move on, Bob interrupted again and asked Kevin to navigate to another area of the application, asking “Do you do this?” type of questions while he clearly had specific answers he was looking for. This went on for another few minutes, despite my efforts to regain control of the interview by trying to rephrase Bob’s questions in a more open manner. My efforts were in vain and I could see Kevin was shutting down and resorting to Yes and No answers. I needed to act and act quickly. “It looks like we need some refills. Why don’t we take a short break?” I said in a desperate hope to try and free Kevin from Bob’s interrogation. I was lucky that Kevin needed to use the washroom, so I took the opportunity to speak to Bob in the coffee line. I reminded him that we had an audio device so we did not have to write down any notes. I also addressed his interview style. I politely stated that I will be asking the questions during the remainder of the session while making sure to address those items that he provided me with in the discussion guide. Bob took my concerns to heart and allowed me to complete the interview without interrupting. We never fully gained the openness back from Kevin, but overall, it was an inspiring session for Bob and me. As we shook Kevin’s hand goodbye, I made a mental note thinking “This is why those UX books encourage you to ask questions instead of your stakeholders.”

    In the field you always have to be on your feet. A single participant can be tricky as you try and figure out their personality and what will help them feel comfortable enough to openly talk to you. Additionally, your colleague may also become too eager and sidetrack the session in order to get their questions answered, despite being told how they should approach the participant. When things go awry, you need to be able to stay calm and get the interview back on track. It was great that Bob realized his mistake during the break and I will not let this experience prevent future colleagues to accompany me during a session. However, I will definitely spend more time explaining to my colleague the importance of rapport and emphasizing the proper technique on how to ask participants questions so as not to overwhelm them.

    Jen’s War Story: Trust your gut, it can save your life!

    Jen Iudice is a Senior Design Researcher with Teague. Here is her story about the road not taken.

    Having done ethnographic research for nearly 20 years, I’ve definitely seen it all in the field. Fortunately, that includes coming across some very interesting and enthusiastic participants. On occasion however, there are times when the recruiter misses the boat, things slip through the cracks, and wham bam, you are in a painfully uncomfortable (or in rare cases) a dangerous situation. Hence the challenge of screening: striking a balance between actually screening participants while trying not to lead them. As researchers we are aware of the occasional duds who sneak their way into a study in order to make a buck! This is one of those stories.

    Recently, I was charged to do some field research for a client about how people use their personal data; a topic that covered a massive amount of sub topics, and could apply to almost anyone. The screener was carefully developed with the client’s input, and the recruit was filled with a great spectrum of participants. Good so far.

    The client was very motivated to participate in the research, which is almost always a positive. However, on this particular occasion my colleague and I were ultimately relieved that he could not make it to this interview!

    When we arrived at the location, we noticed an old, run down high-rise building with a bail bondsman conveniently located on the bottom floor. There were several “tenants” taking leisurely “naps” in front of the doorway to greet us. At that moment I felt a terrible sinking feeling in my stomach. My colleague half joking/half seriously said, “I don’t want to go in there Jen…I don’t care if he uses Mint.com!”

    As we drove around the building several times I contemplated: Am I being too judgmental? Could this really be a well-qualified participant that I am simply not willing to accept because of the sketchy appearance of his place of residence? Can we risk entering this building with all of our expensive electronic/video equipment?

    My colleague and I decided not to risk ignoring the feeling in our guts, and phoned to cancel the interview.

    When the participant answered the phone he sounded very strange and out of sorts. I let him know that we would still pay him for his time, but we could not make it to the interview (translation: we are afraid to come into your building!). He then explained that he had just been robbed at gunpoint in his apartment, and that it was a good thing we did not come over! This became even more concerning when we realized that you could not enter this building without going through a security check-in at the front desk (this was another tip-off that we should not go in!). This event would mean either the security precautions were a joke, or that someone that lives in the building had robbed him! Needless to say, I did not ask any details, and he continued to talk to me about how distraught he was. I did my best to try and console the man and wished him luck with his situation. AWKWARD!

    It boggles my mind to think about what could have happened if we had followed through with this interview! As one could imagine, I “verbalized my concerns” to the recruiter (i.e., I gave them an earful!), but moving forward, I will always map out my in-home interviews and will always make sure I have a colleague with me on every interview…just to be safe!

    Be careful out there, everyone. Always be aware of your surroundings. If it doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t!

    Prasad’s War Story: Skin in the game

    Prasad Kantamneni is a Silicon Valley transplant in rural Andhra Pradesh. He lives at the intersection of politics, design, social work, and entrepreneurship.

    I was visiting an informant’s home with a couple of colleagues to observe her trying to find information on the Internet.

    Things were great – until she opened the door. The first thing we noticed was that the carpet had a lot of pink confetti on it. The confetti seemed to be everywhere. Then things turned scary when we realized that the confetti was skin — lots of it! The informant had shed most of her outer layer of skin.

    At this point, all of us were worried that we would catch something. I knew my colleagues did not want to continue with the visit, but I didn’t want to be disrespectful by cancelling the visit without a valid reason. So I made the call to continue.

    To give my colleagues an out, I asked them to record the interview — which gave them an excuse to keep standing. I then proceeded to ask her about the kinds of information she looked for on-line. She mentioned that, among other things, she sometimes researched her medical condition. At which point I asked her to do what she would normally do when researching the condition. As she searched for the information, all of us were equally involved, trying to read if the disease was communicable!

    Once we realized that the disease was not communicable, we were able to get past our mental block and proceed with the interview.

    This is one visit none of us were likely to forget any time soon.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Hello Monday and hello all. We’re back into the swing of things; one of my favorite tweets last week was someone saying it was the longest 3-day week ever. So true for us as well. Anyway, here’s what we’ve got happening:

    • We’ve been closely reading a bunch of transcripts and are spending a full day and a half this week with visiting clients to sort through the fieldwork stories and pull out the bigger themes and patterns. I’m pretty excited about some of the ideas that the transcripts prompted for me just on my own, so no doubt once we get into the room some interesting things will happen.
    • We just published Daria’s War Story – an epic one – and there should be one more each day for the rest of the week or so.
    • In the community this week is Cyd Harell’s talk on Fearless Mobile Research. I’ll be there. Will you?
    • Ten years gone: From January 2003 – Steve’s sci-fi detective fiction from the 80s, Flasher the Clown.
    • What we’re consuming: This Is My Kingdom, chicken and waffles (for breakfast!), Last Train Home, Gang Nam Chicken.

    Daria’s War Story: Human Thresholds

    Here’s a story about a very challenging participant, from Daria Loi who works as UX Innovation Manager at Intel.

    About five years ago a colleague and I traveled to Sweden, Indonesia and PRC for a study of storage practices in homes. We were particularly interested in observing everyday activities related to the “stuff” one owns, like clustering, archiving, organizing, disposing, sharing, holding, recycling and so on. The goal was to gather useful insights from the analog world to better understand how people might deal with data in the digital one.

    In each city we recruited a number of participants to be interviewed twice and to complete a cultural probe during the week between the interviews. The first interview (about 3 hours) started by focusing on baseline data for the first 60-90 minutes, and then shifted to a home tour in which we would go room by room, observing the environment and asking questions arising from what we noticed or from what the participant indicated during the baseline interview. During this part of the first interview we would often find ourselves opening drawers, cupboards, wardrobes and the like, with participants’ permission of course.

    There is nothing more fascinating than seeing what people do with their stuff. To some extent you see yourself and your own behaviors in action, and in other cases you have to be prepared to find the most obscure things in those drawers – so obscure than even their owners are perplexed when they rediscover them!

    I have fond memories of a young and bright Swedish woman laughing with puzzled surprise when she discovered the enormous amount of candles she managed to accumulate and that all those candles were in the same drawer as a flyswatter she did not recall owning. I still giggle when I think of a beautiful Indonesian family taking us in their storage room, to discover they had 6-7 identical broken appliances. I still remember the puzzlement of the husband, trying to work out how on earth that accumulation happened. And again, I always smile with affection and admiration when I think of a Chinese painter and his lovely wife showing us their feng-shui based order of things.

    During this quite long study (a bit more than two weeks in the field for each country, long for corporate research) one of many adventures is about a Chengdu-based participant, who my anthropologist colleague has since always referred to as “the interviewee from hell.”

    It all starts in the morning at 9 am; the first interview for that day. We ring the bell of an apartment, but no response. After a few minutes we try again, but still nothing. We start feeling edgy as we do not want to be culturally inappropriate or pushy. Yet suddenly the door opens to reveal a young pajama-covered woman with puffy eyes who is evidently just out of bed.

    The young lady, which here will remain of course unnamed, looks at us evidently annoyed, flashing “how dare you to wake me up” eyes, and asks us what we want. The translator explains we are there for the interview and she tells us she’s pretty sure we are one day early.

    My colleague and I begin thinking of ways to accommodate her interview another day but the participant let us in – even though we fear this is not the best premise for the best interview.

    After the usual preambles and consent form sign-offs, we set up our video gear and proceed with the first part of the interview. I should have immediately realized something was off when I saw the participant clutching to her mobile phone with great intimacy – the glued-on-my-body type of intimacy. But no, her behavior did not immediately ring the “this is going to be a disaster” bell and I let my colleague start with the interview, while I start my picture/video taking activity.

    There is something rather cool about framing another human being through a camera. You observe little details even more deeply. And now, all the little details immediately ring the infamous “this is going to be a disaster interview” bell. For the rest of the interview the following occurs over and over again:

    1. Colleague asks a question while participant checks her phone (text, emails, internet)
    2. Participant responds with “yes”, “no” and “hmm-I think so” type of answers
    3. Colleague’s face changes color into a subtle pink tending to a gentle red
    4. Participant continues checking her phone, rarely looking up or even acknowledging someone is asking her questions
    5. Another round of question and yes/no answers follows
    6. Colleague face increasingly changes shades till she looks like a pepper

    This loop goes on and on as I take pictures of-er-participant checking her phone, while my colleague is about to expel her bile on the carpet in front of her. After a while we try to send a subliminal message by asking whether she would prefer to meet another time since she seems busy (read: distracted and totally unengaged). The young lady looks at us (finally!) and says “No, it’s fine. Let’s do it now” (read: this is tedious already, I am already upset you interrupted my beauty sleep, so let’s get over and done with it).

    So…we go on. After a while as this situation continues I start having the giggles. I typically try to see the best in any situation so I find myself firstly intrigued by how limitless this somewhat dysfunctional situation is, then amazed by how upset my usually calm and controlled colleague can get. Eventually I was tempted to suggest we refocus the interview on her mobile phone usage, since that is evidently her passion.

    My thinking was to make the best of the time, opportunistically refocus the interview to a totally different topic even if not helping our project. I wanted to use our time to learn something useful instead of pushing a cart into an evidently void-of-usefulness corner. Ultimately we’d have some use for data on mobile phone attraction, right?

    Anyway, the rest of the interview continues on the same lines, with the exception of the home tour part, where my pictures are not of a user handling her phone while on a couch, but those of shoulders hunched on a phone. During the tour, the verbal part of the interview shifts from yes/no answers to a number of grunts and monosyllables. The red pepper is teary at this stage (or maybe it’s all that eye rolling that produces those tears?)

    After three hours we finally leave. As the door closes I seriously think my colleague will either burst into tears, have a meltdown or light the apartment building on fire. She instead keeps her cool, aside from a few colorful words that I won’t put in writing.

    But the fun part is not yet over, because of course after a week we have a second interview scheduled!

    The second interview is definitely much more colorful: instead of taking pictures of a participant and her phone, I manage to take pictures of serious multitasking in action: send texts and check your social network on the phone with the left hand while checking the stock exchange on the laptop with the right hand. And do not forget the yes/no/grunt answers and minimal level of auditory attention paid to my frustrated colleague.

    If now you were to ask me: what did you learn from this participant, Daria? I will tell you: lots.

    Yet the real question is: did I learn anything useful for our project? Not a thing.

    Regardless, she gave me a good story to share, I will never forget her and I seriously learned a great deal about human thresholds.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Happy 2013 to everyone! It’s Wednesday, back to work for a short week after a long break. Chilly and sunny outside, foggy inside (well, inside my head at least, as I fight off the last bits of a holiday cold).

    • We’ve taken a set of fieldwork transcripts and divided them up between ourselves and our client team in preparation for an extensive synthesis workshop next week.
    • Proposals! We’re working with a number of different organizations to lay out a range of interesting engagements for the next few months.
    • I turned in my latest book manuscript before I took off for holidays; am waiting to hear from the editorial team about next steps but I know we’re making serious headway towards actual publication. More details when I have them.
    • Ten years gone: From January 2003 – clown names, streaming audio of porn music, exotic meats.
    • What we’re consuming: crab, Frequency and Volume, ramen, Weird Al and Bill Plympton.

    Portigal year in review, 2012

    Lots of emotions as the year winds down, with another one waiting just around the corner. Here’s some of what went down this past year.

    Journey through the past: 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008.

    Video from UX Lisbon: Discover and act on insights about people

    The lovely folks at UXLx have just posted the video from my talk earlier this year, Discover and act on insights about people.

    Some of the most effective ways of understanding what customers want or need – going out and talking to them – are surprisingly indirect. Insights produced by these methods impact two facets of innovation: first as information that informs the development of new products and services, and second as catalysts for internal change. Steve discusses methods for exploring both solutions and needs and explores how an understanding of culture (yours and your customers) can drive design and innovation.

    If you don’t see the video embedded above, you can view it here

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Give And Take: How The Rule Of Reciprocation Binds Us [NPR] – While “you can’t control other people” is a constant life lessons, it’s interesting to consider what science teaches about how we can influence and induce behaviors in others.

    Kunz was a sociologist at Brigham Young University. Earlier that year he’d decided to do an experiment to see what would happen if he sent Christmas cards to total strangers. And so he went out and collected directories for some nearby towns and picked out around 600 names. “I started out at a random number and then skipped so many and got to the next one,” he says. To these 600 strangers, Kunz sent his Christmas greetings: handwritten notes or a card with a photo of him and his family. And then Kunz waited to see what would happen. About five days later, responses started filtering back – slowly at first and then more, until eventually they were coming 12, 15 at a time. Eventually Kunz got more than 200 replies. “I was really surprised by how many responses there were,” he says. “And I was surprised by the number of letters that were written, some of them three, four pages long…We got cards for maybe 15 years,” he says.

    Tapping citizen-scientists for a novel gut check [SF Chron] – While we always come up with new methods to get people involved in data collecting for research, this was something I hadn’t really thought of before. By the way, the notion of the microbiome is a fascinating one that seems to be continually gaining traction. Although we haven’t had the guts (if you will) to actually do it, we declared we would stop using “ecosystem” in client presentations and start talking about “microbiomes.”

    Now for a fee – $69 and up – and a stool sample, the curious can find out just what’s living in their intestines and take part in one of the hottest new fields in science. The American Gut Project, aims to enroll 10,000 people – and a bunch of their dogs and cats too – from around the country. uBiome, separately aims to enroll nearly 2,000 people from anywhere in the world. Scott Jackisch, a computer consultant in Oakland, Calif., ran across American Gut while exploring the science behind different diets, and signed up last week. He’s read with fascination earlier microbiome research: “Most of the genetic matter in what we consider ourselves is not human, and that’s crazy. I wanted to learn about that.” Testing a single stool sample costs $99 in that project, but he picked a three-sample deal for $260 to compare his own bacterial makeup after eating various foods. “I want to be extra, extra well,” said Jackisch, 42. Differing gut microbes may be the reason “there’s no one magic bullet of diet that people can eat and be healthy.”

    “We don’t just want people that have a gut-ache. We want couch potatoes. We want babies. We want vegans. We want athletes. We want anybody and everybody because we need that complete diversity,” added American Gut co-founder Jeff Leach, an anthropologist.

    White points mean prizes for safe driving in Dubai [The National] – Is our preference for carrot or stick culturally constructed? Schemes that give students rewards for good grades are often seen as “bribery” and decried for encouraging the wrong thing. Yet inverting our punishment-based driving-record approach seems so kindly. I suppose its efficacy needs to be proven, whether in Dubai or Dubuque.

    Motorists who go the longest period without a traffic violation will be given priority in a new police system that rewards good driving with prizes, including a car. Under the white points system, drivers of vehicles registered in Dubai are awarded a point for each month without traffic offences or Salik toll-road fines. Drivers who go 12 months without any violations will be eligible for prizes worth a minimum of Dh500 each. Dubai Police say there will be between 250 to 500 prizes. The head of Dubai Police traffic department, Maj Gen Mohammed Saif Al Zaffin, said today that if there were more good drivers than prizes then those with the longest standing clean sheets would be given priority. “We have a specific budget for the prizes so there might need to be a selection process based on the number of people who will be eligible for a prize as part of the scheme,” Maj Gen Al Zaffin said.

    Trying the Iguana Cha-Cha: Thoughts on Steve Portigal’s Improv Talk

    Alicia Dornadic has a great writeup of last week’s talk on improv, creativity and design.
    DSC_2464

    Overcoming one’s fears to do improv in front of a group of strangers must feel so empowering, but watching it can be excruciating. Some people are deer in headlights, whereas others are composed and focused. But the activity goes well, meaning everyone manages to say a word in turn, and at times the sentences actually make sense. “How did it go?” Steve asks when they’re done. Participants share that it was hard to anticipate what would be said, so they had to be “in the moment.” You can’t control the sentence and so just have to go with the flow. Sometimes you have be a “the” person or an “and” person to help the sentence make sense, sacrificing a cool word choice to help the team. Get where this is going? Good collaboration tips. Personally, I love to see the player’s expression the second after they say their word. Eyes wide, relieved that they said something, hopeful to see what comes next. It was exciting.

    David’s War Story: Suit yourselves

    David Serrault is an Information Architect and Experience Designer for SNCF, in France.

    It took a long time and several discussions with the stakeholders from SNCF (the French railways operator) to receive authorisation for a field investigation using old-age simulation suits. We were to focus on Gare Du Nord, the largest railway station in Europe. The station hosts more than 190 million passengers a year, including commuters, long distance travelers from all across Europe, businessmen and tourists from anywhere in the world. Gare Du Nord is filled with people in movement, following their daily routine or finding their way in this complex ecosystem of platforms, corridors and stairs, all managed by several operators.

    I have always been fascinated by railway stations. Even more than the airport, I think that they are like temples of modernity, ruled by time and noisy, heavy, industrial technology.

    The goal of this onsite experiment was to evaluate the gaps in the information provided to travelers, especially older ones. The old-age simulation suit makes the user feel the constraints of an elderly person. The suit, made in Japan, looks like a kind of kimono such as one might wear for practicing judo. But this one is green and red, covered with belts and weights in order to simulate the physical constraints of an old person. Also, you have to wear glasses to restrict your visual field and reduce your ability to perceive contrasts as well as ear plugs to reduce your hearing.

    We were four: my friend and colleague Christophe Tallec (a French service designer) and two students. We set out in the morning for our day of experimentation. Indeed we were a bit worried by working in such a crowded public space. Even with an official authorisation from the station officer it was difficult to imagine what the reaction of the police authority and the users of the station would be. The place had been a scene of a spontaneous riot a few months before, when a young boy from a low wage suburb commonly called “Banlieusard” had been arrested and assaulted by the police.

    The main difficulty we faced was more a logistical one. Each of us was to attempt a pre-defined journey through the railway station but we had to find a place to put on the suit. Eventually we did this behind some ticket vending machines that were close to the bus station. Not a very intimate place, but good enough!

    Surprisingly the police simply came to ask us what we where doing and then let us do our job. We didn’t encounter special reactions from the passengers who seemed to deliberately ignore us.

    This experiment was a revelation, especially for the youngest members of the team. We realised how many constraints someone with physical limitations can face during journey through a public space like this one. These spaces are dedicated to people flow, but disabled or challenged individuals are like aliens. There are many initiatives to make these areas accessible and readable but how can this be a priority for an organisation that has to manage daily security and transit efficiency for millions of people. It is a huge challenge for the designers and the architects who work for these places.

    Eventually we realised that indeed a few passengers were staring at us, especially ones who were dressed as Sailor Moon, Naruto or other manga and video game heroes. The day of our research was also one of the largest conventions for Japanese culture aficionados in Paris. Japan Expo is known for its concentration of “cosplay” practitioners; many these young adults were simply in their costume to the event by public transit.

    From their side, I suppose they were wondering what kind of manga persona we were playing. From my side, I felt like I was at the meeting point between modern and post-modern times.

    This Week @ Portigal

    It’s our last real week of work for the year. And as seems to happen every Monday for the past little while, rain has turned to sunshine by the time I sit down to tell you about our week ahead.

    • Wonderful topline session with our team concluded last week; we’re on the cusp of diving into synthesis, full-on, but as often happens with this organization, we’re in a bit of a holding pattern on schedule.
    • Potential projects abound. Our cup nearly runneth over with a diverse set of interesting projects for the first quarter of 2013. We’ll be excited to see which we’ll move ahead with.
    • I’ve set aside some time to do our Portigal-in-2012 writeup. Watch for that!
    • I’ve got one War Story in hand, a near-final draft of another, and a promise of a third.
    • We’ve got our winners for the IxD13 Student Design Challenge. Lots of logistics to get them sorted for travel to Toronto next year and now the planning for the conference moves forward: figuring out the details of their assignment, setting up our judges for Toronto, and looking to see what kind of prizes we can arrange for these folks.
    • I’m taking a book day to finalize the next revision of the manuscript before the year runs out. It’s been a while since I had the time to focus but I’ve got a deadline to meet!
    • Ten years gone: From December 2002 – The 250-word short story
    • What we’re consuming: SF Sketchfest, The Day the Earth Stood Cool, Best Music Of 2012, Best Books Of 2012, The 100 best British films, Top 100 Bay Area Restaurants 2012.

    People Like Us

    People Like Us was a mockumentary that ran on BBC radio in the late 90s before becoming a TV show. The radio shows are hilarious and a great illustration of what can and does go wrong in fieldwork. Each episode is essentially a total War Story.

    The shows follow a hapless reporter, Roy Mallard, investigating the lives and work of ordinary people: a bank manager, an artist, a stay-at-home mom, an actor and so on. Things go awry: despite being married (Really? You?) he finds himself awkwardly attracted to an interviewee, only to realize that another interviewee is her bitter ex-boyfriend. He’s a passenger in a recklessly driven car. He’s witness to firings, incompetency, violence, relationship hassles. He trips, drops things, is sneezed upon, breaks a washing machine, and more.

    At the same time, his attempts to interview people and get to the heart of what their lives are about are thwarted. If not by circumstances, then by the inarticulateness of his interviewees, or by their sheer misinterpretation of his questions (e.g., Q: You’ve been here for a long time. What kind of things have changed? A: My hair.)

    People Like Us manages to be completely absurd yet with an eye-rolling kind of truth that any user researcher (and journalist, I imagine) will identify with.

    The radio series has been posted to YouTube and I’m embedding all the episodes as a playlist below. Check ’em out and let me know what you think.

    Congrats to IxD13 Student Design Challenge winners

    Congrats to the five winners of the first phase of the IxD13 Student Design Challenge who will be joining us in Toronto in January! Special thanks to our wonderful slate of judges who helped us get to this point.

    James McIntyre, Malmo Hogskola

    Mani Hariharan, National Institute of Design, India

    Ari Zilnik, Carnegie Mellon University

    Yongsoon Choi, Graduate School of Media Design in Keio University, Japan
    video offline

    Bethany Stolle, Austin Center for Design

    Curating Consumption

    Since Johnny Holland has said farewell, we’ll be continuing this series here on All This ChittahChattah. Here’s some stories and observations that Beth and Steve have assembled over the past few weeks.




    Tim Hortons beverage pricing offers a large number of sizes with a tiny, silly price difference. No doubt there are graphs that prove this is a good pricing strategy, if upselling by 11 cents turns out to have any impact on the bottom line. As a shopper, I find it mind-boggling; the friction for supersizing is almost zero and now I have to actually think about how much I want to drink. The Tims man showed me the largest size and it was so obviously too much (more horse trough than hot choc), so I saved myself a few pennies and went down a size or two. /SP



    Pets-as-people is certainly nothing new; a trend that has continued to grow in terms of marketplace dollars, emotional engagement a product selection. Still, it’s astonishing to look at a wall of clothing that looks like t-shirts in a range of kids’ sizes and styles, and to realize that actually you are looking at a selection of “Pet Gear.” /SP

    As I tried to write the contents of this bag (pumpkin squash curry coconut) onto the label I quickly found myself ranting about the poor design: How can you fit anything on this tiny label (e.g., “pump sq cur coc”)? Then my young designer self surfaced and I realized that, “No, in fact this is perfectly designed.” The available writing space is exactly aligned to the end of the copy above, the height is exactly the height of the Ziploc brand. Everything was in harmony! I can’t tell you how many times while in design school that I designed something most beautiful yet most unusable. Thankfully a super brilliant creative director showed me the way. Functional can be beautiful. If you make medicine bottles clearer or safety messages intriguing enough to read then you’ve done something as a designer. What can seem like the most banal and uninteresting design project is a challenge not many can rise to. Anyone can design for cool brands like Nike, Coke and Pepsi. But can you make Ziploc bag labels a thing of beauty? Or at the very least, give me some more room to write! /BT



    “Members only?” Here’s how I imagine that signage came about
    Store manager: Why do you think we’re not getting any business?
    Clerk: Maybe people don’t know we’re open?
    Store manager: But we’ve been open for weeks!
    Clerk: But we don’t have any kind of sign or anything telling people we’re open,
    Store manager: But, it’s a store…I mean…the door is open…lights are on…we’re in here!
    Clerk: Yeah, but it’s kind of not official until you have one of those big signs up…
    Store manager: Fine!
    [later that day]
    Customer: Finally! Been waiting for you to open so I can see how much membership costs. /BT

    This Week @ Portigal

    I was out of the state during a big storm and arrived back just in time for more gorgeous weather. We know it won’t last but in the meantime, we’re enjoying it. And this week looks like this:

    • After wrapping up fieldwork last week, we’re sitting down with the team later this week for a topline summary; we haven’t yet begun the in-depth analysis but we find it critical to gather everyone together and align on what we think we’ve heard and what we think it means. No doubt that will be replaced by the outcomes of the analysis, but having a discussion before that begins in earnest is very valuable for the end result.
    • This Thursday in Mountain View I’ll be giving a talk about improv, creativity, and design. Tickets available here. Hope to see you!
    • I’ve got jury duty this week. Let’s see what happens with that!
    • The judges are reviewing the IxD13 Student Design Challenge submissions and we’re planning on announcing the winners in a few days.
    • Out on the town this week: Tragically Hip at the Fillmore, Rick Prelinger’s Lost Landscapes of San Francisco
    • We just published David’s War Story. As usual, I’ve got a few more in progress that I hope to see come to light before too long.
    • Ten years gone: From December 2002 – Hotel soap confessions
    • What we’re consuming: Latkes, Marina Abramovic, Radiolab, Memrise.

    David’s War Story: Footloose

    Interaction designer David Hoard shares a story where even his best intentions are not sufficient to prevent a perplexing gaffe.

    Researcher Chinami Inaishi and I were on a 10-day trip to Tokyo to interview kids and young adults about their video game use. It was 1995 and the console wars were in full effect. Chinami is Japanese, but had lived in the US for many years. So she was the perfect local guide to help me understand the cultural nuances we were witnessing. She also helped us navigate the nearly impossible house numbering system in Tokyo, where house 31 was next to number 6, which was next to 109. This echoed one theme of the trip: squeeze things in wherever you can find space for them. Every square inch will be utilized.

    The visits were fascinating and enriching at each stop. We saw small beautiful homes with Western-style furniture next to Japanese Tatami rooms. We interviewed a young man with the smallest apartment ever, a tiny 8′ x 8′ space packed to the gills with Western-oriented magazines, blue jeans, skateboards, and a (unused) full-size surfboard. The kids were impressive, with their beautiful calligraphy work and exacting toy collections. In all cases, no square inch of space was unused, and that made me rethink the design we were considering. A low, wide game console was perhaps out, replaced by a slim vertical unit that could fit in one of their densely packed bookcases.

    Before the trip, I had done my best to read up on Japanese culture and manners. There’s no way to learn a culture from a book or two – my goal was simply to avoid making a big mistake. I practiced and practiced the few phrases I would need (Chinami was doing simultaneous translation for 98% of it). I knew my two-handed business card presentation technique, and I nearly understood the rules for bowing.

    We’d been through most of the visits, and so far so good. All of the sessions had gone fairly well, and we were learning a lot. But then I did something bad. Something wrong.

    We had been visiting a house near the end of a train line, slightly out of the city-center. The session was over; it was time to pack up the camera and notes and head out. We were doing our now-normal goodbye ritual, trying to check off the right etiquette boxes. And then it happened: I misstepped. Near the front door, I stepped my sock foot just off the wood floor and onto the carpet. With one shoe on already. Unknown to me, I just violated an important manner about where you must be (and must not be) when putting your shoes back on when you leave.

    Instantly the whole family erupted in hysterical laughter, with everyone pointing at me. Suddenly I was in a mayday situation, with my manners in a dangerous nosedive. Confused, I did my best to get my shoes on as Chinami pulled me out the door and onto the street. She was like a commando extricating someone from an international hotspot.

    “What was that??” I asked, once we were out on the street.

    Chinami informed me that laughter (apparently hysterical laughter) was how the Japanese cope with a faux-pas or embarrassing situation. Embarrassment was indeed what I created, and I felt it too. Intense embarrassment comes with a whole set of physical sensations. You’re flushed, addled, and dazed. You’ve got great regret, but it’s too late to fix it.

    When we go out to do field research, we often feel we are going out to observe a strange species in its native habitat. We are the scientists, they are the creatures to be documented. We go to great lengths to help them feel comfortable with our scientist-like presence. We feel like we are the smart ones.

    But guess what? The research participants are in their native habitat, and are experts on their own lives. We the researchers are the weird aliens. We’re the ones not getting their nuance. We’re the ones who are sometimes worthy of mockery.

    But it’s all in a days work when you’re out doing research; you’ve got to be light on your feet. Every research session I’ve ever been on has been a dance to cover the material and sniff out insights right below the surface. All while you try to make everyone comfortable and keep the conversation flowing. It’s that dance that makes it exciting; just try to keep your toes in the right place.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Here’s the scoop for this week, written ahead of Monday, as I am already at an undisclosed location for a brief yet long-awaited vacation.

    Our latest article: Stick to the Knitting

    Stick to the Knitting, my invited editorial for the Journal of Usability Studies, has just been published.

    Hollywood-that seller of dreams-has filled our heads with an American-exceptionalism-esque belief that we are entitled, even obligated, to strive and ultimately triumph when we are clearly outmanned, outgunned, and outclassed. Melanie Griffith lands her dream job in Working Girl. The Pretty Woman is rescued by a (metaphorical) knight on a white horse. The nerds of Tri-Lambs get their revenge and defeat the other fraternity. Sure, Rocky, the Bad News Bears, and the Spartans all lose but what we remember is how hard they tried. Hollywood has successfully promulgated the values of having heart and dreaming big, not only for Americans or even the West, but ultimately for everyone.

    If we use that cultural framing, maybe some of the things that the design communities are spending time on would make more sense. By “design communities” I’m referring to the software and product people-industrial designers, user experience designers, interaction designers, information architects, content strategists, and what have you. I’ll even throw my tribes in there: user researchers, ethnographers, and strategists.

    Lately, these folks-us-are taking on audaciously challenging problems. The sexiest endeavors are those tackling the systemic “wicked problems” in government, healthcare, education, homelessness, civic life, and beyond. Of course the genuine passion and compassion is to be commended, but I’m feeling worried. Let me tell you why.

    Get the PDF here.

    This week @ Portigal

    It’s Monday after a holiday weekend. Whoah.

    • Today we begin fieldwork! We’ve been revising the field guide, developing materials, prepping incentives and release forms, collecting homework exercises, coordinating schedules, parking lots, and meeting locations, and today it all starts. Our whole week is primarily dedicated to completing this round of in-home interviews. We’ll be looking at how people live now and how they want to live in the future. Broad enough for you?
    • The UXPA has just posted Stick to the Knitting, my invited editorial for the Journal of Usability Studies. I challenge designers – especially those involved with technology – to return to the still-unsolved problems that we originally set out to address.
    • What we’re consuming: Gorilla Barbecue, The Queen of Versailles, Nina Conti.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Another gorgeous day here in Northern California. The rain has come, and then the sun comes back. Fingers crossed for the rest of the holiday week!

    • Today began early with a conversation with an industry expert who gave us a lot to think about as we prepare to head into the field next Monday AM. We’ve got a few more of those conversations lined up for the rest of the week; meanwhile we’re also in full-on logistics mode, scheduling clients to join us in the field, figuring out parking and meeting locations in different San Francisco neighborhoods, and convening a brief briefing to talk everyone through what to expect when we go in the field.
    • Last week we published Sharon’s War Story. I’m not holding my breath for another one this week but it’s possible. A couple of folks are very close!
    • Ten years gone: From November 2002 – How (not) to hire a marketing consultant
    • What we’re consuming: The Mind of a Chef, Cloud Atlas, Point Blank, Turkey Tips from Alton Brown, The Abbot’s Cellar

    Sharon’s War Story: Broken Windows Theory

    Sharon Cartwright, a consultant with Optimal Experience, shares her story about uncovering context.

    We were surprised that Anna wasn’t at home when we arrived at her house. We could see through the lounge windows that the house was empty of furniture and personal belongings, adding further to the intrigue. We had followed our usual protocol of sending an email confirmation clearly stating the time of the research session and Anna had been called the day before to confirm.

    We decided to try calling Anna. She picked up our call as she was coming up her driveway. She was running late and seemed a bit agitated, telling us that she had locked herself out an hour earlier. She was just moving into this house and didn’t have a spare key yet. She’d decided, in the interest of proceeding, that she was going to smash a window to get in and had just called around to her brother’s house to pick up the appropriate tools.

    Anna seemed like a practical woman, and smashing her front door window didn’t seem to daunt her. I indicated that there was no need to take such drastic action for our sakes. But she was adamant and was soon taking a hammer to the glass panel in the kitchen door.

    Once inside, Anna, myself and the client (who’d come along for the ride) began the clean-up. I manned the vacuum cleaner and mused over the start to the session. There is something bonding about a shared clean-up!

    We were there to observe Anna set up wireless broadband. On a good day the process wasn’t straightforward; we had already seen several participants struggle through it. Over the next two hours we observed Anna encountering several technical issues with hardware and software. She managed to resolve some issues on her own. Many times she resorted to calling the contact centre, although their advice was mixed – sometimes helping Anna, sometimes complicating matters.

    We had scheduled the session for 1.5 hours expecting this to be sufficient, but many sessions – including Anna’s – extended over this. After two hours Anna had not succeeded in setting up her wireless broadband connection. Unable to stay any longer, we were disappointed to leave without seeing Anna ultimately succeed. We wished her luck, as she was clearly going to need it.

    During the two hours Anna revealed a few things to us. Her long-term relationship had recently ended, explaining her move to Auckland. She was also looking for work. Her ex-partner’s teenage son had generally taken the lead on the technology front in their home, and it was dawning on her that this was now her role.

    With the significant life stresses she was facing it was hard to watch her struggle through a technology set-up that should have been easier, dare I say simple. While we learned that setting up wireless internet often happens during a time of stress, as it’s one task of many when you move house, I felt for Anna and the difficult time she was going through.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    McRoskey mattress jumping is serious work [SFGate] – Silly-but-true stories of product manufacturing. I guess if feet are good enough for grapes they are good enough for mattresses.

    Jumping on a mattress is one of the final steps in making a handmade mattress. It may be true that machines, which can be made to do most things, can be made to jump on a mattress. But a machine cannot do what Reynoso and his toes can do, which is to expertly compress no fewer than 28 layers of fluffy cotton batting while seeking to detect pea-size mattress lumps or other imperfections, the kind that can give insomnia to fairy-tale princesses and real-world princesses, too. Reynoso does his jumping in the McRoskey mattress factory on Potrero Hill. McRoskey has been stomping out high-end mattresses in San Francisco for 112 years and is something of a cult among mattress fanciers.

    The yard. [Marcin Wichary] – Field research sometimes gets us backstage into interesting environments where we can ask questions and get all the details about how something works. And so I loved this tour of a bus yard, filled with great photos of artifacts, processes, signs, and interfaces.

    My friend showed me around the MUNI Kirkland bus yard. MUNI is the municipal public transit system serving the city and county of San Francisco. It will turn exactly 100 later this year. The Kirkland bus yard, near Pier 39, is one of the smallest and oldest bus yards in San Francisco. It is dedicated solely to diesel buses running mostly neighbouring lines, and some express routes too. There are typically over one hundred buses leaving this yard every weekday morning for the rush hour; I visited on the weekend, when it was much quieter and many of the buses were still on the site.

    To Have the Most Impact, Ask the Right Questions [HBR] – I’ve written about seventeen types of interviewing questions; here’s another simpler framework that isn’t focused specifically on interviewing.

    1. Convergent questions: What, where, who, and when questions get a person to clarify the specifics of what he or she is thinking. Converging questions can be important when time is of the essence or you are dealing with someone who is theoretical.
    2. Divergent or expansive questions: Why and what if questions ask a person to expand on what he or she is thinking. Divergent questions can be important when you need someone to see the larger context of a position.
    3. Integrating questions: If…then what questions demonstrate an attempt to find common ground between opposing positions. This builds trust and encourages compromise, which is important in situations where the stakes are high for both sides.

    Architect Bjarke Ingels’s Youthful Ambition [New Yorker] – Here’s a principle from improv applied to a fresh context: managing creativity and vision in an architectural firm.

    “I think you can have high competence, ambitious, without having stress and fear as the motivating factor. It’s one of the ideas of [his manifesto] Yes is More: you can be critical through affirmation rather than negation. You can be critical by putting forward alternatives rather than spending all your energy whining about the alternatives you don’t like.”

    This Week @ Portigal

    Wake up, it’s Monday already! I’m still confused a week after the time changed, but it is indeed Monday.

    Elysa’s War Story: Keep The Swiffer On Your Right

    Senior strategist Elysa Soffer heads into the field where an adventure in building rapport awaits.

    She’s Caucasian, 75 years old, retired, married with 2 grown kids, lives in Berkeley, and cleans her floors 2 – 4 times a week. This woman fits our qualifications as a participant for our research study. But you never know who you might be talking to and how best to get them to open up to you-a stranger entering their home.

    Two of us spent a few hours interviewing this woman in her home for a floor cleaning study. We asked warm-up questions about her and her household. She mentioned that she was a writer and lived there with her husband. She showed us around her house, and pointed out the rooms where she spends the most time cleaning floors.

    During the next part of the interview, she demonstrated her cleaning process and we asked her to test a few prototypes we brought along. She showed us everything from how she stores her tools, cleans, and puts everything away. It was as simple as that.

    This was one of the last in-home interviews out of about a dozen conducted for this project. It went just as smoothly as the previous ones. We felt like we gathered insights. So, we asked our wrap-up questions and packed up. Once the video camera and recorder were off, we made small talk while heading to the door.

    My research partner stopped next to the door to look at a handmade shrine-like structure sitting on a tchotchke shelf. It was made out of bones! Not fake Halloween-decoration bones, but real human-looking bones. We couldn’t resist, we had to ask.

    The woman’s face lit up, and she was excited to tell us the story about her adventures visiting a tribe of cannibals in Africa. She explained that she published articles about this tribe and took many trips over the years to study their culture. She also pointed out how the shrine was made of animal, not human bones. To top it all off, she confessed that she “may” have been fed human during some of her expeditions there. Whoa!

    We asked a few more questions about her adventures, but unfortunately we had to go. The vibe in the room had completely changed. She was enthusiastic and seemed more comfortable than she did for the previous few hours. Had we noticed the statue on the way in, would the interview had been different? If the camera was still on would she have reacted the same way?

    Back in the car, I looked at the recruiter’s sheet again. Cannibal wasn’t listed anywhere. I wondered what secrets the previous floor cleaning participants hadn’t shared.

    Big Content/Big Data Quickies

    My interactions article Content, The Once And Future King has just come out. Here are some other examples, articles, resources, and so on that build on the topics of Big Content and Big Data that I explored.

    99 Problems (Explicit Political Remix) [YouTube] – Jay-Z’s 99 Problems “covered” by Barack Obama. Astonishing.

    99 Problems (Explicit Political Remix) ORIGINAL UPLOAD

    Look to the skies. The flying saucers will always be there [MetaFilter] – Overview of Dickie Goodman and break-in records.

    After Buchanan and Goodman got sued for copyright violations, they exploited the situation for more publicity, by releasing Buchanan and Goodman on Trial, in which the district attorney was portrayed by Little Richard. Their actual trial turned out even better, establishing a precedent for parodic fair use quotations of hit records, as long as copyright holders were compensated. Goodman would then spend several decades making more “break-in” records, where snippets from Top 40 hits were used to “break in” with commentary on the action. Because the records exploited contemporary news events and pop cultural trends, Goodman’s break-in records sound like little time capsules, inspired by topics as varied 50s folk music (The Banana Boat Story), Sputnik (Santa and the Satellite), Westerns (The Flying Saucer Goes West), monster movies (Frankenstein ’59/Frankenstein Returns), the Cold War (Russian Bandstand), TV cop shows (the Touchables in Brooklyn), the Berlin Wall (Berlin Top Ten), the 1968 Democratic convention (On Campus), the Apollo moon landing (Luna Trip), blaxploitation (Superfly Meets Shaft), Richard Nixon (Watergrate), and gas shortages (Energy Crisis ’74)

    Raiders of the Lost Archives [YouTube] – “Shot-by-shot comparison of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ vs. scenes from 30 different adventure films made between 1919-1973.

    Raiders of the Lost Archives

    Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity [McKinsey] – Definitive report on Big Data, with downloadable reports, podcasts, and more.

    The amount of data in our world has been exploding, and analyzing large data sets-so-called big data-will become a key basis of competition, underpinning new waves of productivity growth, innovation, and consumer surplus, according to research by MGI and McKinsey’s Business Technology Office. Leaders in every sector will have to grapple with the implications of big data, not just a few data-oriented managers. The increasing volume and detail of information captured by enterprises, the rise of multimedia, social media, and the Internet of Things will fuel exponential growth in data for the foreseeable future

    How Big Data Became So Big [NYT] – A brief cultural history of the concept of Big Data and how it’s tipped into the mainstream this past year.

    Rising piles of data have long been a challenge. In the late 19th century, census takers struggled with how to count and categorize the rapidly growing United States population. An innovative breakthrough came in time for the 1890 census, when the population reached 63 million. The data-taming tool proved to be machine-readable punched cards, invented by Herman Hollerith; these cards were the bedrock technology of the company that became I.B.M.

    The Ethnographer’s Complete Guide to Big Data: Small Data People in a Big Data World [Ethnography Matters] – Jenna Burrell has a three-part series of posts looks at qualitative cultural work and both traditional and emerging approaches to larger and larger data sets.

    Being an ethnographer makes me more of a “small data” person. It seems counter-intuitive at first, but I find there are good, sound reasons to sometimes forgo the opportunity to collect more data. This gets to ever present questions about how much is sufficient when doing qualitative or, more specifically, ethnographic research (i.e. how many people to interview? how many months to spend in the field? etc). I find memory limits are an important bounding factor. Can I remember key points from each interview, distinctive elements of that individual’s story? Can I recall the setting and some of the things I observed there? Reading a transcript or my field notes, can I put myself back in that time and place? To have good recall and mastery of your data helps you to move through it with agility and to draw the kinds of surprising thematic connections across data that make ethnographic work, at times, profound.

    Designing for Big Data [Jeffrey Veen] – A 20-minute talk from Web2.0 Expo in San Francisco. Veen describes how “technology has enabled massive amounts of data to be recorded, stored, and analyzed. Putting those things together has resulted in some fascinating innovations that echo data visualization work that’s been happening for centuries.”

    Web2ExpoSF 09: Jeff Veen, "Designing for Big Data"

    Jaimes and Aico’s War Story: Sumimasen!

    Jaimes Nel of Connected Futures collaborated with Aico Shimuzu to tell this story about their rapid research in post-quake Japan.

    Research often feels like a process of managing confusion and uncertainty until we find conceptual tools to understand a situation. Failure (and subsequent redemption) are, after all, a well-worn trope in ethnography. The journey from outsider to insider is an effective literary technique that boosts the credibility of the storyteller.

    My experience is an ordinary day’s work on a more asymmetric battlefield than a typical client project. On the 11th of March 2011, a magnitude 9 earthquake struck off the east coast of Japan, causing a tidal wave that devastated towns up and down the coast of Tohoku province. Travelling to Japan later that year, I was interested in how the earthquake had affected people around the country. They had been experiencing rolling power blackouts for several months in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear emergency and I wanted to get a sense of whether this might prompt change in a country that has experienced sluggish growth for nearly two decades. I was only in Tokyo for a week, with other commitments, but managed to set aside a day for some research time with Aico Shimuzu, a friend who works as a design researcher and innovation consultant in Tokyo.

    Our very straightforward approach was to meet at a busy train station, a little way away from the usual Tokyo hotspots of Shibuya or Shinjuku, and simply approach people in the street, asking for a few moments of their time. We spent around 3 to 4 hours wandering through the streets around the station, striking up conversations when we could. As you might expect, more people said no to us than yes. It was probably quite helpful that we were a man and a woman, and Japanese and a foreigner. In a culture that can be very reserved, it was much easier for me to approach strangers than it was for Aico. This small cultural sin was more easily forgiven of a foreigner. My faltering Japanese also made for a great opening line, as Aico would have to step in and rescue our victims! In all we managed to have brief conversations with 7 people (some in pairs and some on their own). They kindly agreed to let us photograph them and told us about their experiences since the earthquake and what they thought had changed in Japan.

    Their stories were moving, and worrying. They all agreed that things had to change, but the events of 11th March had shaken their confidence in the authorities. Some emphasised the need to appreciate daily life, as the things that are ordinarily taken for granted had become impossible for people in Tohoku. One woman felt Japan had become selfish, and needed to re-emphasise connections between people, telling us “In the end, we can never live alone. We have to help each other.”

    Aico and I were struck by the earnestness with which the people we spoke to desired change. This was truly an event that made people notice that the infrastructure around them could not always be relied on. In a way, an event such as this is like a giant “breach” experiment, in which the unspoken assumptions we rely on to get along with each other have broken down. As we walked, Aico and I talked about all of these issues and the people who took the time to chat with us helped us learn a little bit more about our own perspectives and gave us fuel to think about things. In many ways, this type of guerrilla work is as much a tool for your thinking as it is a way to understand a topic. This is what I mean when I say it’s almost inevitably a failure. I don’t mean that it’s not successful, but rather that it can never hope to represent a coherent view. It’s simply too random. The people we spoke to had little connecting them, apart from the fact they were all going through the same experience in some fashion Doing this work outside Tohoku, we were a little distant from the events there and so were our participants. We also noticed that many of those who were willing to break stride and talk to us were from outside Tokyo, which says a little about both big cities and our process!

    Our guerrilla tactics may limit the claims we can confidently make from this data, but we can still explore them as individual cases, and use them to frame our own thought processes. Eventually, our day of guerrilla research left us with more questions than ever, just like our participants, but often that’s entirely the right place to be in a situation which is fluid and unresolved. Discussing this piece now, a year and a half later, Aico makes the point that repeating the exercise would help understand whether the social ripples from the quake were still being felt, or if people were forgetting and moving on. At the time, Japan was still working on making sense of what happened to it all those months ago and this day helped sensitise us to that atmosphere of uncertainty and doubt.

    See Aico’s pictures from Tokyo just after the quake and from Tohoku a month later.

    Our latest article: Content, the Once and Future King


    Our latest interactions column Content, the Once and Future King has just been published.

    Christian Marclay’s The Clock is a 24-hour film, in which each minute of the 24 hours is depicted by images of clocks (or other depictions of the time) from other movies. Creating The Clock was an intensive, meticulous process. For at least several months, as many as six people spent their days watching DVDs and ripping potential clips; Marclay spent three years working at his computer for 10 to 12 hours a day. With at least 90 years of cinematic history to work with, and perhaps 90,000 movies available, there is a substantial corpus of moving images to draw from. Let’s call this Big Content.

    Get the PDF here.

    Previous articles also available:

    This Week @ Portigal

    Welcome to a new week!

    • It’s fascinating and challenging at the outset of a project as there’s sometimes more enthusiasm than momentum, and many parallel pieces to get rolling that move by inches instead of miles. At the bullet-point level, we’re in much the same place as we were last week except we realize we need to push our fieldwork til after Thanksgiving so we can have time to get fully immersed in the topics and build a great fieldwork method.
    • I’m expecting to see publication of one, if not two, of the articles I’ve been working on lately.
    • Last week we published Apala’s War Story. I think a few other people are close; I saw some outlines last week and am excited about what those will turn into.
    • Ten years gone: From November 2002 – Fresh Meat at the American Girl Store
    • What we’re consuming: Strangers podcast, Cartems Donuterie, Letterpress

    People Watching 3.0

    In a previous post I wrote about Losing All Hope Was Freedom, a series of social experiments on video, where the “performer” takes the hands of strangers.

    Now comes Surveillance Camera Man, who does nothing more than take video in places where you don’t expect to be recorded. Perhaps part of his point is that we are semi-surreptitiously recorded in all of those same places but we ignore it, and when it’s made explicit by a dude standing in front of you with a device, then it becomes wrong.

    But there’s some other things happening here besides social commentary/activism. Michael Moore and Borat have created familiar entertainment forms around the unwanted and uncomfortable intruder. Watch the video below (which is at times almost anthropological, exploring context after context – including one heartbreaking example) and see if you don’t start to root for the cameraman. We become co-opted into voyeurism, curiously wondering who those people are or what’s in that room. I’m sure there’s some film theory bit that would explain why the POV shot is so easy to empathize with, regardless of how we would feel if we were in the viewfinder ourselves.

    Updated: videos now here

    Apala’s War Story: Whose side is the researcher on?

    Apala Lahiri Chavan, Chief Oracle and Innovator at HFI relates a tale about her own distress when faced with a difficult household situation.

    In one of the very early research projects I worked on in India, we learned many best practices that became part of our research guidelines. However, there were parts of the experience that I have not quite gotten over even, after 12 years.

    We were researching in-home media usage in India for a multinational tech company from the USA. The research targeted lower middle class households from across the country, both urban and rural. My colleague Amita and I were covering the northern Indian state of Punjab. This particular evening we were visiting a semi-urban household near the city of Chandigarh.

    It was 6pm when we reached the location. We had to leave the car behind and walk the last few yards since the lane was too narrow. As we entered the gate of the house, a group of ladies came out of the house and welcomed us. They had marigold garlands for us to wear and a lit earthen lamp with which evil spirits were warded off.

    We were welcomed inside the house and ushered into a tiny but neat living room. One elderly lady who had garlanded us was the mother-in-law. She invited us to sit on a rug on the floor. She sat down too and so did a number of other people – the entire neighbourhood was there.

    The mother-in-law and some of the other elderly women from the neighbourhood did their own in-depth interview where we the participants! We were asked about our age, income, husbands, caste, education, number of children, size of house, TV serials we watched, and so on. On hearing that neither of us had children though we were married, a hush descended upon the group. After a few tense moments, the mother-in-law told us to have faith in God and not give up hope. We looked down into our plates, wondering what would happen if we told them we did not have children out of choice!

    Some young girls had also joined the gathering inside the living room (which had spilled out to the gate and into the kitchen). One girl rushed home to get us some dessert that she had made that day!

    By the time the gup-shup (friendly chatter) was over it was 7:30pm. Even though we were used to the fact that time stretched quite a bit in India and hence a session slated for an hour could stretch to an hour and a half (after all, the concept of time in India was circular unlike the linear concept of time in the West) this was beyond what either of us had experienced. But there was no possibility of hurrying anybody. How could we tell a group of extremely hospitable and warm people that our time was more important than their company?

    At last, we started the session with the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. As we realized that the neighbours were not about to leave, Amita and I looked at each other and decided that it was fine to have the neighbours since they were clearly like a large, extended family.

    As the father-in-law, two sons and the other daughter-in-law were not back from work yet, this was women’s time. However, it became clear within the first ten minutes that this daughter-in-law was not going to speak her mind in front of her mother-in-law and the other neighbourhood matrons. We did some quick improvisation: I asked the daughter-in-law to show me the house (they knew this would be part of the interview) while my colleague continued to speak with the mother-in-law. This worked very well and while she showed me the house I got to hear the daughter-in-law’s story (e.g., how she never got to watch any television she wanted or listen to any music she chose, and so on).

    It was 8:30pm or so when the men of the house returned from work. Instantly, the atmosphere changed. Until then the mother-in-law and the other matrons had been the ‘bosses’ of the session but now everything changed. The father-in-law and the two sons were clearly in control. Mother-in-law now scurried about between kitchen and living room and many of the neighbourhood matrons and girls left. This was a very high power distance culture after all!

    We were fortunate that we had the time to speak with the ladies while the men were not around. Had they been around from the beginning, we would have not heard any of the ladies speak. Even as we carried on the conversation with the men, we suddenly noticed that there was a young lady standing at the living room door. There was a hint of aggression in her posture that made it difficult to ignore her. However, everyone else in the room seemed to not even see her.

    Then as the elder son was telling us about his media usage preferences, a most unexpected thing happened. The young lady at the door suddenly stormed into the room and started addressing us.

    She screamed and howled about the physical abuse and dowry harassment she was being subjected to by her husband (the son who was speaking) and the mother-in-law. She shouted “He made my poor parents buy him that expensive TV that he has been talking about. Now he wants them to buy him a VCR. Where are they going to get the money for that?”

    We were absolutely stunned and just as we began to get our wits together, her husband got up, caught her by the hair and gave her two resounding slaps across the face. He told her – in the most abusive language – to go up to her room.

    Enough was enough. Both of us sprang up to our feet and stood between the man and his wife. He was unperturbed and tried to pick up the thread of the conversation with us, as if nothing had happened. His parents said “This daughter-in-law is a bad woman and needs to be kept in control since she shames us.”

    We were still standing in front of the daughter-in-law who was now alternating between weeping bitterly and screaming in rage. We had to make a critical decision. What should we do? What was our role in this situation? We were researchers who were supposed to maintain our neutrality and objectivity but was that the right thing to do? Should we not call the police’s Crimes Against Women section and complain about the husband and his parents? Should we not protect this woman who was being abused?

    But before we could do anything, the daughter-in-law ran out of the house screaming and made a dash for the main gate. Not one of her family responded and told to ignore the nautanki (drama) and continue the conversation.

    We said to the family that we would not be able to continue, given what had happened. We handed over the cash incentive and walked out of the house. We looked up and down the lane but we could not see the daughter-in-law anywhere. It was little after 10pm when we got into our car and drove off.

    I have not been able to come to terms with that one incident even today. I felt that in order to be a “good” researcher I had betrayed that girl who was being abused and a much larger cause. Should one not be an activist ethnographer, when the situation demands?

    New Soap in No Bottles

    During a recent hotel stay I came across this familiar tag, hanging in the bathroom.

    As hotel guests, we’re empowered to make the decision about whether to reuse our towels or get fresh ones. They’ve framed this as an environmental issue, which it is, but it’s also about customers improving the bottom line for the hotel. So it’s a wisely-framed message; I suspect it works reasonably well (although I wonder about housekeeping staff in this equation; if they are seeking tips then perhaps that’s why I see fresh towels as often as I not).

    In the shower itself, I found this dispenser.

    Here’s the message in detail

    A similar dynamic; if you give up a little something, you save the environment. However, in this case, you don’t have a choice, and more importantly, the packaging has a significant impact upon the experience. That dispenser connotes generic, low-quality shower goo, not the delightful little cleansing treats found in hotels.

    This is a design/experience/messaging challenge that they just ceded. The goodness of environmental contribution could be better conveyed (even that blue tag is better looking and more enthusiastically written than the dispenser copy). The dispenser could reward you in the interaction. The quality of ingredients, normally messaged by the packaging, could be explicitly demonstrated (an interesting, if not entirely successful example is Method on Virgin America).

    Related: The rooms in Seattle’s Edgewater Hotel have lovely big bottles of shampoo ($25 if you take them) but they lose some of the appeal when you see these bottles used by housekeeping to refill ’em.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Despite early-morning soupy fog, it turns out to be another gorgeous Monday. Here’s what we’ve got going on

    • For one project, we’re working hard to both immerse ourselves in a new business area (interviewing experts, scanning the media, planning a walking tour) and charging ahead with project logistics (getting a recruiter lined up, finalizing a screener, setting up briefing meetings on fieldwork best practices, developing participant homework exercises, etc.).
    • We’re looking at an innovative combinations of methods this week that we’ll be proposing to a prospective client. Wish us luck in landing the work!
    • Last week we published Carla’s War Story. I’ve got a near-final draft for another in my inbox, and have been swapping email with some other folks finalizing their stories, so stay tuned for more.
    • I’ll be leading a class on user research for the Industrial Design school at Academy of Art University this week.
    • I’ve got a handful of lunch and coffee meetings this week to catch up with different folks, both local and visiting.
    • What we’re consuming: underwater dogs, Izakaya Yuzuki, McSweeney’s Issue 41, pumpkins as many ways as possible.

    Carla’s War Story: A dirty diaper sitting in the mud

    Consumer insights professional Carla Borsoi encounters the outlier that illustrates a greater truth.

    There is nothing like home research to challenge your notions of whether or not everyone lives like you. Earlier this year, we were doing research on how people use multiple devices (phones, tablets ad computers) – what they are doing with each, what they feel about each device and how these are shared (or not). We were particularly focused on three audiences: Moms, Entertainment Junkies, and Earlier Adopters. Yes, in my world, we use Title Case to label our different audiences. At any rate, we picked three areas with high density for devices and plenty of each of these audiences in spades: NY, Seattle and Austin.

    I headed to Seattle in late March to meet with people and to talk to them about what they do. The first interviews went swimmingly: one Dad told us how he used his tablet to collect coupons, his computer to develop his Saturday shopping plan with coupons, and his phone to go through with his plan. He also told us about watching movies during lunch at work on his tablet. An Earlier Adopter told us how he obsessively followed tech news as he rode the bus. Good, I thought, these interviews are going really well. The Seattle weather was appropriately grey and rainy, but these folks lived in warm and welcoming homes. Normal, to me, at least, with the typical toys in the home with kids, the nice entertainment system, clean kitchens, and so on.

    It was our last day of interviewing. The rain had been pouring down the night before and I hoped it would hold off until I got to the airport at the end of the day. We were interviewing a young Mom who lived past Sea-Tac. I drove down pseudo-country roads and pulled up to the property for the interview. The driveway was full of mud. Thankfully, I was wearing wet weather boots. As I walked up with my colleagues to the front door I passed a dirty diaper sitting in the mud. Huh, I thought. Their garbage probably got torn apart in the storm last night. The house was old, but that’s how these things go. We were greeted by the young Mom and entered the house. Immediately the stale smell of cigarettes and mildew hit my nose.

    Uh-oh.

    The mom proved to be a bright young woman, who tended bar a couple nights a week, while going to school and parenting the rest of the time. I looked down at the dirty table in front of me while we continued talking. She had some great insights about how she used her tablet (often on loan to her parents who would watch the kids), how critical her phone was to keeping in touch, and how her computer was there as she worked on projects for school. However, the smell assaulted my senses. I could feel my two colleagues shifting in their seats, covering coughs. Our interview was scheduled for two and half to three hours, but after about 45 minutes, I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle it much longer. Someone asked if anyone had more questions. I quickly spoke up “Nope, think we’re good.” No one disagreed.

    We walked out the door and I noticed more garbage outside – but breathed in the sweet clean air. I realized that as researchers we occupy a place of privilege. People allow us into their homes, without embarrassment or shame. This is their life. They allow us to see a window into it. People often participate in research for the chance to earn a little cash. This woman had spoken of how much they had saved to be able to rent this small, mildewed space. It reminded me that I have a lot of advantages that other people don’t. It’s a reminder that when we’re creating products, we’re doing it not just for some sexy early adopter, but real for people who are just trying to make ends meet and get started with their life. It also reminded me to go home and wash down the walls of our stairwell, covered in grime.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Here’s the scoop for us this week

    • Last week’s kickoff was most setting the stage for the project launch. Today we meet the entire team for a work session meant to build consensus, uncover existing hypotheses, and focus our investigation. It was a crucial if surprising moment in last Friday’s meeting when after a couple of months of scope and contract negotiations it became clear that our key project owners don’t have an exact specific focus for the user research and are looking to us to help focus that.
    • Beyond that, we’ll be diving into writing a screener, interviewing remote stakeholders, and setting up conversations with experts and thought leaders who will inform the project.
    • Last week produced three War Stories (from Elaine, Dennis and Debbie). We’d love yours, too!
    • I’ve got a handful of lunch and coffee meetings this week to catch up with different folks, both local and visiting.
    • Ten years gone: From October 2002 – a suspicion around DeLorean vs. Miata psychographics
    • What we’re consuming: Neil Young Journeys, Looper, KONG Classic, Mitchell’s Caramel Praline ice cream.

    Interruption or Interjection?

    Deborah Tannen writes in the New York Times about interruptions. She’s riffing on this week’s presidential debate but I thought this part was relevant to interviewing:

    You might think it’s obvious that an interruption is when a second person starts talking before another has stopped. But how long a pause means “I’m done” rather than “I’m catching my breath”? This, too, varies by region and culture – and the difference can lead to unintended interruptions. In 1978, I tape-recorded a Thanksgiving dinner conversation involving two Christians raised in California, three Jews of Eastern European ancestry from New York and a British woman. At times the Californians felt interrupted when their Jewish friends mistook a pause for breath as a turn-relinquishing one. At other times, exclamations like “Wow!” or “That’s impossible!” which were intended to encourage the conversation, stopped it instead. An interruption takes two – one to start, the other to stop. The New Yorkers in my study assumed that a speaker who wasn’t finished wouldn’t stop just because someone else started. If she does, then she creates the interruption.

    In my book I look at interruptions and turn-taking in interviews. If someone is going on and on and we need to redirect them, how to do so elegantly? If we are having trouble not talking over someone, what are the sources of those missed pauses and cues? Tannen’s exploration of interruption is useful fodder for thinking about this.

    Debbie’s War Story: Sometimes Ignorance is Bliss

    Retired from HP, Debbie Mrazek shares her story about not knowing she she was getting a little too much attention in the field.

    Many years ago, when international “day in the life” visits were not common in my company, I led a study to better understand technology usage in typical homes.

    As a US-based team, when we spent time with a European family, we typically included a translator and local researcher in the team. Each visit started with getting to know the family over a meal that we brought with us. We then toured the home and divided into smaller groups in order to spend focused time with each family member.

    During a visit with an upscale German family, I was interviewing the very friendly and excited older teenage son. He very enthusiastically showed me every gadget, software program and PC trick he knew. He was constantly trying to impress me with his technical skills and knowledge, speaking in a mixture of German and English. The interpreter did her best to help me understand the boy’s key points, but I continued to notice that both she and the local researcher were exchanging knowing smiles. Eventually, the mother joined us and graciously suggested that the son had “bothered the poor girl” (me) enough, and we should join the rest of the family for coffee.

    During our post-visit debrief, it was revealed that the interpreter was strategically not translating some of the boy’s most blatantly flirtatious comments, leaving me unaware that this was even happening. While typically I think the translation should be unbiased and accurate, in this case her careful filtering was a good thing. It allowed me to focus on watching how he used the technology…but it did make for plenty of teasing from my colleagues during the rest of the trip!

    Henry Thomas and the Power of Silence

    Henry Thomas’s audition for E.T. is making the rounds in the blogosphere this week. It’s a pretty incredible bit of emoting, improvising, acting. I’d like to highlight one thing that struck me: as the scene begins, the offstage actor sets up the conflict with his first line, and then turns it over to Henry (aka Elliot). And Henry doesn’t say a word. But he does a lot. His silence is very active, even his minimal facial movement is highly active.

    In interviewing users, those small moments where we choose to be quiet are powerful. We can maintain an active engagement with the participants even though we aren’t talking. We can move the interview forward without using our mouths.

    Out and About: Steve in Ottawa

    Last week I was in Ottawa speaking at Carleton University as well as delivering the closing keynote for UXcamp Ottawa. Here are some photographic highlights of my time there. Look for the rest of my pictures on Flickr.


    Joseph Henri Maurice “The Rocket” Richard


    Suzy Q Donuts.


    The Canada Hall in the Canadian Museum of Civilization. Depicting 1000 years of history, this was an outstanding exhibit. In addition to the familiar elements of contemporary museum design, it had just enough realism, sort of the heightened-fakery from a movie studio backlot. The open-ended design enabled an immersive stroll through recreations of the past. As you wandered you could go in and poke around stores, schools, mills, airports, and so on. It was almost like being in a holodeck, strolling through time (and from east to west).


    Building environmental control module or splash screen for circa 1974 television news magazine?


    Recreation of the Robert Frank image used on the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street cover.


    Stickers stuck to poles outside of the National Gallery. I took the picture without knowing what the heck I was looking at, though. It was only when I got my ticket for the National Gallery and was asked to put the same sticker on my clothing did I realize how those poles ended up like that.


    That about covers it.

    Dennis’s War Story: Negotiating between sympathy and empathy

    Design researcher Dennis Nordstrom tells a story about his team’s own emotional journey as they find themselves face-to-face with someone else’s distress.

    Whenever we conduct design research our aim is to gain empathy for our target audience. Through empathy we enable ourselves to bring together our imagination and creativity as a way to develop a better tomorrow.

    This was exactly our goal when our team was designing for people who were chronically ill. We were conducting research in major US cities and we were about to finish up our interviews in Philadelphia. We were preparing ourselves for the next participant and knew from our recruiter that she was a woman in her early sixties living on her own. Everything else about her was for us to find out.

    As we walked up to her door we were talking amongst ourselves about how inspiring it had been to actually meet all these participants, and to hear about how they had overcome the major life changes that came with being diagnosed with lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart conditions, or even chronic liver diseases.

    We knocked on her door, and heard a voice behind the door invite us in. We walked inside and the first thing we noticed was the smell. It was extremely pungent, to say the least. It was the smell of old urine and vomit mixed with rotten wood and mildew. I saw a figure slowly emerging from the hall. Her arthritis was so awful that she could barely walk. Her dog was walking right next to her cane. It was an older dog, blind in one eye and with several teeth missing. It tried to bark at us, but the poor thing could barely make a sound. Besides the dog, our participant had about nine cats living in her house.

    She came over and greeted us, and we introduced ourselves and thanked her for her hospitality. She offered us something to drink, but her condition was so bad that she needed help with getting the drinks out of her refrigerator and onto the table.

    From the moment we sat down we had cats crawling all over us. They were extremely curious and wanted lots of attention. One cat even laid down flat on my notebook, so that I would pay attention to it. It became clear to us that all manual note taking was out of the question. None of us were able to write anything down.

    We all sat there mesmerized as she told us her story. She was currently working as a part-time school teacher. She needed the health insurance and not working was unfortunately not an option for her. Over the last few years she had been diagnosed with arthritis, diabetes, and high blood pressure. Her arthritis had gotten quite severe, and she was often unable to do much around the house.

    As we sat there listening to her I noticed a dry raspy sound. I looked to my side and saw that her dog was vomiting on the rug. Our participant paused and looked at her dog. She told us that as he has gotten older he had become incontinent and would often get sick as well. As soon as she said this, the smell made perfect sense. Due to her illness she was unable to clean up after her dog and cats, and over time it had all just been sitting there causing her rug and walls to slowly deteriorate.

    I looked at my teammates and sympathy was written all over their faces. They felt for our participant. A few minutes later sympathy turned into empathy as she showed us some pictures hanging on her walls. One of the pictures showed her with some very official-looking people, in a very official-looking place. We were quite surprised when she told us that she used to be involved in peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine during the seventies. With this realization of how this woman had not always been in pain and been unable to even get drinks out of her fridge came overwhelming feelings of empathy. She used to be a strong and assertive woman, who had had the misfortune of getting seriously ill.

    At that moment it became perfectly clear: this was something that could happen to any one of us.

    Our newly gained empathy became a powerful catalyst for design ideas, and for the rest of the project no team discussion happened without at least one mention of this woman.

    Elaine’s War Story: I thought my client was going to die

    Elaine Ann, the CEO of Kaizor Innovation in Hong Kong tells a story about consciousness – both cultural and physical.

    One of my most memorable research experiences was ten years ago in China. My Western client fainted in broad daylight in the middle of our Beijing field trip. We had completed field research work and were touring an exhibition. She just plopped on the floor without any previous sign that she had any health problems.

    We called the ambulance and a white van came along. There was nothing on it – no ambulance emergency lights, no oxygen equipment, no CPR equipment, only a stretcher. Not knowing what was wrong with my client’s health, we (me, my colleagues and her co-workers) decided to take her to the hospital anyway.

    Upon arriving at the hospital, we had to first pay for the ambulance fees in cash (this is China). Then the client was carried onto a hospital bed. I was caught in between cultures at that point as my client’s Western co-workers were dubious about the medical standards in Chinese hospitals and refused an injection from the doctor; while the Chinese doctor was quite annoyed by the Westerners’ attitude (reading their horrific facial expressions) and challenged them whether or not they really want to be helped after coming to the hospital. Meanwhile, I was trying to translate everything in both English and Mandarin, amidst all the chaos, trying to not offend either party (who couldn’t communicate directly with each other).

    Finally, the client’s co-worker decided to take a risk with her boss’s health rather than risk it with the Chinese hospital, so we had to shuttle the client back to the hotel instead. (We then discovered that five-star hotels usually have English speaking travel doctors for emergencies – a handy tip for researchers doing field trips in China). In the hotel elevator, my client fainted a second time and we had to drag her off the elevator, along the corridors and into her room like a dead fish.

    My client finally became conscious again and luckily we found out this was caused by a low blood sugar syndrome and happened all the time. All she needed was a candy. We had to decline her request to visit the Great Wall the next day. I really wouldn’t know how to carry her down from the Great Wall if she fainted on top of that, as it’s a defense wall designed to make it difficult for invaders to climb even in ancient times!

    Seriously, I would have made the national news if my client died on our China research trip! Phew!

    This week @ Portigal

    It’s another week of gorgeous fall weather but with lots and lots and lots of coastal fog. Here’s our week

    • Hail Ants! I came back into the office today after a great few days in Ottawa (the talks were very well received; the people were super engaged and had a lot of good thoughts and comments) to have Beth point out a whole lotta ants in the kitchen. A trip to the hardware store is imminent.
    • We’re excited to kick off a new project on Friday and in the meantime are diving into an exhaustive briefing document the team put together for us.
    • I’ll be spending another day this week focusing on edits for the book.
    • I’ve got a War Story in hand to publish as soon as I can; a few more folks have told me they are working on theirs, and we had a great conversation this morning about a story that Beth is working on.
    • Ten years gone: From October 2002 – Musical potty
    • What we’re consuming: Suzy Q donuts, The Group of Seven, OneFortyThree – our project home (and stuff we make for it)

    Curating Consumption #4

    We’re back with another round of some curious, provocative, amusing, and frightening observations that come from our daily experiences as researchers and as consumers. Thanks to Tamara Christensen for her contribution!


    Ideally parental love is unconditional love. And when you love something or someone you want to tell everyone how great they are. It’s not that disease or disability should be hidden away in shame, but what aspects of our lives do we choose to announce and celebrate? It’s not uncommon to hear that people with Down’s Syndrome do have a number of uniquely endearing qualities that are particular to the syndrome, but is that what’s behind this parent’s vanity license and license frame? /SP


    Of course this is a kind of service; I’m not surprised to learn that it exists but I’m still surprised to see it in my daily travels. I was certainly struck by the 2012 touches, using aspirational words like “grooming” and “beautification” (over the more common “maintenance”). And why not put the (delightfully alliterative) name of your business on your hearse-black vehicle? You never know where you’ll find customers! Perhaps even when parked in front of your local coffee shop. /SP


    I came across this during a recent hike by the ocean, painted on one of the few large concrete blocks spattered about the landscape. I was taken aback by this image/text combination and immediately created a narrative with two dueling characters. First comes the antagonist, whose symbol of choice is a weapon, and later comes the protagonist who uses language to diffuse and reframe this act of aggression. Of course it’s possible that a single artist is responsible, but why would the hero deliver a message – intended to disarm – with such heavy artillery? /TC


    Here’s Steve figuring out where to dispose of the trash from lunch. In the Bay Area, composting bins are getting pretty common in public places and along local trash pick-up routes. “Trash” is no longer a catch-all term or container. Composting is the new recycling. Green is the new blue. There are more bins plus posters and pamphlets that explain what goes where. For example, in some places the chicken leftovers go in the trash, in other places it goes in the compost bin. Disposable paper plates or plastic utensils are tricky because they might be compost, or recycling, or the trash. Ironically, the quest for more environment and consumer-friendly waste management involves the creation of more trash (i.e. bins, bags, and signs) and more confusion. /TC

    Rapport building

    Friend-of-a-friend Elizabeth Rubenstein took this awesome picture at our local Safeway.

    I’m always amazed to see the backstage on display where those of us who are frontstage can see it (see another Safeway example here). In this example we’ve got two separate Rapport Topics Of The Day:

    • How do you like todays (sic) weather?
    • How do you think the Giants baseball team is doing?

    Safeway has a long history of awkwardly conceived inauthentic rapport-building techniques, such as the one I wrote about back in 2002 where staffers would hold onto my receipt for a painfully long time while they tried to puzzle out the pronunciation of my name, before handing it back after muttering “Thank you, Mr. Portugal.”

    For what it’s worth, they seem to have got better with the name thing, and I haven’t been asked any false-note questions about the weather or the Local Sports Team.

    Other Safeway goodies from the past:

    (Thanks to Jen Lum)

    This Week @ Portigal

    Hello, week, and happy Thanksgiving, Canada! This is our story for the next few days…

    Greg’s War Story: Culture shock

    Anthropologist Greg Cabrera spent 17 months in Afghanistan as an embedded academic with the military, supporting social science research and analysis as part of the Human Terrain System. In his third story here, he encounters a challenge to his own moral standards.

    One of the first places I visited in Afghanistan was a security checkpoint along a major route in northern Kandahar. The security was contracted to a private group of Afghans, mainly from the south and east, to provide route security and protect military and civilian supply routes. Their job was to protect the route against insurgents who wanted to disrupt the convoy and see oil tankers burn.

    A few days before insurgents did exactly this. They stopped a convoy carrying military supplied with an improvised explosive device, hitting the first truck and killing the driver. Then they attacked the last truck and shot a rocket-propelled grenade which effectively exploded and hit the side of a fuel truck. Civilians fled, the insurgents attacked the checkpoint, and it was utter chaos. These security guards returned fire and called the local police for reinforcements. All that was left at the end were a few burned trucks, dead bodies, and some burned firearms.

    Upon arrival, I could see where these men were being shot at, how they fought back, and where they stored their weapons. They worked on this mountain and lived here too. There were approximately 15 to 20 men living in this bunker. All they carried were machine guns, assault rifles, ammunition, and blankets. Of course, they also had food, chai, cooking supplies and utensils. As I inspected their site and positions, they told me about the event and shared their war trophies, burned AK-47s captured from insurgents. It was unusual to observe so many men living in such a tight area together, away from their village and home. This was security, Afghan style, and it felt like a group of armed nomads living under the radar. They were living and working together in a confined space in the middle of what felt like nowhere in particular. I would later find out that these men often worked for 2-3 months at a time before going home for a short period.

    When we all sat down for chai, I noticed some of the people who were working at this checkpoint did not look old enough to be here. I thought to myself “Shouldn’t these kids be riding their bikes or playing in the village?” The individual serving chai and placing candies out for our consumption did not have facial hair and had henna painted finger and toe nails. I looked over at my interpreter and asked him on the side what these kids were doing here hanging out with security guards. My interpreter, looking down, smiled, and turned to me saying, “They have fun with them at night.”

    The sergeant who I worked with was sitting across from me. When he heard this, his face turned blank. I could tell this made him uneasy. I always wondered what the expression on my face looked like. As the young boy finished serving everyone chai, he moved near an older male who was resting comfortably on a pillow on his side. That’s weird I thought to myself. I had just arrived in country, at this field site, surrounded by strange men who do strange things. I grabbed my cup of chai and drank it down.

    Despite the weirdness of the situation, I carried on. I asked lots of questions, took lots of notes, and attempted to be as respectful of their culture as possible even though it bothered me and made me uncomfortable. Who was I to judge? I wondered to myself, what business did we as a nation have in this country? How can its people allow human exploitation to exist like this? I learned later on that Kandahar was a different place than most of Afghanistan. It retained practices unlike the rest of the country. Although this specific instance of culture shock made me uneasy to say the least, I learned to see past it. This was an unconventional war in a strange, neglected land and I was not there to change their culture, only study it.

    Raffaella’s War Story: Learning to deal with expectations

    Raffaella Roviglioni reflects on an earlier part of her career where she learned new interview skills by adapting to a situation on the fly.

    I’m currently a freelance UX designer based in Rome, Italy but I used to be an agronomist. I like to see my professional shift not as a mutation but rather as an evolution: I understood that my passion was working with people, and now user research and UX work is fulfilling that need. Despite the different context and purpose that drove me as an agronomist, I had to interview people quite often and I didn’t have any formal training on it. I guess I was attracted to this kind of activity because I’m an outgoing person and consider myself a good listener.

    Back in the days when I was a research fellow at the University of Viterbo I was involved in a pretty interesting project: investigating the old fruit tree varieties in my region. Part of the job (for me the most exciting part!) was interviewing old farmers who were between 80 and 90 years old; they were both the guardians of those old plants and the living repository of the related knowledge.

    The job required me to travel to their houses and farms to perform the interviews. Given the distance and the remote location of the rural areas the best way of getting there was by car. As a research fellow, though, I wasn’t allowed to drive the department car, since I wasn’t considered to be an actual employee, according to Italian law.

    A lab assistant (also a good friend of mine) agreed to come with me with on the field trips. He was basically acting as my driver, but helped out with taking pictures and collecting plant samples in the field.

    It was during a first visit to one farmer’s house that the unexpected happened.

    We arrived, got out of the car and went over to the farmer who was waiting for us at the front door. He greeted my assistant first, and then looked at me and said to him: “So this must be your wife!” Even after an embarrassed explanation from our side he clearly could not believe I was the one in charge of the research (with a college degree!) whereas my friend was “only” my assistant.

    I have to confess that at first I had to rationalize a bit not to feel offended by his reaction. But after all, I told myself, he was over 80 years old and even my grandfather would have had the same reaction in a similar situation. But the awkwardness continued because, given the context, this famrer wouldn’t expect me to conduct the interview either!

    So what I did instead was direct us all (the farmer, his wife, my assistant, and me) to have coffee together, inside the house. We started chatting while drinking our coffee, as any pair of couples would do. Slowly I moved the conversation to the questions on the plants we were interested in. This allowed us to establish a more acceptable situation where the farmer felt comfortable enough to start sharing that information.

    What I learned from this experience is that in order to ensure my interview is successful I needed to be able to deal with the expectations of others, embracing them and trying to let go of my emotions (as in this instance, avoiding feeling offended). I also realized that as interviewer I needed to adapt to the interviewee’s setup (in this case, transforming what I view as an interview to a visit to the house) and act accordingly.

    It wasn’t my first interview nor the last, but taught me a lot!

    This Week @ Portigal

    Happy Monday! It’s October in the Bay Area and so it’s the nicest day of the year! Here’s the scoopage.

    • Awesome new team member! Say “Howdy” to Beth Toland!
    • While it’s more complex than a single bullet-point can convey, our largest project is now abruptly wrapped up, ultimately done in by some daunting challenges our client encountered in setting up site visits.
    • We’re waiting on the final contract to be signed before we kick off our newest project, in a totally new (to us) category. We expect this to launch Any Day Now!
    • Last week’s WebVisions travel and a weekend project to finish up an editorial have meant very little progress in book chapter revising. Soon!
    • We’ll be at tomorrow’s german design – shaping the future today event in San Francisco.
    • Ten years gone: From October 2002 – Googlism, Steve hates CSI, translation fail.
    • What we’re consuming: Songza, Philz, Allen Ruppersberg: No Time Left to Start Again.

    Portigal welcomes Beth Toland

    Awesome news here today as we welcome Beth Toland to the Portigal team!

    Beth is a recent transplant from New York City, where she was leading user experience for the Economist Group’s B2B global offering. In addition to research in China, she developed products for the Middle East, the UK, and the US. Before that Beth worked in hospitality and healthcare, setting up research practices at Marriott and Revolution Health. She’s still surprised to find herself here in the Bay Area, saying “Holy Cow, I’m on the west coast!” As she normalizes to her new environment, she has this topline summary: “The east coast is about survival. The west coast is about enjoyment.” She’s stoked about returning to more active, hands-on participation in the design research community.

    Welcome, Beth!

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Mice as Stand-Ins in the Fight Against Disease [New York Times] – Looks like this has been happening in some measure for a while, but some new methods are increasing the usage. The most science-fiction thing you’ll read all week.

    In what could be the ultimate in personalized medicine, animals bearing your disease, or part of your anatomy, can serve as your personal guinea pig, so to speak. Some researchers call them avatars, like the virtual characters in movies and online games. “The mice allow you the opportunity to test drugs to find out which ones will be efficacious without exposing the patient to toxicity,” said Colin Collins, a professor at the University of British Columbia.

    Australia 2012 [Flickr] – My complete set of pictures from Australia earlier this month.

    Chinese families’ worldly goods in Huang Qingjun’s pictures [BBC] – We’ve seen other projects like this, but the focus on China captures a material culture in transition.

    Amid China’s tumultuous dash to become rich, one man’s photographs of families posing with their worldly goods will soon seem like records from a distant era. Huang Qingjun has spent nearly a decade travelling to remote parts of China to persuade people who have sometimes never been photographed to carry outside all their household possessions and pose for him. The results offer glimpses of the utilitarian lives of millions of ordinary Chinese who, at first glance, appear not to have been swept up by the same modernisation that has seen hundreds of millions of others leave for the cities. But seen more closely, they also show the enormous social change that has come in a generation. So the photo of an elderly couple of farmers outside their mud house reveals a satellite dish, DVD player and phone.

    Four Big Things, a phrase dating from 1950s for most sought-after goods for newly married couples: sewing machine, bicycle, watch, radio. It’s since come to refer to whatever is most fashionable at the time. By 1980s the four big things were: TV, washing machine, rice cooker, fridge. Now, consumer goods flood China’s cities, it tends to be used to describe people’s aspirations for the latest thing.

    Must-See Video: How a Woman With No Arms Dresses Herself. What Assistance Can Design Provide? [Core 77] – I love the reaction; that excitement of discovering how current solutions could be improved. Designers are so great at bringing that creativity and know-how to bear to make change for the good. But let’s remember, we don’t need videos to be posted by users to uncover what things aren’t working for them. Are designers waiting for broken products to appear in front of them so they can spontaneously improve them, or are they out there looking at current behaviors and solutions in order to proactively find opportunities. Designers: you don’t need the disabled (or anyone) to post their own videos, go and shoot your own!

    I hope that more folks with disabilities make videos like this, not just to share with others what their particular trials are, but to enable us designers to improve upon the objects they use.

    FILMography – a Tumblr with an incredible series of images where a printout of a still from a film is held up in the actual location where that scene was shot. It’s a “trick” I’ve seen before but mostly as a one-off; the breadth here is fascinating.

    FILM + photography = FILMography.

    Computers are stupid

    Two recent but fairly typical interactions lately serve to remind me just how stupid computers really still are.


    Every time I upload pictures to Facebook, it can’t tell the difference between a photograph of a person that I know and an image from advertising, artwork, street art, or otherwise, and asks me to indicate which of my friends are in these pictures. Face recognition is gee-whiz and has some utility in this context, but if they can’t make it work properly (e.g,. no false positives) why is it being used? Why is it okay that I have to work around the computer’s mistakes?


    LinkedIn runs over with suggestions for other people I might to connect to. Yesterday it encouraged me to connect with someone who recently passed away (and whose passing was widely noted). As with the previous example, our immediate reaction is “Well, how should the computer know that?” And that’s my point: we’ve become so used to working within the constraints of technology that we just shrug off this annoying, potentially offensive interactions.

    I’m interested both in the limits of the technologies we use and in our enabling of those limits.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Welcome to the beginning of another work week!

    • I’m meeting with the editor and publisher today to talk about the book: we’re revisiting the title, and thinking about the foreward and that sort of stuff. Meanwhile, I’m hoping that somewhere I’ll find some time to dive into the editor feedback on the manuscript itself.
    • We’re assembling the jury for the first phase of the IxD13 Student Design Challenge. We should get that assembled in the next week or so, but it’s looking great!
    • I’m off to Chicago on Wednesday for my WebVisions presentation.
    • Next week I’ll have an announcement about the Portigal team, so just some last-minute preparations to get that all ready to roll.
    • What we’re consuming: Fizbo the Clown, The Melt, songs vs. performances
    • .

    Announcing the Interaction13 Student Design Challenge


    After a successful experience with the 2012 conference, Jeremy Yuille and I are the co-chairs for the IxD13 2013 Student Design Challenge, sponsored by Intel Labs.

    Entries are open now, and close on December 1, 2012. Be in the running to win a scholarship to Interaction 13 in Toronto, and take part in an exciting master class around the design challenge.

    The challenge theme for 2013 is Playful Technology

    With every passing year, technology becomes further embedded into every aspect of our lives. With its increasing ubiquity, our traditional relationship, where technology is a tool for completing tasks and accomplishing goals, is receding. Now, people (especially young people) look at technology as a way to connect, and even interact with in a less-structured and playful manner.

    This year, Interaction and Experience Research (IXR) at Intel Labs and the IxDA challenge you to consider these paradigm shifts in what technology means and how we interact with it. Building on the work that Intel Labs has been doing around the changing relationships we have with technology, we want you to explore the experience implications of “playful technology.”

    Frequently when we design products and services that utilize technology, we think in terms of satisfying a user need, or enabling the user to achieve a goal, complete a task, or solve a problem. What if we instead think about designing playful experiences for people, in which there is no end goal, people are encouraged to explore, be spontaneous, and creative? By allowing people to experiment, collaborate, create, and share, this goes well beyond gameplay. Look at children’s play for inspiration, where often the simplest raw materials lead to completely unexpected outcomes and hours of engagement.

    See http://interaction13.ixda.org/studentdesign.php for more information and to enter.

    Financial pings

    I received the above notification today. A new client has put a penny in our bank account. We haven’t started the project (or even signed the contract) yet; this is clearly some validating that they have the correct bank details in their system.

    I appreciate the gesture (better to work it out now then when they actually owe us something), but it’s such a weird artifact. There’s some interesting signal processing thing happening here; the message (“Hello Portigal bank account, are you receiving?”) isn’t meant to contain any actual content (“Here’s some money!”) but the system doesn’t allow any contact without content, so $0.01 is this meaningless amount that gets moved in order to prove out the connection.

    I’ve authorized services like PayPal or Quickbooks to read and write my bank account; if I recall, they send a value below $1.00 and then ask you to verify the amount.

    But this is just write access and we’re still doing ping/validations.

    Will they deduct $0.01 from my first invoice? Will they try to get it back? Are penny errors so common now that there’s no concern about these piling up here and there?

    Otherwise, I guess, woo-hoo! Free money!

    Out and About: Steve in Melbourne

    Here is the last post with highlights of my trip to Australia (see parts 1, 2 and 3, previously). Meanwhile, all my pictures are making their way to Flickr.


    At the tram stop for the Children’s Hospital, the platform is filled with various cute “Dr. Jake” signs. I especially like transforming the transformer box into a height chart. Someone is thinking broadly about reframing the hospital from scary into welcoming and using the first point of entry – the tram stop – as the place to begin doing that.


    Patience is a virtue. A post-design attempt to mollify confused users.



    I could not figure out what the heck “Teady” referred to on this first truck. It wouldn’t be my first time encountering a word I didn’t understand (see “showbag” in an earlier post, say). But no, the adjacent truck says “Steady.” I went back and checked – did the initial S wear off? No, it was never there to begin with. The design – sans S – fits perfectly in the designated area on the first truck.


    Bold language boldly presented.


    Once again, weird people sculptures.


    Free WiFi at the train station. Nice visual reference to many memes (e.g., Star Wars kid, the dancing baby, keyboard cat) as well as Facebook and Twitter.


    ACDC lane. Yes, the official City of Melbourne lane commemorating ACDC.


    Reminded me of a similar sign in San Francisco.


    The menu at this restaurant offered beer in a pot or a beaker. I was further charmed by the use of familiar words with shifted meanings, as part of my foreigner’s journey. But no, the beaker is exactly what you’d think: a beaker.


    More 8-bit-videogame streetart, although Mario instead of Space Invaders; stickers instead of tiles.


    Many many flavors of hot chocolate at Chokolait. I must go back!


    Indoor nighttime climbing wall.

    This Week @ Portigal

    It’s Monday and here’s the thoughts about the week.

    • Having rescoped/rescheduled our largest project, we’re out for fieldwork this week. I’m flying to Boston today while Tamara flies to Wichita. Clients are joining us in those cities from Connecticut, Dallas, and Chicago. This is most activity we’ve had in the field on this project in a couple of months!.
    • I’ve got the first few book chapters back from the editors. Desperately looking for time to plow through all the great comments and challenges.
    • Today is supposedly the “any day” finally here for the IxD13 Student Design Challenge announcement. Of course, I’m traveling today, so…
    • Two fun presentations this week, talking about improv with Shwab’s “Brain Circus” and about user research at General Assembly.
    • Also trying to get stuff sorted out for upcoming presentations – next week Chicago and two weeks after that with three presentations in Ottawa!
    • Ten years gone: From September 2002 – A tour operator from Myanmar likes to cowork with you.
    • What we’re consuming: Leopold’s Gasthaus, Platinum Blonde, Cambridge’s foodie scene
    • .

    Dark Patterns for Interviewing

    How to Win at Conversation is a humorous New Yorker article that frames conversation as a competition and offers up strategies (including Seed of Doubt, Barrage of Interruptions, Intentional Mishearing and Unfulfilled Intimations of Actual Gossip) for winning. You’ll likely recognize when you’ve been on the receiving end, or maybe when you’ve done it yourself. The piece can be read as a set of dark patterns for good interviewing.

    OPPONENT: We just got some pretty good news.
    YOU: I can’t believe it! They finally gave you a five-hundred-thousand-dollar raise, didn’t they?
    OPPONENT: Er…no.
    YOU: Oh. Sorry. So what’s the good news?
    OPPONENT: Our little Jimmy just got into his first-choice preschool.
    YOU: Oh. That’s good, too. Certainly nothing to sneeze at!

    Strategy used: Intentional Overstatement of Expectations.

    Out and About: Steve in Brisbane

    I got back last week from two weeks in Australia, traveling around as well as speaking at UX Australia in Brisbane and Service Design Melbourne. Here is the third of four posts with some of the highlights (see 1 and 2 previously). All my pictures are making their way to Flickr, as well.


    Hmm. Update: Golden Casket is a lottery company, not the store itself. And “casket” more typically refers to something like a treasure chest than a coffin. The language discontinuities wonderfully surprising!


    Brilliant idea to highlight a positive so specifically.


    Burger King, in some parts of Australia, is Hungry Jack’s.



    While the text and icon evoke the fleeing-immigrants signs seen in Southern California and Arizona, this supposedly refers to a traffic island in the middle of the street where pedestrians can wait if they are caught in the road when the light changes. However, this location had no such island.


    Dolphin attendance. What can we infer about the dolphins with the dashes in place of checks? Or the dolphins with a line through the week?


    Jelly.


    Peanut butter.


    From the Gallery of Modern Art (or, if you prefer, GOMA), biomorphic scooters.


    “I never stopped loving you” reminded me of the iconic “I love you so much” graffiti-cum-icon in Austin. One is in an art museum, and the other is on the side of a building.


    The piece is called Distillery: Waveforming. It uses biofeedback, as you clip a pulse oximeter to your earlobe and the iPad display starts to play mellow music and visually echo your heartbeat. It was like a digitally-induced high. I hope we all get one soon.

    Michael’s War Story: The glass is more than half full

    This story comes from Michael Powell, Cultural Anthropologist at Shook Kelley. He blogs occasionally here and tweets unoccasionally here.

    I was on the job at Shook Kelley (a Los Angeles strategy and design firm with roots in architecture) for about one and a half weeks when I was asked to travel to a small town in central California for a brand strategy project. The research goals were ambiguous; essentially, learn as much as we can about this place and what makes it tick, looking to discover unique or meaningful veins for the design team to consider in reshaping or reinvigorating the town’s brand. I was the only anthropologist on staff and expectations were large for what I might dig up.

    This was 2006, before the recession hit rural central California. But things were already tough. Like so many other small towns in out-of-the way areas, this one suffered from a degree of “brain drain.” Young people didn’t want to stay, they wanted to leave for the city or head to college somewhere. The economy wasn’t growing. Maybe tourism, some on the Chamber of Commerce thought, could help stimulate the local economy. This had precedence, but it also seemed far-fetched. What was the appeal of this small town over any others? Was there a history here? Even located in the most productive agricultural area in the country (if not the world) would anyone be willing to drive a few hours to “eat local” and learn about the land, when farmer’s markets easily accessible much closer to California’s major metro areas? The local farms here were mostly industrial size, and seemed less appealing to the locavore.

    I drove to the town in a separate car from another small team, led by a brand strategist who wanted to make a documentary-style film about the town. He was accompanied by a filmmaker. These two already knew exactly what they wanted to create – a kind of Ken Burns-style reflective piece about what makes small towns great. I was new to the firm, so I figured I would tag along and find out how things worked. After a handful of “man on the street” interviews with unsuspecting locals, with me standing behind the cameraman, I realized this was a two-person operation: the first person stops pedestrians and asks them what’s meaningful about living here, the other records. Not much need for a third wheel ethnographer in that operation. I decided to head my own way and see what I could find. It was just a two-day trip, so I thought I should make myself a little useful. “Good luck,” the guys told me, and we agreed to meet up later for dinner.

    I walked to the coffee shop on Main Street, grabbing the local newspaper on the way. I sat down and started searching the back of the paper for classifieds, calendars and events. I found a lead: The Optimists Club was having a meeting that afternoon, in just an hour. I got on the phone and gave them a call. I explained who I was, the firm I worked for and the project we were doing with the Chamber of Commerce. “Sure, come on down and you can sit in on the meeting,” they told me. At this point, I had no clue what the Optimists Club is, but I understand that it’s some kind of local community group focused on creating positive change for the town. This sounded like my goal, too. [NB: Optimist Club]

    The Club meeting was at a local community hall, like a VFW-style hall with plain lobby and a set of meeting rooms. Not knowing what to expect, I arrived early and introduced myself to the people who looked like the Optimists organizers. The person I spoke with on the phone greeted me cordially, and invited me to have a cup of coffee. The room was set up in a square formation, with three sides of tables and some space in the middle for a presenter or speaker. Unfortunately for the ethnographer, there’s no chair in the back to hide away and watch the proceedings. My style of research is to begin in the background, staying away from any kind of intervention in order to get the beat or rhythm of what’s happening around me before I jump in with a lot of questions. It didn’t look like that would happen today. Still, I positioned myself in the corner. A couple pf dozen people eventually filed in, one or two noticing the strange face among them.

    At five or ten minutes after the hour, everyone was still chatting and catching up. I was taking note of the pace of things. It’s a small town, I figured, what’s the rush? Of course, this was a lot different than the small towns I knew well, growing up in the Midwest, where punctuality is priority.

    Then, the leader of the Optimists Club approaches me, sits down and curiously asks “Do you do much public speaking in your line of work?” On occasion, yes, I tell him. “Okay, well, our speaker couldn’t make it today. Could you talk to the group?”

    What the hell, why not? After all, it’s the Optimists Club, not the Washington Press Corps.

    As I listened to myself suddenly introduced to the Club members a moment later, I remembered that I knew barely anything about my own firm, much less the specifics of this project, which, truth be told, was not crafted with ethnographic research in mind. I stood up, and I just start talking.

    After rambling on for probably 10 minutes, I realized two important things. One, I had run out of things to talk about concerning the firm and the project. And two, if I don’t think of something else to talk about quickly, the Optimists were going to turn negative on me.

    And then I remembered why I came to the Optimists Club in the first place.

    “So, tell me about your town,” I asked.

    The next two hours gave me a wealth of information. This was not a focus group, but rather a much more ideal situation for an ethnographic group encounter. It was their turf, not mine. It was their club, not mine. They felt comfortable talking as a group of friends who worked together to make the community better, and I was a welcomed outsider who was curious about them and genuinely interested. By the end of the meeting, I felt like I had read the book about the town and understood its cultural, social, political and economic dynamics. Afterwards, I stopped by a couple places the Optimists had mentioned and talked with more locals, now asking more pointed questions.

    At the end of the afternoon, I met up with my new colleagues at the bar on Main Street. “So…how did it go?” I asked them. “This place is boring!” they told me. They had made progress, but were not getting good insights. Fortunately, our subsequent discussion about what I had learned that afternoon helped in guiding their film.

    In any case, it was a lesson learned in the field: Stay optimistic.

    Out and About: Steve in Sydney (2 of 2)

    I got back last week from two weeks in Australia, traveling around as well as speaking at UX Australia and Service Design Melbourne. Here is the second of four posts with some of the highlights. Part 1 is here.

    All my pictures are making their way to Flickr, as well.


    Nice combination of cultural iconography.


    I liked seeing the range of medical services laid out like this. Not very confidence inspiring, however.


    Manners poster.


    Asian preferred.


    A really awful brand name and sign. What does crocodile have to do with thai? And what is added by making him or it senior? It’s a puzzle.


    Father’s Day is September 2.


    Milk for the workplace. At last.



    360Àö Self-Portrait at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Although there are no visual cues, the artist is in some contraption that moves her around, through a complete circle. As she moves, gravity deforms her face slightly while she essentially remains expressionless. The net effect is compelling and disorienting.



    The 18th Biennale of Sydney was chock full of astonishing spectacle. Really wonderful. And I only heard about it because I checked in (via Foursquare) at the museum and a kindly person on Twitter suggested I head over to the island and see it.


    A crushed car was on display and yet needed to be marked before and after with warning signs so that traffic going by would not be alarmed. Are the signs part of the work or something that is imposed on the artist in order to allow their work to proceed? And what does it mean to have a sign announcing “End Artwork” anyway? Is that an observation or an imperative?

    Out and About: Steve in Sydney (1 of 2)

    I got back last week from two weeks in Australia, traveling around as well as speaking at UX Australia and Service Design Melbourne. Here is the first of four posts with some of the highlights. All my pictures are making their way to Flickr, as well.


    The diminutive is a common Australian form. Toasted sandwich becomes toastie. Football is footy. Breakfast is breaky/brekkie. Motorcycle gang member is bikie. Slot machine = pokie. Self-portrait is selfie. I saw this in advertising, building signage and the newspaper.



    I’m certainly impressed to know that Sol Levy is such an esteemed tobacconist. What related line of business does he offer that requires one to be over 18 in order to take a trip down memory lane and reveal treasures? Some sort of vintage tobacco porn? The mind boggles.



    The savory pie is an Australian dish, sold in all sorts of stores including the ubiquitous Pie Face, where their pies are decorated with, well you guessed it, faces.


    Yet another example of personas (or the aesthetics of personas) turned into customer-facing messaging: “Hi, I’m James. I’m a freelance TV producer. But before you write me off as some sort of knob who owns a fancy European car, think again. I don’t even own a car! Instead, I just use GoGet Cars whenever I need one. So when I’m on a shoot and I’ve got expensive equipment to transport, I’ll use this van.”


    I was astonished at how foreign I felt in Australia. Despite a common language, there are so many disconnects around vocabulary. This ad on the back of a bus reads “Grab an iinet Combo. It’s like a showbag for grown-ups.” Sure, I can read that, but what the heck are they talking about? Some Aussies clued me in that showbags are gift bags from the equivalent of state fairs. Whatever – that feeling of cluelessness was a particularly wonderful aspect of the whole trip.


    Whether you say please or not, the option of opting out at the mailbox is something I’ve seen in Europe as well.


    Prohibited clothing.


    And more prohibitions.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Teaching the F.A.A. That Dogs Don’t Buckle Up [NYTimes.com] – This is (part of) what it takes to do great work: patience and persistence. As much as we slap our foreheads about the corporate cultures we interact with, clearly the regulatory cultures are likely to be even worse.

    In one scene, about a minute into the video, a man is shown sitting next to a large bull as he fumbles with his seat belt. A voice-over says, “For the 0.0001 percent of you who have never operated a seat belt before, it works like this.” Few people know that the bull was originally a dog. But when the Federal Aviation Administration reviewed the video, one of the many concerns it had was that passengers would think dogs, which are sometimes on flights, had to wear seat belts – I’m not kidding here – so it made Virgin America change the dog to a bull, as bulls are, thankfully, not allowed on planes. According to people who were involved in the making of the video, there were six months of meetings with the F.A.A. and changes to the video before it was finally approved.

    Orangutans get iPads at Toronto Zoo [CBC] -I’m struck by the limited amount of adaptation the device required, in contrast to classic example where Koko the talking gorilla used a customized Mac II.

    The zoo is working with a program, dubbed “Apps for Apes,” which was started by the conservation group Orangutan Outreach. The goal of the program is to improve the quality of life of primates in zoos by providing them with additional mental stimulation in the form of Apple’s tablet. Apps for Apes collects donated iPads and then provides them to zoos with orangutans. The staff who work with the orangutans had to teach them to touch the screen with their fingers – they were initially using their nails to manipulate the screen, and the tablet does not recognize that. In April, orangutans Puppe and Budi used Skype to interact with Orangutan Outreach director Richard Zimmerman. The next month they used Skype to view other orangutans at the Milwaukee County Zoo, although the video was blurry as the primates moved so much.

    This Week @ Portigal

    It’s the beginning of a new week and here’s the overview

    • I got back from Australia late last week. Jetlag has been minimal but I certainly feel out of sorts from the time away. It was a really wonderful trip; look for pictures coming soon.
    • No fieldwork this week, but a rescoping conversation is imminent since we’ve been on hold or semi-hold for about 2 months, waiting for hear about getting the interviews scheduled. Delays create anxieties and shift expectations, so I’m hoping a conversation will help us all realign.
    • I’m dealing with the contract for a new project that should start in a few weeks. We’ve agreed on the plan and now need to get the documents finalized. The project is with a very creative and engaged team and deals with a topic we’ve thought about a lot (and devoted time in our workshops to exploring) but haven’t explored in a consulting situation before.
    • Meetings galore: connecting with new contacts, reconnecting with folks who have changed jobs, discussing capabilities with prospective new clients, and on it goes. Assuming that good conversations are ahead.
    • My editors have been working on my book manuscript for more than two months; in the next few days they’ll be passing their latest revision back to me – and telling me what my next steps are!
    • I’ve been told that we should be able to announce the IxD13 Student Design Challenge any day. Of course, I’ve been told that a few times and continue to wait for whatever contractual stuff is going on behind-the-scenes to be resolved.
    • Ten years gone: From September 2002 – This couldn’t possibly go wrong, School-uniform reverse trend.
    • What we’re consuming: Tim Tams, Web Therapy, 99% Invisible.
    • .

    Greg’s War Story: Biting off more than I can chew

    Anthropologist Greg Cabrera spent 17 months in Afghanistan as an embedded academic with the military, supporting social science research and analysis as part of the Human Terrain System. In his second story here, he gets more than he expected out of meal with a local respondent.

    In Afghanistan, hosts treat their guests as a gift from God. One of the principles of Pashtunwali – the way of the Pashtun – is hospitality, and a host must protect and treat his guests with the highest form of respect in order to preserve his cultural identity. An interview in Afghanistan is not a one-hour/gift-card-honorarium/thank-you-for-playing experience. Rather, it is a large chunk of your day, 4-5 cups of chai and maybe a meal if you are welcomed kind of interview. This was apparent from my first interview in Afghanistan.

    After my interview with the local police chief in northern Kandahar, I was treated to a cultural meal with my interviewee and another soldier. The soldier worked closely as an advisor and assisted me with the introduction to the interview. The police chief was a proud host and he asked his men to prepare a special meal for us. As our interview came to a close, the men began rolling out mats, bringing in dishes, and placing large pieces of flat bread on the floor for us to consume. Typically, in this rural area, meals were eaten by hand from shared plates while sitting on the floor.

    A typical meal consisted of rice, animal fat and a vegetable. Meat was consumed on occasion, usually to impress a powerful individual. This meal consisted of okra cooked in animal fat with rice and naan (or flat bread). “A nice treat,” I thought to myself, and a great opportunity to understand the cadences of daily life over a cultural meal.

    The solider who was working with me raved about the okra, telling me how good it was and that the local police grew it in the back of the building in a small garden. Sweet!

    Ready to dig in, I grabbed a piece of naan and ripped it into a smaller, user-friendly piece. I took one bite and immediately noticed a strange and somewhat hairy texture. Attempting to be as inconspicuous as possible, I moved my head to the side and pushed it out with my tongue. I examined it and noticed what appeared to be a lock of animal hair, dark brown and grey, either from a rodent or canine. In Afghan culture, dogs are considered unclean and are not welcomed inside the home. Although, part of me wished it was from a dog and not a rat. I pushed forward and avoided embarrassing my host. I moved on to the rice. The okra did not look very appetizing, so I tried to avoid eating it. However, my host asked why I was only eating rice, and the soldier next to me said I had to try it because it was so tasty. Oh alright! I dove in. I ate until I was full, and concurred that the okra tasted great in the goat fat.

    Making small talk, I thanked the police chief and his men for the food and chai. We talked about security challenges for the district and government, and some next steps in increasing the security bubble through checkpoints and army forces. This was good information that I could use for my analysis. As we said our goodbyes and thanked our guest for his warm hospitality, I walked outside of his compound and the soldier pointed at the garden where the okra was being grown.

    The small plot looked somewhat haphazard, not incredibly well maintained. I thought nothing of it until the soldier walked away and I saw a young man walk toward the okra, squat, and urinate on the small plot of okra. Great, he was urinating on the okra they were using for human consumption!

    Perhaps, the most valuable lesson I learned was to stick to the rice. In this context, I was able to share firsthand the lived experience of Afghan policemen, and how they generated hospitality with whatever they have despite it forcing me to sacrifice my bowel system and notions of cleanliness in my home country. If I had raised the issue or appeared disgusted, I would have risked losing the relationship and opportunities for future interviews while offending my host in the process. I wonder at what point do researchers draw the line when cultural experiences make us too uncomfortable or even sick? How do researchers cope with experiences that test the limits of cultural sensitivity?

    This Week @ Portigal

    Just a quick update for the week:

    • I’ve been in Sydney for the past few days, exploring, socializing, taking pictures and adjusting to the jet lag; tomorrow I head to Brisbane for my workshop at UX Australia. I’m looking forward to the Monday pub night where I’ll see a few local folks (and a few fellow travelers).
    • Check out my SXSW proposal for The Power of Bad Ideas. It’d be a tremendous help for me if you’d vote yes and add your comments, too!
    • Ten years gone: From August 2002 – a new story for SUV owners, kids and art.
    • What we’re consuming: Spice I Am, Circular Quay, PIE.

    Vote for Steve’s SXSW proposal: “The Power of Bad Ideas”

    I’ve got a proposal in for next year’s SXSW conference. The talk I’m planning to do is entitled “The Power of Bad Ideas”

    In business and in life, we pursue the good stuff and champion people who are known for their good ideas. But when we place too strong an emphasis on just the good, we may neglect to consider the bad ones. In design and in brainstorming, deliberately seeking out bad ideas is a powerful way to unlock creativity. Generating bad ideas can reveal our assumptions about the difference between bad and good, and often seemingly bad ideas turn out to be good ones. Jotly and Cow Clicker were jokes/parodies (e.g., not good ideas) that have been surprisingly successful. Neil Young and Crazy Horse have covered folk songs. An action blockbuster features a US president swinging a silver axe against vampires. In this talk, I’ll explore how opening up the bad idea valve can lead unexpectedly to the kind of success we aim for with our good ideas.

    This talk picks up where my Core77 article and some recent blog posts (here, here) left off. I’m looking forward to developing the material further and talking it through live.

    Part of the consideration that SXSW uses in sorting out their 3200 proposals is voting. I’d really appreciate your help: check out the page for the talk, add any comments, questions, or words of encouragement, and vote “thumbs up” (you’ll have to sign in or create an account if you don’t have one).

    Thanks for your help!

    This Week @ Portigal

    What’s going on this week:

    • Fieldwork! This morning I’m in Salem, OR with the client talking to users about their businesses. I’m flying home tonight, hopefully with a stop in Portland for something delicious. More interviews in Phoenix the rest of this week.
    • Sadly, a project I was bidding on, with a really great group, didn’t come through because that team’s timeline didn’t line up with our availability. But as always, doors close and others open. We’re talking with another organization about a fascinating project with a talented team and I’m keep fingers crossed that timing won’t be a deal breaker for them as well.
    • I leave on Wednesday for Sydney. There will be a meetup next Monday at The Beresford. Get in touch for details. Then it’s UX Australia in Brisbane and Service Design Melbourne after that.
    • Coming very soon – details for the IxD13 Student Design Challenge.
    • Check out my SXSW proposal for The Power of Bad Ideas. Please vote yes and add your comments.
    • Ten years gone: From August 2002 – Fresh Meat #15, Rashomon: 1, 2, 3, 4
    • What we’re consuming: NTSF:SD:SUV:, Voodoo Doughnut, Paul Calf, Salt & Straw.

    Brandon’s War Story – CATastrophe

    Brandon Satanek (Twitter, blog) is a User Experience Designer who lives in Michigan, trying to make everyday products better. He tells a story about a multi-sensory fieldwork experience.

    I’ll never forget the sight of that poor kitten munching on a cockroach. Our mission was relatively simple. Being employed by a large computer peripheral maker, we were to interview small businesses to see how they were using our products. The visit that brisk winter morning was to a costume rental shop that also did some tailoring. Upon entering the store, we were greeted with a smell, which if called pungent, would be a kind and generous description. The owners, well, they must have had very large hearts.

    I am actually a cat person (maybe it’s their independence I admire). So, the presence of a gaggle of feline friends could have been a welcome site. But unfortunately, I don’t think the owners were up to the task of caring for that many cats. In 2012 terminology, they would now be referred to as “hoarders.” This was not a well-heeled, venture capital-rich setting; the building had a raw plywood floor and the employees were doing the best they could to make a go of it. However, that flooring clearly did not help the smell-retention factor for animals that have periodic bladder control issues.

    In many ways, the visit was worthwhile. As might be predicted, their computer system was not the latest, and it was good to see the struggles they had installing our software because of it. But, once that installation was underway, we experienced perhaps the slowest moving progress bar known in existence. Or maybe it just felt that way. Minutes drifted by before another column of pixels filled. It could have been the fumes playing tricks on my eyes, but I swear I saw that progress bar move backwards on occasion.

    My teammate and I began to develop various coping mechanisms. At first, we would periodically take breaths using the tops of our shirts as a crude filtering system. We were able to pull this off because we had positioned ourselves outside of the main office area, and outside of view. Later, we began to make excuses for trips out to the car for supplies (aka fresh air). How were they to know we really weren’t low on batteries or videotape? Unfortunately, the moderator was not so lucky and remained stuck with the participant. Yes, I do feel guilty about that.

    Our minds drifted and I began to wonder why anyone would actually leave clothes for mending there; perhaps their skills or prices were amazing. It was around this time when another creature joined the party. A cockroach skittered across the floor. A kitten gave chase. It did not end well for either, in my opinion. My teammate made that face which looked like she was gagging at the sight. Maybe this was just for effect…but maybe not.

    The visit ended uneventfully once the product was finally functional. In reality, I escaped with an interesting story and some clothes that needed freshening by the cold breeze entering my car during the drive home. I’m not so certain if those cats had a similarly good fate.

    That dream of finding an extra room in your house

    In the summer of 1992, I came across this book, The Rolling Stones Complete Recording Sessions, in a bookstore on University Ave. in Palo Alto. Flipping the pages, I discovered the existence of an entire universe of Rolling Stones music that existed, albeit underground, beyond what was on the existing set of albums. Beyond recordings of live concerts, there are dozens and dozens of other songs, alternate versions, etc. This absolutely blew my mind, in an On Beyond Zebra! fashion.

    From this book, I was inspired to launch an online community for Rolling Stones fans, Undercover, that still runs today. That was 1992, twenty years ago! I’ve met fans and made friends from around the world, including the author of the book, now in its 3rd edition!

    Whether wistful or purely parodic, the notion of extending a closed set of content into new ones continues to fascinate me. While fan-fiction (including fan films) is extensively documented and discussed, I find these micro-forms quite cool and curious; in Martin Elliot’s book, he didn’t provide the actual Stones songs, just the library abstract that points to their existence, tantalizing the reader to experience them – somehow, somewhere – in a more complete form.

    HEIGLR is a blog with fictional advertisements for fictional Katherine Heigl films that just might come out some day.

    Seinfelt is a blog with plot synopses for Seinfeld episodes that never happened – but could have!

    The Substitute

    Kramer takes on a substitute teaching position, primarily because he already owns a pipe and a tweed jacket with padded elbows. He becomes frustrated when Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason is incomprehensible to his class of third graders. George’s girlfriend takes him to see a foreign film, which he finds so abhorrently pretentious that he decides to become a rabid football fan, deeming it “the lowest common denominator of popular entertainment.” An endangered species of eagle nests upon Elaine’s windowsill, disgusting her daily by bringing back enormous rats for its chicks to feast upon. When she calls 311 to ask if they can dispose of the birds, she gets a follow-up from the EPA, who say that her apartment is now a wildlife refuge and she must vacate. In a dusty old shoebox, Jerry discovers explicit photographs from his parents’ honeymoon.

    TNG Season 8 is a Twitter feed with “plots from the unaired 8th season of Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

    Act now, pay later: here come the offsets

    Here’s a fascinating response to the recent culture skirmish that has erupted around Chick-fil-a. Just like you can purchase carbon offsets, spending money on something “good” to essentially atone for doing something “bad”, now there are chicken offsets.

    I love the chicken sandwiches at Chick-fil-A. But I also like my gay-married friends and don’t like the guilt of indirectly supporting Chick-fil-A’s stance on gay rights. And I know there are lots of other people in the same boat. So I’ve started ChickenOffset.com. Every time you buy a chicken-sandwich meal at Chick-fil-A, you can buy an “offset” here. You can print out the receipt and demonstrate to your friends that the money you gave for LGBT youth more than compensates for the profits you put in Chick-fil-A’s coffers. $1 gets you 1 chicken-meal offset; $6 for ten offsets. We promise to send at least 90% of the proceeds (and will almost certainly send more than that) after our minimal expenses to It Gets Better and the Williams Institute. We promise your offsets will provide far more money to non-profits that support gays than buying a sandwich at Chick-fil-A ends up putting in the pockets of anti-gay-rights organizations.

    If we are compelled to conflate politics and consumption then we should be able to extend this idea, and offset a lot more than carbon and chicken. What other offsets could there be for behaviors we want to pursue but wish to atone or adjust? Note that these aren’t penalties we use to punish what we don’t want, they are opt-in ways that we counteract our own choices.

    I’ll start us off:

    • Bad driver offsets – cut someone off or tailgate, your offset contributes $5 to the state fund for uninsured drivers
    • Loud talker offsets – talk as loud as you want on your cellphone, wherever and whenever, and your offset will fund earplug distribution
    • Homeless avoidance offsets – if you ignore a homeless person begging on the street, your offset will help provide them with clean socks
    • Shark fin offsets – enjoy the delicious traditional soup and your offset helps pay for prosthetic fins and ocean-going rehabilitation
    • Date rape offsets – no means yes when your voluntary contribution provides counseling services and funds the distribution of the morning-after pill

    Offensive, perhaps. Feel free to take on the logical and ethical fallacies in my argument here. Chicken offsets may be a good idea or it may be a bad idea. What do you think about it? And do you think this opens up a precedent that we are going to eventually regret? I’m conflicted, myself, and would be curious to hear other opinions.

    Just a song that I used to know

    Back in 2005, I wrote The More The Merrier for Core77, exploring how consumer and producer continued to blur. Of course, that trend has continued, and even accelerated.

    Meanwhile, for my next interactions article (coming out in November) I’m thinking about the creativity that can emerge from the massive libraries of data we now can access.

    So here’s something astonishing that builds on both of those themes. Gotye, the musician behind this summer’s omnipresent song Somebody That I Used to Know digs into all the covers (and parodies and so on) of this tune on YouTube, and remixes them into a new cover. Of his own song.

    Reluctant as I am to add to the mountain of interpretations of Somebody That I Used To Know seemingly taking over their own area of the internet, I couldn’t resist the massive remixability that such a large, varied yet connected bundle of source material offered.

    Check it out, it’s pretty great example of something very much of our moment.

    Gotye - Somebodies: A YouTube Orchestra

    Notes: Gotye acknowledges this video for inspiring his remix; he has blogged a complete catalog of his sources; and I was pleased to see he included this parody video which addresses the song’s ubiquity in a funny and relate-able way.

    Richard Saul Wurman: The unlimited repertoire of ignorance

    Richard Saul Wurman has an inspiring line in the Eames: The Architect and the Painter documentary. He’s talking about the point at which the Eames office began to work closely with IBM.

    You sell your expertise, you have a limited repertoire. You sell your ignorance it’s an unlimited repertoire! He [Charles Eames] was selling his ignorance and his desire to learn about a subject, and the journey of him [going from] not knowing to knowing was his work.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Here’s the story for this week:

    • Our largest client has been working pretty hard to line up some fieldwork sites and finally we hit the road for the first few next week, which means this week is about finalizing stimuli, prepping everyone for their roles, working out travel logistics and so on.
    • I’m having some meetings about the next set of projects, one in an area I’ve long been fascinated in but haven’t worked in, another with a team that I’m really growing to like in a really innovative category. Fingers crossed!
    • I’m thinking about of my talks, after UX Australia and Service Design Melbourne, including UXCamp Ottawa University of Wisconsin-Madison.
    • Along those lines, my proposed talk for SXSW is here. I’d really appreciate it if you’d give it a thumbs up, tweet it, pass it along to friends, and add some comments!
    • Last week we had four new War Stories. Submit your story here!
    • If all goes well, we’ll be ready to send out the details of the IxD13 Student Design Challenge this week.
    • Ten years gone: From August 2002 – dream dialogue, Clippy takes the stage.
    • What we’re consuming: Off the Grid, Cindy Sherman, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia.

    Francoise’s War Story: Black glances cast our way

    Anthropologist Francoise Brun-Cottan, an ethnographer on the WorkPlace Project team, recounts a story about embedding deeply in an active work environment in comparatively primitive time, both in terms of the recording equipment and the field’s sophistication in describing to participants what was happening and why.

    It was the winter of 1989. Members of Lucy Suchman’s group at PARC embarked on a multi-year joint Steelcase/Xerox project to look at ground control operations of two airlines at San Jose airport. Airport management and each of the airlines’ managements were “on board.” The project would study ground control operations of each airline in the existing airport facilities and then follow them over to newly built facilities in a new structure.

    We were going to look at the interplay of paper (manuals, computer printouts), voice (over the air, walkie-talkies, radio, and telephone), chalkboard and whiteboards, and direct visual observation (versus camera/video feeds) of planes pulling into and out of the gates and being cleaned, fueled, and having baggage loaded and unloaded.

    The plan was to use basic ethnographic methods and techniques: interviewing, shadowing (inside and on the tarmac), audio and video taping, still photography, and transcribing recordings to-we weren’t quite sure exactly what we’d come up with. But we wanted to find out what could be extracted using these methods in such a tech-heavy environment. We were betting it would be informative, insightful, and valuable to everyone concerned. We hoped.

    In 1989, technology had come a long way from the cameras and recorders that had to be moved about on dollies and trailers but, as portable as they were, the wonderful Panasonic video cameras were heavy, and so were the VHS tapes and batteries. The little Sony audio tape recorders (about a the thickness of a stack of 10 iPhones) were great for interviews but micing a control room took hours. Synching the mikes with the video was a cabalistic art colorfully augmented by below-the-breath expletives.

    The members of the airline ground crews had basically been informed by management that they were going to cooperate. In reality that mean they were going to “tolerate”: non-lingo literate researchers climbing over their equipment whenever they weren’t actually underfoot, being recorded for hours at a time (rather gleefully when crises were underway) and being followed around and asked question after question (further confirming the depth of the researchers’ lack of common sense and basic knowledge) whenever there was a moment of down time.

    We did try and tell crew what we thought we were doing. But saying that we wanted to understand their work practices, how they would change in new environments using new technologies and how they made sense of their work and communications was not exactly revelatory. As a field, we’re much better at doing that now, partly because we’ve also got lots more examples we can show to prospective participants about results of our work.

    Viewing the videos made clear what some of the crew members stated directly, which is that they were deeply suspicious of what we would report about their actions to management. Anytime they deviated from protocol, or made mistakes, or seemed to be resting rather doing some piece of work might be opportunities for management reprisals of one sort or another. Some people were openly, if politely, hostile. No one welcomed us. It was tough on participants and researchers alike. They always cooperated at some level; there was no point in antagonizing us (though some were pretty gruff).

    It is known that after a time people seem to forget that cameras are rolling, even if those cameras are right in front of them and so are the researchers. Viewing the weeks of tapes gave us plenty of opportunities to see them cast black glances our way, or whisper something together and laugh at us. In their banter we also learned about their home lives and romances and trials and aspirations. Sometimes that could let us congratulate them, sometimes our knowing was resented.

    I don’t remember exactly when it became clear to our team – maybe somewhere toward the end of our fieldwork – that the final report would be a 2-hour video tape, which came to be known as The Workplace Project. We said our good-byes and appreciations on the last days of fieldwork. “Thanks,” they said and (figuratively) “good riddance.”

    We made sure that copies of the tapes were made available to the crews at both airlines. We learned that the report was being used by the crews to convey to mid -management complexities about the work that the crew members had not been able to convey. They repeatedly mentioned the benefit of demonstrating how manuals misrepresented events and complicated the work rather than facilitating it. Although previously unacknowledged in the organization, our work highlighted their level of expertise in differentiating personal task-relevant details from the sonic soup of incoming streams of information.

    Sometimes you just have to stick with it, whatever “it” will turn out to be. And then, sometimes, you get to get thanked for revealing aspects of the work that the workers can’t make visible. A few years ago I was told that Steelcase still showed the video to visitors to their user centered division. So, that’s not too bad!

    Sean’s War Story: Pockets full of cash

    Sean Ryan, a corporate ethnographer, reflects on a fieldwork experience where he learned first-hand some crucial lessons when going into another country: pre-recruit participants, and do some basic homework about where you are going.

    It was back in my early days as an ethnographer. I was still a young pup in the field, doing consulting projects. I was teamed up with an Elder Anthropologist – a Puerto Rican woman who lived in Guadalajara, named Luz. We were doing a project for a major pharma company who had just had great success with a new oral care product, so they thought they would try an ethnographic exploration to uncover any other unmet needs. I think their aspirations at the time were something like “We want the next $500 million consumer product!” Luz and I were to visit two field sites in Mexico: Guadalajara and Tijuana. Living in Los Angeles, I was relatively close to the border and it wasn’t yet seen as that dangerous to go to Tijuana (i.e., no Mexican mafia drug lord street battles…at least you didn’t read about them in the papers everyday). But I still had my reservations, not possessing any potent Spanish language skills (outside of the slang I had picked up from bartending in a Mexican restaurant in Long Beach).

    Having only been to Tijuana once to explore the finer points of Avenida Revolución (read: drinking tequila shots with college kids and having my head shaken back and forth by a woman with a whistle), I had no real frame of reference for doing fieldwork in TJ. As I quickly learned, neither did my counterpart Luz. She had some relatives in TJ, but had never done fieldwork there. And so we made what we later realized was a critical error in not pre-recruiting participants before we went into the field. Upon arriving in Tijuana we quickly found ourselves literally approaching people in the streets, in shops, etc. to ask about their oral care routines (a strange encounter for the locals I’m sure). While this has all the hallmarks of classic guerrilla recruiting it’s never a comfortable situation to be in, especially in a foreign country. Luz was doing her best to recruit people while I stood by idly awaiting our field day fate.

    Eventually we started to have some success…or so we thought. One woman who worked in a nice department store in downtown TJ offered to let us come to her home after work. We got her contact info and told her we would see her that evening. We were offering $150 in US cash (this was more than 10 years ago) to interview the participant and observe their oral care routines. This, no doubt, was more than substantial for an incentive. So we were quite confident that we would have no problems grabbing participants on the fly. That evening, we made our way to this woman’s house via an old Crown Victoria station wagon taxi (with the suicide seats facing out in the back). Once we got to her town we approached the participant’s door and gave it a confident knock…but nobody answered. We waited a few minutes longer and knocked again…still no answer. This was before mobile phones, so we couldn’t exactly call this woman on her cell. We sat and waited for 15 minutes, but then realized that our day was quickly wasted on a participant who, for whatever reason, decided she did not want to do the study (Perhaps she thought the $150 was too good to be true?). In a moment of desperation, Luz decided to frantically go door-to-door in this small community, hoping for a shot at someone’s teeth and mouth. But to no avail.

    This disastrous field trip continued. The next day we tempted fate again by preying on another unsuspecting citizen of Ciudad Tijuana. Once again, we arranged to go visit a shopkeeper’s home later in the evening. Once again, we had no idea where exactly our little field visit would take us. And once again we crammed ourselves into an old Crown Victoria station wagon. This time we were left off at what appeared to be a small village of Gypsies. It was, in fact, just a typical working class abode on the outskirts of the city. I brazenly brought out my Sony DV camera with the Carl Zeiss lens and began filming the local scene as we walked through the streets to find the right home. We were very excited to actually find the participant’s home and then to actually find her in her home!

    It was a very interesting interview: the participant was a mother of two, a 9-year-old daughter and a 6-year-old son. We observed their oral care routines, which consisted of going out to the backyard to gather water from a large plastic drum (as there was no running water), after which the children vigorously brushed their teeth with your standard run-of-the-mill Colgate toothpaste and toothbrush. When we paid the mother $150 (US) cash at the end of this encounter, her eyes lit up. I realized at that moment that this was probably more money than they made in a month. And so we broke another field rule: understand your surroundings and pay participants appropriately based on the context. But there was bit of a feel-good moment here too; the client could clearly afford the incentive money, so it was no skin off of their backs.

    After this first round of field visits in Tijuana we came back about a month later for a second round, with different participants. We interviewed a relative of Luz’s who lived in a canyon high above where we had visited last time. He laughed out loud when we told him that we had been down in that village only a month ago. He said with all seriousness “Don’t you know that is the most dangerous area in all of Tijuana?!” Of course we had not known this. I thought back to the $800 Sony camera that I slung around in the streets of that village. And then I thought of my pockets full of cold, hard US dollars. I laughed to myself, but thought “I need to be a little more careful in the future if I’m going to make a career of this ethnography business!”

    Lisa’s War Story: When Rapport Goes Too Far

    Lisa Aronson Fitch, a qualitative customer researcher who works in product development, struggles with balancing her personal boundaries with the need to connect with her participant.

    While working at a product development consultancy several years ago, I went to Southern California to conduct a series of in-home interviews for a consumer product client. As we all know, it is essential for researchers to develop a rapport with the participants immediately so they feel comfortable having you in their home and opening up about their lives, behaviors, and interests. In one particular interview, a degree of rapport, however questionable, developed quickly.

    As soon as the door opened, a five-year-old boy appeared in blue footsie pajamas, asking if he can give me and my colleague kisses. My colleague and I exchanged a quick glance because in the car not minutes before, he mentioned that he isn’t very fond of kids (if I recall, he didn’t say it that nicely). What should we have done? This little boy was waiting with puckered lips. If we said no or that we were uncomfortable letting him kiss us, we risked alienating the mother who was standing there with a smile; if we said yes, we would feel uncomfortable knowing this kid is about to do the exact opposite of what a child should do when meeting a stranger. (Didn’t this parent ever hear of “stranger danger?”) We hadn’t even put our bags down yet and introduced ourselves! To make matters worse, as I started to slowly (very slowly) bend down towards the little boy, his mother says “Remember son, not on the lips!” Needless to say, I was completely confused and disturbed as to why this was all happening. After I received my kiss on the cheek, it was my colleague’s turn. The little footsies-clad kid was then sent to bed and we began the interview with his parents.

    While our conversation focused on kitchen routines, my colleague and I struggled with the idea that these parents encouraged their son to kiss strangers. We began to even feel violated as the little boy came running out of his bed six more times through the two-hour interview to give us more kisses. Didn’t he care to ask if I was seeing someone at the time? Following the ordeal, I mean interview, my colleague and I discussed the idea of “when rapport goes too far.” What should a researcher do in this situation? Should we accept kisses from a strange child in the name of developing rapport for a research interview? Should we have suggested to the parents that they teach their child a much different lesson about strangers? Having grown up around New York City, I’ve become properly paranoid about dealing with strangers so the idea of teaching my child it is alright to kiss strangers made me twitch.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Welcome to the week. Here’s our deal:

    • We’ll be working through some fieldwork stimuli as we finalize our plans to get out to these customers we’re waiting to see. These won’t be designs per se, but sketches or other visualizations of new functionality meant to provoke conversation. We’re evaluating the idea more than the solution itself (see Role Prototype here [PDF]).
    • I am mostly ready for my UX Australia workshop but want to do some prep for my talk in Melbourne. Yes, it’s next month but between fieldwork and travel, it’s going to be upon me in a moment.
    • Five War Stories last week, at least two this week. And we need your story, too! Tell us yours here.
    • We’ve begun work on the IxD13 Student Design Challenge. We had a great first meeting with our sponsor and are filled with excitement about it; I expect there will be an announcement this week or soon about who the sponsor is and what we’ll be exploring together.
    • Ten years gone: From August 2002 – chocolate french fries, a celebrity encounter.
    • What we’re consuming: Curiosity, Storm Large, COOKIES.

    George’s War Story: Skyfall (or A View to A Kill)

    Design researcher George Ressler navigates gravity and the TSA in order to collect user data in an innovative way.

    Recently I was on a project that focused on observing customer’s shopping behaviors at a retail space in Philadelphia. This was not the typical shop along project because I was asked to observe customers without altering or impacting their shopping behavior. I believe that if the customer is aware of our presence as researchers, it alters their shopping behavior, creating noise in the data. For this project the research team really needed to become an invisible fly on the wall. To do this we built a rig that consisted of several cameras that pushed a video feed to our research station in the back of the store. At our research station we tracked the customers’ path and tagged shopping events as they happened. In simple terms, we created a high-tech mobile solution for capturing a customer’s journey that resembled something you might see James Bond using.

    When the time came for the first of many fielding trips we packed all the technology into three custom black hard shell cases that collectively weighed 228 pounds. We arrived at the Columbus airport extra early because we anticipated a lot of hassle from TSA for trying to fly with such “unique” equipment. While at the ticket desk our luggage was immediately flagged and a TSA agent asked me to follow him into a backroom to hand-inspect every item in the cases. As I watched from behind a yellow line of the floor, the agent tore apart my neatly packed electronics, swabbing everything for traces of explosives. All the while he asked detailed questions about everything; “What is this? What does it do? Why do you have this?” After at least thirty minutes of explaining everything to this agent he said that it all checked out and I could re-pack the cases and head to the departure gate.

    When we arrived that afternoon in Philly we were relieved to see our three cases thump down the baggage carousel. From the airport we headed directly to the store to begin our set up process. Upon arriving at the store we encountered our first real problem. Each store was supposed to have a 24-foot ladder, which would allow us to reach the ceiling to install our cameras, however this store only had an 18-foot ladder. Being the most agile of the research team I volunteered to climb on shelves, support beams, anything to get me up into the ceiling to install our cameras. At one point, I climbed a store shelf, holding on for dear life while clutching a 25-pound camera unit, thinking to myself that I would be so mad at myself if I died by falling off the shelf.

    Once all the cameras were installed throughout the store I began to set up the network that would pull all the video to our research station in the back room. Then problem number two arose: everything was set up perfectly but I could not connect to the cameras from our research station. After an hour of troubleshooting, I finally realized that because our research station was behind a cement wall the wireless signal was not reaching the cameras out in the store. In all my preparations for this trip I never thought to account for being behind a cement wall! The only solution was to move our router onto the store floor in front of the wall and then run an Ethernet cable to our back room research station. This meant I again climbed up to the ceiling and suspended the cable from the middle of the store to the back room. After almost an hour of monkey-climbing around the store we had our cameras connected to the network and were ready to start collecting data.

    The following two days were packed full of documenting customer’s journeys. It was fascinating to observe customers’ shopping while slowly seeing patterns in behavior emerge. After our time in the store collecting data was over I repeated my climb up the shelves to the ceiling to retrieve our cameras and packed up our three black cases.

    We made it through TSA at the Philly airport smoother than in Columbus and got to the gate early, leaving ample time to relax. After landing in Columbus we waited at baggage claim for our cases and in no time the first case clunked down the carousel. However the other two cases never appeared. We checked their status at the baggage claim office where they informed us that our other two cases were held back for further screening because they contained “suspicious materials.” We assumed they would eventually clear and indeed they arrived in Columbus on the next flight from Philly.

    Before this all gets blamed on the TSA, those two cases did look very suspicious. I was amazed that we got them to Philly with such little problems. Each one of those cases contained a couple of huge batteries, lots of wires, and electrical boxes. Without a close inspection the cases did look like very large, heavy bombs. So as much as I was upset at TSA for holding our cases back, I was relieved to know that they are actually catching bomb-like packages at airports and taking the time to inspect them properly.

    Whenever I tell this story I will always remember the problems we overcame with transporting and installing the technology. I can still picture myself jumping from store shelf to store shelf trying to reach the ceiling to install the cameras. But above all I vividly remember how much I felt like James Bond when we arrived at the store with three heavy cases full of complex “spy” technology. Next time we do this kind of project I will be bringing my tuxedo, so I could really bring the Bond persona to life.

    Jon’s War Story: Beware of Trap Doors

    Jon Innes, founder of UX Innovation has a story about getting – and maintaining – access to a secure location. Very secure.

    Early in my career I helped a number of companies outside of the consumer space adopt methods from consumer design research for devevloping products sold to businesses. This is always a challenge because you have to explain to various people at the companies you visit what you want to do and they typically think you are crazy.

    In this case, my project involved trekking to companies around the US to talk to telecom and networking geeks. My assignment was to study adoption barriers to Cisco’s Voice Over IP products, which meant physical phones, special servers to make them work like old fashioned phones, and some software to set them up to do stuff like retrieving voice-mail, and dialing extensions or outside lines.

    On this particular day, I was onsite at an Ivy League university. I had just spent several hours talking to telecom guys who clearly didn’t like the idea of having to use some fancy networking gear or for that matter anything that was designed after Jim Morrison had died. I had just parked my stuff in the corner of a network operations center (NOC) that resembled NASA’s Mission Control Center in preparation for a series of interviews with the staff there. Getting in the NOC was a major coup. Most organizations do not like outsiders in the NOC, especially outsiders with cameras taking notes.

    About 5 minutes before my first interview with a NOC employee, I decided to make a run for the restroom. My time-zone-adjusting caffeine intake was taking its toll, and the person I was supposed to speak to had yet to arrive. I asked someone in the NOC for directions to the nearest restroom and walked down the hall, not thinking about much but the call of nature. I passed through several doors and got flashbacks of an old TV show called “Get Smart” I watched in reruns as a kid.

    I located my destination, but as I attempted to return to the NOC, I quickly realized I had a problem. In my haste, I’ve left the secured zone of the NOC. The doors I passed through require a special badge to get back through. Worse yet, I’ve left my bag with my ID and my notes of who I’m supposed to visit, and I can’t remember the name of who I’m supposed to be meeting with next.

    While most companies make you sign in, I had not needed to that day. I had an escort from the IT group show me around, leaving me at each place for the time we agreed so I could do the interviews. So I’m now in an unknown part of the building, with no idea how to get back to where I was, or even how to get out of the building I’m in. I don’t have my cell phone with me, and there’s no one in the hallway to ask for help. Even if I do find someone, like a security guard or an employee, I realize it’s going to be really hard to explain this. After what seemed like an eternity, I talk a passerby into helping me contact my escort from IT, who kindly helps me return to the NOC. I manage to gather some good insights there during the time I have left.

    To this day every time I’m doing a study in a corporate setting, I always hear the theme from Get Smart playing in my head as I walk down those hallways-and my trusty laptop case is always on my shoulder.

    Greg’s War Story: Taking notes, getting detained (sort of)

    Anthropologist Greg Cabrera spent 17 months in Afghanistan as an embedded academic with the military, supporting social science research and analysis as part of the Human Terrain System. In this story, his best practices bring some unwanted attention.

    In the summer of 2010, when I first arrived to Kandahar Air Field, Afghanistan, I was unsure about how I would fit into a military culture. Just being from California created a cognitive barrier for most my military colleagues. Simply put, there were a lot of “don’t ask, don’t tell” jokes.

    In any case, the first couple of weeks involved me playing catch up and learning everything I could about the assigned area and region. I took copious notes all the time to help jog my memory and capture information that would come in handy later on. My hope was to refer back to these notes and re-create the picture people were creating themselves based on scanty information.

    In a war environment, you hear stories all the time and you never know what is real or not. The jargon further complicates the situation and makes it difficult for one to navigate people, places, and things, all of which tend to be obscured in military code.

    One evening, I was hanging around the base waiting to link up with my liaison, Mike. He was facilitating an introduction to a detachment commander who I would work for over the next 12 months. Depending on how the meeting went, the commander would decide to bring me on board as a social scientist to work with him and his unit. I had tried to meet the commander earlier, but it was unclear where he was. His men told me he was busy in the port-a-john, but I think those guys were testing my wits. Long story short (and bathroom humor aside), we coordinated a meeting that night.

    While I was hanging around the base waiting to link up with the commander, I noticed a large gathering of soldiers and civilians in an open area. In my curiosity, I wondered if there was something I needed to be in the know about. There was approximately 50 or so people gathering around a projector to watch a PowerPoint presentation projected on the side of a wall. I assumed the crowd was too large to accommodate on this small base where work areas were tight. Doing this outside made no sense because fighter jets flew and were so loud it could cause permanent hearing damage. I thought to myself, “Well, since they are doing this presentation out in the open, the information can’t be that sensitive. Surely taking a few notes or jottings couldn’t hurt?”

    This presentation took place right before I would be heading out into the field. As it started and I began writing things down, I started to feel more than a bit uneasy about what I was hearing. The gentleman started off by explaining this fighting season was the bloodiest since 2007 A chart detailed the number of significant events (SIGACTS) and quantitative information about those killed in action, enemies killed in action, those wounded in action, improvised explosive devices found, indirect fire attacks, etcetera. Cough, ahem. I stopped myself at this point for a couple reasons:

    First, I did not want to walk around with this in my notebook in case I lost it and the enemy had eyes on this information. Second, I was sure this could come back a bite me somehow. I immediately became nervous because of what I already had written down. I started thinking to myself as well: I don’t really need to be here.

    As I started moving back, my actions caught the attention of a very attentive Sergeant Major. Sergeant Majors feed off opportunities to explode and make examples of others to reinforce the nature of their authority and rank. A strange civilian was the perfect feeding opportunity. Indeed, when I caught a glance at others in this crowd, no one else was taking notes or writing down information. “I’m dead,” I thought to myself.

    Before I knew it, this dude’s eyes were piercing through me and he pointed at me to stop moving as he came over to me. He yanked me out of the crowd, and starting barking questions at me, hands on his hips and head leaning forward: “What are you doing?! What were you writing?! Who do you work for?!” Frozen, I muttered something to the effect of “Uh, I, I’m just an analyst.”

    He took away my notebook and identification card and told me to follow him. The fact I did not have a security badge did not help my case and only contributed to the uneasy feeling sitting in the pit of my stomach.

    He sat me down in the operations center near the legal officer. He pointed at me and explained to others that he had caught me taking notes. He assigned a soldier to guard me while he figured out how to handle the situation. As I sat on the couch with another soldier staring coldly at me, I gazed around the operations center. There was a white board with a funny quote about strippers, an empty office with a blow-up doll in it (oddly enough!), and some metallic signs on the walls demonstrating football fan territory.

    These guys were pretty laid back, but I had broken the social contract and had no idea what the repercussions would be. At this point, I wished I had just stayed in my sleeping quarters. A phone call to my liaison Mike was my get-out-of-jail-free card. The Sergeant Major explained the situation to him and the JAG (legal) officer.

    The JAG officer called me into his office and explained to me the nature of note-taking in a sensitive environment. Even though the presentation was out in the open, my act of taking notes classified my entire notebook. He handed the notebook back to me and I was on my way. I never saw the guy who detained me again. I wanted to simply get out, lick my wounds, and meet the commander who was waiting for me. The commander, who was not terribly impressed with my antics, laughed about my story. He decided to bring me on board on the spot despite my initial casting as a troublemaker. I like to think this gave me an edge or maybe he saw value in having me around to take notes (ironically) and provide insight into the strange cultural environment he was about to encounter.

    I shook off the embarrassment, but it was a story that got a few laughs in my organization: “Human terrain guy detained for taking notes.” For me, it set the tone for the abrasiveness of military culture and reinforced my status as an outsider. I learned to be cautious about what I would capture in field notes and the sensitivity of collecting information in a war environment.

    Fumiko’s War Story: Goodbye cruel world

    Design researcher Fumiko Ichikawa offers this devastating tale about losing face.

    In May 2008, I coordinated what I call an inspiration study concerning healthy eating. What do Japanese people eat and drink? Why? Is there a particular tradition or habit that people have developed around eating? How are the perceptions of eating and health related in Japanese culture? My mission was to make sure that my client’s researchers had all the exposure they could imagine around how Japanese people buy, cook, and eat, through interviews, observations, and own experiences.

    One day, our interview took place in the residential area of East Kanagawa, an hour-and-a-half from Tokyo. Our informant was a housewife in her late 40s. She expressed a clear preference about her choice of vegetables, for the sake of the wellbeing of her husband and two children. She offered us pickled vegetables and soft bamboo shoots, all homemade and requiring time and dedication to prepare. She also allowed us to see what is inside her refrigerator, which some would consider a brave act, as many housewives whom I met considered this far more private than their bedroom or toilet!

    The interview went fairly well. She was very relaxed and open, and I felt that we got more than what we came for. But there was one minor glitch: the interpreter we hired was not quite the person we hoped her to be.

    The interpreter came from an agency, arranged by my fellow researcher. An hour before the interview she appeared at the meeting point and we had a chat. She was a lady in her late 30s with a soft, elegant smile. Dressed in a white jacket with a stitched Camellia flower, she appeared to me to be very sophisticated. The way she spoke to us prior to the interview was soft but confident, and until the actual interview started, I had no doubts.

    As the interview progressed, I noticed that my clients appeared confused. The interpretation concentrated on facts and did not convey the emotion and the passion that we were clearly seeing from the housewife, with her big smiles and gestures. Thirty minutes passed by and after some struggle, my client asked in a very polite way that the interpreter stop. From that point on, the client asked the questions, and I became the interpreter. This change of setup was done quite discreetly, and I do not think that the housewife noticed much.

    Dismissing someone on the spot is not an easy thing. It is awkward and challenging. But I felt my client addressed the matter in a very professional way. After we left the informant’s home, I saw that my client stepped away from the rest of the group and approached the interpreter, to talk with her about why she had done that. From a distance, the interpreter appeared calm. I assumed that despite the situation, she took things well.

    Soon after this interview the study was complete and my clients went back to the States. But four days later, in the middle of the night, I received an international call: it was my client. I called her back. She told me that she received an email from that interpreter and I should read this as soon as possible. In the email, the interpreter has written eloquently about how humiliated she was on that day. This email was in fact a suicide note, telling us “I have no choice but to kill myself.”

    I felt like someone had hit my head real hard. There was a tremendous rush of anxiety, anger, and confusion. How could this happen? What did we do wrong? Why is she reacting this way? Despite of the odd hours, we frantically called her and her agency. After three or four hours we confirmed there was nothing wrong with her. We learned it was simply her way of expressing her anger and making sure we felt sorry for her.

    “Lip! Lip my stockings!” a Japanese call girl shouts in the film Lost in Translation, as she forces the American celebrity actor played by Bill Murray to ‘rip’ her stockings in his hotel room. The combination of an exposure to foreign culture and the wrong interpretation can generate confusion, frustration, and often times, laughter. But on that day, it was mostly confusion that the experience brought me. Sometimes we experience foreignness in our own culture.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Patton Oswalt’s Letters to Both Sides: His keynote address at Montreal’s Just For Laughs 2012 [The Comic’s Comic] – We’re regularly exposed to wicked-problem discussions about complete upheaval in many industries: manufacturing, newspapers, music, books. Patton Oswalt addresses the upheaval in comedy, how he struggles with it, and how he thinks performers and producers can address it. Inspiring stuff.

    You guys need to stop thinking like gatekeepers. You need to do it for the sake of your own survival…Our careers don’t hinge on somebody in a plush office deciding to aim a little luck in our direction. There are no gates. They’re gone…Comedians are getting more and more comfortable with the idea that if we’re not successful, it’s not because we haven’t gotten our foot in the door, or nobody’s given us a hand up. We can do that ourselves now. Every single day we can do more and more without you and depend on you less and less…I want you, all of the gatekeepers, to become fans. I want you to become true enthusiasts like me. I want you to become thrill-seekers. I want you to be as excited as I was when I first saw Maria Bamford’s stand-up, or attended The Paul F. Tompkins show, or listened to Sklarbro Country.

    For More Pianos, Last Note Is Thud in the Dump [NYT] – Another example of the old slowly, gradually, and then finally being replaced by the new.

    The value of used pianos, especially uprights, has plummeted in recent years. So instead of selling them to a neighbor, donating them to a church or just passing them along to a relative, owners are far more likely to discard them, technicians, movers and dealers say. Piano movers are making regular runs to the dump, becoming adept at dismantling instruments, selling parts to artists, even burning them for firewood…It is strange to think of them as disposable as tissues. Yet economic and cultural forces have made many used pianos, with the exception of Steinways and a few other high-end brands, prone to being jettisoned. With thousands of moving parts, pianos are expensive to repair, requiring long hours of labor by skilled technicians whose numbers are diminishing. Excellent digital pianos and portable keyboards can cost as little as several hundred dollars. Low-end imported pianos have improved remarkably in quality and can be had for under $3,000. “Instead of spending hundreds or thousands to repair an old piano, you can buy a new one made in China that’s just as good, or you can buy a digital one that doesn’t need tuning and has all kinds of bells and whistles,” said Larry Fine, the editor and publisher of Acoustic & Digital Piano Buyer, the industry bible.

    Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare as Corporate Focus Groups [NYT] – A misleading headline; social media allows high quantities of shallow consumer input. In focus groups, the numbers are much smaller but there is the chance for a discussion.

    Frito-Lay is developing a new potato chip flavor, which, in the old days, would have involved a series of focus groups, research and trend analysis. Now, it uses Facebook. Visitors to the new Lay’s Facebook app are asked to suggest new flavors and click an “I’d Eat That” button to register their preferences. So far, the results show that a beer-battered onion-ring flavor is popular in California and Ohio, while a churros flavor is a hit in New York. “It’s a new way of getting consumer research,” said Ann Mukherjee, chief marketing officer of Frito-Lay North America. “We’re going to get a ton of new ideas.” When Wal-Mart wanted to know whether to stock lollipop-shaped cake makers in its stores, it studied Twitter chatter. Estée Lauder’s MAC Cosmetics brand asked social media users to vote on which discontinued shades to bring back. The stuffed-animal brand Squishable solicited Facebook feedback before settling on the final version of a new toy. And Samuel Adams asked users to vote on yeast, hops, color and other qualities to create a crowdsourced beer, an American red ale called B’Austin Ale that got rave reviews. “It tells us exactly what customers are interested in,” said Elizabeth Francis, chief marketing officer of the Gilt Groupe. Gilt asks customers to vote on which products to include in a sale, and sets up Facebook chats between engineers and customers to help refine products. “It’s amazing that we can get that kind of real feedback, as opposed to speculating,” Ms. Francis said.

    Women Outdoors [Metropolis] – A review of an interesting new book Why Loiter? Women & Risk on Mumbai Streets.

    Mumbai’s public spaces belong to all of its 13 million inhabitants, but at any time of day or night the ratio of men to women is glaringly disproportionate. Men have no qualms about hanging around on street corners or at tea stalls, but women make a point of looking busy, striding with purpose, or talking on their cell phones. Thousands of women travel by trains or buses, but it’s not easy for them to find a toilet, a park bench, or any public place in which to linger. “If Mumbai is the best city for women in India,” says the sociologist Shilpa Phadke, “then the bar is set very low indeed.” Why Loiter? Women & Risk on Mumbai Streets, coauthored by Phadke, the architect Shilpa Ranade, and the journalist Sameera Khan, takes a close look at the public spaces of a city where women are said to live more independently than anywhere else in India. But over three years of “extensive, not intensive” research through ethnographies, mapping, interviews, and workshops, the authors found that the city doesn’t quite live up to its egalitarian reputation. And while the book is specific to Mumbai, the ideas in it apply to any metropolis – are public spaces anywhere truly gender neutral?

    Can Geoengineering Solve Global Warming? [The New Yorker] – A discussion of innovation in the context of a wicked problem provides some delicious quotes.

    “What is fascinating for me is the way the innovation process has changed,” Eisenberger said. “In the past, somebody would make a discovery in a laboratory and say, ‘What can I do with this?’ And now we ask, ‘What do we want to design?,’ because we believe there is powerful enough knowledge to do it. That is what my partner and I did”…”There is a strong history of the system refusing to accept something new,” Eisenberger said. “People say I am nuts. But it would be surprising if people didn’t call me crazy. Look at the history of innovation! If people don’t call you nuts, then you are doing something wrong.”

    Dan’s War Story: Shanghai Surprise

    Dan Szuc (writing on behalf of the whole Apogee team, including Jo and Hok) relates a familiar experience about equipment failure, highlighting the importance of improvisational problem solving and supportive team dynamics.

    We were on on the train in Shanghai on our way to visit a person in their home as part of a research project. Doing random checks of all equipment becomes second nature, ensuring that you have backups of backups, cables work correctly, sound is being recorded correctly and video is working well.

    We all have specific roles on home visits where. Hok and I capture both the interview and surrounds on film using Flip cameras, Jo is responsible for speaking with the person we are visiting to ensure that they are comfortable and Hok also is our guy for ensuring all the equipment is technically working well (and if something is not working well he usually knows how to fix it).

    So back to the train ride in Shanghai…the three of us were together, testing the recorder, cable and microphone. We realized on conducting a few test recordings that there were clear breaks in the recording when playing it back. We realized this was caused during the previous interview as we needed to go through a security scanner at a train station with the participant (as part of the journey we were filming). The cable connecting the recorder and the bag were stretched going through security unnecessarily, possibly causing damage to the wires.

    We tested various places where we thought the sound might be breaking up – the connectors, the microphone and the cable itself. We wanted to get this right because the microphone clips onto the person we are interviewing and ensures that we have clear audio (in addition to the audio that’s captured on the video using the Flip cameras). We did not have time to go to an electronics store to get new equipment and were relieved that the audio recorder itself was working well and could serve as a (non-ideal) backup microphone.

    Together, we needed to come up with a plan to ensure that we could capture the same level and quality of audio as in the other people’s stories captured to date in Shanghai. Consistent film quality is an important part of the storytelling. We tried a few configurations using the cables, rubber bands and microphone. We eventually worked out a way to place the microphone close enough to the participants chin so that the audio would come through clearly, and discarded what we had determined was the faulty cable.

    On reflection, it taught us all the importance of team work, thinking quickly about solutions, not blaming when things sometimes go wrong, trying out various configurations whilst on the move and planning ahead to have some other cables/equipment available if there are failures. Not everything goes according to plan in field research, but having a calm head and a team who works together makes for a nicer working environment and a huge difference in the overall results. Happy researchers equals happy participants equals nice stories equals lots to learn from.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Here’s the deal for this week:

    • We’ve developed a fieldwork plan for our latest study, and are thinking about how that will vary for all the different user types we’ll me meeting with. We’re waiting for news from our client about setting up the customer site visits. In the meantime, we’re diving into the software tools that these customers are using so we can get a glimmer of understanding about how they are currently working, and we’re co-developing some sketches of future designs to help provoke conversation once we’re in the field.
    • UX Australia is coming up soon, so it’s time for me to get my materials in order, figure out the agenda, line up the handouts, and start sending out the homework assignments for my workshop. Plus, some logistics for my travel to Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne.
    • Latest War Stories are from Susan and Gavin. I’ve got one more in hand to post tomorrow, and promises for quite a few more in the next few weeks. If you’ve got a great story to share, you should do so here.
    • What we’re consuming: 99 River Street, Jablow’s Meats, Marvin Gardens.
    • .

    Gavin’s War Story: It’s 4:00 a.m., Do You Know Where Your Ethnographer Is?

    Gavin Johnston, Principal at People Path, LLC has a epic fieldwork adventure that evokes a darker version of those 80s flicks that might have starred one or both of the Coreys.

    The nature of what you’re studying and the importance of context is something one should never forget. This is particularly true when the product you’re focusing on is a fusion of caffeine-infused malt liquor, Red Bull and Tang and is primarily consumed by hipster 20-somethings as they “pre-funk” on a Friday night. On the surface it sounds like the kind of thing one hears or reads about and says “Oh, poor you” with more than a touch of sarcasm. And to be fair, I’ll be the first to admit that doing ethnographic research on a topic like this is decidedly more enjoyable than studying, say, online tax preparation. Or at least it is until it’s 4:00 a.m. in the Bronx, the subway has stopped running for night and your shoulder is coated in a quickly freezing film of someone else’s vomit. This is when knowing your limits and having a back-up plan for getting back to the hotel (or out of jail) becomes as important as the camera, the training or your research experience.

    The fieldwork began with a party being hosted by two young women so obsessed with the drink that they had actually dressed as cans of the product for Halloween. They were experts at finding an amazing number of uses for it, from turning empty cans into art to cooking with the neon liquid. Imagine a float made with a mix of the god-awful stuff and strawberry ice cream. As the party heated up and the list of participants grew, simply keeping up was difficult. Notepads were quickly filling up and batteries drained.

    Normally, the idea is that you drink one of these concoctions to kick off the evening and one late in the evening, say midnight, to keep the party going. But that wasn’t the case with these folks. No, rather than being used to supplement the other drinks throughout the evening, the stuff was consumed exclusively, leading to what they hoped would be “mad adventures” and general mayhem. Being long past my partying days, I took it in stride, assuming it was just bravado. Fieldwork demands vigilance, so if capturing the full context of use meant losing a little sleep and stinking of cigarettes, so be it. But it turned out that much more was required.

    At about 1:00, as one of the roommates found a corner in which to sleep away the night. The other grabbed two more cans of the stuff, three of her friends and me, then headed for the door, intent on getting to an obscure club in the Bronx. After a walk through a foot or so of snow, we hopped on the subway and headed out of Brooklyn. As it turned out, the obscure club was a warehouse in a deserted neighborhood. At this point my camera battery had run dry, my notebook was full from cover to cover and I was running out of steam. As I contemplated calling a cab, I realized that I was too far away, had limited cash and was in a neighborhood that no cab driver would have driven to in the first place. So I decided to continue on with my participants. In for a penny, as they say.

    Not long after, around 3:00, my key informant and one of her friends tracked me down (I had lost them half an hour earlier in the crowd) and asked if I was ready to go because one of their cohort had consumed “a little too much” booze. We headed for the door. Unfortunately, making it to the subway for the last late-night train was unlikely. Instead, half an hour later I found myself, my host and her friends sitting in a subway station that was in disrepair. Thirty minutes after that, sitting on a bench in the frigid subway station, waiting for the 5:00 a.m. train, the friend that had downed a bit too much decided it was a good time to paint my shoulder with the Day-Glo contents of her stomach.

    The decision to stick with it ultimately resulted in some breakthrough insights and a very happy client, so I can’t complain. But all things being equal, I would do things differently today. The experience helped remind me that it’s important to know when to bow out and how you’re going to do it. It reminded me that it’s important to set limits on what you’re willing to do in the name of research, rather than pushing yourself to the breaking point, putting yourself in harm’s way or being party to what may be questionably legal behavior. Of course, six months later I was sitting in a 130 degree attic with HVAC guys for 10 hours at a time. Sometimes it takes years for these lessons to take hold.

    I’ll tell you something I think you’ll understand

    Losing All Hope Was Freedom (or LAHWF) is a project (with an associated YouTube channel) devoted to breaching experiments (“an experiment that seeks to examine people’s reactions to violations of commonly accepted social rules or norm”). It takes a certain bravery to engage in these experiments, say going into an elevator and facing the back wall, to see what others will do. It also hopefully requires some ethical examination; some of these experiments come off more as pranks and can disturb people (honestly, I’m not impressed with Improv Everywhere because they needlessly perturb strangers for our bemusement).

    With that in mind, here are their two latest videos, where they sneak up on people and casually take their hands. Compare the experimenter and the environment between the first and second video, and look at your own reactions to the reactions they gather. The second one, for sure, is worth watching all the way through.

    Holding People's Hand

    Holding People's Hand 2

    Susan’s War Story: The trust dance

    Ethnographer Susan Wilhite has a jangly impressionistic story about committing, body and soul, to her participant’s world.

    Fieldwork in New York City, this time shadowing a Dominican guy in Queens. Tech-edgy and as proud of his gamer laptop as greasy dudes are about their hotrods. It was early July and I was there to get his story: the what, how, where, when and why – especially the why. The hacked, the black-marketed, the legacy and the shiny new, and all the numerous income streams. In New York, like everywhere, everyday life is all the drama you need.

    First off, he had advised me to not stay in a crummy cockroach-infested hotel close to his place. No, I should stay in Manhattan and he would come get me, each and every day. And so he did. 9am, he is at my hotel lobby on the upper West Side to escort me on three subway lines and a bus. His place is his aunt’s and cousin’s house on a street Archie Bunker might have lived on. At 21 he is el hombre de la casa.

    I see the situation right away – I need his cooperation if only to get back and forth every day and I can’t tell how long his reliability will last. He has not a clue what ethnography is. So I say to him: for the next three days you’re working for me. We’re pretending we’re making a documentary about you and your devices. We’ll talk and you show me stuff to illustrate your points. He buys it. We’re in business.

    He makes a lanyard to wear my digital recorder around his neck, to better capture his comments over the loud air conditioner while he runs Lara Croft through a troublesome Tomb Raider level. We sit at the white wrought-iron patio table out back and discuss his take on every wireless access point in the neighborhood. He demonstrates how he invents ringtones in the front room to sell at one joint or another. He’s a boxer on the side – he knows people.

    One morning he packs his virus-infested hotrod laptop and we head to Brooklyn. He’s talked his techie friend into occasionally wiping his hard drive. “Good as new”, he says. By this time I’m spending 7-something hours a day with him, and not every moment pertains to the research. In fact, it’s exhausting for us both to keep running in this acting out-demo mode. So it’s a relief to watch other parts of his life, which sometimes expose incidental intersections into the topic at hand. But on the way to Brooklyn he drops hints about how to walk and look at people to avoid unwanted attention.

    His techie friend, it turns out, is less than thrilled about the risks of wiping a friend’s laptop hard drive. Maybe there’s even some unspoken debts and favors between them – I don’t know. I play along. The afternoon is getting long and the air is heavy – this is his mother’s house and the grand furniture and stuffed curio cabinet suggests it’s been in the family for a few generations.

    Apparently the subject of our being there must be carefully broached. Veering into distracting topics gives the two parties a chance to modulate the tension. So they ask about me. They’re also looking for reasons to impart respect upon me and maybe be okay with my being female and older than them. I say more than is strictly professional but that was the point – they want to know I’m okay, I’m human, I’m not taking advantage of them. I can be trusted. A few revelations about my video game background convey cred that seems to lubricate the moment; I’m one of them, at least for now. Shortly thereafter it comes to light that while I am in no danger there’s something illegal about the hard drive wiping thing.

    The trust dance subsides and now we huddle in a back room. A fluorescent bulb lights the scene and the New York Transit Authority roars outside the barred window now and again. What I witness is ripe stuff but being there, in that room, with these people, in that moment, is mildly warped. But this is the real deal, the reason we research. I avoid shooting the illegal parts even as I avoid endorsing their actions. I’m all objectivity on the inside and going partly native on the outside. Mission accomplished, the ‘high five’ is caught on camera, and my guy and I are outta there.

    There are ethical lines in what ethnographers do. To be really committed it’s tough, though, to pull back, to play it safe. To be willing to seek humanity is to push boundaries.

    I had meant to bring his gratuity with me on the last day and I just plain forgot. So his girlfriend comes along back to my hotel. As we ride I sense no distrust in my intentions but they are a little anxious. They watch as I sign the traveler’s checks at a grand old table off the lobby, and then they turn out toward a hot night in the vicinity of 89th and Amsterdam. Upstairs, after downloading the media, recharging batteries, and writing fieldnotes, it’s 10pm – time for dinner and a drink. It’s my birthday.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Butlers in high demand, ready for any household job [SF Chronicle] – Are we in a service economy or is this just an upper-crust exception?

    The path to becoming a truly top-notch butler is certainly not for the faint of heart – or ego. Hours can be long, and physical labor, depending on the number of staff members, can be exhausting. What is critical is utter dedication to the skill of superior – and tactful – service. An extraordinary butler can look forward to a long career with the same family and a base salary as high as $100,000 or more. The more talented and cosmopolitan, the more desirable. “Most people are surprised to learn that butlers don’t wear tails very often,” Grise says. “I’ve known them to sport khaki shorts and white crew shirts, especially when traveling in settings where they need to blend in discreetly and not draw attention away from their principals.”

    Brits Find Writing a Cheddar Anthem That Isn’t Cheesy Isn’t Easy [WSJ] – Perhaps if they settled for jingle or doggerel rather than going for the anthemic, it might be more easily accomplished.

    Despite the global spread of Cheddar, Britain has done little to promote the cheese as a cultural icon. There are no well-known poems to Cheddar and, until now, no songs. In the Somerset village of Cheddar, where the cheese was invented 900 years ago, all but one Cheddar-maker has melted away. Other countries treat their curds with more reverence. A French village has erected a statue of Marie Harel, the supposed inventor of Camembert. Last year, a Dutch astronaut persuaded the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to send up more than 20 pounds of Amsterdam cheese as he circled the planet in the international space station. The Cheddar song competition hopes to tap into a year of nationalistic pride, as Britain hosts the Olympics and celebrates the Queen’s jubilee. More than 100 entries poured in, from career musicians, church choirs, kids, grannies and a team of crooning puppets.

    Don’t Indulge. Be Happy [NYT] – This sort of research continually reveals surprising and counter-intuitive aspects of what influences and is influenced by our emotions.

    Imagine walking down the street to work and being approached by our student Lara Aknin, who hands you an envelope. You open the envelope and find $20 and a slip of paper, which tells you to spend the cash on something for yourself by the end of the day. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal. Now imagine instead that the slip of paper told you to spend the cash on someone else. Being generous is nice, sure, but would using the money to benefit someone else actually make you happier than buying yourself the belt, DVD or apps you’ve been dying to get? Yes, and it’s not even close. When we follow up with people who receive cash from us, those whom we told to spend on others report greater happiness than those told to spend on themselves. And in countries from Canada to India to South Africa, we find that people are happier when they spend money on others rather than on themselves. But what about individuals who are notorious for their struggles with sharing? Surely the emotional benefits of giving couldn’t possibly apply to very young children, who cling to their possessions as though their lives depended on it. To find out, we teamed up with the developmental psychologist Kiley Hamlin and gave toddlers the baby-equivalent of gold: goldfish crackers. Judging from their beaming faces, they were pretty happy about this windfall. But something made them even happier. They were happiest of all when giving some of their treats away to their new friend, a puppet named Monkey.

    PLAY video memo pad – I saw this in a store in Barcelona and experienced a small science-fiction moment, when technology becomes cheap and disposable enough that it can be used in ad-hoc ways. It reminds me of when calculators shifted from being a $200 purchase to a freebie embedded on a keychain, etc.

    If you only tend to bump into family or flatmates when you’re both queuing for the bathroom, it’s not easy remembering to pass on important information. After a while communications can break down, messages can be misplaced, misunderstandings can occur; and before you know it, you’re having fisticuffs on the landing over something as mundane as replacing the tin foil. Well not any more. Because the Play Video Memo Pad lets you record video messages up to three minutes long for your flatmates (or even your future self) to play back later. A magnetic plate on the back makes it ideal for sticking to the fridge or any metal surface, so it’s always to hand when you need it.

    Fonts in Use – Once again, the power of the Internet to crowdsource significant databases of elements of the real world, tagged and categorized.

    Fonts In Use is a public archive of typographic design indexed by typeface, format, and industry. We document and examine real-world typography with the goal of improving typographic literacy and appreciation. The new version, launched in July 2012, introduces the Collection, a much larger database open to contributions from visitors. Any kind of image is welcome in the Collection, as long as type is clearly visible.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Here’s what we’ve got going on this week:

    Out and About: Steve in Barcelona (2 of 2)

    More observations from the trip to Barcelona. See part 1 here (and the complete set on Flickr).


    Graffiti scarification. At Park Guell, people mark the cactus so future tourists can see that they were there and they were douchebags.



    I’m sure I’ve never seen a sign for a detective agency before. But within days of seeing this, I come across a New Yorker article excerpting Mavis Gallant’s diary from Spain, in 1952. She mentions the ubiquity of signs for detective agencies in Barcelona! Who knew?


    Gaudi’s Casa Batll??.







    Delicious pinxtos.


    Recycling depot with a book-exchange rack and a used-clothing-for-charity collection box.


    The presentation and form factor of the Jam??n ibérico is sufficiently iconic that you can buy an inflatable non-meat version.


    Gestural guidance.

    Out and About: Steve in Barcelona (1 of 2)

    I’m just back from a week in Barcelona for WebVisions, where I led a workshop on fieldwork, synthesis, and ideation, and gave a short talk about championing contextual research within your organization. I’ll be covering similar material coming up in a couple of months at WebVisions Chicago. Meanwhile, I had a bit of time to explore, and found Barcelona to be a beautiful and well-designed city. Here are some sample images, with more to follow in the next day or so (and the complete set on Flickr).


    Bounty at La Boqueria market.


    Pedestrian safety warning placed in context, as you step from the sidewalk into the street.


    Obama British Africa Gin and Rum. Odd description here.







    Stickers on the corrugated metal doors pulled down when a business is closed advertise what I assumed was a taxi services but in fact is for locksmiths. Why are locksmith services advertised with such verve?


    Gaudi’s La Sagrada Fam??lia, under construction since 1882. Astonishing, even from the outside.


    Known in the US as Ice Age: Continental Drift.


    Marketing for something via Facebook.


    A very modern cinema structure, down by the water, where all the buildings are new and ultra modern. While the whole place is a delicious mix of old and new, classic and modern, this area went just a bit too far into Mall. While this building is gorgeous, its siting and overall vibe is dehumanizing.

    This Week @ Portigal

    And the scoopage for this week is as follows:

    • We’re off to Dallas for a couple of days for an in-depth immersion with our new client and their extended, distributed team. What is their business? What are their products? Who are the users? What changes to the product do they plan to make? What do we need to learn? Etc. Plus, there will be barbecue!
    • I’ll be finishing my final column for interactions; due to the editors imminently but not coming out in print until November!
    • I hope we’ll get some more War Stories this week. Do you have one for us?
    • I’m planning out speaking gigs – and potential speaking gigs – through the end of the year and into next year, even. Some fun ones coming up!
    • Ten years gone: In July 2002, we blogged about classic logos, an early Core77 article being published, a nice place to stay in Monterey.
    • What we’re consuming: pizza and ice cream, People Like Us, Diary of a Fire Lookout.

    Omni Quickies

    Cockroaches equipped as wireless networks [SF Chron] – While this is not “the” technology that Minority Report made famous (that would be the gestural interface), this reminds me strongly of those scurrying mechanical spiders that made their way through the building to chase down Tom Cruise.

    On its belly, each roach carries a dime-size circuit board along with a radio, a microphone and a battery. The gear, which adds up to 2 grams, about half the weight of a roach, is still in the prototype phase. As the bugs crawl into crevices and disperse, their microphones pick up sounds, while the radios transmit data via a local-area wireless technology called ZigBee. In the future, the bugs might carry sensors to detect radioactivity or chemicals. Epstein and his team are working to make the electronic circuitry even tinier, so it can be carried by smaller insects such as crickets and water bugs. They’re also testing a metal composite that flexes like a muscle when electricity is applied. Placing the material on a cricket would alter the flutter of its wings and distort the pitch of its chirp. It’s a way to relay information as aural zeroes and ones, like the bits in a computer, which could be decoded by software. Epstein came up with the idea of using insects to form wireless networks while listening to swarms of cicadas in Shanghai, where his wife is from. Submitting a funding proposal “was like writing a science fiction novel,” Epstein said, but resulted in $850,000 from the U.S. Army.

    “Thought Experiments” by Roger Ebert [Asimov’s] – Ebert posits an interesting, if recursive, framework – that the science-fiction enthusiasts who networked maniacally using dead-tree technology were precusors (so to speak) of the type of online behaviors that would show up later. Science-fiction consumption helped pave the way for the science-fiction-like use of technology that we are so familiar with today.

    For that matter, we were online before there was online. It is perfectly obvious to me that fanzines were web pages before there was a web, and locs were message threads and bulletin boards before there was cyberspace. Someday an academic will write a study proving that the style, tone, and much of the language of the online world developed in a direct linear fashion from science fiction fandom-not to mention the unorthodox incorporation of ersatz letters and numbers in spelling, later to influence the naming of computer companies and programs. Fanzines acted uncannily like mimeographed versions of Usenet groups, forums, message boards, and web pages-even to such universal design strategies as IYGTFUI (If You’ve Got the Font, Use It). Some of the same people segued directly from fandom to online, especially to places like the Well-not surprisingly, since many computer pioneers were also SF fans. Today, fandom survives on the web, where it is no doubt World Wide, and some very slick fanzines have segued into prozines. Are there still analog (paper) publications called fanzines? I haven’t heard that there are. That world has moved on. Today a twelve-year-old kid in Urbana has other ways to connect with alternative ideas, other worlds to explore. No doubt they are as exciting as fandom was for me. God knows what we would have given in 1958 for the web. To look through these old pages of Xero even today, and find Harlan Ellison right about “Psycho” when the world was wrong, and Blish taking on Amis, is to realize that in the mimeographed pages of a fanzine created in the Lupoff living room there existed a rare and wonderful discourse, and it was a privilege to be part of it.

    Inmates at Brazil prison pedal for electricity – and their freedom [TODAY] – While this story frames it as a positive, it’s easily reframed as the tip of a dystopian scenario where the world is so destroyed that inmates are enslaved to produce the most basic of necessities. Black Mirror played out a dark version of this, in its second episode.

    By pedaling the prison’s stationary bikes, the inmates charge a battery that’s used to power 10 street lamps along the town’s riverside promenade. For every three eight-hour days they spend on the bikes, Silva and the voluntary program’s other participants get one day shaved off their sentences. The municipal police contributed bicycles that had long been lingering in the lost and found, and neighborhood engineers helped transform them into stationary bikes and hooked them up to car batteries, donated by local businesses. Area entrepreneurs also pitched in the converter used to transform the battery’s charge into the 110 volts needed to power 10 of the cast iron street lamps that dot the riverside promenade. Every night just before sunset, a guard drives the charged battery from the prison, on the outskirts of town, to the downtown promenade. He hooks it up to the converter and a few minutes later the 10 street lamps begin to glow a soft white, like full moons suspended over the rushing waters of the river. Another guard comes in the morning to pick up the battery and ferry it back to the prison.

    Kelly’s War Story: Pictures are language independent

    Here’s Kelly Braun, Senior Director, User Insights and Analytics at Walmart.com with a story about shooting fieldwork video and inadvertently getting the money shot.

    At eBay we did a lot of field visits. We were always over-prepared with checklists, allergy meds, extra batteries, and everything else we could think of for the unexpected.

    For this particular study we were interviewing people who had bought large equipment on eBay. This visit was to a store that had purchased a giant Xerox machine that had been used by big corporations. This video store specialized in Chinese language videos.

    I perused the movies as we got set up. Some were American movies that I recognized by the pictures even though the titles were in Chinese. Others were films made specifically for the Chinese-speaking audience.

    We interviewed the owner and he told us about the amazing deal he got on the machine and when we asked if we could see it he said “Sure, it’s in the back.” No problem, we had extension cords for the video camera.

    I took the camera off the tripod and followed the store owner and my co-researcher into the tiny back office. I couldn’t really get a good shot of the Xerox machine from the door so I went inside and around the machine to get a better angle. At this point the owner says “Oh, I forgot. This is where the porn videos are…but don’t worry – they are all in Chinese”.

    I look up and the side of the room I was now facing with my video camera rolling was filled with porn – all with Chinese titles, but let’s just say it really didn’t matter that the titles were in Chinese because…well, a picture is worth a thousand words regardless of the language!

    My co-researcher just soldiered on asking questions and all I could think of was “Wow am I supposed to film this guy with all the frolicking nakedness on the video covers behind him?”

    Lesson learned: Make sure you know how to override the auto-focus on your camera!

    Come to Steve’s UX Australia workshop on interviewing


    I’ll be teaching Immersive field techniques: Interviewing and observing for user research, a full-day workshop at UX Australia in Brisbane, in August 29th.

    Interviewing is undeniably one of the most valuable and commonly used user research tools. Yet sometimes we forget that it’s a skill we need to learn, because:

    • It’s based on skills we think we have (talking or even listening)
    • It’s not taught or reflected on
    • People tend to ‘wing it’ rather than develop their skills

    Without good interviewing skills, research results may be inaccurate or reveal nothing new, suggesting the wrong design or business responses, or they may miss the crucial nuance that points to innovative breakthrough opportunities.

    In this day-long session, we’ll focus on the importance of rapport-building and listening and look at techniques for both. We will review different types of questions, and why you need to have a range of question types. This session will explore other contextual research methods that can be built on top of interviewing in a seamless way. We’ll try some practice exercises for improving your own interviewing skills. Through a homework exercise and a field trip during the workshop, we’ll also practice observation of users in an environment.

    This workshop is an evolution of something I’ve been teaching for a number of years (and continue to refine). Over the past couple of years I’ve led forms of this session in Istanbul, Vancouver, Savannah, Toronto, Lisbon, Barcelona, Hong Kong, and San Francisco. Now it’s Australia’s turn.

    I believe some of the conference workshops have already sold out, so if you might be going, please sign up soon! I look forward to seeing you there!

    This Week @ Portigal

    Here we go with this week’s update

    • I’m writing this in Newark Airport, halfway or so on my journey back to San Francisco from Barcelona. Great city, great conference, great time with friends and colleagues, old and new. I’ll post photos in the next few days (and some are already up on Flickr)
    • For the past several weeks, when I’ve put together this anticipatory summary, I’ve referred to the large project we’re just about to start. And so once again, it’s Monday and I’m almost embarrassed to say it again. The sales cycle for this project will exceed the duration of the project itself, at this point.And we’re good to go! Hooray!
    • I’ll be playing catch-up with a dozen or so phone or face-to-face networking meetings that were pushed out until after my return, which is essentially tomorrow.
    • I just posted Diane’s War Story, and will have another one later this week, perhaps as early as tomorrow. Meanwhile, submit yours here!
    • While the ink is barely dry on the Barcelona experience, I’m thinking ahead this week to UX Australia and even next year’s SXSW.
    • Ten Years Gone: in July 2002, I blogged about IDSA 2002, Hippo Hardware, and discarding digital media.
    • What we’re consuming: pintxos, Gaudi, VINCON.

    Diane’s War Story: Interrupted Interview

    Diane Loviglio, User Experience Researcher at Mozilla, has a story that reminds us our participants are part of larger systems that we don’t have insight into when we’re recruiting them.

    We walk down a nondescript hallway, me and my team’s designer and engineer. It’s the first time the three of us have been in the field together. I’m confident and excited, but also a little nervous that our engineer will start asking off-topic questions like “How many lines of code did that take?” during the interview. We find the door of the gaming studio and we walk inside – straight into the kitchen. The walls are brightly painted, the plan is open, the kitchen is right in front of us, but there’s no reception area in sight. So now the three of us are just standing in the hustle and bustle of the studio and aren’t sure where to go next. We felt a little awkward. Eventually, I started to text our host, but she appeared before I finished typing the message.

    Melissa (that’s what I’ll call her) warmly greets us. She had high energy, but you could also tell things were a little chaotic that day. She walks us 500 feet to one of their two conference rooms and then she goes to get her engineering counterpart, who we would also be talking to for the next 90 minutes.

    We set up the Flip video camera and unpacked our notebooks and paper and markers for the drawing exercise at the end. Mike (that’s what I’ll call him) comes in with Melissa. He’s much more reserved than she is, which was expected, but we get started and things are going great. They are playing off each other well – they both had different perspectives on the subject we were studying and that was coming out very well in the interview.

    55 minutes into the session, we are completely interrupted by an angry guy slamming the door open and barging into our conference room. He knew we were doing a private interview in there, because the walls were glass, but he barged in just the same. He starts yelling at Melissa and Mike – as if we wouldn’t pay attention unless he used his outdoor voice – “we’re meeting with [important company name] next door – let’s go!” Who the hell was this guy? And how obnoxious for him to walk in on our meeting without knocking or excusing himself. He didn’t even make eye contact with us.

    Melissa was taken aback. This other meeting wasn’t even on her schedule, so she was a little confused, but she tried to handle it and excused herself to go talk to this lunatic. I stopped the Flip, and without prying into the details, tried to get a read on how important this meeting was and if we should start packing up to go. Mike just sat there silently, as if this behavior was completely normal and things would pass over soon. He didn’t have any kind of reaction to the incident at all. We told him we could finish this at another time if Melissa wasn’t free – maybe over the phone or email. He just shrugged. Melissa walked back into our formerly private room, was very apologetic and said that we could continue, but she was obviously distracted. She was under the impression that we would just be another 5 minutes and I told her that this was actually a 90 minute interview so we still had 30 minutes to go, but we could hurry and wrap it up in 15. She paused for a moment, and we thought “Okay, that’s our cue. We’ll leave and let you be.” But, Melissa said that Mike wasn’t needed in the meeting after all, and he offered to stay and talk with us. So we plopped back down and said, “Oh. That would be great.” Melissa apologized again for not realizing how long our meeting was supposed to be and promised to reply to questions over email instead. I gave her a hug as she left the room. She looked like she needed one. And, I gave her that sincere “Gosh, I hope you don’t get fired today” thank you. She left and went into the conference room adjacent to us and we heard the call begin, because the walls didn’t go all the way up to the ceiling.

    With Melissa gone, we asked Mike the next question and realized we’d be spending probably no more than 10 more minutes with him. Not more than 1 minute later, as soon as we started to get comfortable again, the crazy guy comes back in and starts yelling at Mike! “We rescheduled this for you – we need you on this call. Now. If you don’t come, we can’t close this deal.” Okay, now we realized this was a bad situation. Mike casually said, “OK”, got up to leave, and asked us to email him the questions.

    They just left us in the conference room, all alone. We packed up our stuff and awkwardly made our way to the front door, none of us saying a word. We walked down the nondescript hallways in silence, making faces at each other to share our mutual feeling of “what the hell was that?” but we kept our cool and made it out of the building. On the way back to the car, the only thing I could do was apologize profusely to my designer and engineer. “I’m so sorry guys, that has never happened to me before. I feel so icky. Oof, so sorry guys. Usually, my interviews are a lot more professional than that and people don’t come in yelling at the people you are interviewing.”

    So, we spent the car ride back pretending to barge into each others’ interviews, laughing it off and trying to re-group for the rest of the day.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Not a ton to report this week

    Nicolas’ War Story: Do you want me to act?

    Nicolas Nova, consultant and researcher at Near Future Laboratory encounters an unusual individual, entirely unrelated to his study.

    I remember a study I’ve conducted last year that was set in a big shopping mall in France. We were there interviewing users of smartphones for an R&D project. The place was pretty standard and we decided to sit in a fast food joint called “Quick”, at the entrance of the mall (which means a lot of people were passing by). Given the focus of the project, we had to videotape the interviews and take pictures of the posture of the user. This means that the presence of cameras was hard to hide and that passers-by couldn’t avoid noticing them.

    After four interviews, we started the fifth one, kind of tired after hours of discussions with informants. Right in the middle of this interview, my colleague and I saw a tall guy moving to us with urgent haste, putting his two hands on the table, and screaming the following line: “I’ve just been released from prison and I’m hungry! What are you guys up to? Are you in the video business? Do you want me to act? Or what?”

    The size of the guy, his level of excitement, the face of our informant and the people around us made the event very odd as it stopped everything for a second or two. It’s this sort of situation in which you have to behave yourself and avoid pissing off the nervous intruder, take care of the informant naively stopped in her description and an audience frowning at us. He seemed so energetic, perhaps by his re-entering of public society, that he looked at the same time excited about a new opportunity AND being a thug about to rob us from our devices. The “or what?” was said with so much hatred in his voice that were a bit nervous ourselves.

    We explained to the guy that we were interviewing someone, asking her about her perspective for a research project and that he could be a participant later on. We were of course hoping it would be the end of it, a sort of way to make him understand that this is not the moment to chat with us.

    Of course, he didn’t seem convinced, or he simply didn’t get it because he told us: “Oh yes I’ve a friend in Marseille in the video industry, I know your stuff!” To which he added: “But why do you have so many telephones?” My colleague explained the project and that was the end of it. “Arf, I don’t get it, I don’t care, plus I’m hungry”… and he left as fast he arrived few minutes ago.

    Nothing really bad here but it was just awkward for us, a sort of break into our interview day…which actually readjusted our energy because we then completed three more afterwards!

    Observation and empathy

    Here’s another proof point for the power of video in user research. Check out this very simple observational video.

    If you didn’t watch it, it shows person after person stumbling on poorly designed stairs.

    I don’t know about you but I felt increasingly emotional the more I watched this. A bubbling outrage and a sense that something so obviously needs to be done about this. Of course, this is a simple problem, which makes the failure to act even more aggravating.

    The goal of user research isn’t always to uncover people’s fail states with the team’s existing products, but when it is, tools like video are impactful on rational and emotional levels.

    Update: according to this Tweet, the stairway is now closed.

    Leo’s War Story: No, We Really Meant the User

    Product Design Manager Leo Frishberg underscores the effort required to ensure you’re seeing the right user in the right context.

    Our team was embarking on an ambitious, multi-country Contextual Inquiry effort. We had created our sample cells, identified the right industries, established a great relationship with our sales team and done All The Right Things Up Front to make the effort a success.

    Working from Oregon with prospective participants in Bangalore is never an easy prospect; introducing a new research technique at the same time raised the stakes.

    Several weeks in advance of the interviews we had contacted our sales team in-country explaining the process: we needed individuals who were currently working with our equipment and willing let us observe them working in their labs, in situ.

    Everyone claimed to understand. We arrived in-country and I confirmed the arrangements, on the telephone, with the sales team. “Yes,” they confirmed, “we’ve found exactly who you are looking for…”

    We arrived at our first interview in a gorgeous sparkling new office building and were led to an upstairs glass-enclosed conference room. Presently, a manager-type entered, clearly expecting to hold court with us.

    I began the discussion with a recap of our expectations and a quick sanity check with the individual.

    “So,” I began, “we are looking forward to working with an actual user in the lab. Are you going to work with us today?”

    “No,” he said, dismissively. “I’m the team manager. I can tell you everything that’s wrong with your equipment. I’ve polled the team and have collected answers from all of them.”

    It’s at times like this, having flown 10,000 miles, having spent as much time as I had setting things up, that I lose a part of my conscious brain. I could feel the anger rising, but I knew that couldn’t help improve the situation.

    Instead, I signaled to the sales guy sitting next to me that as far as I was concerned, the interview was over and we could pack up to go to our next meeting. Here’s where the details get sketchy, but I know he said something, in English, to the manager, and whatever magic words he uttered, the manager smiled and nodded, suggesting he could definitely get the lead engineer to help us. He left to find the guy.

    A few minutes later, the engineer entered the room, curious as to what the group was doing there. We began the front part of the interview, and it was clear he was the right guy. After explaining what we were planning to do, we asked if he had any questions or needed any further explanation.

    ‘No,” he said, “you want to see me work with the equipment. I don’t have anything to do today, but I could show you what I was doing last week.”

    That was fine, we agreed.

    “Okay. Just give me a few minutes and I’ll bring you back…”

    Imagining what he might be doing in those few minutes I stopped him. “Uhhh, what would you be doing between now and then?”

    “Oh,” he assured us, “I’m just going to get the equipment all set up.”

    “Great!” We practically shouted. “That would be great! We’d be happy to watch you do that!”

    He smiled as if hoping we had taken our medication and led us to his lab. “I’m not sure what you’ll find so interesting about my pulling the machines off the shelf, but come on along…”

    The take-aways remain the same:

    • Persistence and staying on track no matter what the situation throws you
    • No matter how much you prepare, nothing will go as planned

    Out and About: Tamara in Atlanta

    While attending and presenting at the CPSI conference last week I managed to find a few moments to get outside of the hotel and take in some of the sights, sounds and flavors of Atlanta. The conference was dedicated to creative thinking and innovation so perhaps it’s no coincidence that I kept running into examples of my favorite creativity catalyzing tool: forced connections (also referred to as combinatorial creativity). Essentially, it’s the mashing up of seemingly different things to create something new.

    Take this sign, a great forced connection between Italian and Southern hospitality. In my opinion this is considerably more successful than the Collard Kimchi dish I ate the night before. Curiosity got the best of me, I had to try it. And I was pretty sorry that I did.

    What happens when you cross a cotton mill with a condo? No, that’s not a joke. It’s actually an amazing example of urban revitalization with a factory that had ceased serving its purpose. My hats off to the developers – they maintained architectural authenticity leaving many elements intact (as seen in the background of this image), and honored the rich history of this place through its rebirth as a hip place for urban dwelling denizens.

    I came across this little poem in the window of a coffeeshop. All of the windows had clever sayings printed in them. Rhymes are fun examples of forced connections. I also like the play here between transparency (i.e. looking through a window) and translation (i.e. looking at words for meaning).

     

    The sign here reads: Sister Louisa’s CHURCH Of The Living Room & Ping Pong Emporium, Come On In Precious!! Below the arrow on the left it states (it’s a bar). So, yes, it’s a forced connection between bar and church with some ping pong and living room thrown in for good measure. Other signs on the building simply read CHURCH and (it’s a bar). It’s funny to see that, clever as the name is, it still requires qualification that this establishment is, in fact, a bar.

     

    Mary Ann’s War Story: Be Prepared

    Ethnographer Mary Ann Sprague is forced to improvise when one slip changes her plan.

    I have always taken great care and a certain amount of pride in always being on time and prepared for field sites and interviews. I thank my mentors for instilling this in me early on. I always made sure I had charged video and audio equipment, discussion guides, contact information, notebooks, extra writing implements, and power cords to carry on despite any possible problems. There have been the occasional failed battery, but I always had a spare, or my coworker had one. It’s never been a serious setback until this spring.

    I was meeting my coworker at an elementary school for a teacher interview. Teacher free time is at a premium so I made a point of being on time and prepared to maximize the time we have together. On this occasion I arrived at the school parking lot a few minutes early, so I turned off my car and pulled out my iPhone to check messages. I did a mental check that I had everything in my backpack in the passenger seat. Everything was in order, so I relaxed for a couple minutes.

    Just before the meeting time, I put my phone in my pocket, got out of the car, and hit the door lock. I walked around to grab my backpack and the door was locked. No problem I thought, I’ll go back to the driver’s side and unlock it. The driver’s door was locked, and the keys were still in the ignition with my equipment, questions and paper still locked in the car!

    I called my husband and he agreed to drive home (luckily it wasn’t too far) to get my spare keys and deliver them (but still a good 40 minute wait). I went into the school to meet my coworker. She had relied on my previous level of preparation and had a notebook, but without the questions or any recording equipment.

    Not wanting to reschedule, we met with the teacher. Luckily, the teacher had printed the list of questions I had emailed. I was frustrated because I didn’t want to miss any part of this conversation. The teacher was a wealth of information, but the information came out at warp speed and I worried about being able to keep up.

    Thinking about what I had with me, I realized I had my iPhone, so I recorded the entire conversation using the voice messages app and took several pictures, as did my coworker, using our phones. I wrote my notes on the back of the question sheet from the teacher and we had a very interesting discussion. My husband met us in the parking lot just as we left our interview. Later, I was able to retrieve the audio through iTunes and convert it to listen on my PC.

    Everything worked out in the end, but it was a shock to my confidence. I have since begun looking at other apps to capture audio on my iPhone so I have a better backup plan for the future, and my coworker now carries audio equipment at least so we are always prepared.

    Steve leading a workshop in Barcelona about Making Research Real

    Next week I’m off to Barecelona to speak at WebVisions. In collaboration with Kelly Goto, I’ll be running a workshop called Synthesis to Ideation:Making Research Real.

    In this hands-on workshop, insight strategists Steve Portigal and Kelly Goto will lead you through a fast-paced, engaging workshop with one requirement: Rethink your research approach and implement new frameworks for collection and synthesis of findings — to create actionable artifacts and outcomes for the real world.

    I’ve been leading workshops like this a lot over the past few years, but I’m really excited about the collaboration with Kelly; our approaches are generally aligned but different in interesting ways and we’re using that creative tension to give our participants a broader perspective.

    If you’re interested in signing up, use registration code PORTIGAL for a 40% discount.

    I’ll also be presenting Championing Contextual Research in Your Organization during the conference itself.

    I hope to see you there!

    Curating Consumption #3

    We’re back this month with another round of Curating Consumption, seen last week over at Johnny Holland. In previous editions we have looked far and near for ponderous consumer experiences. This time around we are looking a little closer at the messages targeting us and what meanings they explicitly and unintentionally reveal.

    On my last overseas flight, by the time they came around with the meal, I was more than ready. Sure, the crew didn’t seem to know what the options were, where words like “beef” and “chicken” were interchangeable options (and one attendant was freestyling with the radical “lentils” offering). Given the uncertainty, I went for the most-likely-to-keep-me-from-dying-of-low-blood-sugar-option: pasta. Looks like I made the right choice, because the pasta was homemade! Well, sure, the perfect formation of noodle-cheese-sauce may not evoke the sense of the artisinal, but the industrial inkjet printing on the foil covering reassures me that it was indeed homemade. Just like an artist numbers her limited edition prints, the pastacraftsman behind this meal uses a special code to document the individual pride and care. Sure, it tasted like crap, but I was thrilled to have homemade airborne crap. /SP

    In this park in Lisbon, we found a phone hole, where a payphone once was, but is no more. The sign helpfully suggests that the phone is temporarily unavailable while being repaired. But let’s face facts, that phone is long gone and ain’t never coming back. Lisbon telco maintenance people, please don’t set up expectations you can’t meet! /SP

    I recently received this card from an agent at the Southwest Airlines check-in counter. It included a lovely little flower-shaped piece of paper with flower seeds in it that I can plant wherever I choose. While I “luv” the idea of Southwest giving me flowers, I am baffled for a few reasons. Firstly, it seems like an unnecessary use of paper. Why not just print the promo message directly on the flower paper? Why use up a not plantable piece of paper to give me one that is? I have seen this kind of paper printed on before so I know that it is possible. Secondly, I don’t understand the campaign purpose. In preparation for this post I visited the Southwest Citizenship link on the card and found no connection to this item. I expected to see an image of this card or something, anything really, that would visually or conceptually close the loop between the gift, the targeted behavior (visit the site) and the message. A flowery fail, really. /TC

    Celebrity sighting! For all of you out there wondering “Whatever happened to Johnny 5 from the 1986 film Short Circuit?” I believe I have the answer! While my son and I were returning a movie to a DVD rental kiosk in our local market this message appeared on the screen. My son doubted the likelihood of a little old-fashioned robot inside of the kiosk handling the check-out and return process. Of course, he is much too young to remember Johnny 5. So while he left the store incredulous, I left sighing with satisfaction that even 26 year-old robots can find relevant work in today’s economy. /TC

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Chick Beer | America’s Beer for Women – Products that claim to be designed especially for women cloak themselves in empowerment and equality. Yet they easily ring false. Beyond issues of feminism, I see this as any type of design failure: not offering a specific understandable benefit that makes your promised experience tangible. In other words, why is this beer for “chicks?” Even if it was made by chicks, that’d be more than what they’re telling us here.

    We brew Chick at America’s second-oldest brewery, located in beautiful southern Wisconsin. With over 160 years of experience, we know how to brew great beer. For centuries, beer has been created, produced and marketed by and to men. At Chick, we think that it’s time for a new choice. Chick Beer celebrates women: independent, smart, fun-loving and self-assured women who love life and embrace all of the possibilities that it has to offer. Above all, we think that beer is supposed to be fun! So enjoy! Grab a cool Chick and Witness the Chickness!”

    The crayola-fication of the world: How we gave colors names, and it messed with our brains [Empirical Zeal] – Words are a culturally unique approach to categorizations. But some science folks have looked into identifying a universal, cross-culture map of colors.

    There are plenty of other languages that blur the lines between what we call blue and green. Many languages don’t distinguish between the two colors at all. In the Thai language, khiaw means green except if it refers to the sky or the sea, in which case it’s blue. The Korean word purueda could refer to either blue or green, and the same goes for the Chinese word qƒ´ng. It’s not just East Asian languages either, this is something you see across language families. I find this fascinating, because it highlights a powerful idea about how we might see the world. After all, what really is a color? Just like the crayons, we’re taking something that has no natural boundaries – the frequencies of visible light – and dividing into convenient packages that we give a name.

    Joel Hodgson on ‘Mystery Science Theater’ and Riffs – [NYT] – I love the insight into the process they used. As well, I am sick with jealousy over the folks that got to participate in a class, called RiffCamp2012, led by Hodgson. What could be more fun than that?

    If “Mystery Science Theater” was part insult comedy aimed at movies, there was also something congenial in the show’s tone. (Perhaps it was the puppet robots, or that it was all being produced in Minneapolis.) Six writers had to deliver a 90-minute episode every week, Mr. Hodgson said, with 600 to 800 riffs per movie, “when all the pistons were firing.” In devising the lines, no reference (Bella Abzug, Roy Lichtenstein) was too outré or rejected initially, Mr. Hodgson said. As he tried to convey to the students at Bucks, it’s best to brainstorm nonjudgmentally first and figure out what’s funny later.

    The Science of ‘Gaydar’ [NYT] – Gaydar is provably real, and the framework used by these scientists describes a couple of different ways that we cognitively process what we see as faces.

    It’s widely accepted in cognitive science that when viewing faces right side up, we process them in two different ways: we engage in featural face processing (registering individual facial features like an eye or lip) as well as configural face processing (registering spatial relationships among facial features, like the distance between the eyes or the facial width-to-height ratio). When we view faces upside down, however, we engage primarily in featural face processing; configural face processing is strongly disrupted. Thus our finding clarifies how people distinguish between gay and straight faces. Research by Professor Rule and his colleagues has implicated certain areas of the face (like the mouth area) in gaydar judgments. Our discovery – that accuracy was substantially greater for right side up faces than for upside-down faces – indicates that configural face processing contributes to gaydar accuracy. Specific facial features will not tell the whole story. Differences in spatial relationships among facial features matter, too.

    A Peek Inside The CIA, As It Tries To Assess Iran [NPR] – A cultural and process overhaul to help intelligence analysts see beyond the obvious conclusions. Applies to the analysis process in design research as well.

    The post-Iraq changes at the CIA also involve new analytic techniques, highlighted in a “tradecraft primer” in use at the agency since 2009. The manual is now used at the Sherman Kent School, the agency’s in-house training institute for new analysts. The manual opens with a section on the “mind-set” challenge. “If you’re only looking at [an issue] through one narrow view of the world, you’re not looking at the whole picture,” says John, who teaches at the Kent School. revealed. “Your biases will get you things like a confirmation bias: ‘I’ve seen it before, so it must be happening again.’ Or an anchoring bias: ‘We’ve come up with that conclusion, and I think it’s true, and it’s not going to change.'” One exercise now in use at the CIA is called “Analysis of Competing Hypotheses.” Analysts who may be inclined toward one explanation for some notable development are forced to consider alternative explanations and to tally up all the evidence that is inconsistent with their favored hypothesis. “You’re looking for the hypothesis with the least inconsistencies,” says John, who’s been at the CIA for 34 years. “We call it the Last Man Standing approach.” Such exercises are employed throughout the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence. Each office now includes a “tradecraft cell,” staffed by specialists whose mission it is to make sure their colleagues are using all the latest analytic techniques and challenging their own judgments.

    To Profile or Not to Profile? : A Debate between Sam Harris and Bruce Schneier [Sam Harris] – Bruce Schneier’s stuff is pretty amazing. His command of logic and skills in debate make his essays and other appearances mandatory for thinking about design, systems, and of course the post-9-11 security- and attendant cultural-issues.

    When implementing any human-based system, the interests of the people operating the system often don’t precisely coincide with the interests of those designing it. This is the principal-agent problem, and it manifests itself in your profiling system as the TSA agent who thinks “If I wave this person through without checking out the anomaly and he turns out to be a terrorist, it’s my ass on the line.” Because the cost to the agent of a false positive is zero but the cost of missing a real attacker is his entire career, screeners will naturally tend towards ignoring the profile and instead fully checking everyone. And the screener’s supervisor is unlikely to tell him, “Hey you need to ignore the next old lady that beeps,” because if he’s wrong then it’s his ass on the line. The phenomenon is more general than security; discretionary systems tend to gravitate towards zero-tolerance systems because “following procedure” is a reasonable defense against being blamed for failure.

    A Simple Tool You Need to Manage Innovation [HBR] – You may have seen Ansoff’s Product Market Matrix (perhaps like me, without knowing its name); this is a nice evolution of that model.

    In the lower left of the matrix are core innovation initiatives – efforts to make incremental changes to existing products and incremental inroads into new markets. Whether in the form of new packaging, or slight reformulations, such innovations draw on assets the company already has in place. At the opposite corner are transformational initiatives, designed to create new offers – if not whole new businesses – to serve new markets and customer needs. These sorts of innovations, also called breakthrough, disruptive, or game changing, generally require that the company call on unfamiliar assets and to develop markets that aren’t yet mature. In the middle are adjacent innovations. An adjacent innovation involves leveraging something the company does well into a new space. Adjacent innovations allow a company to draw on existing capabilities but necessitate putting those capabilities to new uses. They require fresh, proprietary insight into customer needs, demand trends, market structure, competitive dynamics, technology trends, and other market variables.

    Our latest article: Never Eat Anything Raw


    Our latest interactions column (written by Steve Portigal and Julie Norvaisas) Never Eat Anything Raw: Fieldwork Lessons from the Pros has just been published.

    Interviewing is based on asking questions. As children we all learned to ask questions (perhaps more than the adults around us were ready for!), but it takes work to become a skilled interviewer-the kind of interviewer with whom a natural exchange is almost inevitable and for whom asking questions is as effortless as Roger Federer’s forehand. Great interviewers are made, not born. We’ve had the ongoing opportunity to think even more about the experiences that have shaped us as interviewers. Of course, as researchers we are compelled to look outside ourselves, so we asked some people we admire to tell us about how they improve their interviewing skills. We have synthesized our findings into four key areas: practice, reflect,
    critique, and exchange.

    Get the PDF here, and check out (and add to) the fieldwork War Stories here.

    Previous articles also available:

    This Week @ Portigal

    The happenings this week:

    • We deliver the goods tomorrow; wrapping up a crazily-quick project (with an availability-caused interregnum) with a session tomorrow. Excited to share our analysis and resulting implications with the team and see where they take them.
    • At the end of last week a purchase order magically emerged from a corporate sourcing machine and today we start kicking off a large project. There’s so many known unknowns, I totally expect this to be a meeting about a meeting more than anything, but that’s where we have to start in order to bring clarity to the murk. Many projects start this way, but this seems even more so (our clients didn’t know we were getting the purchase order any more than we did, for example).
    • We had three new War Stories last week and I hope to be getting more this week!
    • Ten Years Gone: On All This ChittahChattah in June, 2002 a minor rock legend dies, a still-unanswered set of questions about what the heck a belt-buckle actually is.
    • What we’re consuming: Surf Spot, John Scalzi, Spalding Gray.

    Slides from yesterday’s talk on Improv, Creativity and Design

    Last night I spoke at the ACM Bay Area chapter’s monthly event. My talk was Yes, My Iguana Loves to Cha-Cha: Improv, Creativity and Design, another iteration of a talk I’ve been giving since 2005. For me, the topic continues to evolve and inspire and each time I talk to a group about this, some new things emerge. Last night, I talked (albeit briefly) about the power of Yes. In improv, we hear a lot about “Yes, and…” which is really an alternative to saying “no.” In “Yes, and…” you accept an idea and then add your own. But I really got to thinking about the fundamental reframe being about empowering ourselves to say Yes. The “and…” is about putting yourself back into it, but I thought there was something to focusing for a moment on the core idea of responding to things with yes. A few years ago we led an ideation training workshop and at the end we had everyone line up and one at a time come to the front and say something that they had learned, while everyone in the room responded with “Yes!” While it had a bit of a revival meeting about it, it was an interesting exercise. My challenge to the folks last night (a mix of old-skool Silicon Valley types and people in my network, all of whom jumped into the games and exercise) was to try responding yes in a situation where you might typically respond no. It’s a challenge I’ll have to take on myself as well.

    The slides are below:

    Tom’s War Story: Go with the flow

    Tom Williams, Principal of Point Forward is confronted with his own health concerns, and with some unexpected practices for managing bureaucracy.

    Our ethnography research team visited a small neighborhood health clinic in Beijing to study its workflow. It was 2009 and concern over H1N1 swine flu was at its peak. There was a special flu screening at the airport and yet the folks at the clinic seemed concerned that we, as Americans, might be seen as potential carriers of the virus that was causing near-panic at the time. To make matters worse, I had awoken that morning with a scratchy throat. It was just a reaction to the hazy air quality in Beijing but still, it would be very bad to be coughing in this situation so in the taxi on the way to the clinic I stuffed multiple cough drops into my mouth.



    The Health Services clinic in Beijing where ethnographic research was conducted. Inside, a dispenser for free contraceptives.

    Doing field research in China is always a little bit surreal for me, an American. The cultural differences are pretty subtle on paper but can be stark in person. They reveal themselves in that weird way that cultural differences do; unexpected little variations in design, procedures, or personal manners. In this setting in particular, lots of little things stood out when first walking into the clinic: the scale to weigh patients was in the waiting area, not near the exam rooms. Next to the scale was somebody’s bicycle and a broom was propped in the corner. The waiting room chairs were plastic, not upholstered and there was a vending machine offering free contraception. There were brochures but no magazines.



    The clinic’s waiting area.

    “How long have you been here in China?” the nurse manager asked us through an interpreter. “Three days,” I replied, willing myself not to cough. “Well, we occasionally get unannounced spot-checks by government health officials and, because of the swine flu, if they show up while you’re here doing research we’ll need you to say you arrived in China two weeks ago, not three days ago.” Huh? Wha? Lie to Chinese government officials? Is that in my job description? I’ve seen way too many prison movies to be comfortable with this. Plus, isn’t my time in the country a pretty easy thing to check on by just – oh, I don’t know – looking at the stamp in my passport? And the request was made in such a matter-of-fact, this-is-no-big-deal way that we weren’t exactly given a chance to voice our concerns; it was simply on a list of mundane procedures for the day: “the bathrooms are down the hall, you’re scheduled to interview two nurses, then two doctors, then you’ll do an hour of straight observation, then we’re gonna have you lie to government officials, and by then it’ll be time for lunch.” Ugh! Fidgeting nervously, and imagining what would happen if this were a movie, I glanced around to see if there was a back door for a hasty exit (of course – fleeing from government officials is surely better than lying to them!).

    We were taken to a room for our first interview and the oddness continued: we sat in reclining chairs normally used by dialysis patients. They graciously served us tea and watermelon but then placed bucket in the middle of the floor for seeds and rinds. I was wondering what the bucket was normally used for but decided not to ask. We interviewed a very kind and helpful nurse but she kept a surgical mask on her face the whole time.



    My colleague Priya mans the video camera near the tea and watermelon while the rest of the team discards seeds and rinds into a bucket.

    But then something happened: it was the simple magic of focusing on what I was there to do: field research. I got absorbed in hearing people tell their stories, obsessing about getting good video and good still photos, asking good questions, and listening closely. I enjoyed the watermelon and stopped worrying about how weird it felt to be spitting watermelon seeds into a bucket during an interview. By letting myself go with the flow, I actually forgot about my scratchy throat and even forgot about the possibility of being confronted about the date I arrived in China.

    The interviews and observations went very well and for all my initial impressions of differences, we noticed many similar workflow patterns to clinics we had studied in the U.S. and Europe. In the end, there was no surprise visit by health inspectors. After feeling uncomfortable as an outsider at the beginning, by simply sticking to the process and not pushing against prevailing cultural norms, I now felt at ease. We truly bonded with the clinic staff and developed a very solid understanding of their process. We said our goodbyes, left the clinic, and walked to a nearby Buddhist vegetarian place for lunch. When we stepped into the crowded restaurant, all the customers turned in unison to look at the foreigners. I reached in my pocket for a cough drop and the process started all over again.

    Priya’s War Story: Taking empathy to a whole new level

    Design Researcher Priya Sohoni has a very personal experience in the field and reflects on the challenge in order to find deeper insight about her users.

    I’ve never been too comfortable with hospital environments–the smells, sounds, sense of urgency–it makes me nervous. Yet, as an ethnographer should, I’ve attempted to conquer my queasiness and conduct research in medical facilities several times.

    In October 2010, I was conducting research in a hospital in the SF Bay Area. I was almost 8 months pregnant with my first child. I was given a choice between spending a day in the ICU, emergency, or the maternity department. I picked maternity – I was excited to be among so many about-to-pop mothers and so many who had just delivered. I thought to myself that for the first time I wasn’t feeling so queasy, I could hear babies in nurseries, we shadowed some nurses as they took the babies for their first immunizations, observed visitors greeting happy families with flowers, balloons, gifts…it seemed so odd that this was a part of a “hospital” environment.

    On one of the shadowing sessions, I sat in on a nurse shift change. The nurses went around the table sharing information about the newborns and their mothers and taking careful notes of the patients’ needs and requests. On one of the nurse’s share-outs, she turned to the nursing manager and said: “Baby girl in room 203, born vaginally at 8:02am, had trouble breathing, survived for 53 seconds and then died. Should I register her as a live birth or a still birth?” I felt as if someone had stabbed me in my stomach. So much pain that I clenched my tummy, sat down on the floor and broke into tears. I was expecting a baby girl too, in just over a month. Why was the nurse so unemotional around a baby’s death? The nursing manager noticed me sitting in the corner, brought me a glass of water and apologized that I had to sit through that. She suggested I take some rest in the nurses’ break room. But I wiped my tears away and stuck around.

    In a few more minutes, the shift change was over and the nurses dispersed. The nurse from 203 then walked over to another room to check in on another Mother and her baby. I continued shadowing her. She entered the room with a big smile on her face, congratulated the parents and commented on what a beautiful baby they had. She changed the baby, swaddled her, gave the mom her meds and assured her that she could call for help whenever she felt like it. It then struck me that the nurse was concerned about her patients. Deeply concerned. She too had felt the pain that the family in room 203 had gone through. But she had made a commitment to hundreds of other patients, a commitment to take care of them and make them feel better. She could not have done that if she had carried the sorrow with her, out of room 203.

    As ethnographers, we get trained to empathize with our respondents. To speak their language, to make them comfortable, to be one of them. I had just witnessed a remarkable new level of empathy that the nurse had. Where I had failed, she carried out each one of her roles with respect and propriety.

    I went home that day with a new appreciation for the nursing profession.

    Dan’s War Story: Focus, no matter what!

    Design researcher Dan Soltzberg has a brave and touching story about the best of intentions – and their consequences.

    I was doing fieldwork for a project on at-home computer use, and a client and I were at “Richie’s” house–a double-wide in a Mid-Peninsula mobile home park. Richie’s small-to-begin-with mobile home was filled with heavy wooden furniture, boxes of paperwork, and old pieces of technology, making it feel even smaller. We were sitting at the kitchen table, and Richie was saying that he liked to lie on the couch and work on his laptop, so I asked him if we could go into the living room so he could show us.

    We re-situated in the living room, and when Richie started opening up emotionally about how meaningful his work was to him, I got down on one knee next to the couch so that I would be on eye level with him, rather than standing over him. As Richie was talking I was totally focused on listening to him and guiding the conversation forward, but in the back of my mind – somewhere really far in the background – I was aware of a strange cold feeling in my leg.

    In addition to leading the interview, I was also manning the video camera and shooting stills, so I wasn’t able to give this strange feeling much bandwidth. When we finished our conversation and I stood up, I saw that there was a wet spot on my khaki pants. A wet spot that covered the area from the middle of my shin to above my knee. A massive wet spot.

    I hadn’t figured out yet what it was, but I knew I’d kneeled in something liquid that was lurking in Richie’s carpet. One of the cardinal rules is, I don’t make research participants feel bad, and I figured if Richie saw that this had happened, he could only feel bad. So I followed him back into the kitchen, conducted the rest of the interview, paid and thanked him, and left, all the while keeping my wet-spotted leg as much out of Richie’s sight line as possible. As far as I know, he had no idea I’d been befouled.

    The day’s next interview was scheduled tightly, and there was little time to take stock of things. I thought about doing a quick pant leg wash in a gas station bathroom, but made a judgement call that showing up at the second interview with a soaking wet pant leg would be worse than whatever was already starting to dry, so I decided to let it be. As I drove, my leg continued to dry, and it became apparent from the emerging smell that the mystery liquid was cat pee.

    The 10-inch wet spot dried to a hard, shiny, stinky consistency as I pulled up to our next interview. The woman we were interviewing had a house that was neat as a pin, and let’s say she was not the an easygoing type of person. I sat as far across the living room as I could, but I could only imagine during the whole interview that she could smell my ripening leg. Let’s hope not. Nothing to do but keep calm, and carry on.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Here’s what’s going on for us this week

    • We made rapid progress through our data last week to produce a final deliverable for our client. Due to some scheduling challenges, we won’t actually talk through what this means for them in terms of new opportunities until next week. So this week, the project is in a holding pattern. We lose a bit of momentum this way, but there’s nothing we can do about it.
    • Up next? For the past 6 weeks we’ve been making slow but steady progress on a new project that should take us to some interesting business and industrial environments across the US. The client team is super engaged and understandably taking a lot of time to align on the details, having never done this sort of work before. Meanwhile, we’re crawling our way through the corporate processes, finding ourselves assigned vendor numbers, and other trappings of the way that sourcing works. I hope for this week to be the one that officially moves us towards the next steps, but it’s entirely out of my hands.
    • We’ll be publishing some fieldwork War Stories this week. I’ve got one in hand as of this writing and another promised to me. As this archive continues to grow, we welcome your contribution!
    • We’re gathering applications for our open positions. Interested in working with us? Let us know!
    • Tamara is in Hot’lanta to speak at CPSI, connecting the insights from research to ideation.
    • I’m speaking in Cupertino this Wednesday for the San Francisco ACM, talking about improv, creativity, and design. This event is free, open to the public, and I’m told there is going to be food. Come on out!
    • I’m working with Kelly and Alison at gotomedia to finalize our Barcelona WebVisions workshop (use reg code PORTIGAL to save 40%). It promises to be an interesting synthesis of our complementary approaches and best practices.
    • Early this week, I’ll turn over the next revision of my book manuscript, now with all the figures detailed. It’s been a flurry of activity tracking down original files (in some cases, original paper documents) and numbering and cataloging them.
    • I’m excited about meeting some new people this week, possible colleagues and collaborators that I’ll be having lunches and introductory phone calls with.
    • Check out my pictures from Lisbon and UXLX!
    • Ten Years Gone: On All This ChittahChattah in June, 2002: umbrage over MCI (remember them?) sales scumbaggery, appreciation for an early archive of Internet humor.
    • What we’re consuming: the LEO at Wise Sons Jewish Delicatessen, Chum-chum the bored bear, The Other F Word, and Big Train

    Creativity and Haiku

    Creativity
    5 ways to test it
    7 big ways to kill it
    5+ ways to win

    I keep coming across articles about creativity that use the numbers 5 and 7. This got me thinking about haiku poems, often written 3 lines long with 5, 7 and 5 syllables respectively. I took this as an opportunity to get creative, so I wrote the haiku above and one for each of the articles that sparked my haiku-frenzy.

    Test Your Creativity: 5 Classic Creative Challenges [Behance]
    Do it yourself tests
    Learn how to assess
    And find when you flow

    The 7 Biggest Creativity Killers [Co.CREATE]
    Crime scene metaphor.
    Who killed creativity?
    Whodunnit plus tips.

    5 Ways to Win With Creativity [Inc.]
    Beat competition
    Questions, courage, bold gestures
    Gotta play the part.

     

    Steve speaking locally, about improv, design, and creativity

    I am frequently asked when I’m doing a public talk in the SF Bay Area, and now I can answer: next week!

    I’m giving my popular talk Yes, My Iguana Loves to Cha-Cha in Cupertino on Wednesday, June 20th, at 6:30. This talk, about improv, creativity, and design, is something I’ve revisited and revised for a number of years. As the talk has evolved, I’ve presented it at CHIFOO, Puget Sound SIGCHI, IxDA New York (slides, video), IDSA’s Southern Conference, IDSA/ICSID World Design Congress, IDSA 2009, and DUX05.

    Read more here, and come on down to the event
    HP Oak Room
    19111 Pruneridge Avenue
    Cupertino, CA 95014

    I hope to see you there. No iguanas will be harmed. No one will be forced to do improv but there should be plenty of opportunities to try it out if you’re up for it!

    This Week @ Portigal

    Here’s the latest on our end

    • Infrastructure? Who needs it! After last week’s challenges (resolution still pending) on the water for our kitchen, today PG&E finally made good on their repeated promise to only offer intermittent power throughout the day. So we’re in and out, in cafes, and waiting hopefully for full service to return.
    • We’re taking last week’s flurry of Bay Area and Sacramento interviews and very rapidly turning that into a deliverable. We’re committed to finishing up this week (which is about as rapid as we’ve ever done something like this, admittedly with a bit of trepidation) but it looks like our client has some scheduling gremlins emerging at the last minute.
    • It’s San Francisco Design Week, a time to hang out at other firms, talking to our friends, and eating-and-drinking from their free and sumptuous spreads. Maybe we’ll see you around (we’ll be the ones with our mouths full).
    • We’re hiring!
    • I’m in some near-final stages with the book, focusing on the images, a lot of which I’m crowdsourcing from other research folks. Hooray, community!
    • Do you have a fieldwork War Story? Please share it with us!
    • We’re moving ahead on upcoming talks at CPSI, San Francisco/Bay Area ACM, and WebVisions Barcelona.
    • What we’re consuming: Stanley Park Noble Pilsner, Crunchie Bar, Hyperbole TV.

    Parody or for-reals? More bad ideas becoming good ones

    Neil Young has had an amazing career where musically speaking he’s done just about everything: doo-wop/rockabilly, electro-synth, experimental feedback noise, rock opera, and more.

    Rock music (or any media) lends itself to parody, of course. Neil himself has been lovingly lampooned by Jimmy Fallon over the past few years, as Jimmy plays Harvest-era Neil singing some unlikely songs (here, here, here). The collision between artist and material is an easy (and hilarious) one; here’s an SNL classic, Kiddie Metal

    But now we have Americana, Neil Young’s latest album. With Crazy Horse (his grungiest of bands), he’s covered old old folk songs, including Oh Susannah, Clementine, She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain, and This Land Is Your Land.

    Just to be annoying, Neil’s also got a 40-minute silent film to promote the album. He was interviewed on Fresh Air this week, as well.

    Of course, there’s no objective measure of this as a “good idea” or a “bad idea” (and for Neil Young, it’s definitely not album sales). But despite my initial grouchy skepticism (that’s gonna suck!) about the concept, I did have “whoah” and “oh wow” smiles when I first heard any of it. So I’m voting good idea for the result, but what an awesome bad idea in the creative process.

    Also see Ideas so Bad, They’re Good and my recent Core77 piece The power of Bad Ideas.

    Ideas so Bad, They’re Good

    In Appsurd: In Silicon Valley, It’s Hard to Make a Joke, bad ideas become successes.

    When Mr. Cornell crafted Jotly as a joke, he says, he tried well-known start-up tricks to make it convincing, like using the color blue and giving it a name ending in “ly.” Other important elements, he says, included assuming everybody wants to share everything they do with everyone, and having “no clear purpose.” He was surprised at the positive response to the idea. “One of our programmers said it would be fun to make, so we decided to crush it out,” he says.

    While the creative (and other) excesses of Silicon Valley culture are wonderful media fodder, this article goes quite nicely with my recent Core77 piece The power of Bad Ideas. What we initially frame as bad can – especially as we understand more deeply the measures we should be using – emerge as good.

    Playing Participant: An autoethnography

    With our Curating Consumption series Steve and I take time to look through our researcher lens at our lives as consumers. Sometimes we get to play participant and experience the other side of the research conversation. I recently participated in an online focus group for the redesign of a website. I couldn’t help but reflect on my own experience in contrast to that of being on the other side of the virtual glass. While the opportunities below were generated from a moderated online context, they also suggest possibilities for designing real time research interactions:

    What Was Happening: I logged in and waited for the moderator to start talking. This was a silent discussion. Everyone was typing.

    What I Was Thinking: Here I am at my computer, wearing my ear buds, ready to listen and there’s no talking. Oh my God. I’m an extrovert. How can I make it through 90 minutes of silence? How can I get my big wordy thoughts into these little text boxes? This is not what I was expecting.

    Insight: No one set appropriate expectations for what ‘online focus group’ meant. I assumed it would be like a focus group with actual verbal communication. As an extrovert I found it difficult to sit quietly for 90 minutes with a virtual room full of people. As a verbal processor I struggled to articulate some of my ideas as typed words with limited character restrictions. This may have felt considerably different had I known going into it what to expect.

    Opportunity: Use words wisely. If you call something X but it is different from most Xs, then clearly communicate how it is different so participants have appropriate expectations. Or don’t call it X.

    Opportunity: Employ a variety of methods that cater to diverse personalities (i.e. introvert, extrovert) and learning preferences (i.e. visual, auditory, kinesthetic). Try to avoid using only one mode of interaction, it can feel alienating and disillusioning for participants.


    What Was Happening: The moderators introduced themselves and set some guidelines for the session. Our first instruction was to introduce ourselves with a story about our name.

    What I Was Thinking: Fun! Our icebreaker is simple! A story about my name: where it came from, what it means, whatever I want to share! Am I allowed to talk to the other participants? I want to comment on that story!

    Insight: This was a fun and simple icebreaker with a low barrier to entry (everyone has a name!). It was also appropriate to the context because all I knew of the other participants in the group were their names. We began addressing comments to each other and then the moderator encouraged us to do more of that. We quickly established a rapport and connected to each other through these stories.

    Opportunity: Facilitate rapport building between researcher and participants AND among participants. If you have expectations about who should (or shouldn’t) be talking to who, clarify that at the outset (or before beginning).


    What Was Happening: We were asked questions by the moderator (her type was in bold and blue) and then all of our responses would come up in a feed below. It was a small window that I was unable to resize or navigate.

    What I Was Thinking: This interface is driving me nuts. I am struggling to follow all of the comments. The moderator’s questions get lost upstream when everyone starts answering. When I try to go up to revisit the question, an answer comes in and I lose my place in the thread. I cant’ find the rating scale we are supposed to use. Is 1 high or low? ARGH!

    Insight: The researcher often has a clear path through the conversation in mind. Participants don’t necessarily have this big picture view and can feel lost in the forest of questions and answers.

    Opportunity: Ensure participants have various tools for keeping up with the flow of the conversation. This may be easier in live/in-person meetings, and especially valuable for virtual or asynchronous interactions.

    Opportunity: Provide a map of the journey that enables participants to identify where they are if they feel lost. Let them peek behind the curtain to see what’s ahead. It can be a trust builder if done well, or a spoiler alert if not framed appropriately.

    If you want to play with the possibilities of using these opportunities to improve your own practice (I know I am!), you can turn each Opportunity into a question that catalyzes divergent thinking. Simply ask “How might we…” before each Opportunity (e.g., How Might We ensure participants have various tools for keeping up with the flow of the conversation?). Then challenge yourself to generate as many ideas as you can (20 is always a good round number). And if you do, please share! We would love to hear suggestions for how to improve the practice of research by improving the design of the participant experience.

    Vanessa’s War Story: DDoSed in Vegas

    UX Researcher Vanessa Pfafflin shares this great story, where she finds success in failure.

    My colleague and I were visiting Las Vegas for a trade show and decided to tack on some field visits at a couple of our Vegas clients’ businesses. We planned to help out at the trade show booth for two days and then do one day’s worth of observational research before catching our flight back home. The first night we were in Vegas, we were notified that our company was experiencing a DDoS attack and our software was completely down for all 17k clients. (To give a little background, my company provides health and wellness based businesses with business management software centered around scheduling and POS). Our sales people were panicky. The show was 5 days long and we knew that it would be a really terrible week if they were unable to access the sales demos for the show if the server remained down.

    Unfortunately, the attacks continued for 2 days before we were able to install a new firewall and switch to a different data mitigator. We humbly kept our booth up sans demos. By this time our war-torn trade show team had improvised with screenshots of the product. Some of our clients showed up at the booth – many offering re-assuring words, while some met us with anger.

    At the end of the second day, connections were restored. I contacted the two clients we planned on visiting the following day, asking if their sites were up and working properly. Both clients assured me that their systems were back up and running just fine, and that they were anticipating our visits tomorrow.

    The next morning, we visited our first client, a massage therapy business, and were greeted warmly. We spent three hours onsite (mainly troubleshooting) and they thanked us with complimentary 60 minute massages! After two days on the DDoS battlefield, it was the best gift a girl could ask for.

    Our next client was a thirty minute cab ride away. By this time in the day, the temperature was in the 100s and we pushed through the wall of heat up the steps and into the lobby of the second business, a yoga studio. When we walked in, the girl at the front desk studied our business name embroidered on our shirts and said “Oh you guys, you’re on our sh*t list right now”. We apologized on behalf of our company and offered to help in any way we could. The girl did not want to have anything to do with us. Our software outage had made the last two days at work so difficult for her that all she wanted to do was scream. I asked to speak with the manager, with whom I had been working to schedule the visit. After 30 incredibly uncomfortable minutes waiting for him in the lobby, we made the decision to leave.

    The reactions of our two clients were so dramatically different that my colleague and I were left feeling quite bewildered as we waited for our flight back home. In retrospect, I’m glad we decided to go forward with the visits. Although the visits turned into more PR than observational research, we felt good about showing up and offering our support. In this situation, external factors put a damper on our research and put us in some pretty uncomfortable situations. In one of the situations, we were presented with an opportunity to help, and in the other, we learned when it is best to just stop and walk away.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Here’s what’s going on with us!

    Creativity is a practice (not a perfect)

    Being creative ain’t always pretty and it’s rarely easy. Creativity is a practice that brings out the best and worst of us. The articles below have me pondering the shadow side of creative pursuit, how to stay motivated through the highs and lows, and which of these creative calisthenics I should try first.

    How Creativity Connects with Immorality [Scientific American] – Citing a number of studies that link creativity to unethical behavior by employees, this article suggests that there is a dark side to creativity. This comes as no surprise to me. The internal tension that pits notions of “accepted” against “unheard of” is one of the most fundamental and key ingredients in creative production. Creative thinking is frequently predicated on a willingness to question the norms and accepted rules. In fact, if you want to practice your divergent thinking a bit today, I invite you to think of a rule at work (i.e. thou shalt not take the sticky notes home) and come up with ten, make that twenty, ways around it.

    The authors hypothesized that it is creativity which causes unethical behavior by allowing people the means to justify their misdeeds, but it is hard to say for certain whether this is correct given the correlational nature of the study. It could just as easily be true, after all, that unethical behavior leads people to be more creative, or that there is something else which causes both creativity and dishonesty, such as intelligence.

    What Doesn’t Motivate Creativity Can Kill It [Harvard Business Review] – I have a serious creativity crush on Teresa Amabile and particularly value her research contributions in the area of creativity and business. Here she emphasizes the importance of intrinsic motivation for fostering creativity within the organization and the delicate balancing act required when leaders utilize goals, evaluation, reward, and pressure to fuel innovation.

    In the end, it’s level, form, and meaning of the motivator that makes for that perfect balance. Being told to do a tough job in a particular way, with no tolerance of failure, little expectation of recognition for success, and extreme, arbitrary time pressure, can kill anyone’s creativity motivation. But being given the same job, in a positive atmosphere where false starts are examined constructively and success is recognized, can drive creativity – and innovation – forward.

    The articles above reminded me of an RSA animation for a talk given by Daniel Pink about how intrinsic motivation functions. I love it for both medium (graphic animation) and message (rewards come from within when you do what you love). If you are looking to amplify your creative practice, start with what you love to do already. And then do more of that.

    RSA Animate -- Drive

    Coarse Art: A 30-day experiment [Scree] – Definitions of creative thinking often refer to the four key skills of originality, flexibility, fluency and elaboration. Fluency is all about quantity- generating as many ideas as possible. Go. Go. Go. The more the merrier! My friend Emily, an Innovation Catalyst at a global corporation, recently undertook a month-long experiment in pursuit of creative fluency by committing to something she calls Coarse Art. Thirty days of making something, quickly, every single morning. No judgment, no reasons, no justifications. She just made something every day, celebrated the practice of it and reflected on all the struggles that this seemingly simple and deceptively challenging practice raised. You can find her article (and her art) on page 38. And if you are looking to develop your own creative fluency, it’s pretty simple. Commit to creating something (i.e. words, poems, assemblage, song, painting, culinary delight) everyday for 30 days in a row. And be sure to celebrate every single day, no matter what.

    We readily celebrate the brilliance of a child’s first artistic experiments, noting the highly abstract elements and excitement inherent within their expression, though as grownups we suffer from massive celebration delay.

    ‘Inspiration is 80% Mental, 40% Physical’: Your Secrets of Creativity [The Atlantic] – Last month Jared Keller asked Atlantic readers how they come up with their best ideas. This article is filled with responses. It is like a pinata of productivity exploded into a shower of suggestions for generating new ideas. Take a look, there is something for everyone here. You will likely find at least one suggestion that resonates with you and inspires you to try a new way to get your creative juices flowing.

    Do not silo your brain. I find myself at my most creative when I am connecting disparate things. How should I connect this blog post about reality television with a Congressional Budget Office white paper on home foreclosures? I am envious of designers who draw inspiration from a variety of sources: photography, textile patterns,medieval architecture, 1990s Geocities sites and the like. Inspiration needs room to breathe. I create this space by combining what I am working on with what I like.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Here’s what’s going on for the team this week

    • Wanna work with us? We’re hiring!
    • New project! As soon as we wrap one project, we’re off to the races with another one. This is a super quick effort, and so today we’re on site with our client team, trying to get a handle on what they know, what they’re trying to do, and what they’ll need to know to do that. Throw in a mess of logistics and you’ve got a kickoff meeting!
    • We’re collaborating with a new prospective client, doing longer-term project planning for a larger endeavor we’re all hoping to launch soon.
    • Tamara is digging into the planning of her CPSI workshop and Steve is working with Kelly Goto to plan their WebVisions workshop.
    • 10 Years Gone: On ChittahChattah, ten years ago this month, a cookie recipe and an improv milestone.
    • What we’re consuming: The Cult, manchego, painting, Draw Something.

    Out and About: Steve in Lisbon (2 of 2)

    More observations from last week’s trip to Lisbon. See part 1 here





    Street art.


    Body-enhancing undergarments.


    Clooney.


    Eat box? Yum!


    Y’arr! Pirate Bar! That’s some great neon. Perfect place for Drink Like A Pirate Day.


    Scented dolls? They look pretty intense. Perhaps they inch forward menacingly as you pass by their window.


    The design museum was redoing its facade with sticky notes. We watched their progress over several days.


    This is the take-a-number device for a retail queue. Far more advanced than the familiar North American paper ticket dispenser. And also unrecognizable if you don’t read Portuguese and don’t know to look for this.


    Detail of a building exterior. Tiled buildings are ubiquitous, with many different beautiful tile designs of various vintages.

    Out and About: Steve in Lisbon (1 of 2)

    Last week I went to Lisbon to speak at UX Lx (you can see my presentations and more here). We had a great time exploring the city on our own, and courtesy of our kindly hosts. I’ve got some images and observations here, and some more to come tomorrow.


    This sign is advertising one of those small bright yellow cars that tourists drive around while a recording guides them from place to place. But here the promotional message is rather ribald. Is this reflective of the local culture and how English is used, or is it an attempt to adapt to visitor norms? My other triangulation point was the frequent t-shirts with rather forward sayings in English, worn by people that maybe didn’t know what they meant? I saw a slender woman jogging with a “Chubby Girls Cuddle Better.” A late-middle-aged man on the subway wore a shirt reading “Rock Out With Your Cock Out.” There was just something off about the wearer and the message, seeing my own culture coming back at me in a completely different way. Was this like Engrish, or something else?


    Same idea. This is an advertisement for learning English, from the prestigious-sounding “Wall Street Institute” presumably targeting people who want to improve their careers. But FUCK (and the other side, SHIT) are the reference points for learning English. For sure, these are important words in business 🙂


    The reliefs in the base of the statue of St. Anthony.


    Friendly key dudes.


    Do they sell each of those animals as meat?


    Is this frog flashing a gang sign, or suggesting his availability for romance?


    Funiculars traverse the steep hills.



    Stunning architecture of the Oriente train station.


    Nothing says sexy like toilet paper.


    At the Vasco de Gama mall, this staircase used the same handrail as the escalator. As you approached it, you’d assume you were about to get on an escalator. But no, it’s stairs. Did some architect insist on symmetry with the design of the adjacent escalator?


    Rossio train station.

    Out and About: Tamara in Phoenix

    I spent some hot days in the 106 degree heat of Phoenix last week facilitating for social good at the Phoenix Design Summit. Even though we were crazy busy, I still found some time to capture the local flavor and ponder my surroundings.

    The side of this truck reads “Tree Frog Treks” and has a phone number to call. I never would have thought of hiring someone to take me out on a tree frog trek, especially in Phoenix (which, admittedly does not have a climate or environment that I associate with trees or frogs). I like the BooWoop! on the door. Is this what tree frogs sound like? Or what we tourists would exclaim upon seeing them?

    We had lunch at the Food Truck Fridays court held in the Phoenix Downtown Market on Friday afternoon. I appreciated the clever humor from Hey Joe’s Filipino food truck but most of all I loved their specialty drink: a whole young coconut that they served with the top cracked off and oversized straw.

    We visited an exhibit at the ASU Art Museum titled Miracle Report. The gallery was filled with many screens of various sizes. Each piece included audio of interviews with people about a miracle they had experienced while the video showed only their hands. Hauntingly beautiful and startlingly expressive. I’d like to try this approach for capturing video during research interviews.

    Also had the chance to visit Emerge: Redesigning the Future, an exhibit that followed the recent crossdisciplinary summit dedicated to design fiction and playing with the future. In this exhibit, you enter your name and a word on an iPad and then a phrase from the future appears on the screen in the bubble.

    I have no idea why this onion was sitting on a mailbox. But it got me curious about how many stamps it would take to send an onion. It would probably depend upon weight, right? Would the USPS deliver an onion if it had the correct postage and an address on it?

    This guy must really love hamburgers because this is not a uniform (as I initially presumed when I saw it). There were no logos or other elements on the front of the shirt. This made me wonder if there is any food item I love so much that I would wear a shirt of it like this one. Maybe kale. Or fresh young coconuts with a straw.

    Back from UX Lisbon

    Last week I had the pleasure of visiting Lisbon and presenting at UX Lx.

    I gave an updated version of “Well, We’ve Done All This Research, Now What?” where we did a brief observation of the area around the venue and then developed concepts that spoke to the needs we uncovered. Among the concepts the teams played with was a giant robotic sheep that would provide shade.

    The slide deck:

    Per Axbom took a series sketchnotes during the session and kindly posted all of them here.

    I gave a short presentation on the final day of the conference, exploring the power of user research not only to uncover data that drives product development but to change the way an organization thinks about it’s customers and itself.

    The slide deck:

    Sketchnotes from LiveSketching.com, Per Axbom, and Francis Rowland.

    Click to see larger original

    (Side note: amusing to see the consistent use of the presenter caricature. The organizers of the conference may have contributed to this; in each attendee packet was a poster showing a funny if awkward scene with cartoon representations of all the different speakers, as well as a set of cards for one of the speakers. Attendees were supposed to trade cards until they got a complete set.)

    Steve’s “The Power of Bad Ideas” published on Core77

    Core77 has published my latest column, The Power of Bad Ideas

    Bad ideas are not boring, meh proposals. Bad is not the absence of good. These ideas should go beyond provoking “That’s stupid!” to eliciting a much stronger response. Bad ideas might be immoral, dangerous to the user or bad for the business itself. In one session I led, a team proudly showed me their sketches of homeless people packed onto trains and shipped away from the downtown core they were trying to improve. At the time, I reacted to the general lack of humaneness in the idea and saw that as visceral proof point of how they were challenging boundaries. It wasn’t until much much later that I appreciated the horrific evocation of the Holocaust. In this writing, and perhaps in the reading, in the cold pixels of this piece, this feels grotesque. That’s because in reflecting here we are outside the environment of ideation. Within the context of the brainstorm, we have a “safe place” where exploring what’s possible without judgment is crucial.

    Check out the full piece on Core77.

    This Week @ Portigal

    It’s one of those weeks where everyone comes back together after being away. Digging out of email, setting up meetings that have been on pause, and following up all those things that you pushed off several weeks ago, knowing there was impending travel.

    • What happened at UX Lx? What happened at the Phoenix Design Summit? We’ll be scrambling to find an opportunity to catch each other up on our travels, eatings, networkings, and work. Look for some blog posts as we share some bits and pieces.
    • It’s deliverable time. We’re putting the final touches on the findings from our gamer research and meeting with the team later this week to discuss the implications for their products.
    • What’s up next? As one project wraps, another kajillion are in various states of emergence. We’re writing proposals, revisiting year-old proposals, meeting with new prospects, going through corporate vendor approval processes.
    • We’ll be at the IXDA-SF event (“Designers with drinks”) later this week. Will you?

    What we’re consuming: Game of Thrones, Phoenix Mountain Preserve, Ribadouro, Man or Muppet.

    Curating Consumption #2

    We’re back with another round of some curious, provocative, amusing, and frightening observations that come from our daily experiences as researchers and as consumers.

    Our second guest post of Curating Consumption came out last week over at Johnny Holland. In case you missed it over there, you can sit back and relax and enjoy it right here on our blog! In our first digest (Curating Consumtpion #1) we featured images from our travels to Austin, New York City and Dublin. This month we are looking much closer to home and finding ponderous interactions and objects within a few miles (and sometimes feet) of our front doors.

    My local cafe offers a small selection of lovely creams and lotions on the back of the toilet tank. I react thusly: “Ewwwww.” It’s one thing to put this in your home bathroom, or maybe in your office, where there’s a known and finite set of users. But this is a cafe along the highway. You don’t know who else has been using it, touching it, or not-washing-their-hands-and-touching-it! Or worse, I’ve seen some of the people that come in there and I do know who’s been touching it. Suffice to say that I do not want to be sharing cosmeceuticals with them! It’s the tragedy of the commons in the coffeeshop toilet. /SP

     

    The fitting rooms in Old Navy have labelled hooks to assist you in categorizing your prospective purchases. It’s what we do when trying on clothes anyway, and while it’s not a complete solution (e.g., where’s the place to put the clothes you are already wearing?), there’s something charming about how it acknowledges your process. Also, those arrows bring a real dynamic energy to a static aspect of the task. Small details, but fun. /SP

    There is not a lot of graffiti in the tiny town of Pacifica, CA where Portigal Consulting calls home. I passed this while walking from the office to the ocean one day and felt annoyed, but not because of the graffiti itself. I like to think I am an enlightened urbanite who appreciates the aesthetic enhancement, self-expression, and community color that street art affords. In this case, however, I was pissed off by the placement. See that ugly grey brick wall RIGHT BEHIND the fence? Yes, that’s the one; the unadorned, badly-in-need-of-anything-to-bring-it-to-life one. I can’t for the life of me figure out why the artist tagged the pretty white picket fence instead of the menacingly misfortunate wall. /TC

    I spotted this sad scene on the sidewalk in front of our office. First I thought of the little girl who lost her shoe and would be upset, perhaps even scolded by her mom. And then I thought about the mother, recalling my own mothering moments of frustration realizing that my son or I had lost something of his along the way. And then I thought of the 6 word story penned by Hemingway, “For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.” And then I waxed anthropomorphically about the shoe and her point of view. Yes, that little shoe looks like a lonely lady; one who has lost her sole mate. /TC

    This Week @ Portigal

    The Portigal team is on the road and in the air this week. We have lots happening on the home front, stateside and abroad!

    • Steve is already in Lisbon and gearing up for his sold-out workshop (as well as a short talk) for User Experience Lisbon.
    • Tamara is digging into the results of a co-analysis session we hosted with our clients last week and preparing the final deliverable for our research with gamers.
    • Tamara is heading to Phoenix later this week to facilitate for social good at the Phoenix Design Summit.
    • We shared ours, will you share yours? We have launched the War Stories series and are now accepting your submissions about the not-so-glorious side of fieldwork!

    What we are consuming: Risk!, Sagres, The Universal Traveller, La Damiana

    Well, thank you for joining us

    For a little Friday Fun, here’s Mike Birbiglia‘s new short film from This American Life LIVE (if you are in the US, Canada, or Australia, I highly encourage you to find a screening near you for this next Tuesday; truly a wonderful entertainment and storytelling experience).

    In this short and gently comedic film, Birbiglia pokes fun at some the norms of interviewing (and being interviewed).

    Fresh Air 2: 2 Fresh 2 Furious

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Innovations Like Instagram Are Tough for Large Companies [NYT] – Large companies try so many different ways to create subsets of their culture that is somehow more free. Ray Ozzie did it at Microsoft, through architecture and interior design. I do wonder how many leaders treat this like a cultural problem, though, and bring the appropriate solutions to bear.

    Leica, Nikon, Canon, Pentax and Olympus didn’t build Instagram, either. Michael Hawley, who is on Kodak’s board, said the answer could be summed up in one word: culture. “It’s a little like asking why Hasbro didn’t do Farmville, or why McDonald’s didn’t start Whole Foods,” said Mr. Hawley. “Cultural patterns are pretty hard to escape once you get sucked into them. For instance, Apple and Google are diametrical opposites in so many ways, have all the skills, but neither of them did Instagram, either.” Neither could Facebook. If it could, it wouldn’t have paid $1 billion to acquire the small team of engineers and access to the program’s 30 million users. The challenge of creating something small and disruptive inside a large company is one that many face today.

    Thou shalt not commit logical fallacies – A nice library of dark patterns for persuasion, manipulation, and bluster. Available in a printable poster, too.

    A logical fallacy is usually what has happened when someone is wrong about something. It’s a flaw in reasoning. They’re like tricks or illusions of thought, and they’re often very sneakily used by politicians and the media to fool people. Don’t be fooled! This website and poster have been designed to help you identify and call out dodgy logic wherever it may raise its ugly, incoherent head. If you see someone committing a logical fallacy, link them to the relevant fallacy to school them in thinky awesomeness.

    The Outsourced Life [NYT] – Arlie Hochschild with an insightful and slightly alarming perspective on the consequences of a service society. How does the increasing possibility for outsourcing (also: buying our way into something) change what we bring, expect, or get out of our lives?

    The very ease with which we reach for market services may help prevent us from noticing the remarkable degree to which the market has come to dominate our very ideas about what can or should be for sale or rent, and who should be included in the dramatic cast – buyers, branders, sellers – that we imagine as part of our personal life. It may even prevent us from noticing how we devalue what we don’t or can’t buy. A prison cell upgrade can be purchased for $82 a day in Santa Ana, Calif., and for $8 solo drivers in Minneapolis can buy access to car pool lanes on public roadways. Earlier this year, officials at Santa Monica College attempted to allow students to buy spots in oversubscribed classes for $462 per course. Even more than what we wish for, the market alters how we wish. Wallet in hand, we focus in the market on the thing we buy. In the realm of services, this is an experience – the perfect wedding, the delicious “traditional” meal, the well-raised child, even the well-gestated baby.

    As we outsource more of our private lives, we find it increasingly possible to outsource emotional attachment. A busy executive, for example, focuses on efficiency; his assistant tells me, “My boss outsources patience to me.” The wealthy employer of a household manager detaches herself from the act of writing personal Christmas-present labels. A love coach encourages clients to think of dating as “work,” and to be mindful of their R.O.I. – return on investment, of emotional energy, time and money. The grieving family member hires a Tombstone Butler to beautify a loved one’s burial site.

    Snack makers’ “Red Caviar” Lay’s and “Mango-orange” Oreos appeal more to global tastes [Winnipeg Free Press] – Some possible acquisitions for my Museum of Foreign Groceries.

    After noticing sales of Oreos were lagging in China during the summer, Kraft added a green tea ice cream flavour. The cookie combined a popular local flavour with the cooling imagery of ice cream. The green tea version sold well, and a year later, Kraft rolled out Oreos in flavours that are popular in Asians desserts – raspberry-and-blueberry and mango-and-orange…To get a better sense of what Russians like, PepsiCo employees travelled around the country to visit people in their homes and talk about what they eat day-to-day. That was a big task. Russia has nine time zones and spans 7,000 miles, with eating habits that vary by region. The findings were invaluable for executives. In the eastern part of the country, Pepsi found that fish is a big part of the diet. So it introduced “Crab” chips in 2006. It’s now the third most popular flavour in the country. A “Red Caviar” flavour does best in Moscow, where caviar is particularly popular. “Pickled Cucumber,” which piggybacks off of a traditional appetizer throughout Russia, was introduced last year and is already the fourth most popular flavour.

    Video now available from Steve’s talk at Mozilla

    Last week I visited Mozilla’s beautiful, dog-friendly offices to talk with their user researchers and designers. They’ve just posted the video from my presentation of We’ve done all this research, now what?. Note that the start is cut off, and it kicks in at 11:47.

    Note: the slides are included in the video but for easier viewing check out a similar presentation here.

    This Week @ Portigal

    It’s sunburn weather this week (well, today at least), perfect for zipping from place to place, which is indeed what we are doing

    • It’s a busy fieldwork week, as we are going into the homes of (mostly young, mostly male) gamers to see what they’re doing and get their reactions to a prototype.
    • No sooner do we finish fieldwork than our clients come to our office at the end of this week to help untangle the data and identify the key takeaways
    • I’m putting the final details together my sold-out workshop (as well as a short talk) for User Experience Lisbon next week.
    • We’ve launched a new series devoted to fieldwork War Stories.
    • What we’re consuming: Frittle, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, scopa (the game), Scopa (the restaurant).

    Tamara’s War Story: What the Hell? Don’t you knock?

    My first trip to New Jersey for fieldwork involved two memorable events: a blizzard and a bathroom blitz.

    Two days before we departed for New Jersey I received an email request from my client to rent the biggest SUV available. A huge snowstorm was pounding the Northeast and he wanted to feel safe as we ventured into the streets and highways of various townships for a week of in-home interviews. I obliged and was glad I did. The evening we arrived we found the streets covered with snow and the plows were evidently having trouble keeping up.

    I kept getting rescheduling calls from the recruiter. Participants were cancelling because of the weather. This seemed strange given the fact that WE were the ones travelling to their homes and they didn’t have to go anywhere! It felt like a game of musical chairs as we continually shifted and rescheduled. It was impossible to predict if we would be able to complete the targeted number of interviews during our weeklong visit. In fact, it was even difficult to predict if we would be able to leave town at the end of the week because the airport was cancelling flights every day.

    There were three of us in the field: myself, a videographer, and the client. We all met for breakfast the first morning while the car warmed up. It took 30 minutes to melt the layers of ice that had accumulated overnight on the windshield. Fortunately the heater had kicked in by the time we all piled into the SUV and headed out for our first interview of the week, giving ourselves ample time to arrive at our destination.

    Instead of the 30 minutes suggested by Google Maps, we arrived an hour later at our destination, a narrow residential street of two-story beige brick duplexes still decorated for the Christmas holiday. Plows had left six foot tall snowbanks on either side of the street and cars were parked in tight spaces carved out by the residents. Sadly it appeared that most of those residents didn’t have an SUV as big as our rental. We circled the area for fifteen minutes before we found a gap large enough to park in.

    We were there to interview a young woman in her 20s, a nurse. She welcomed us into the living room where we set up our cameras and found places to sit among the teddy bear collection and floor-to-ceiling cabinet containing an homage to Michael Jackson. Her mother appeared in a short fuzzy black robe. “I’ve been doing focus groups for years. No one ever asked to come to this house before. Why do you want to go to people’s houses?” We explained the nature of our visit and commenced with the interview.

    For the first half hour of the interview the mother came in and out of the room, answering and asking questions and reiterating her concerns about our presence and intentions. Each time, the daughter would suspend her responses to address the interruption, urging her mother out of the room. “We always meet at Dunkin’ Donuts. That’s the place to go…MA! They’re here to talk to me. Let me do this!”, “I always stop on my way to work to pick up an iced tea…MA! Go get dressed already!”, “I love those little facts on the lid. They are so cute…MA! Enough! Quit interrupting us!” No matter what the daughter said, the mother would return every few minutes to listen and contribute.

    I realized shortly into the interview that, in our flurry of inclement travel, I had neglected to honor one of the cardinal rules of interviewing: “Go before you arrive.” I ignored my biological needs as long as I could but the morning’s coffee didn’t help. I finally had to excuse myself for a restroom break.

    “It’s just there in the hall, on the right” said the nurse, pointing down the mirrored hallway.

    I excused myself and walked up to bathroom door. It was open a few inches so I pushed it. There in the bright pink and black tiled bathroom stood the mother, facing the toilet with her little black robe hiked up above the waist, her backside completely exposed. She turned before I could retreat. “What the Hell? Don’t you knock?” I felt blood rush warmly to my face.

    “I’m so sorry” I said, backing out and closing the door behind (or rather, in front of) me. “I’m so sorry” I continued, “the door was open. I didn’t realize anyone was in there. I’m so sorry.”

    I swiftly returned to the living room.

    “I’m so sorry,” I told the nurse. “The door was open a crack so I just went in and I walked in on your mother. I am sure I’ve upset her.”

    “Ha! Don’t worry. She’ll be fine” she consoled me. “Maybe she’ll leave us alone now.”

    I wasn’t sure I would be fine. I tried to concentrate on the interview, the purpose of our visit, the friendly nurse who gave us a detailed tour of the kitchen drawers. But images of her mother’s bare behind kept flashing in my mind. She was right, sort of, about her mother leaving us alone. For the remaining hour we didn’t hear a word from the woman, though she kept appearing (now fully clothed) wherever we were. She said nothing. She just looked at me with a glare that felt as icy as the windshield that awaited us outside.

    Our first stop was a Dunkin’ Donuts where I was finally able to relieve myself.

    My car, my coalmine

    I have unintentionally discovered a new way to test my comfort level with what I am consuming. In three separate events, aggressive olfactory triggers suggest that what I am putting into my car (and my home and my life) may be more toxic than I realize.

    #1 the guest bed I went to IKEA a few months ago to get a SOLSTA sofa bed. An employee helped me get that giant box into my Honda Element but my 8 year-old, Max, and I could not get it out of the car and into the house, so it stayed in my vehicle. For a week. And my car smelled horrific. Like I had left a to-go container of MDF-laced dinner in there. I began to have serious reservations about putting that piece of funky smelling furniture in my home and inviting my guests to sleep on it.

    #2 the luggage I hosted some friends from out of town for the weekend. When they picked me up in my car so I could take them to the airport, I was startled by the olfactory assault of marijuana; a smell that apparently infiltrated their luggage while sitting in my home for a weekend. Thanks to California Proposition 215, marijuana is legal in our state for those who have a prescription and, it turns out, my downstairs neighbors are card-carrying members of a medical marijuana clinic. I hadn’t noticed that scent in my home and then I got a whiff of suitcases that had sat in my car for less than 10 minutes. Thanks to my vehicle, I became aware of what my son and I had been unassumingly consuming. It’s worth noting that since I brought this to my neighbor’s attention they have taken to smoking outside and using an air filter.

    #3 the bike I got Max a new bicycle. He’s still learning to ride so it spends most of its time parked in our garage. When we loaded up the car for a road trip to Napa last weekend, I decided to bring the bike. About 30 minutes into the journey, Max started complaining of a headache and we both became aware of the stench of rubbery bicycle toxicity emanating from the back of the car. No matter how many windows we rolled down we could find no relief. The odor was completely overwhelming. When I found a park and finally pulled that bike out of the car he refused to ride it. It’s now back in the garage and I am wondering if Max will ever want to ride it.

    Sadly, the car still reeks of bicycle and the garage has become yet another coalmine where the canary of my consumption fights for breath.

    Steve’s War Story: It’s All Going To Burn

    My colleague and I showed up to learn about our research participant’s smart house. In the initial part of the interview, just trying to learn a bit about the family before we learned about the house, the participant (I’ll call him Jon) told me they home-schooled their kids. I was young and naive enough that I didn’t have a clue what other factors that typically signifies. When I asked about why they made that decision, Jon really snarled at me, I think because he was far more interested in showing me his gear than talking about his family, but I just explained that we wanted to learn about him as well. He told me that they didn’t support the school system and their attitude towards alternative lifestyles. That’s when I realized I was in an environment where the values were just really different than my own. Okay, no problem, that’s par for the course for the job. We spent a good long time after that checking out the details of a really incredible smart home system that he had built, cobbled, and coded together. Really incredible. Yet there was a constant theme of monitoring and control, of using the technology to check up on the kids from other rooms. Still, all good information. As we were getting to the reflective part of the interview, wrapping up or nearly so, Jon abruptly changed gears mid-explanation.

    Jon: “Of course, none of this really matters because it’s all going to burn.”

    Me + Colleague: [Puzzled silence]

    Jon: “And now I have a question for you fellas: Have you accepted Christ as your savior?”

    In my life in general, this is the sort of question I’m utterly unprepared for. In this interview, I knew it was coming, some part of my body was tense from the discussion of the rationale for home schooling, knowing that I was in a slightly vulnerable situation that was going to emerge at some point. So while I was dreading it all along, perhaps it came as some kind of relief. Watching the video later, I saw the most deadpan version of myself I’d ever seen: “…………Well…..perhaps that’s a question for another time.”

    I was stuck, I couldn’t dishonor all the rapport-building and honest curiosity I’d been exhibiting for the past two hours, but now we were trapped. My colleague spluttered helplessly in an endless loop of reflecting back what Jon had said previously (“So…..it sounds like you’re saying…”). I kept waiting for my opening for the “Well, time to go!” but Jon really wanted to talk to us about what we should be doing and thinking, with respect to Christ. It seems this went on for a very long time, but we finally made it to the doorway. Jon asked us to wait, and went off to get something. We should have made a break for it, but we were ensnared by the requirements of politeness in our researcher role. He returned with some bible-related literature and exhorted us – in terms that would make the Glengarry Glen Ross salesmen proud – to follow up. Another eternity (if you will) and we were finally able to step away.

    We made it to the car, drove a block and erupted in hysterical, gasping laughter. It was the laughter of relief, the kind of manic giggling you’d get from 10-year-olds who just got away from the angry shopkeeper. We had some choice words about Jon, once we were safe.

    The experience was terribly uncomfortable; I could not find a way to follow my own values as a researcher and still protect myself from a conversation that was personally risky (as a Jew, I’ve had my share of proselytizing/Hell/Christ “discussions” and really don’t ever want to have one again). As a researcher, I am interested in and have respect for Jon’s views on his family, his home, education, and the afterlife. But as a person, I just don’t want to have to reveal my own beliefs or defend them, especially in this sort of setting.

    This was more than 10 years ago, I wonder how I would handle it now.

    Breakfast of Champions

    Last Friday we opened our doors to a few superheroic leaders from Silicon Valley firms for a morning discussion about championing user research within an organization (thus “Breakfast of Champions”). This event came hot on the heels of Steve’s recent webinar and provided a learning forum for us as consultants and for our guests, who shared insights and questions from the client perspective.

    The discussion included trials and triumphs, questions about current challenges, and new frameworks to yield as tools for overcoming obstacles. We were impressed with the humility and willingness to share evident in the discussion as research champions from diverse departments, companies, and industries swapped war stories and provided each other with encouragement and new ideas.

    I captured some of the conversation on our whiteboard. On the left side are successes, questions and ponderings in the middle, and current challenges on the right. See a bigger image here.

    We covered a lot of ground during two hours so the list below is not exhaustive, but it does start to hint at the themes that came up.

    • The importance of measuring, benchmarking, and storying research successes
    • The value of taking non-researchers (especially skeptics and critics) into the field
    • The challenge of confronting organizational paradigms and questioning sacred ‘truths’ when framing research questions
    • Success with embedding research in the design process as opposed to making it a distinct, standalone project
    • Overcoming obstacles of apathy with insights that are action-ready and and deliverables that are easy to share
    • Thinking strategically about the relationship between quant and qual, and considering how they feed each other
    • The value of research in corporate strategy and business solutions and the need to frame it as such
    • The changing role of the consultant and research provider
    • The importance of show and tell of research results to various groups, departments, etc.

    This was our first time doing something like this and we’re looking forward to doing it again in the near future!

    Announcing: War Stories

    We love stories, and in our work as ethnographers, we love war stories about fieldwork. These experiences – the crazy household, the dog that does his business on your shoes, the GPS failure – are inevitable and are often (at least in hindsight) hilarious. Exchanging these stories is a way of socializing our technique and creating learning opportunities for both tellers and listeners. A culture of exchange – wherever we can find it – is going to help us grow our own skills.

    Through this series, we’ll be sharing our own war stories and those of other researchers. Watch this space for the first few war stories, and some info about how you can get your own fieldwork war story published here.

    This Week @ Portigal

    It’s a gorgeous sunny Monday here in Pacifica (stay away fog, stay away!) and we’re on our way into another interesting week.

    • Later this week we’re taking our clients and their prototype out into the field to meet users. We’re also exploring how people are using a brand new product, something no one on our client team has any idea about, so we’re expecting a very cool experience. Meanwhile, Tamara is printing out materials, putting incentives in envelopes, charging batteries, picking meetup and debrief locations and other organizing the hell out of the whole process.
    • We’ll be launching a new feature here devoted to war stories from field work.
    • Steve gets his revising on, hopefully wrapping up the next iteration of the book manuscript.
    • We’ve put away all the leftover snacks from our event last week and Tamara will be posting some of the highlights (of the discussion, not necessarily the snacks).
    • Out and about: Look for us at the inauguration of the new Orange Silicon Valley office, at SF Service Design Drinks, or the Tangible UX Happy Hour.
    • Steve will be heading over to Mozilla to speak with UX researchers and designers about how to synthesize user research data.
    • We’ll be making at least one announcement about an upcoming conference presentation, and in a wonderful location!
    • While it’s not quite American Idol level of tension and suspense, we’ll be chatting with more people this week about collaborating with and even joining our team.
    • What we’re consuming: Roadie, head rubs, margaritas.

    A word is worth a thousand pictures

    I’m intrigued by a few examples I’ve come across lately that downgrade (to an interesting effect) the visual to the textual.

    On Twitter, two feeds that take image-specific services and simply describe them in a few words.

    • PicturelessPinterest offers “The best of Pinterest without having to look at the pictures.” (sample tweets: Overexposed picture of a bride walking through a white hallway; A recipe for rhubarb-lemon curd yogurt; Dining room table set up on a beach)
    • Text-Only Instagram is “Your personal Instagram feed in a lightweight text format.” (sample tweets: Tilt-shift fortune cookie; Latte with foam shaped like a heart; Four self-portraits of a teenage girl separated by white lines.)

    Descriptive Camera is a camera that captures an image and then obtains a typed description of the contents. Example: Looks like a cupboard which is ugly and old having name plates on it with a study lamp attached to it.

    After the shutter button is pressed, the photo is sent to Mechanical Turk for processing and the camera waits for the results. A yellow LED indicates that the results are still “developing” in a nod to film-based photo technology. With a HIT price of $1.25, results are returned typically within 6 minutes and sometimes as fast as 3 minutes. The thermal printer outputs the resulting text in the style of a polaroid print.

    I love people hacking together some bit of technology (or a technology-enabled experience) to drive just a bit of reflection on what we might take for granted.

    Bonus deconstruction: garfield minus garfield

    This Week @ Portigal

    Monday is well underway and the week is filling up with meetings and work sessions! Away we go!

    • Last week we kicked off a super-rapid project. We didn’t know we were doing the project at the beginning of the week and by the end of the week we had started recruiting research participants. This week we’re lining up our participants and figuring out what we’ll do in the field.
    • I’m calling it “collaborative listening” – thanks to our officemate Olly, we’re experimenting with some networked speakers that lets us all listen to music together instead of individually over headphones. This will mean sorting out some social norms around volume, phone calls, and musical tastes. But so far, so good (oh yeah, because we’re listening to my music right now!)…
    • We’re hosting our first event later this week. We’ve invited a small number of folks for a discussion and will be sharing more once it’s all over. But we’re actively discussing our catering options right now!
    • More conference submissions to prepare, more conference acceptances to announce, and more conference presentations to start getting together!
    • This week we’ve begun reaching out to potential new teammates, partners, and collaborators. We don’t know where we’ll end up but the journey is sure to be an informative one.
    • What we’re consuming: A Visit From The Goon Squad, The Firestarter Sessions, Pizzeria Delfina

    Boost your creativity: Booze, barf and boredom

    I am always on the lookout for ideas to boost creativity. Below are a few recent insightful readings…

    Alcohol Benefits the Creative Process [Psychology Today] – Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago set out to determine if being intoxicated actually helped people think more creatively. They recruited people ages 21-30 and gave half of them vodka cranberry cocktails until their blood alcohol level reached .075. Then both groups completed a Remote Associations Test wherein they were given a series of three words (i.e. tar, arm, peach) for which they had to find a single word that would create two-word phrases with all three (i.e. pit). This kind of task was chosen to assess creativity because it is believed that the most obvious response is often not correct and therefore people must search for other more remote words in order to solve the problem. The findings indicate that the intoxicated participants not only performed better than their sober counterparts, they did so in less time and were more inclined to attribute their performance to a flash of insight; an “Aha!” moment.

    Why might being intoxicated lead to improved creativity? The answer has to do with alcohol’s effect on working memory: the brainpower that helps us keep what we want in mind and what we don’t want out. Research has shown that alcohol tends to reduce people’s ability to focus in on some things and ignore others, which also happens to benefit creative problem solving.

    I had a great excuse to practice this approach this weekend (admittedly, this was not the first time). I found that a yuzu-infused cocktail from Morimoto in Napa actually did catalyze divergent thinking. In fact, I generated a significant number of ideas for ideation and training sessions that involve yummy bites and liquid concoctions.

    Produce First, Sharpen Second: What Dylan’s Vomit Teaches Us About The Creative Process [The Creativity Post] – This article references Bob Dylan’s creative process behind Like A Rolling Stone which involved a massive vomit of verses followed by a period of crafting and sculpting that rambling mass into an exquisitely refined piece of work. Dylan’s experience and other examples from the article illustrate a topic that I believe is profoundly important to understanding what creative thinking is and how to facilitate it. Creativity involves two polarized modes of thinking that can be described as opposites: divergent/convergent, imagination/logic, improvisation/composition, writing/editing, and so on. The key is to keep these two modes, vomit/cleanup, separate. Do not mix! In fact, a recent study at a Dutch university that is cited in this article concluded that taking a break between creating ideas and assessing them actually improves one’s ability to recognize the more promising concepts. Quick tip: The next time you are looking for great ideas, set yourself (or your team) a wildly large goal (i.e. 30-100 ideas) and don’t stop until you reach that number. Then take a break (10 minutes, 24 hours, whatever). Finally, go back and dive in to your ideas to cluster, organize, eliminate and ensure that the best ones rise to the top. Then give them refinement and strengthening that they deserve!

    The reason we should “never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down” is because we initially don’t know which of our ideas are worthwhile. It’s only after we get everything down that we are able to recognize what works from what doesn’t. This is the lesson from Ritter’s research: we need to give the unconscious mind time to mull it over so it can convince the conscious mind to make adjustments.

    Want To Be More Creative? Get Bored [Fast Company] – If you are looking for something to do between ideaphoria and analysis, a break that Edward deBono calls the “creative pause”, give some thought to not thinking at all. The author reflects on the importance of clearing the mind and the calendar and not doing a thing. Why? Because this space of quiet be-ing (not doing) is a lacuna from the litany of productivity and entertainment. It gives the mind room to breathe. Think of it as mental yoga, a place to pause between the inhale of ideas and the exhale of action.

    I know it sounds strange, but I welcome boredom. It forces me to ponder. But to make sure we’re on the same page, when I speak of boredom, I’m not referring to killing time on your smartphone, your iPad, or your laptop. I’m not even talking about paging through a book. I mean bored as in doing absolutely nothing.

     

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Meet Google’s search anthropologist [SF Chron] – While the article still has a bit of the wow-technology-companies-use-social-science-to-watch-people-use-stuff wide-eyedness we see in every popular press piece, I was intrigued by the nice exploration of the gulf between what some people reveal they need and what design changes make it into the product. It’s not a one-to-one match and the article speaks to that reasonably well.

    Google has hundreds of millions of users, each with different needs, working styles and levels of search competence. Every change for one subset – like those who occasionally use advanced search – comes at a cost for others – like the vast majority of people who never use it and don’t want it cluttering up the main page. Striking the right balance for the greater good requires listening to the data – and, of course, to the users themselves. “That particular interview didn’t finish off the painting,” Russell said. “But every interview helps fill in a little bit more of the canvas.”

    Why Storytellers Lie [The Atlantic] – “Lie” is a perfect headline-grabbing word and it probably pays to read the piece with a less judgmental take on what people tell us. There are many situations that are lies but in research it’s our job to seek a number of possible truths and understand why what we hear may not always be the same as what we identify as true.

    Sinister as that may sound, therapy likely helps many of us feel better at least in part because it encourages us to become less truthful autobiographers. As studies have shown, depressives tend to have more realistic-and less inflated-perceptions of their importance, abilities, and power in the world than others. So those of us who benefit from therapy may like it in large part because it helps us to do what others can do more naturally: to see ourselves as heroes; to write (and re-write) the stories of our lives in ways that cast us in the best possible light; to believe that we have grown from helpless orphans or outcasts to warriors in control of our fate…We should remember how much we all have a tendency to fictionalize, whether we realize it or not. We like stories because, as Gotschall puts it, we are “addicted to meaning”-and meaning is not always the same as the truth.

    Clickers Offer Instant Interactions in More Venues [NYT] – This continues to be an almost-trend; the desire/opportunity/ability to “like” stuff IRL (“in real life”) the way we do on Facebook (see a previous example here).

    The delighted shouts from middle-schoolers and seniors alike suggest that neither group is accustomed to having its opinions solicited. But with a clicker, “suddenly their voices are important,” said Professor James Katz, the director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers. “If people feel their opinions really count, they’ll be happy and likely to give more opinions.” The dynamic of social comparison – understanding where you stand relative to your tribe – is also a draw. Clicker software satisfies that curiosity by immediately displaying a bar graph of responses in the room. “This is a new form of transparency for crowd psychology,” he said. He added some cautions about using clickers, also called audience response systems. In a society in which checking the crowd’s opinion becomes the norm, Professor Katz said, taking risks or relying on one’s instincts may be devalued. “Those who want to strike out in new directions and challenge the sentiments of a crowd, like artists and writers, have an additional burden with this technology because they can know that no one takes comfort in their vision,” he said. “There goes the Great American Novel.”

    The Wizard of Oz Focus Group – Footage from an early focus group for The Wizard of Oz. ‘Nuff said.

    Embedding disabled. Drat! Just click on the link above, then.

    What Makes People Share Information? [Mozilla UX] – The Mozilla UX team is doing a nice job at sharing their inquiries, their methods, their artifacts and their thinking behind all of ’em.

    We’re starting another research study this week. We’re interviewing 8 users in their homes, for 90 minutes each, to understand how people define their online life. It’s purposely broad as we’re trying to learn more about how people discover and organize websites from both online and offline sources. It wouldn’t be a successful interview without some artifacts to help us collect this data, so we came up with a two fun activities – the timeline and “me in the middle”. At the beginning we’ll start with a simple timeline and have the participants walk us through their yesterday – what they did, where they where and we’ll prompt for what tools and devices they used – but that is just a way to get all the raw data on paper quickly. What we are really after is their stories.

    This week @ Portigal

    It’s another busy week here at Portigal as we are aflurry with a webinar, a kickoff, and a retreat:

     

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Robots Ate My Job [Marketplace] – “Robot” is a bit of a red herring…the series is really an investigation of automation, when we interact with other devices instead of a human. Not sure there are too many surprises here but it’s still great to have this topic receive some focused attention.

    Special Correspondent David Brancaccio takes us on a week-long series on air, online and on social media, called “Robos Ate My Job” to explore how technology is impacting the future of jobs in America. Find out who’s winning and who’s losing at the hands of the robots.

    The Strange Art of Picking a TV Title [The Hollywood Reporter] – I’d be interested in knowing if the TV people design for nicknaming. Battlestar Galactica comes BSG among the cognoscenti. Does that little hook let people take ownership as the narrative pulls them in? Around my house we call “The Simpsons” by its shorter form “Simpsons.”

    Would Friends have been the same hit had NBC executives approved its original title, Six of One? Would Lost have lasted six seasons with its earlier name, Nowhere? And would Grey’s Anatomy be able to charm nearly 12 million weekly viewers had it remained Surgeons? These are the questions now haunting studio and network executives as they look to attach the perfect title — catchy, but not cheesy; clever, but not confusing; inclusive, but not vague; provocative, but not inappropriate — to their crop of pilots in contention for the fall schedule. Producers and executives agree that getting a title right is more important than ever given the increasingly crowded and fragmented television landscape, where standing out is as important as telegraphing what a show is about. And while a great title can’t carry a poor show, it can get an audience to show up, which is why networks and studios have been known to rely heavily on focus groups and the occasional consulting firm.

    Alphabet Soup [More Intelligent Life] – More on the ‘how does stuff get named?’ theme. Ever dine at QV? Me neither.

    Some names come out of the blue. While seeking inspiration for his new London venture in 1926, an Italian restaurateur called Pepino Leoni saw a poster for the 1925 film “Quo Vadis”. The restaurant that bears its name can still be found in Soho. In 2002, about to open a place specialising in French food, the British chef Henry Harris was forced into creative thinking by his signmaker. “He said if we didn’t come up with a name right then, we wouldn’t have a sign in time. So I put together a long list of French words, including a few writers as fillers: Beaumarchais, Moli?®re, Racine-Going through them, we went, ‘Crap, crap, crap’ until we reached Racine and someone said, ‘Racine, of course, French for root. Absolutely brilliant.’ So there it is. Both interpretations are true.” The restaurateur Will Smith explains the origin of Arbutus, in central London, thus: “We discovered there used to be an arbutus, or strawberry tree, around the corner in Soho Square. The name felt good and sounded great. It was a bit like naming a child. At first, people went, ‘Eh?’ but soon said ‘That’s interesting’ and accepted it. Also, arbutus fruit have a culinary application in Portugal, where it is made into a spirit.” So does Arbutus sell arbutus spirit? “No.”

    The Personal Analytics of My Life [Stephen Wolfram Blog] – I was pretty surprised to see this was just about his email. Email is one lens into someone’s life, but it doesn’t provide much detail into what you are doing when you aren’t using email. I was hoping for something along the lines of the good ol’ Americans Use of Time Project that took a broader look. The title is definitely an overreach.

    What is the future for personal analytics? There is so much that can be done. Some of it will focus on large-scale trends, some of it on identifying specific events or anomalies, and some of it on extracting “stories” from personal data.
    And in time I’m looking forward to being able to ask Wolfram|Alpha all sorts of things about my life and times-and have it immediately generate reports about them. Not only being able to act as an adjunct to my personal memory, but also to be able to do automatic computational history-explaining how and why things happened-and then making projections and predictions. As personal analytics develops, it’s going to give us a whole new dimension to experiencing our lives. At first it all may seem quite nerdy (and certainly as I glance back at this blog post there’s a risk of that). But it won’t be long before it’s clear how incredibly useful it all is-and everyone will be doing it, and wondering how they could have ever gotten by before. And wishing they had started sooner, and hadn’t “lost” their earlier years.

    Curating Consumption now playing at Johnny Holland

    We are delighted to announce the debut last week of our new series, Curating Consumption on Johnny Holland. The idea was born right here on All This ChittahChattah as an occasional curated collection of musings, seen through the bifocal lens of consumer/researcher. Not to worry if you missed it, we have it right here!

    When is a door not a door? When the sign on it clearly states “Do not Touch, Pull, or Use This Door. Thank You!” I came across this (not a) door during a recent fieldwork trip to New York City, where I found myself invariably studying every door I walked by because they all seemed to have great stories to tell. Sadly, this story is one of inability to fulfill one’s useful purpose. What is a door if it is not a portal to some other place; a threshold to cross? Now it is a wall, and a window. I wonder if it will be repaired or replaced or reframed as an aesthetic relic that will remain in its present location and state of dysfunction. /TC

    This television was hanging out on the sidewalk in the Mission, right here in San Francisco. I am curious who labeled this anthropomorphized electronic with feelings of inadequacy. It could have been added by a passerby; a reflective commentary on the choice by the TV’s previous owner to upgrade and abandon. In fact, a man passing me as I shot this picture told me “I love rich people, man! They throw away the greatest stuff. I got a vacuum cleaner last week that works perfect.” Or maybe the words were put there by the person who left that unsatisfying TV on the street. A “Dear John” letter from consumer to consumed: It’s not me, it’s you. /TC

    When visiting Dublin, I was prepared for (and delighted to experience) all Guinness, all the time. What I didn’t realize was the supporting infrastructure required to make that happen. They’ve got tanker trucks of the stuff rolling down the street to meet the demand. /SP

    Just days after the Kony 2012 video went viral, hitting the national media, images of the dictator appeared as stencil art on the streets of Austin. From Facebook and YouTube, the story touched the activism (or some say slacktivism) nerve. But what meaning is implied or inferred when the medium changes? Stencil art is hip, ironic, anti-mainstream. The street art form has none of the outrage of the previous forms. Is the previously unknown Kony now accorded folk hero status? /SP

    Join me on April 17 for “Championing Contextual Research” webinar

    On April 17 I’ll be presenting a UIE webinar about Championing Contextual Research in Your Organization. Sign up here!

    To the delight of UX designers everywhere, organizations today increasingly conduct user-centered research methods like surveys, focus groups, and usability testing.

    But what can we learn beyond the office environment? Isn’t user observation among the most powerful UX design research techniques we can do?

    Yes! So Steve Portigal will describe the techniques, processes, and discussion points you can use to make it happen in your organization. And once you find out how to quell cultural or budgetary resistance to fieldwork, then you can create more analytical designs that make users jump for joy.

    You’ll gain user insight before you need it.

    • Identify opportunities to learn about users
    • Conduct specialized interviews beyond just “talking to people”

    Advocate for the adoption of contextual research

    You’ll become a change agent in your organization.

    • Understand how markets and processes relate to one another
    • Discuss benefits and drawbacks for both stakeholders and users

    Maximize the organizational impact of any research you do

    You’ll start to establish research agendas from the get-go.

    • Integrate synthesis and analysis in any approved project
    • Create research outputs that are relevant to your stakeholders

    Engage the rest of the organization in contextual research

    You’ll make your process and outputs more visible.

    • Tackle entrenched belief structures with hands-on techniques
    • Involve teams in identifying patterns and themes

    Please sign up here. If you can’t make the scheduled time, you can also get a recording of the event.

    Some relevant articles I’ve seen lately that might relate to this topic are
    How to tell managers they’re wrong about UX research and Organizational Challenges for UX Professionals

    This week @ Portigal

    We were here last week, working hard on exactly the same things we were working hard on the week before, so while we could have simply done a copy-paste-post, we took a week off from This-Week-@ing. But it’s Monday again and we’re back, baby!

    • We’re editing (and more to the point – rendering) video, getting our decks in a row, all to wrap up an in-depth and exciting study. We’ll be following up this week’s presentation with a creative workshop as well
    • I’m getting the final slides together for my upcoming webinar, Championing Contextual Research in Your Organization. This is some new material that I’m very excited about. Have you signed up yet?
    • Party time! Excellent! I’ll be checking out the book launch party for Mike Monteiro’s Design Is a Job
    • I’m sitting on a pile of helpful, challenging, provocative, and encouraging notes from reviewers who are helping me with my book; it’s time to start editing and rewriting!
    • Conference proposals to go out, acceptance (or not) for other conference proposals to come back, article outline to be shopped around, article copy to be crafted
    • What we’re consuming: Imagine: How Creativity Works, The Taste of Others

    Hertz, Donut*

    *Referring to a dumb, fun, and rather apt joke

    I tried to opt-out of unwanted marketing email from Hertz. The link in the email took me to this outrageous page.

    Go ahead. Try to parse the nested logic and dense legalese. To add insult to injury, I was unable to submit without the ugly red form error admonishment (“You have entered an incorrect option. Please correct and resubmit”) for the whole first set of options. I eventually had to submit it without any of those checked. Will I get more unwanted marketing email? I’ll have to check with my lawyer about that.

    Out and About: Steve at SXSW

    I recently spent a while in Austin attending SXSW. Part work, part vacation, it was all fun and all inspiration (see, I’m now posting in rhyme???!!!). Here’s some of my observations and experiences.



    Austin’s independence and weirdness are fairly unique and always enjoyable.


    While there was a national uproar over an ad agency hiring homeless folks to circulate as wireless hotspots, FedEx hired non-homeless folks (we talked to them and yes, despite the cool outfit, they are not regular FedEx employees) to circulate as human phone chargers. No one raised a peep over this. It’s okay to to turn people into device support as long as they have sufficient income such that we don’t feel awkward?


    A typical bewildering promotional scene. I’m unsure specifically what was happening here. Pose with this Grinch (I guess?) and tweet the photo with a hashtag for chance to win something? Anne posed for the picture but we never bothered to determine exactly what it was about. This sort of exchange and promotion was very common.


    This was the moment I realized how much my localized norms had shifted. Over the course of a few days, we ate and drank and snacked for free. Wwe got delicious ice cream sandwiches for free; all we had to do was tweet something. We got a free lunch from FedEx, although they asked that we check in Foursquare. Moments before taking this picture we followed the trail of Ben-and-Jerry’s-eating-folks to find out where the cart was, asking of course for some tweet action in exchange. By the time I came upon this popsicle stand. I looked up and down to figure out what I had to do, or if they were just going to give me a frozen treat without any action. We were a little chatty, reading their sign out loud, but no one was initiating a transaction, finally the woman asks us “Do you work for Twitter?” (I guess since we had mentioned tweeting). Finally, the penny drops. “Oh,” she explains, “right now these are $2.50.” It was just a regular frozen-good-for-money cart! No special SXSW promotion or anything! And she’s located herself right across from the Convention Center – ground zero for crazy promotions (the spot where Kobayashi ate 13 grilled cheeses in one minute was just feet away)! Well! I walked away grumbling at the nerve of this person to try and ask for money for their food product!



    Making new friends.


    What does this mean? Kony went from viral slacktivism to stencil-art in a matter of days. Is this anti-Kony? It seems to be iconifying him with Che-like kitsch. That was fast!



    Attention-grabbing scumbaags put realistic paper “clamps” on parked cars. Haw haw! Fooled ya! You didn’t really get clamped, just wanted to tell you about our great service! Ummmm, no, no, no. That moment – be it one second or 90 seconds – of angst and despair upon seeing your car clamped is not okay. You should not do business by upsetting people and then telling them that it was just a joke. I realize that’s the premise for prank television, but this is simply not acceptable for marketers to be doing. You can make me feel good, but you must not make me feel bad.


    I’m intrigued by the proliferation of these backdrops in publicly accessible places, so that we too can play at doing a red carpet appearance. The opening party had an actively-posed-with backdrop that was not intended to see any of its traditional star usage. These backdrops were also throughout the Convention Center. Certainly the appeal is understandable (we made good use of a similar opportunity last year in Florence); perhaps this starts to replace the stick-your-head-through-a-painting-of-a-character; now it’s red carpet for the rest of us.


    These folks in the yellow skinsuits were promoting SceneTap but found themselves seduced by a street hustler more skilled than themselves, doing some kind of of three-card-Monty meets card trick. And those onlookers wearing “MYSPACE IS DEAD” shirts are actually promoting Myspace,


    Fun with The Daisies, or the unexpected pleasure of following a titanic sound down a back street only to find ourselves feet away from a young, skinny, long-haired rock-n-roll band kicking out the jams.

    Other highlights

    See also:

    This Week @ Portigal

    We are traveling this week and finding time for…

    • Storytelling – We are headed to sunny San Diego this week to deliver the results of a recent project. Though the prototypes were super sci-fi, the results are pretty down to earth.
    • Storymaking – We have converged upon the key insights and narrative for another project and are now weaving that story into a presentation and video.
    • Ideating – We are talking with friends at two different organizations (one hyper local and one far-flung) about innovation collaborations.
    • Retreating – Taking time to huddle at a hip SF coffeehouse to review, revision and recommit to our 2012 goals.
    • Consuming Cow Palace, Christo, and Duarte’s Ollalieberry Pie

    Creativity, Sex, & the Karate Kid

    One of my favorite tools to inspire radical new thinking is a technique I call forced connections. It is, fundamentally, a cognitive math problem: x + y = ? (assuming, of course, that x and y are seemingly unrelated things). This concept, also described as combinatorial creativity, is amazing because human brains are wired for it. The brain experiences cognitive dissonance when you try to hold two or more dissimilar things in your mind at the same time. It wants to resolve that tension so it creates resolution in the form of a new idea. Understanding how ideas work helps us design tools that facilitate idea generation. The articles and talk below explore ideational procreation through the lenses of neuroscience, quantum theory, psychology, and anthropology.

    Musical Creativity and the Brain [The Dana Foundation] – This article explores some big theoretical and empirical questions about creativity, namely what it is and how we do it. My researcher heart jumped for joy with the introduction of an operational definition of creativity that comfortably applies across a range of artistic and business contexts: a fundamental activity of human information processing. The researchers discuss the brain functioning behind creative problem solving and the processes that make up creative behavior. Not surprisingly, it is a study in polarities: creativity is deliberate and spontaneous, cognitive and emotional, improvisation and composition, productive and consumptive. One of the authors, Charles Limb is a surgeon who also studies creativity and talks about your brain on improv.

    During any creative act, from language production to marketing techniques selling the latest iPhone, ideas or past experiences are combined in novel and significant ways via the interaction of such cognitive capacities. The creative cognition approach is the current model dominating the neuroscientific study of creative thinking. According to this approach, creativity is far from a magical event of unexpected random inspiration. Instead, it is a mental occurrence that results from the application of ordinary cognitive processes.

    How the Mind Creates Ideas [Psychology Today] – I often use forced connections when facilitating brainstorming as a deliberate idea-generating activity with specific stimuli (i.e. research insights). Quantum theory offers a more expansive approach to thinking about ideas as unmanifested sub-atomic particles that represent endless possibilities and countless possible combinations. The key to harnessing your quantum creative potential is to harvest as many ideas as you can: observe, record, interact, react.

    We are taught to be exclusionary thinkers, which means we exclude anything that is not immediately related to our subject. Creative geniuses do not think this way. They know that the sky is a billion different shades of blue. When they brainstorm for ideas, their first objective is to observe and record all thoughts and ideas as possibilities. They observe without judgment. This is why all their thoughts and ideas come into existence as possibilities. Creative geniuses also think inclusively which means they include everything no matter how unrelated or absurd. This is a basic requirement of creative thinking. Creative thinking requires the generation of associations and connections between two or more dissimilar subjects.

    Matt Ridley: When ideas have sex [TED] – The notion of ideas having sex is not, in fact, a new idea and the fruits of idea coupling have been applied and studied in a variety of areas. Ridley brings to life this concept with a tour of human evolution that offers material culture as evidence of our inescapable need for cross-germination in the collective brain. If you are interested in such creative romancing you can also find some practical tools to set the metaphorical mood here.

    When ideas have sex | Matt Ridley

    What The Karate Kid Can Teach Us About Agile and UX [UIE] – While the selections above discuss the process of ideational procreation, this article illustrates the progeny of forced connections: Daniel-san + UX=Lessons in Agile Mastery. Gothelf suggests that ritual and repetition breed expertise in both the hard skills (i.e.rapid rendering) and soft skills (i.e. trust and transparency) necessary for collaborative cohesion. Mr. Miyagi would certainly approve of this evolution of “Wax on. Wax off.”

    Daniel found this level of mastery in the final tournament where he anticipated his opponent’s moves and ultimately defeated him. An Agile team achieves this when they trust each other implicitly, react as a cohesive unit to change and manage that change as well as any conflict with little impact to productivity or quality of work.

    *Nota bene: The forced connection as metaphoric literary trope is not necessarily novel. In fact, some might convincingly argue that it is overplayed for its linkbaiting ability to seduce readers with catchy headlines. Personally, I am a sucker for such headlines and I have yet to grow tired of this tactic because I liken it to creative calisthenics. Reading and writing such pieces forces the brain to contemplate a familiar topic through a new lens. It requires the brain to constantly make new connections and it nurtures our divergent thinking capabilities. If you are looking for such exercise, try some of these: What Jay-Z Can Teach Us About The Future Of Education,What Downton Abbey Can Teach Us About the Future of Energy, What Nature Can Teach Us About Design, and What Visual Designers Can Learn From Biggie Smalls.

     

    This Week @ Portigal

    You can tell just how busy things are by the dearth of non-This Week postings here.

    • We’ve synthesized, organized, and otherwise pummeled our data into a story. Now comes telling that story!
    • For one client, we’re creating the final presentation, honing ideas, getting feedback, finessing the wording.
    • With another client, we’re nailing down the core of the story and thinking ahead to editing video.
    • I’ll be sharing some stories and pictures from a wonderful trip to Austin.
    • What we’re consuming: Waco Brothers, Cosentino Winery Cigarzin.

    This Week @ Portigal

    This week we continue to swim through an ocean of data from two concurrent projects.

    • Tamara and Julie are still poring over transcripts from New York and LA. We are looking forward to hosting our clients for another co-analysis session this week..
    • We are making sense of the transcripts and spreadsheets of data from our second project. Next up- outlining the key findings and drafting the presentation!
    • Steve is down in Austin for SXSW Interactive and a little vacation time. We look forward to getting the rundown when he returns.
    • What we’re consuming: Global Home, dim sum, homemade fortune cookies

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    ‘Brogrammers’ challenge coders’ nerdy image [SF Chronicle] – It’s a bit of a silly story that turns a catchphrase into a cultural trend, but of course there’s something happening to drive the growth of the catchphrase. Sad that flipping the nerd stereotype reveals a sexist one.

    Tech’s latest boom has generated a new, more testosterone-fueled breed of coder. Sure, the job still requires enormous brainpower, yet today’s engineers are drawn from diverse backgrounds, and many eschew the laboratory intellectualism that prevailed when semiconductors ruled Silicon Valley. At some startups the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction that it’s given rise to a new title: brogrammer. A portmanteau of the frat-house moniker “bro” and “programmer,” the term has become the subject of a Facebook group joined by more than 21,000 people; the name of a series of hacker get-togethers in Austin, Texas; the punch line for online ads; and the topic of a humorous discussion on question-and-answer site Quora titled “How does a programmer become a brogrammer?” (One pointer: Drink Red Bull, beer and “brotein” shakes.) “There’s a rising group of developers who are much more sociable and like to go out and have fun, and I think brogramming speaks to that audience,” said Gagan Biyani, co-founder and president of Udemy, a San Francisco startup that offers coding lessons on the Web.

    Mr. Peanut’s Alter Ego Leads Kraft Into Planters Butter [Bloomberg] – Surprising not to see any mention of Kraft Peanut Butter, the Canadian product that pretty much defines peanut butter in that market.

    Mr. Peanut has a stunt double. Sporting a goatee, aviator sunglasses and overconfidence, “Doug” performs death-defying feats that always end the same way: with him getting crushed and turned into peanut butter. Doug’s daredevil act is part of Kraft’s move into the crowded U.S. peanut butter market. In what may be the most overdue brand extension in history, Kraft is using the 100- year-old Planters brand to spark growth in its mature grocery business. Kraft is targeting adults, who consume two-thirds of the $1.8 billion of peanut butter sold in the U.S. each year, Kraft was looking for an adult mascot and settled on Doug, voiced in Web ads by Kevin Dillon in an homage to the hapless Johnny Drama character he played on HBO’s “Entourage” series. “Peanut butter was a natural extension,” Schmelter said. The new spread and Peanut Butter Doug, as he is formally known, are signs Kraft is getting more aggressive with the grocery business, said Alexia Howard, an analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York.

    Internet Archive’s Repository Collects Thousands of Books [NYT] – Digital technology allows rapid content creation, and creates interesting archiving challenges. First all the digital data was worth preserving. Then digital was a method to archive the physical world. Now we’re going all-in and trying to archive the physical world itself. Seems like a setup for a Steven Wright joke (didn’t he describe his full-scale map of the US and the problems he had folding it?).

    “We want to collect one copy of every book,” said Brewster Kahle, who has spent $3 million to buy and operate this repository situated just north of San Francisco. “You can never tell what is going to paint the portrait of a culture.” As society embraces all forms of digital entertainment, this latter-day Noah is looking the other way. A Silicon Valley entrepreneur who made his fortune selling a data-mining company to Amazon.com in 1999, Mr. Kahle founded and runs the Internet Archive, a nonprofit organization devoted to preserving Web pages – 150 billion so far – and making texts more widely available. But even though he started his archiving in the digital realm, he now wants to save physical texts, too. “We must keep the past even as we’re inventing a new future,” he said. “If the Library of Alexandria had made a copy of every book and sent it to India or China, we’d have the other works of Aristotle, the other plays of Euripides. One copy in one institution is not good enough.” Mr. Kahle had the idea for the physical archive while working on the Internet Archive, which has digitized two million books. With a deep dedication to traditional printing – one of his sons is named Caslon, after the 18th-century type designer – he abhorred the notion of throwing out a book once it had been scanned. The volume that yielded the digital copy was special. And perhaps essential. What if, for example, digitization improves and we need to copy the books again?

    Myq Kaplan Gives Birth to a Stand-Up Joke [NYT] – The prototype/test-with-users/iterate process of designing a joke.

    The first week is arguably the most creative in the life of a joke. For Mr. Kaplan it’s all about generating ideas. What could explain this jacket convention? Maybe, he speculated, jackets were once very cheap and, as he would later say onstage, “men wore seven coats out, hoping it wasn’t an eight-puddle day.” He also decided that the modern equivalent was leaving the toilet seat down. All these ideas were transformed into jokes as the bit expanded. Setups shrank. Punch lines multiplied. The jacket over the puddle soon became one of several examples of chivalry that began with his pantomiming opening a door after asking the audience: “Does it detract from chivalry if, when opening a car door for a lady, I say, ‘Chivaaalry!'” He dragged out the last word in the self-satisfied voice of a magician introducing his assistant. A coarse joke about chivalry during sex replaced the homeless-man line. By early January Mr. Kaplan’s rhythm became more assured and moseying, lingering on pauses, finding extra laughs between punch lines. His typical stage pose – leaning back, his free hand placed gently on his stomach as if he were pregnant – became looser, adding touches of showmanship. It didn’t matter where he performed (clubs, restaurants, even a hostel), chivalry always worked. The focus now was on getting the right laughs. It was important, he thought, to get a big one right at the start with his car-door opening, and in paring it down, he turned a question (“Does it detract from chivalry…”) into a statement. Later, he brought back the question. Laughter marginally improved.

    Lucy Kimbell: Expanding the visible and sayable

    This interview has been edited, condensed, etc.

    Lucy Kimbell works as a designer, educator and researcher. She is head of social design at the Young Foundation in London and associate fellow at Said Business School, University of Oxford. As an undergraduate she studied engineering design and appropriate technology and made feminist performance/theatre. What she does these days does not look that different. Find her on twitter: @lixindex

    Tell us about your work!

    Lucy Kimbell: Over the past decade I have worked in a range of contexts, from academia to art to design. I have been able to move fairly fluidly between what might seem quite distinct fields, at a time when innovation and creativity are supposedly what’s needed to address global, community and organisational challenges but when artists, designers and others are not necessarily good at explaining how or why what they do might be relevant or productive, and the effects of their work are as varied as anything else.

    In January I started a role as head of social design at the Young Foundation, a 60-person organisation working in the UK and internationally to trigger and support social innovation and venturing. Basically my role – which is new for the organisation – is to explore how practices within design and the arts can help support creating social (in the sense of civil society) ventures and projects. My brief is to build up the Young Foundation’s capability, rather than building a design team. There are lots of other examples of this shift both at government level (like Mindlab in Denmark or TACSI in Australia), and other activities initiated by consultancies and by universities and corporates. I’m hoping to be able to combine some of the ideas I’ve been exploring teaching design to MBAs at Oxford University for the past six years, research I’ve done in design thinking and designing for service in particular, and my own art/design making practice. The latter has dwindled although my Physical Bar Charts have been shown a few times in the past year including at TEDGlobal in Edinburgh and a show at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. Right now I’m setting up a critical reflective conversation about all this stuff, with a series of talks and seminars co-organised with Guy Julier (University of Brighton/Victoria and Albert Museum) and the people at Policy Connect.

    tOp: How do you define “technology?”

    LK: I don’t think of technology as something that exists outside of people and what we do, who we are, and how we live and work. It’s not a thing, it’s not other, but rather is part of being human. We’re not human without the things we currently call technologies, whether these are Google, or management fads, or pencils. I think of the things often called technologies as stable arrangements or configurations that are a result of the ways humans and material/digital artefacts come together, at specific times and places. But they are not just results; they also shape how things are and how they could be. So our relationship with technologies are changing – who we are as human beings and the cultural practices within which we come to be those people change with this.

    tOp: What do stories about technology reveal about our culture and our relationship with technology?

    LK: This question makes me wonder who is telling these stories, who is engaging with them, and where they are circulating. The stories I see on TV in the form of adverts are more or less the same as they have been for several decades: This new device/network/thing will help you become a different, better person! more lovely! more effective! will make you become a more connected family! help drive sales! And so on. More or less the same but perhaps with higher levels of anxiety? Then there are the narratives that are often outside of corporate culture, of resistance, and alternatives, and questioning of assumptions. One of the interesting things about the Occupy movements in Western/Northern cities last year was resistance to advancing a totalising alternative – a narrative of what the right answer is. I suppose what I see is narratives about technology being mobilised for quite distinct purposes and there are probably examples of everything.

    tOp: What are the factors that influence how (or what) technology is being developed?

    LK: Every now and then I hear about a bubble-world I am not familiar with which is focussed on technology for example in healthcare innovation. And as an outsider I am struck by how existing practices in a particular sector constitute differently what the technology question is – what they hope a thing they call technology might be able to do for that sector. These vested interests and ways of thinking about what “technology” can do, whether they are professional or corporate or in the realm of public policy, have a big role in shaping what technology research programmes take shape.

    tOp: How do you think technology is changing everyday lives for mainstream consumers?

    LK: I wouldn’t say that technology is changing their lives, but rather that new configurations or arrangements of people and things come into being and stabilise and so what is possible, or expected, or what is at any point in time the regular way of doing things, changes. And material and digital techniques, tools and artefacts are part of this but so are the way people use them, adapt to them, break them or improvise in relation to them. So I would say that what it is to consume or rather be constituted as a consumer in relation to possible practices of consuming changes. My consuming as an affluent London resident living within a straight family involved in a global elite of educators and design innovators is different to other consuming I was involved in when I was younger, single, not a parent, less affluent and so on. Technological artefacts are part of that but are not the (only/main) drivers.

    tOp: Your working definitions for “technology” and “consumption” seem close to each other. How do they relate?

    LK: To be a consumer in an affluent society now involves lots of what in ordinary language we call technology. To be a teacher or student, to be a parent, to be someone who works in a supermarket, to be a bus driver, to be to be a person who goes out in the evening, to be a person who has a garden in a city, to be a person operating in the art world, all of these involve technologically-mediated practices.

    tOp: What kind of impacts is technology having on your own life?

    LK: My partner and I are finishing a major house refurbishment where we live in London. We sourced many of the buliding materials as well as furniture and fittings via eBay and Freecyle. Not just shelving and beds but also windows, doors, flooring, insulation, radiators, toilets, showers, ovens, tiles and so on. Rather than saying technology had an impact on how we did the refurb, I would say we developed some new ways of living and building, as we increased our skills and knowledge about how to source, price, bid for, exchange, pick up, transport, store, make use of and dispose of all the stuff that is involved in constructing a house. Digital networked technologies have made this possible through giving us access to platforms where people want to give away or sell their unwanted items, and allowing us to search for and research what we need, and get things transported if they are far away, and get input from the architect when we needed it. The carbon and materials costs are not very visible in these transactions but they should be.

    Compared to other projects of this size, we may not have saved money (we saved on buying materials but then the contractors had to do lots of non-standard activities to fit or use them) or time (it’s taken two years). But there’s a satisfaction in knowing that the ash floor was picked up from the street where someone had thrown it out, and the gas hob, insulation, sliding windows, toilets and many other things would most likely be in landfill. We’ve paid for them not to be there, through our labour and through paying for adapting our building process to what’s available and when it’s available – a middle-class luxury, in one sense, but also a kind of living out of our values. So the technologies we used made all this possible in ways that we (and probably their designers and manufacturers) would not have foreseen.

    tOp: As a society, do you think we are losing or gaining anything with these changes?

    LK: I have the hope that the practices and devices that come into view through these changes support wider access to resources, enable participation in decision-making of people who have been excluded or marginalised, increase transparency and accountability, and reduce the effects of climate change. But I don’t think the technologies/practices that we now have that we are learning to live and work with do not necessarily do any of these things per se, even if their designers or funders or champions want it to be so. You can see the influence of the ethnomethodologists and ANT researchers on me here – it all depends on the local, the specific, the what is – I’m avoiding making generalisations, sorry. What remains an always open and public question is the what could be. Art and design practices have very powerful ways to constitute and involve people in collective imaginaries and in particular disrupt the current ones by doing what the French philosopher Jacques Ranci?®re calls expanding what is visible and sayable in the distribution of the sensible (le partage du sensible).

    tOp: Is your own work meant to provoke those imaginings? Who do you regard as influential in expanding the visible and sayable?

    LK: I asked someone else a version of this question recently and after a long pause, the answer was…hmmm… Bourdieu, Wittgenstein… To be a bit more 2012 I have a whole long list of makers and writers and researchers and educators who provoke me to imagine (although I also like Bourdieu). Within design, this includes the people in the School of Design Strategies at Parsons in NY, Ezio Manzini in Milano, Thomas Binder in Copenhagen, Pelle Ehn in Malmo, Jon Kolko at Austin Center for Design, Nathan Shedroff at CCA, small consultancies like the fashionable young men at Berg London, or the people constituting new digital publics at Futuregov. Within the arts, practitioners like Nina Pope and Karen Guthrie of Somewhere, Heath Bunting or Natalie Jeremijenko. Within the social sciences people like Noortje Marres and Nina Wakeford at Goldsmiths and Cat Macaulay at Dundee. The people behind the Kenyan comic cultural enterprise Shujaaz. Some people I met yesterday who run a hostel for homeless people in Soho. The three Roca brothers who run El Cellar de Can Roca in Gerona, Cataluyna. The producers and writers and actors of TV shows like True Blood and The Wire. The people of the city of Homs in Syria. I seem in recent years to be located (to locate myself) in a way which asks me to be quite careful about how I do any disrupting which is the price of my institutional reconfiguring. It’s too early to say what that’s doing to my imaginaries.

    This Week @ Portigal

    This week is all about data, and making sense of it

    • We’re poring over transcripts from New York and LA. We’ve killed a lot of trees with our printouts; everyone is heads down reading through interviews and making notes. Our clients are coming over for a no-doubt lively session of storytelling, analysis, debate, sticky-note madness, and pattern matching.
    • We’ve put a stake in the ground over last week’s multi-method mayhem; sharing a topline summary with those clients (now safely back at home overseas) and staging the next round of transcripts and analysis.
    • I’m off to Austin later this week for SXSW Interactive and then hanging around for some vacation time at the film festival, with some live music, tacos, and BBQ thrown in for good measure.
    • What we’re consuming: Laser Quest, The Ice Cream Bar.

    Interviewing past the platitudes

    From this past Sunday’s New York Times, a review of Craig Taylor’s “Londoners”:

    Taylor devoted five years to collecting the material for “Londoners.” He gathered stories from all 32 boroughs, conducting formal interviews with more than 200 people, running through 300 tape-recorder batteries and taking down enough notes to generate transcripts of more than 950,000 words. Fewer than half the people he talked to made the final cut. Some interviews took months to set up and lasted just a few minutes. Others went on for hours.

    The reviewer, a journalist herself, makes an excellent point about the challenges in interviewing:

    Anyone who conducts interviews for a living knows how hard it can sometimes be to get subjects to move past cant and cliché, to leave the platitudes and drive on to the good stuff. (How many articles feature people expressing “shock and sadness” at their neighbors’ personal tragedies or noting that a murder victim “kept to himself”?)

    Collecting soundbites is easy; the trope of the soundbite is so well-entrenched that most anyone will perform one in the right circumstances. Sometimes those soundbites feel – to the interviewer – like nuggets. It’s up to us to understand the difference between performance that we’re eliciting and a comment or observation that leads us towards insight.

    Note: For more “Londoners” Taylor himself has an essay elsewhere in Sunday’s paper.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    P&G gets innovative [Cincinnati.com] – The process behind Tide Pods includes lots and lots of research such as “talking” to 6,000 consumers. It appears this research was all done in simulated environments. I am bemused by the willing self-deception that if you put a couch in a lab, it makes the research contextual. I’d like to see P&G watching people do laundry in their real, non-idealized, messy, distracted, semi-functioning environment. Because then maybe you’d get takeaways richer than “Most laundry-doers are looking for a way to get it done faster.”

    Inside the Beckett Ridge “home,” P&G researchers interviewed regular people as they sat in the comfortable couches of a mock family room or at the counter of a mock kitchen. They did the wash in a fully functioning laundry room. Through it all, they were videotaped and audiotaped, so P&G can capture how the wash gets done in a real-world setting…Back at Beckett Ridge, researchers worked on the packaging and the store display. Inside the “grocery store” with its six aisles, two checkout lanes and a self-scan lane, cameras are everywhere, recording how shoppers shop. The video feed can be streamed to any P&G Intranet site so questions and comments can be called in.

    Never Too Early Movie Predictions – Sure, if we care at all, we’re still digesting the most recent Academy Awards. But forgot about 2012, this site has predictions through 2017. Sheesh, I haven’t seen any of these movies! Another moment where the corners of the Internet remind you that everyday life is filled with some genuine science fiction moments.

    2015 Oscar Best Picture predictions
    1. Noah
    2. Citizen Hughes: The Power, The Money And The Madness
    3. Churchill And Roosevelt
    4. Avatar 2
    5. The $700 Billion Man
    6. The Color Of Lightening
    7. Serena
    8. Americana

    Young Women Often Trendsetters in Vocal Patterns [NYT] – I had missed the original “vocal fry” hubbub a few months back, but I also enjoy how this article reframes young-female speech into a positive, leading-edge anthropological act.

    Girls and women in their teens and 20s deserve credit for pioneering vocal trends and popular slang, adding that young women use these embellishments in much more sophisticated ways than people tend to realize. “A lot of these really flamboyant things you hear are cute, and girls are supposed to be cute,” said Penny Eckert, a professor of linguistics at Stanford. “But they’re not just using them because they’re girls. They’re using them to achieve some kind of interactional and stylistic end.” The latest linguistic curiosity to emerge from the petri dish of girl culture gained recognition in December, when researchers from Long Island University published a paper in The Journal of Voice. Working with what they acknowledged was a very small sample – recorded speech from 34 women ages 18 to 25 – the professors said they had found evidence of a new trend among female college students: a guttural fluttering of the vocal cords they called “vocal fry.” A classic example of vocal fry, best described as a raspy or croaking sound injected (usually) at the end of a sentence, can be heard when Mae West says, “Why don’t you come up sometime and see me,” or when Maya Rudolph mimics Maya Angelou on SNL.

    Plastic Surgeons See iPhones Increase Demand for Cosmetic Procedures [Austin-Weston Center for Cosmetic Surgery] – It’s hard not to be cynical about this “press release” in which plastic surgeons tie the need for their services to a particularly hot tech brand. If you do this (the wrong way, at least) in China, you can get into trouble!

    “Patients come in with their iPhones and show me how they look on [Apple’s video calling application] FaceTime,” says Dr. Sigal. “The angle at which the phone is held, with the caller looking downward into the camera, really captures any heaviness, fullness and sagging of the face and neck. People say ‘I never knew I looked like that! I need to do something!’ I’ve started calling it the ‘FaceTime Facelift’ effect. And we’ve developed procedures to specifically address it.” (via Kottke)

    draw me in – Jeff Johnson’s quest to become a comic book extra. The best summary of the project – yet another example of the collapsing gulf between producer and consumer comes from this Wired article (quoted below).

    Popping up in nearly 30 comic books, he has become the industry’s Waldo-a lurking stowaway who has managed to hijack the unlikeliest panels. “It’s the ultimate bragging right to go into a comic store and pick up a book you’re in,” says Johnson, a 30-year-old Kmart electronics clerk from Leavenworth, Kansas. His infamous glasses-and-goatee mug has been zombiefied (The Walking Dead), digitized (Tron: Betrayal), and placed alongside Sinestro (Green Lantern Corps), thanks to his ceaseless lobbying and the cooperation of artists. The idea sprang from a 2006 FHM contest in which entrants sent pictures of themselves in homemade costumes of villains; the winner (if you want to call it that) was drawn into Ultimate X-Men. Johnson didn’t want to dress up, so instead he handed out DrawMeIn flyers at Comic-Con, after which penciler Ryan Ottley worked him into Invincible.

    This Week @ Portigal

    This is an intense, single-focus week for us

    • We are hosting a dozen or so clients from overseas. They’ve shipped over their working (we hope) science-fiction-like prototype which we’ll be showing to a huge number of people, using a method (for the first time) called Central Location Testing (aka CLT). Over a few days, we’ll also be visiting some of those same people in their homes to talk further about how this product might be used. Probably our most intensive data-gathering three days ever.
    • What we’re consuming: Lucky Peach issue 3, MacGyver, Gary Shteyngart.

    From Dublin, presentation videos of the IxD12 Student Design Challenge

    We’ve got video of the four finalists giving their presentations. You can see their slide decks here.

     

    Grand Prize: Priscilla Mok

    @Interaction12(Dublin)- Priscilla Mok presents her idea on 'Future of News'

     

    1st Runner Up: Diksha Grover

    Interaction12(Dublin)- Diksha Grover presents her idea on 'Future of news'

     

    2nd Runner-Up: Siri Johansson

    @Interaction12(Dublin)- Siri Johansson presents her idea on 'Future of News'

     

    Honourable Mention: Jaime Krakowiak

    @Interaction12(Dublin)- Jaime Krokowiak presents her idea on 'Future of News'

    Out and About: Julie in NYC

    There’s no better place than New York for the casual wandering photog. And no better way to unwind between interviews than wandering casually. Tamara shared her observations from last week’s trip; here are a few of mine.


    An ambitious seeker-of-companionship slipped this onto the subway; an attempt at old-school social networking, ironic in its particular placement. It’s author provides a few interesting and wholesome-sounding options (library, the zoo, coffee date) to entice people to respond to this rather salacious-seeming invitation. Who calls, I wonder? And don’t they know that with Google Voice they can link those two numbers?


    Surprisingly lifelike and expressive, for mini-robots cobbled out of plastic scraps.

    A few of my pictures wound up revealing accidental compositional synchronicity. That’s one of the joys of taking photos – along with being obvious documentations of what I ran across, I often discover something new when I get them back and reflect on them:


    When I took this, I only saw the blue face. And yes, this is the correct orientation of the photo!


    The colors in this juxtapostion of the utilitarian and the ephermeral echo each other.


    I like taking pictures of poles for the way they can surprisingly and dramatically bisect a scene. And because people put stickers on them. The little face sticker here is obviously a product of the same person/people who slapped up a little sticker I snapped on the other side of the country, at Venice Beach, just two weeks prior – the LA one reads, “Enjoy You” rather than, “Gain You.” Interstate sticker-art pattern! Theories?


    Red, yellow and blue syncopate in a Brooklyn subway entrance, in a way that put me in the mind of Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie. Jazzy patterns abound, waiting for us to notice them.

    Out and About: Tamara in NYC

    Last week Julie and I got to take a bite outta the Big Apple and take in the sights, sounds and sensations of the city streets. Here are a few highlights and memorable moments from the adventure…

    Fired folks aren’t the only ones profiting from their appearance on The Celebrity Apprentice. I am not convinced that a restaurant appearing on this show implies endorsement of a quality culinary experience and while the stock photo certainly has the flavor of Reality TV, it doesn’t say “appetizing” to me.

    These guys were camped out in front of a Foot Locker store in anticipation of the arrival of the new Nike Foamposite Galaxy a week later. I imagine this is very common, but I honestly can’t think of anything in life that would compel me to camp on a city street for one week.

    I initially appreciated the tenor of this little letter to Residents until I got to the end. From, Porter. felt so impersonal! Unless of course, that is his name…

    Poetry in motion! Thumbs up to the NYC Department of Transportation for adding a little beauty to the urban landscape.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Why You’re Doing Customer Research All Wrong [Inc.] – It comes as no surprise that many innovative ideas hit the cutting room floor before ever seeing the light of day in consumer testing. The author suggests that too many great ideas don’t get chosen for testing and this is where the problem lies. While I agree that this is a grave problem for customer research, it’s not nearly as reprehensible as the omission of consumers from ideation sessions, and the failure to converge in the ideation process. In fact, I’d argue that the problem could be averted with two steps upstream in this process. First, start with the end in mind when planning a brainstorming session and invite customers and executives to help generate stakeholder-inspired ideas. Secondly, make sure those ideas get clustered and prioritized before anyone leaves the room. Ideation should include both divergent and convergent thinking! This results in more collaborative value-added ideas and less ‘intuitive’ choices about which ones merit further testing.

    Affinnova studied 100 testing campaigns that its clients had done in the past. Typically the testing process went like this: A company came up with a long list of potential ideas to test, whittled it down using mostly executives’ intuition, and then tested the much shorter list of ideas. Affinnova, on the other hand, took the initial brainstorming list and tested everything on it, presenting the ideas in groups and asking participants to select their favorites.

    Looking To Hire And Keep Great Innovators? Focus On The 3 Rs [Co.Design] – When companies look inward in a quest for amping up their innovation capabilities, they undoubtedly see the potential of their human resources. The three Rs of getting and keeping innovative employees are Recruiting, Retraining and Rewarding. Given the very premise of the article a fourth R, Reflection, seems mighty important. While the ROI (yikes, another R word!) of a strategic debrief may be hard to justify in some cases, the cost of ignoring valuable lessons learned from experience can be catastrophic. Consider how many times companies learn the same lessons over and over again. It’s Ridiculous. Besides, a healthy organization that engages its employees in regular reflection is likely to keep those folks feeling engaged, valued and loyal, thereby reducing the need to look outside for more innovators.

    Innovation relies on people more than other processes. This reliance on employees, management, and executives in an organization requires that the “right” people are attracted, and then given the appropriate tools and techniques for a sustained innovation success. Their passions and capabilities also must be ensured to align with the needs and expectations of the firm.

    Building Self-Control, the American Way [New York Times] – Although this article is focused on parenting strategies for cultivating self-discipline, I think the lessons can be applied to nurturing innovative thinkers. This article talks about the importance of play in allowing children to practice and develop skills like self-control, self-esteem and social interaction. Companies who rely on their people to continually generate creative ideas should explore opportunities for productive play experiences that challenge and nurture their employees’ essential abilities to manage themselves through intrinsic motivation.

    Fortunately for American parents, psychologists find that children can learn self-control without externally imposed pressure. Behavior is powerfully shaped not only by parents or teachers but also by children themselves. The key is to harness the child’s own drives for play, social interaction and other rewards. Enjoyable activities elicit dopamine release to enhance learning, while reducing the secretion of stress hormones, which can impede learning and increase anxiety, sometimes for years.

     

    This Week @ Portigal

    What we’re up to this week…

    • Fresh from fieldwork in NYC, Tamara and Julie are in the throes of uploading data, preparing a top line report, and reviewing transcripts.
    • Be afraid. Be very afraid. Steve and Tamara are up to their necks in foam core, X-Acto knives and glue guns preparing mock-ups that we can take into consumers’ homes next week.
    • Steve will be giving a remote lecture on synthesizing user research to the Dundee Masters of Design Ethnography folks.
    • Field trip! We’ve been invited to meet the folks at Stimulant and check out their amazing interaction design, “beyond the computer.”
    • We’ll be helping our friends at Bolt|Peters celebrate their 10th birthday.
    • What we’re consuming: Trigger, David Sanborn

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Dry your eyes with an eBay for the broken-hearted [Telegraph] – There’s an interesting idea here; I’m not sure exactly why this sort of items deserve their own ecommerce site; is the narrative sufficiently appealing for buyers and sellers to replace an established player like eBay? I’d suggest they get their story straight, the site says “Never Liked It Anyway is a place where once loved gifts from once loved partners get a second chance.” If the gifts were indeed once-loved then the site’s title is not very accurate. Or maybe this is something I’d have to be a woman to understand.

    The bride ditched at the altar hardly wants to save her wedding dress for a later date, while angry ex-wives are unlikely to keep the diamond earrings from a cheating husband. How about selling off those expensive gifts? A new website, NeverLikedItAnyway.com, is helping dumped girlfriends and jilted brides get emotional closure – and a bit of cash to ease their heartbreak. The global site, set up by New York business consultant Annabel Acton, 28, is an eBay for the broken-hearted. Users upload an image, description and “break-up price” for their item, as well as a sob story of how they came to be getting shot of it online. From engagement rings and wedding dresses to the detritus of a cancelled wedding day, spurned women are flocking to sell their unwanted goods.

    Find puppy love (cats too) through Meet Your Match [AP] – As Internet dating tips fully from losers-last-refuge to lovers-log-on, it becomes a metaphor, albeit a tortured one, for other types of services. Weren’t we screening for a good match in adopting pets a long time ago? Sounds like they have streamlined the approach, but the idea is probably strong enough to stand on its own without leveraging online dating. Although maybe that’s the journalist looking for a V-Day angle?

    Meet Your Match was designed by Emily Weiss, vice president of shelter research and development for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Potential adopters answer 19 questions on subjects such as whether they want a playful or laid-back pet, how their animal will spend its days and how they will spend together time with their new dog or cat. For the pet evaluation, animals are put in a room in front of a camera. Staff members watch how quickly they settle, lie down, curl up and what else they choose to do. They watch the animals play and interact. People and pets are assigned a color – green, orange or purple – and one of three categories in each color category.

    Dogs are watched for friendliness, playfulness, energy level, motivation and drive. A dog might be a laid-back couch potato, a curious busy bee or an action hero go-getter, Weiss said. Green is for dogs who like to be physically and mentally engaged, orange for middle-of-the-road dogs who enjoy regular activity and interaction, and purple for dogs who are easygoing, Cats who test green thrive on adventurous, carnival-style living. Orange is for go-with-the-flow pets, while purples require a less exciting, library-like home where they can be nothing more than a love bug, Weiss explained.

    Merope Lolis tested at the ASPCA’s Adoption Center as a good fit for a purple love bug – a cat that would be on its own much of the day. But she fell in love with a beautiful calico cat before realizing that it was a “frisky cat who was going to need lots of attention when I wasn’t available. I found that information to be very useful to me,” Lolis said.

    Jevons paradox [Wikipedia] – These counter-intuitive principles are handy to collect as frequent reminders that the world is a complex system of complex systems, and our presumptions about interventions leading to predictable outcomes are hopelessly naive.

    The proposition that technological progress that increases the efficiency with which a resource is used, tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of that resource In 1865, the English economist William Stanley Jevons observed that technological improvements that increased the efficiency of coal-use led to the increased consumption of coal in a wide range of industries. He argued that, contrary to common intuition, technological improvements could not be relied upon to reduce fuel consumption.

    Seventeen types of interviewing questions

    I’m cited in Developing Your Interviewing Skills, Part I: Preparing for an Interview, with a set of question types. The article suggests those question types are helpful in preparing an interview guide. I think they are also very helpful in the interview itself, as you will often have to probe a number of different ways to get at what you are think is interesting.

    Anyway, I’m not sure where the author found that set of questions, but I’ve recently rewritten and restructured them for the book. This seemed like a great opportunity to share them with everyone. I’d love your feedback: What am I missing? Do you disagree? What else would be more helpful for readers?

    Questions to gather context and collect details

    • Ask about sequence “Describe a typical workday. What do you do when you first sit down at your station?-Then what do you do next?”
    • Ask about quantity “How many files would you delete when that happens?”
    • Ask for specific examples “What is the last movie that you streamed?” – Compare this to “What movies do you stream?” The specific is easier to answer than the general and becomes a platform for follow up questions.
    • Ask for the complete list “What are all the different apps you have installed on your smartphone?” – This will require a series of follow up questions, e.g., “What else?” because few people will be able to generate an entire list of something with some prompting.
    • Ask about relationships “How do you work with new vendors?” – This general question is especially appropriate when you don’t even know enough to ask a specific question (e.g. in comparison to the earlier example about streaming movies). Better to start general than to be presumptive with a too-specific question.
    • Ask about organizational structure “Who does that department report to?”

    Questions to probe on what’s unsaid

    • Ask for clarification “When you refer to “that” you are talking about the newest server, right?”
    • Ask about code words/native language “Why do you call it the ‘Batcave?'”
    • Ask about emotional cues “Why do you laugh when you mention ‘Best Buy?'”
    • Ask why “I’ve tried to get my boss to adopt this format, but she just won’t do it-” “Why do you think she hasn’t?”
    • Probe delicately “You mentioned a difficult situation that changed your usage. Can you tell us what that situation was?”
    • Probe without presuming “Some people have very negative feelings about Twitter, while others don’t. What is your take?” – Rather than the direct “What do you think about Twitter?” or “Do you like Twitter?” this question introduces options that aren’t tied to the interviewer or the interviewee.
    • Explain to an outsider “Let’s say that I’ve just arrived here from another decade, how would you explain to me the difference between smartphones and tablets?”
    • Teach another “If you had to ask your daughter to operate your system, how would you explain it to her?”


    Questions that create contrasts in order uncover frameworks and mental models

    • Compare processes “What’s the difference between sending your response by fax, mail or email?”
    • Compare to others “Do the other coaches also do it that way?”
    • Compare across time “How have your family photo activities changed in the past five years? How do you think they will be different give years from now?” – The second question is not intended to capture an accurate prediction. Rather, the question serves to break free from what exists now and envision possibilities that may emerge down the road. Identify the appropriately large time horizon (a year? Five years? Ten years?) that will help people to think beyond incremental change.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Here’s the latest around here!

    • Start spreading the news! Julie and Tamara are taking to the skies once again, this time to New York. Having finished one round of research and done just a bit of sensemaking, this second round, again with our client in the field, should be nothing short of fascinating.
    • We’ve got a multi-method study coming up in a few weeks, with a client coming from Asia with their one-off super-secret prototype, and sessions with users in their homes and in a facility. This week Steve nails down the details of what we’ll be asking them.
    • Proposals for workshops and speaking gigs! Proposals for training! Proposals for consulting! Lots of exciting possibilities in the offing.

    From Dublin, the results of the IxD12 Student Design Challenge

    Just over a week ago, we came together with our four winners for a great two-day masterclass, with guest lectures and critics (thanks to Steve Baty, Martin Colebourne, Dan Lockton and Fiachra Ó Marcaigh). We debated, brainstormed, discussed, and designed. And after class, the students went back to their hotel and worked and worked and worked.  As the conference itself kicked off, each one got up and shared their vision for the future of the news for an audience that included our awesome judges as well a heap of conference attendees. The judges voted, we tallied, and here are the results!
    Grand Prize: Priscilla Mok

     

    1st Runner Up: Diksha Grover

     

    2nd Runner-Up: Siri Johansson

     

    Honourable Mention: Jaime Krakowiak

    And what did they win? A dazzling array of prizes!

    Meanwhile, our winners have taken on @ixdanewsfutures to continue the discussion. Check it out!

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Are You Learning as Fast as the World Is Changing? [HBR Blog Network] – Innovation is about the new. It begins with new thinking and typically involves learning new things and being exposed to new ideas. Through our self-funded study, the Omni project, we describe this challenge to keep up with the pace of possibilities in the Transformations theme. Here the author suggests three “habits of mind” (diverse sources of inspiration, copy success from other industries, and collaboration) that promise to keep you learning as fast as the world is changing.

    Today, the challenge for leaders at every level is no longer just to out-hustle, out-muscle, and out-maneuver the competition. It is to out-think the competition in ways big and small, to develop a unique point of view about the future and help your organization get there before anyone else does. Which is why a defining challenge of leadership is whether you can answer a question that is as simple as it is powerful: Are you learning as fast as the world is changing?

    The human factor in service design [McKinsey Quarterly] – The customer service landscape is continually evolving and responding to the winds of technological change and floods of social media. Here, three company stories illustrate different ways to think about the human side of service interaction. The article suggests that you ask yourself three questions to diagnose opportunities for improvement: How human is your service? How economic is your service? Can your people scale it up? The only question I’d add is: How do you know? since this line of inquiry into the design of services is fueled by research with humans both inside and outside the organization.

    When putting together services that are economically attractive and grounded in a good understanding of what motivates customers, companies shouldn’t overlook their own employees-the other human beings involved in a transaction. Companies give themselves a big edge when they design service processes that a widely distributed workforce can easily adopt, understand, automate, and execute.

    Let’s Debunk 4 Myths About How Great Companies Innovate [Co.Design] – This “mythbusting” article delivers a punchy dose that dispels any notion that innovative companies are fueled solely by visionary leaders, industry competition, market mimicking, and luck. It appears that we have no excuse not to innovate.

    A growing base of consumers with new expectations and new demands only fuels the fire for more products and services. Firms that claim to be fast followers are often merely just followers. As a firm grows and matures, its bureaucracy, decisions, and approvals inhibit its ability to bring a new product to market quickly. The company can’t respond fast enough to innovators or consumer demands. In this period of rapid change and global competition, innovation isn’t a “nice to have” but an important core competence; those firms that can’t keep up will inevitably perish.

    Observing Dublin (part 2 of 2)

    More pictures from my trip to Dublin for tbe IxDA Student Design Challenge. Also see Part 1.


    There is a chain called TJ Hughes in parts of Europe, so they swapped out the J for a K in order to prevent confusion.


    KitKat deathmatch?


    Most charming packaging, ever!


    Dublin doors.



    The classic, interpreted two ways.


    Viking marketing.


    Differentiation?


    Damn right it hurts.



    Local retail aesthetics.


    Treasures in the trash.

    Observing Dublin (part 1 of 2)

    Last week I was in Dublin for the IxDA Student Design Challenge (more on that coming soon). I had a chance to stroll about (in the cold!) and get some pictures, here are a few favorites, with part 2 coming tomorrow.



    You can’t understate the prominence (relevance?) of Guinness


    The Museum of Natural History. A big, big room crammed with more dead stuffed animals than you possibly imagine.


    Rolling advertisements.


    Occupy and social media.


    Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott.


    Aspiration meets reality.


    Local hero Colm Meaney.


    Why, indeed?


    The Liffey at night.


    Samuel Beckett Bridge.


    Services you didn’t know you needed.


    Zipperman.

    Out and About: Tamara in LA

    I am missing the sun and beaches of LA from our trip there last week. At least I have these fond memories to keep me warm…


    I’ve read about airlines letting passengers choose their seats using social media profiles and finally got to experience a digital/analog collision first hand on our Virgin America flight. I accepted the offer from 12A (aka Vinnie) to chat. Admittedly, I never talked to that stranger as I was engrossed in an inflight film.


    I was not surprised by the proliferation of celebrity endorsements in every eating and dining establishment that we entered. I was surprised by what constitutes celebrity.


    Dear lucky owner of this gorgeous Manhattan Beach home overlooking the ocean, thank you for using your prime position to promote a message of peace (in 4 different languages).


    I am so fond of legacy establishments (like Pink’s Hot Dogs) that make explicit the rules of how to be a customer. I’m also fond of people like Julie’s dad, who insist that we stop at such locations to relive childhood memories when we are in town!


    Julie and I both captured images from this Burbank dry cleaners. She focused on the environmental sustainability while I was enamored by the sustainability of their service!

    Out and About: Julie in LA

    Despite my relative proximity to it, LA is not a city I’ve had much occasion to visit. But I was there last week, with Tamara! Here are a few snaps I took in-between fieldwork interviews and client pow-wows. Most of these are from Venice Beach, with the exception of the last shot, which was taken in Burbank.

    Napping Aliens
    Clad in familiar brands (LA Lakers, Spongebob Squarepants, USA), this pile of patriotic aliens comes across as just another family of worn-out tourists.

    Faces
    The face, three ways.

    Stickers in your face
    Upper left is a riff on Shepard Fairey’s original Andre The Giant Has A Posse sticker. This one reads “Chopstick Charlie has one crazy posse,” then lists Chopstick Charlie’s dimensions at 5′ 11″ 150 lbs. (Note: If you are easily offended definitely do not look too closely at the nose and lips stickers).

    Shapes and figures
    I discovered a moment of serenity and geometry in the midst of the madness.

    Something surreal
    Magritte and the Surrealists are clear influences here.

    Retail guillotine
    It’s all about the body.

    Environmentally friendly
    The neon juxtaposed with this message of environmental consciousness comes off as deliberate irony! See Tamara’s Out and About: LA for her shot of this unique dry-cleaning establishment.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Together again…

    We are all back in the office this week (starting tomorrow).

    • Steve returns today from an enlightening and exhausting experience at Interaction 12 in Dublin. I can’t wait to hear about the Student Design challenge results and every other amazing detail. In the meantime, I am happily consuming the pictures he took in Dublin.
    • Julie and Tamara are back from an inspiring week of fieldwork in LA. We will be busy downloading, uploading, unpacking, repacking, refreshing, etc. as we prepare for round two of fieldwork in NYC next week.
    • Steve is meeting with another studio this week to explore combining forces for a new client opportunity.
    • Tamara continues to search for visual thinking tools and inspiration- focusing this week on reviewing a presentation from Interaction 12 by Jason Mesut and Sam ‘Pub’ Smith about sketching interfaces.
    • Julie is rocking her project management super heroine powers on another project we have kicked off and will be working on this month.
    • Tamara was lamenting the lack of actual dance moves by Madonna during yesterday’s Super Bowl half time show until I revisited her first music video for the song Everybody. Now I’m just thinking the more things change, the more they stay the same.

    Here’s to the future. And the past.

    Have a great week!

     

     

    Curating Consumption: Identity Crisis

    Yet another collection of random musings from the perspective of a consumer/researcher.

     

    This is awkward on so many levels. Of course there is the bizarre act of turning a fine cut of meat into a hot dog. Most troubling for the polyglot in me is the collision of cultures and languages: Kobe Beef is a Japanese culinary delicacy, it’s offered American Style, it’s touted as the Ultimate Haute Dog bringing French into the conversation and, wait a minute, it’s also a Gourmet Frankfurter so willkommen Germany! I’m sitting here wondering if I am supposed to consume this dog raw or put it on a bun and add ketchup, dijon, or sauerkraut. Mon dieu!

     

    It might appear, on first glance, that this homeowner wants to sell you some fresh eggs. On second glance you might notice that spray-painted notice on the gate that you are absolutely not welcome. Missing from the image is the front porch, apparently a welcoming halfway house for transient felines. If ever I wanted to buy some fresh eggs (hen’s) here, I wouldn’t even know where to begin my purchase journey. I am considering offering some customer service design advice but seriously doubt it would be welcome.

     

    Dear Fresh & Easy, I trust that you have access to some stellar check-out technology. You must; you have all but eliminated the need for any employees at the check-out and empowered me, the consumer, with this task! I typically don’t mind this activity (or I outsource it to my son, who loves to do it) except when it ain’t easy. Allow me to clarify: When the scanner won’t read a UPC code because the sticker has been wrapped unreadably around a package and I have to enter that code and that code is 24-characters long, that is not easy. Also, when I have two of these poorly stickered items and you don’t offer me the chance to enter a quantity so I have to enter the 24-character code twice, that is so not easy I start referring to you as Fresh & Fiercely Annoying.

     

     

    This week @ Portigal

    It’s a crazy busy week for us, focusing on just a couple of big things

    • Julie and Tamara are in LA with our client team for the rest of the week, interviewing consumers and professionals (we can’t say what type of professionals they are but from what we’ve learned about them in setting up the interviews, they are highly accomplished) – no doubt all the interviews will be utterly fascinating
    • Steve is in Dublin, co-leading a two-day masterclass for the IxDA Student Design Challenge – we’ve got a really great agenda for the class with some special guests – and some really wonderful prizes (thank you generous sponsors!)

    Introverted Observers

    We’ve had a lot of good posts – and comments – as of late about extroversion, introversion, talking to strangers, comfort zones, and so on. This brought to mind a story from a visit to New York a while back. In Let’s Embrace Open-Mindedness I tell two stories from my personal life (e.g., not when conducting research) where I explored the edges of my own comfort zone in just slightly unfamiliar circumstances, one situation where I saw the opportunity and couldn’t make the leap, another where I saw the opportunity and convinced myself to take that leap.

    Followers of this blog will know I love taking pictures of curious and interesting things that I see everywhere, but it’s much harder – and not always appropriate – to take pictures of the curious and interesting people that I see everywhere. Indeed, in true Heisenberg fashion, you can’t always get the picture you’d want if you have to interact.

    Anyway, visiting New York and walking through Times Square, I came upon people promoting Carrie Fisher’s “Wishful Drinking.” They were dressed as parodies of the book cover, with Fisher as Leia. At two separate points, I asked these hawkers if I could take their pictures.

    Well, sure. It’s New York. It’s Times Square, thick with tourists, and these people are calling attention to themselves for promotion. All those cues shift the norm and make it reasonable/comfortable/appropriate/possible to do something that we don’t normally do: asking “Hey, can I take your picture?” That’s probably why I have so many photos taken with Shrek, Mr. Peanut, an Animaniac, the Monster.com monster – there’s something delightful and ironic about this staged naturalism, as if yes, I am hanging out here with my arm casually thrown around a 6-foot be-monocled legume. The opportunity to ask for a picture is so built-in to our scripts that it seems a crime to not get the picture!

    Also see: The bear that saluted me

    Omni Quickies

    Not Quite Smart Enough [NYT] – Smart appliances are back, yet again! Engineers are crammed atop happily dumb products because, well, because they can. The classic of course is the Smart Fridge, the result of jetpack-denied technologists channeling their rage. We’ve heard the use cases over and over again, we aren’t that interested (are we?) but comically, that doesn’t seem to stop them. From past work, I believe there some wonderful opportunities for technology to have a meaningful impact in domestic chores, but this repetition of an undesirable product just isn’t it. Bonus funny/sad: Mike Kuniavsky’s 2008 blog post looks at the history of these ridiculous things. /SP

    Still, there are differences in what is offered this time around – especially in the role of smartphones, which were not widely on the market a decade ago. In addition, even if the idea of a connected home, controlled by a smart electrical grid, is years off, it is more than just a pipe dream. For now, though, manufacturers are promoting the high-tech gizmos on their smart appliances, rather than focusing on the potential for being a cog in a smart grid. Samsung offers a French-door refrigerator with an LCD screen and its own apps, allowing consumers to check the weather, browse the Web for recipes, listen to music and keep tabs on what is in the refrigerator. The 28-cubic feet, four-door refrigerator costs about $3,500. LG is introducing a refrigerator that allows consumers to scan a grocery receipt with their smartphone so that the refrigerator can track what is inside. So if you buy some chicken, for instance, the refrigerator will keep tabs on when you bought it and tell you when it is about to expire. If you have chicken, broccoli and lemons in your refrigerator, it will offer recipes that include those three ingredients, even narrowing recipes based on specific dietary needs and goals. Several manufacturers are introducing washers and dryers equipped with Wi-Fi that alert consumers on their television or smartphone when a load is done, and gives them the option of fluffing towels for another 10 minutes or adding a rinse cycle. LG’s robotic smart vacuum can be told, again, through a smartphone, to clean up the living room. And since it’s equipped with a built-in camera, its owner can secretly watch what the nanny is doing, too.

    Tenured Professor Departs Stanford U., Hoping to Teach 500,000 Students at Online Start-Up [The Chronicle of Higher Education] – Last week we explored the innovative physical learning environment at the Swedish Vittra school. This week we learn that the future of educational institutions may involve abandoning the halls of the academy entirely in favor of virtual pedagogy and entrepreneurial ventures. Is the university destined for obsolescence? Freelance online classes challenge the value proposition (and often prohibitive cost) of a university degree by offering affordable alternatives that connect teachers who are motivated to share knowledge with students who are eager to learn and apply it, regardless of location. This reminds me of a recent Kickstarter project I funded called Don’t Go Back to School: A handbook for learning anything. For $25 I am getting a whole course and textbook on independent learning. Bargain! /TC

    During his talk, Mr. Thrun explored the origins of his popular online course at Stanford, which initially featured videos produced with nothing more than “a camera, a pen and a napkin.” Despite the low production quality, many of the 200 Stanford students taking the course in the classroom flocked to the videos because they could absorb the lectures at their own pace. Eventually, the 200 students taking the course in person dwindled to a group of 30. Meanwhile, the course’s popularity exploded online, drawing students from around the world. The experience taught the professor that he could craft a course with the interactive tools of the Web that recreated the intimacy of one-on-one tutoring, he said.

    Interactive film, Bear 71, blurs lines between wild and wired [Montreal Gazette] – News articles on this work, currently showing at Sundance, have difficulty classifying it. Is it a film? A documentary? An interactive experience? Multi-media project? All-encompassing digital experience? An interactive film? Akin to Steve’s comments on smart-appliances above, the interactive multi-media experience has also been around for awhile – remember ye olde CD-ROM? This project, however, is doing more than just using technology to give viewers some ownership and direction in the story-telling. The film-makers seem very tuned in to the philosophical implications of inserting all this technology into a very natural environment, and conscious of the irony of their ambition to use technology to bring us closer to our animal state, despite their claims that technology is the very thing drawing us away from that state. Bear 71 official site. /JN

    Enter Jeremy Mendes, a Vancouver-based artist and three-time Webby Award winner with a special talent for interactive work. “I drove out to Alberta and met Leanne [Allison], and when I saw these images, I knew right away that it was bizarre: It was surveillance equipment, essentially. These are the same cameras we use on ourselves. They’re the same cameras in Times Square and 7-11,” says Mendes. “I thought, ‘This is a technology story about us and this bear.'” “We prepared an outline and did all the research, and realized this was a story about communication. It’s about the communication humans use, and the communication animals use,” says Mendes… Call it the natural bulletin board, or deciduous Internet, but the scents tell each animal’s story to other animals – very much the same way we use Facebook of Twitter to keep tabs on other humans. “Humans probably had the same ability to understand that information before technology removed us from the natural world,” says Allison…It’s such a different approach to filmmaking and art, that it may take a while for the average Joe or Jane to take it all in, but that’s kind of the point: We’re only half-awake to our animal nature, and all our ambient technology only serves to shove us deeper and deeper into a state of instinct denial.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Has Microsoft Word affected the way we work? [The Guardian] – It’s interesting to reflect on the obvious and also the thoughtless ways in which the tools we use shape the way we write, and what we write. I know that I’m not alone in having a different writing process and style based on the interactions/affordances of WordPress, Word, PowerPoint, etc…

    Consider first the name that the computer industry assigned to it: word processor. The obvious analogy is with the food processor, a motorised culinary device that reduces everything to undifferentiated mush. That may indeed have been the impact of Word et al on business communications, which have increasingly become assemblies of boilerplate cliches. But that’s not been the main impact of word processing on creative writing, which seems to me to be just as vibrant as it was in the age of the typewriter or the fountain pen. But has word processing changed the way we write?…The most interesting academic study I looked at found that writers using computers “spent more time on a first draft and less on finalising a text, pursued a more fragmentary writing process, tended to revise more extensively at the beginning of the writing process, attended more to lower linguistic levels [letter, word] and formal properties of the text, and did not normally undertake any systematic revision of their work before finishing”.

    How to Write [Barnes & Noble] – Distractions are obviously distracting, but also extremely critical to the writing process. It’s funny because it’s true!

    Step Two: Seltzer. Doesn’t a tall class of icy cold seltzer sound delicious right now? Maybe with a slice of lime? Your lack of seltzer is no doubt what’s holding you back from greatness. If only you had seltzer, then the words would pour out of you-like seltzer out of a seltzer bottle and maybe just as bubbly. Check the fridge. Maybe there’s still some club soda from the New Year ‘s Eve party. Is club soda the same as seltzer? What club served it first? That’s a pretty boring club. Am I right? Hahaha-yeah.

    This week @ Portigal

    Sometimes I get a good feeling… that it’s gonna be a great week here at Portigal.

    Here’s what we are looking forward to…

    • After bidding a fond farewell to Etta James last week, this week we will lovingly remember two completed projects with a team debrief + reflection.
    • Tamara and Julie are preparing for fieldwork next week in LA (woot! woot!). Let us know if there is anything particularly fantastic we should try to squeeze in, though we will of course be pretty darn busy.
    • Steve is in the final week of preparation for Interaction 12 in Dublin (another woot! woot!) and getting everything in order for the Student Design Challenge.
    • Steve is writing his book about the Art and Craft of User Research Interviewing and Tamara will be interviewing him about writing. Stay tuned for highlights…
    • Steve continues some interviews for the Omni project. Did you see the recent interview with Molly Wright Steenson?
    • Julie and Tamara will be out and about learning from fellow practitioners this week at a number of sweet gigs around the city including SF Service Design Drinks at Adaptive Path, Creative Mornings at Typekit, and theWhiteboard at SonicRim. Will you be at any of these? If so, please do say “Hi!” We would so love to meet you!
    • Julie is nose deep in details and planning for some fieldwork for the Omni project. More to come on this.
    • Steve is exploring an exciting project opportunity in partnership with another studio. Viva collaboration!
    • Tamara is ready for a creative fuel injection when she chaperones her son’s school field trip to the Children’s Creativity Museum tomorrow. Fun for all ages!

    Hope to see you out and about.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Teenagers Sharing Passwords as Show of Affection [NYTimes] – Can you believe it’s been 17 years since Seinfeld considered the shareability of an ATM password within a relationship? Now we have more passwords controlling more access to more parts of our lives, so the issue is just that much more pressing.

    The digital era has given rise to a more intimate custom. It has become fashionable for young people to express their affection for each other by sharing their passwords to e-mail, Facebook and other accounts. Boyfriends and girlfriends sometimes even create identical passwords, and let each other read their private e-mails and texts. They say they know such digital entanglements are risky, because a souring relationship can lead to people using online secrets against each other. But that, they say, is part of what makes the symbolism of the shared password so powerful.

    Waterstones drops its apostrophe [Telegraph] – The justification of digitalization is a curious one. Since I have no attachment to the brand, personally, I like the new name’s evocation of rocks just below the surface of a flowing brook, rather than the possessive-of-someone-with-a-classic-British-name seen in the previous version.

    The country’s last remaining national chain of bookshops, founded by Tim Waterstone, has decided it is more “practical” to ditch the apostrophe. James Daunt, the managing director, who took over the chain last year following a change of ownership said: “Waterstones without an apostrophe is, in a digital world of URLs and email addresses, a more versatile and practical spelling.” One customer on Twitter responded: “Wish I’d used that in spelling tests …”. Others used the hashtag #isnothingsacred, while another tweeted that it was another step towards apostrophe extinction. John Richards, the chairman of the Apostrophe Protection Society said: “It’s just plain wrong. It’s grammatically incorrect. If Sainsbury’s and McDonald’s can get it right, then why can’t Waterstones. You would really hope that a bookshop is the last place to be so slapdash with English.”

    At Bank of America, the Image Officer Has a Lot to Fix [NYTimes] – Buried in a hagiographic profile (that, given the subject matter, might have been just a tad more circumspect) is this familiar bit of corporate speak about what people do and don’t want and what they do and don’t say they want.

    Ms. Finucane jumped to Hill Holiday, a Boston advertising agency, where she developed a flair for marketing. At one point, the agency conducted a study for Hyatt Hotels, aiming to distinguish between what customers said they wanted and what they really wanted.The lesson, Ms. Finucane recalls, was this: Customers don’t always know what they want. “You may say you want a bathrobe and slippers,” she says, “but the truth is you really want a telephone in the bathroom.”

    Dating service connects people over their leftovers [Wired] – This little story is actually a leftover itself, from some of Julie’s scouring-the-web-for-curiosities. Might make more sense to pair up people with extra food and people with not enough food, rather than try to force a romantic connection into the mix. I guess that’s what sells, though.

    Farmers cooperative Lantmännen has developed a dating tool that connects singles based on what food they have leftover in their fridges. It might not sound like the level of psychometric filtering touted by other dating websites, but Lantmännen aims to pair up fellow environmentally-conscious single people to share leftover dishes or ingredients. According to Lantmannen, a fifth of all food in Sweden is thrown away. It was this figure that led to the creation of the dating service, called Restdejting. People are invited to visit the website and enter up to five ingredients that they have hanging around the kitchen. This list is then published to Facebook for other Restdejting singles to peruse.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Who Arted? Framing a Curatorial Intervention [Core77] – Steve and I talked about how great it is when street artists build on each others’ work in our Interactions article, Kilroy was Here. The “Who Arted” group has really formalized this idea in parts of Brooklyn, serially framing, thereby curating street art.

    But what are we to take away? Is this some counter-establishment commentary? Some kind Dadaism reincarnated or an art project born of a lazy Saturday evening “potluck” that comes in little plastic baggies? Ha! Is it some conservative attempt to contain and sterilize an otherwise loose and “free” art form? Are these frames meant to control and connote a more sanctioned museum-like quality? -OR- More intriguingly, is this a fun, yet purposeful recommendation towards a comfortable middle ground; a less combustible space between tension and expression?

    ComScore Study Confirms What We Already Knew: You’re Wasting Money on Ads No One Sees [AdAge Digital] – Many, many apps and web-based services (and concepts we encounter on projects regularly!) are predicated on an advertising-based revenue model, but (as we all know from our own behavior – this study is in the category of things-we-really-didn’t-need-a-study-to-know) these ads are very rarely even glimpsed. If a banner ad falls in a forest, etc…what are the implications to our virtual-economy?

    ComScore announced it has developed measurement software it’s calling Validated Campaign Essentials, which includes at its core an analysis of which ads in an online campaign were in-view (50% of the ad must be viewable for at least one second.) The company said at an event this morning that it tested out the software over the last two months on campaigns for 12 big brands, including Kraft Foods, Ford, and Sprint. One of the key findings: 31% of the 1.7 billion ad impressions were never in view.

    Buying the Body of Christ [Killing the Buddha] – This is a pretty thorough history of the Cavanagh Company, a 69-year old business that provides a product believed by many to transmogrify into the body of Christ: altar bread. A wide variety of influences cultural, logistical, ritualistic, theological and economic have driven innovation over the years. The company is now faced with bitter bested competitors (nuns!), niche-products (gluten-free wafers) and Polish knock-offs, all of which threaten their 80% market share.

    Had production remained the exclusive bailiwick of monastic communities, it is likely that the findings of Vatican II would have prompted some minor changes in Communion-wafer production. Among the guidelines issued by the Church was a directive to “make the bread look more breadlike,” head of production Dan Cavanagh told me. It is a change whose significance may yet be lost on the millions of churchgoers who continue to think of hosts as a form of Styrofoam. Nevertheless, Cavanagh’s more “breadlike” whole-wheat wafer caught on. It became the industry standard, and forced the Poor Clare nuns to follow suit. In fact, the doctrinal changes of Vatican II were only a starting point for innovation. The Cavanagh Co. soon led the way to wholly aesthetic alterations in the host, to marketing campaigns and 1-800 numbers. The ethos of the altar bread industry changed profoundly, which is precisely what the Sisters of St. Clare found so unjust: ‘And they had the audacity to send samples and a price list to every parish in the United States! We were doomed. Priests started calling to say they preferred the “other” breads. Orders dropped. Our spirits drooped.’

    Talking to Strangers: Eugenio and Grace

    Where I see boundaries, you see opportunities. – Steve, to me

    On Monday Steve and I stumbled into a conversation that surfaced this difference between us in how we think about communicating with people. I’ve been reflecting on it all week and considering how it affects my interviewing practice. Mostly I have been paying more attention to how I am thinking during conversations and what kinds of opportunities I am seeing and looking for. Hot on the heels of Steve’s post with tips to improve interviewing skills, I hoped to surface a new point or two.

    Yesterday morning I was walking a trail along the ocean. I heard a woman remark to the man next to her, “Well that was very creative of you!” I tried to keep walking, honestly I did. But I love creativity almost as much as I love talking to strangers so I had to backtrack- two loves in one conversation was irresistible! “Excuse me. Hi, I’m so sorry to interrupt you, but I overheard you say something about him being creative and I’m so curious! What creative thing was he doing?” So began my 20-minute interlude with Grace and her husband Eugenio (as Grace explained, “It’s pronounced ay-you-HEN-ee-oh”).

    He is an artist, a painter. “I prefer mostly abstract and figurative painting. But you have to find your own voice-You can’t do too much school. I did some school when I was younger, in Mexico City. But if you are in school too long you become a mannerist. It just gets harder to find your own voice and be honest with it.” He told me about Joseph Beuys and Hockney (who Eugenio insists is overrated). We shared our mutual love of making art in and with nature. “You haven’t seen The Crack by Goldsworthy yet? Oh, you have to take your son to see it.”

    Grace is the mother of a 43 year-old and retired from some job that required her to sit in front of a computer all day. “I already spent a lot of my life in front of a screen. I don’t want to do that anymore.” They don’t have email addresses and don’t bother with the Internet. They do walk by the ocean everyday, each one carrying a soft ball to squeeze. Grace has a red ball she kept turning in her gloved hands. Eugenio’s is a faded dark turquoise-y blue. “The hands of an artist require dexterity” he told me, fingers flexing. They laughed when I pulled out my iPhone to take notes so I would remember the names, the words, etc. and agreed that I could take their picture for this story but didn’t care to see it.

    At some point early in our chat I became aware that I wanted to blog about my encounter with this couple. This awareness immediately transformed my thinking. I found myself struggling to just listen to their words once I started searching for a story I could later write. I prefer listening to, over listening for when I meet new people. It feels more organic, more natural. It also feels hard to stay present when my mind wants to narrate.

    Thanks to a conversation with Steve, I got curious about the art of inquiry and how we have different perceptions of conversational openings. Thanks to Eugenio (and my love of talking to strangers) I got curious about the local work of an artist I admire for his love of the ephemeral. People (and conversations with them) are fleeting opportunities to pique curiosity and learn something new. I guess if any tip emerged from this interaction it would simply be to stay curious. And look for learning.

    And that’s what art’s about, isn’t it? … It makes you see things in a different way than you would normally. – Andy Goldsworthy

    Innovation for Introverts

    We here at Portigal are diverse practitioners, particularly when it comes to the polarizing spectrum of introversion and extroversion. Many a delicious dinner have been sprinkled with questions about how our preferences impact our practice. Steve, who identifies as more of an introvert, was interviewed by Gerry Gaffney for his User Experience podcast late last year and discussed the context of interviewing as a place where this gets manifested and managed. This topic is not new, but some recent articles remind me how important it is for innovation efforts that we acknowledge the valuable differences between those who draw energy from within and those (like me) who draw energy from the people around them.

    The Rise of the New Groupthink [NYtimes] – Collaboration is the new black and, not surprisingly, it is not without its discontents. The author cites a range of studies (and Steve Wozniak as an exemplar) for why uninterrupted alone time is necessary and brainstorming in groups is not as effective as solo ideation. It doesn’t take loads of creativity to cherry-pick studies and successful individuals that support your case, in fact I think that’s called confirmation bias. Most disappointing is the characterization of collaboration as Groupthink which implies assembled individuals are stifled creatively and unable to reach their maximum creative frequency of Flow. Rather than supporting the case that collaboration isn’t worthwhile, I see a need for better communication, alignment, and understanding of diversity by the individuals that make up the group. A gifted facilitator, dedicated to stewarding collaborative creative processes and balancing different ideation styles, may offer a valuable remedy for this divergent diagnosis.

    One explanation for these findings is that introverts are comfortable working alone – and solitude is a catalyst to innovation. As the influential psychologist Hans Eysenck observed, introversion fosters creativity by “concentrating the mind on the tasks in hand, and preventing the dissipation of energy on social and sexual matters unrelated to work.” In other words, a person sitting quietly under a tree in the backyard, while everyone else is clinking glasses on the patio, is more likely to have an apple land on his head. (Newton was one of the world’s great introverts: William Wordsworth described him as “A mind for ever/ Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.”)

    Woz on Creativity: Work Alone [brainpickings] – My favorite source of cognitive candy offered a lovely, gentle rebuttal to the above article. It suggests, as do I, that creativity benefits from collaboration because fantastic things happen when ideas bang against each other. Neuroscientists tell us that new ideas are born of cognitive dissonance (when the brain struggles to hold two seemingly contrary concepts in the mind at the same time). This process has various monickers (forced connections, ideas having sex). In my experience it is guaranteed to produce innovative thinking and often works best when those two dissimilar ideas come from different people.

    This, of course, should be ingested with caution – when taken out of context, it could easily become a distorted extreme. As Steven Johnson argues in Where Good Ideas Come From, innovation happens when ideas collide with one another, which can’t happen in isolation – an environment conducive to such collisions is essential for combinatorial creativity.

    Federal Buzz: Does the government need more extroverts? [The Washington Post] – If you don’t have time for an in-depth study of the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) then this article offers a quick little lesson in some key distinctions between introverts and extroverts, as well as why there can be confusion and cases of mistaken identities. The article is a response to the argument that the government must hire more extroverts if it has any hope of fostering innovation. Plenty of voices chime in to dispel myths of introversion vs. extroversion and illuminate the challenges of employee retention within a work culture that neither nurtures nor rewards innovative contributions.

    Several [introverts] also professed to being mistaken for extroverts because any personality type can exhibit the qualities of a good leader. Explained Kenneth Wells, an employee with the Navy, “I have been in positions where I had to act like an extrovert and make decisions quickly and decisively. Just remember that person who you think is an extrovert may be an introvert. All he or she wants is to get the job done, and then spend a little alone time to recharge and work on the next assignment.”

    Stockholm’s School Without Classrooms [Architizer] – The Swedish Free School Organization Vittra is innovating the learning landscape with a new school designed to inspire creativity and community. The interior architecture is reminiscent of design studios (which are criticized in the above Groupthink article for lacking personal spaces). I, for one, drool at the thought of my son getting to attend a school designed to promote openness and interaction. Of course, my son is an extrovert like me so he would likely flourish in a school without walls. How is this kind of open environment experienced by a more introverted child? How do the teachers nurture and honor diverse creative kids in this context? I acknowledge my own confirmation bias here in suggesting that the teacher-as-facilitator seems like a viable anecdote for ensuring the students learn to stretch and shine, both alone and together.

    The principles of the Vittra School revolve around the breakdown of physical and metaphorical class divisions as a fundamental step to promoting intellectual curiosity, self-confidence, and communally responsible behavior. Therefore, in Vittra’s custom-built Stockholm location, spaces are only loosely defined by permeable borders and large, abstract landmarks. As the architects explained, “instead of classical divisions with chairs and tables, a giant iceberg for example serves as cinema, platform, and room for relaxation, and sets the frame for many different types of learning,” while “flexible laboratories make it possible to work hands-on with themes and projects.”

    Molly Wright Steenson: Shifting time

    This interview has been edited, condensed, etc.

    Molly Wright Steenson is an architectural historian, designer, researcher and strategist. She is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University’s School of Architecture, where her dissertation, “Artificial Intelligence, Architectural Intelligence: Nicholas Negroponte ad the Architecture Machine Group” looks at the intersection of technology and architecture in the 60s and 70s, and how AI and architecture created groundwork for contemporary human-computer interaction. Molly began working with the Web in 1994 at a wide variety of Fortune 500 and smaller, creative companies. As a design researcher, she examines the effect of personal and mobile technology on people’s lives, with recent projects in the US, India and China. She was a resident professor at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Italy and holds a M.A. in Architecture from Princeton, a Master’s in Environmental Design from the Yale School of Architecture and a B.A. in German from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Molly’s lived online at Girlwonder.com since the mid-90s. She travels too much and she probably knows someone you know.

    the Omni Project: How do you define technology?

    Molly Wright Steenson: Technology is a device, the connective tissue, the functional implement. I’m especially interested in how technology drives our communication, whether we’re talking about the Pony Express, the pneumatic post, or the Internet.

    tOP: What insight can we gain from the way we conceive of and discuss technology?

    MWS: One of the hangovers of Web 2.0 and the there’s-an-app-for-that mentality is that success in technology values the market and shipping a project, not a critical viewpoint or different design questions that can lead to breakthroughs we haven’t had before.

    One reason I love teaching in schools of design is the speculative nature of student design work: it does not need to make it to market to be successful; it does not need to answer to a bottom line or an uncreative client. What it needs to do is address the question of the application of art, the incorporation of a stance or point of view, and the execution on a variety of levels, whether drawn, rendered, built as a model, told as a story, presented as a fly through, or enacted as a performance. In order to develop novel ideas for the mainstream or commercial world, it’s important to spend time on speculation and surprise.

    I approach technology from a historical perspective to look at the foundations of why we turn to different technologies to help us communicate, to consider the kinds of problems we had in the past and the interfaces we developed to help us deal with it. For instance, telegraphy boomed in the 1870s because it was inexpensive and theoretically instantaneous, but it was difficult to get a telegram across a crowded city like Paris quickly, due to traffic and the labor required to transmit and transpose the messages. So it made more sense to build a network of cast iron pneumatic tubes between post offices, to bypass street-level traffic. Every major financial center had this problem; financial centers drive communication needs and thus the technologies that support communication. Paris developed the largest pneumatic post network in the world with 450 km of pneumatic tubes, and at one point processing 12 million pieces of pneumatic post.

    Pneumatic tubes. Doesn’t that seem elaborate? A technological wonder? Magical? Steampunk? Yet at the time, given relationships between civil engineers and the government and communications, it made sense to build something this elaborate. What could we learn from this decision today? What does it teach us about our questions of interface, of network, of capital, of finance?

    tOP: As a historian, do you privilege the past over the future? What is the benefit of looking backwards when looking forwards?

    MWS: Becoming a historian provided another perspective: it shifted time for me. I like looking at things flatly: newer does not necessarily mean more advanced. My perspective considers equally the contemporary impact of mobile phones on urban India or social network technologies in China, or Web 0.0 and 1.0, or the projects Nicholas Negroponte led as a part of his Architecture Machine Group at MIT in the 1960s and 70s, or the pneumatic post in the 1880s. All of these contexts-and many more I have yet to discover-represent possible futures that haven’t happened yet, or might happen in a different way. They’re all fruitful and ripe contexts for investigation.

    So what about near-past casting, instead of future-casting? I’m struck by what Haruki Murakami said about his new novel, 1Q84 in a New York Times interview

    “Most near-future fictions are boring. It’s always dark and always raining, and people are so unhappy. I like what Cormac McCarthy wrote, The Road – it’s very well written…But still it’s boring. It’s dark, and the people are eating people…George Orwell’s 1984 is near-future fiction, but [1Q84] is near-past fiction. We are looking at the same year from the opposite side. If it’s near past, it’s not boring.”

    Thinking slightly back in time spurs different thinking.

    tOP: When you look at your life, what impact is technology having?

    MWS: Molly Steenson has come unstuck in time, to borrow liberally from Kurt Vonnegut. I’ve lived my life online in some manner or another since 1992, on the Web since 1994, and as girlwonder.com since 1997. I maintain a huge network of people and things, and for better or for worse, the technologies that illuminate our social network makes these things all the more possible. In some ways, I feel a lot more like people a generation younger than me who grew up with the Web and mobile technology: it’s very much a part of who I am. It’s sometimes bewildering to people my age or older outside of high tech culture.

    tOP: A network of things?

    MWS: I’m interested in how things mediate connections between people-the relations they bring to bear. Some parts of actor-network theory (ANT) influence on how I think about people and interactions with places and things. ANT doesn’t necessarily privilege people (or users) at the center of an interaction, but rather actants: human or non-human elements that stand in relation to each other. The relations become particularly important. So when I look at the world that we interact with, I see people and infrastructures and interfaces. I see people as interfaces for ideas, and interfaces as ways to get what lies beneath and makes ties us together.

    When I wrote about the Poste Pneumatique (published in short form in Cabinet, a clip available here) and about the Paris Central Post office, I went back and looked at all of the interfaces I could determine: brass cranks, cast iron tubes, steam engines, water for the steam, cast iron and glass desks for mail sorting, elevators for moving the post, chutes for sending it to the basement. I also looked at the relations that these enabled between people and financial systems, between the movement of capital and the development of communication networks.

    But these same kinds of interactions are why I was fascinated by the phone book as a kid, of how to call a foreign country (though I didn’t have anybody to call and I didn’t go overseas till I was 17), why I still stop and look mail sorting facilities and switches and wires. Somehow, they seem to represent us and the relations we build between ourselves. I guess you could say I’m an infrastructure nerd, or a media and communication nerd.

    tOP: You have a strong connection between what you are learning and how you are living. How do they drive each other?

    MWS: One of the reasons that I went back to school was the experience I had living in Ivrea, Italy, when I was a professor at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. Ivrea was the headquarters of Olivetti, and although it’s been there since Roman times, it’s best known for its role as a modernist social-corporate utopia. We lived in Talponia (mole city) – a huge 1972 semicircular residence built into the side of a hill, with a meadow in the middle. It was parts Logan Run, parts northern Italian idyllic, and it changed me. For that matter, it changed all of us who lived there. I came back to the US, fairly undone from the whole experience of living and working there, inspired by the architects and industrial designers I worked with, and needed to change my focus. That’s how I ended up studying architectural history: I wanted more depth than my previous career in user experience afforded.

    Asking “What can I do to spend a month (or two, or three) where you are?” leads to wonderful things. I just came back from a month in Ume?•, Sweden, where I was a resident at the HUMLab (the digital humanities lab at the university), where I turned 40. Two years ago, I spent the summer in Montreal at the Canadian Centre for Architecture There’s been Berlin, Bangalore and Copenhagen while I’ve been in grad school. In all of these cases, the travel isn’t random: it’s connecting with people and projects and places that I know, and as a student, I’m lucky to have the flexibility I do.

    tOP: If society is changing through technology, what is gained, and what is lost?

    MWS: Look at this quote: “…the transmission of intelligence, in the most literal sense of the term, annihilates both space and time.” [1] It’s the case today, certainly, but the quote is from 1850, from Dionysius Lardner, and the technology in question in that quote: the electric telegraph. “Nothing facilitates and develops commercial relations so effectually as cheap and rapid means of intercommunication,” he writes.

    It seems to me that we’re grappling with the same question today that Lardner asked, whether at the speed of rail travel, as he addressed it, or at the speed of nanoseconds and the scale of planetary orbit. What are we gaining or losing? Maybe that’s the wrong question.

    Okay, one thing. I have this thought that we’ve lost our senses of proxemics and proprieception, thanks to our reliance on the mobile phone screen we always looked down at before we make our next move, and it’s changed people’s walking and peripheral vision, even when they don’t have their devices in front of them or in their hand. I think we’ll learn how to reintegrate and multitask both with people in front of us on the street and as we drift in the third space of mediated communication, but it’ll take some time. It makes it really annoying to get anywhere quickly, even in a place like New York or a busy international airport (especially at the top of an escalator, but I digress).

    tOP: What else do you want to tell us?

    MWS: I’d like to pick up the things I’ve loved but that somehow fell away over the years: playing classical guitar and flute, acting, writing poetry. I’d like to do more of the things that I enjoy but am not awesome at, like running, or drawing and watercolors. My life’s about to focus a lot as I finish my dissertation and find (a likely academic job). And I want a dog.

    [1] Dionysius Lardner, Railway Economy; a Treatise on the New Art of Transport, Its Management, Prospects and Relations (London,: Taylor, Walton and Maberly, 1850), 18.

    This Week @ Portigal

    We all survived Friday the 13th last week and are ready to take on another week that certainly promises to end less ominously…

    So, what’s happening this week at Portigal? Quite a bit…

    • We are up to our ears in interesting opportunities that require some creative thinking about participant engagement. Our research gears are turning!
    • Steve and Tamara will be giving a curtain-call presentation of findings from a recent study.
    • We continue to prepare for upcoming fieldwork (New York!! Los Angeles!!) and Julie is going to be busy making some tools to catalyze conversation.
    • Steve presses on with writing for his forthcoming book, synthesizing fabulous interviews with change agents who have driven the adoption of user research and pulling together the great suggestions people contributed to Tips to Improve Your Interviewing Skills (and a request for more!)
    • We are percolating some sweet ideas for primary research in 2012 for the Omni project and plan to share them soon. Stay tuned…
    • Steve continues to plug away on various tasks related to the upcoming Interaction 12 in Dublin.
    • We are all eagerly awaiting the arrival of Wednesday so we can get our geek on at Nerd Nite SF!
    • Steve is meeting with a big Silicon Valley player to explore how we can deliver design research training to their teams.
    • We continue to search for (and find!) cool opportunities for learning, teaching, and sharing. Julie and Tamara are currently in the throes of submitting proposals for Agile2012 and a few other gigs…
    • Tamara continues to dive deep into the eye-candy-land of visual thinking, doodling, mind mapping, graphic facilitation, etc. and welcomes suggestions for articles, websites, examples or groups of local SFists who like to get together with colored markers, blank paper, and ideas.

    Merry Monday and Happy Week to you!

    Innovator’s Dilemmas

    Some recent thoughts about challenges that accompany a desire to innovate (or not), from corporate culture to classroom to convenience store treat.

    Give Your Employees Unlimited Vacation Days [Inc] – It will come as little surprise that letting employees take vacation time whenever they want (and for however long the desire) is a pretty clear indicator of an innovative company culture. It’s a policy that almost guarantees a deluge of resumes and hopeful job applicants. Apparently, it also promotes a highly productive work place. This article is anecdotal and autobiographical, so if you are looking for some statistics or a less shiny discussion of how this policy plays out in other companies, try this.

    Through building a company on accountability, mutual respect, and teamwork, we’ve seen our unlimited vacation day policy have tremendous results for our employees’ personal development and for productivity. There. I said it. I think Red Frog is more productive by giving unlimited vacation days.

    Do Innovation Consultants Kill Innovation? [Co.Design] – Bringing innovative thinking to organizations big and small is obviously a complex challenge. The authors contend that innovation professionals have stepped into an arena previously dominated by entrepreneurs and that this new breed is ill-equipped and ineptly motivated for the task of effectively transforming a company culture. It’s like blaming cigarettes for cancer when culpability actually lies with the smoker. The authors do encourage smokers, er, companies to learn from Hollywood and hi-tech industries and invest in better dream teams. With this approach, the challenge falls in the lap of the director, responsible for unleashing and wrangling the talent of the tribe. I am still stymied about how the authors (who are, as far as I can tell, innovation professionals) will fit into this proposed new order.

    The new breed of innovation professionals we have encountered can be placed in two categories: innovation custodians and innovation word-slingers. The custodians are middle managers assigned to oversee the innovators and their processes. The word-slingers are external consultants that will take corporate managers through endless innovation workshops or blabber on about the aforementioned processes.

    4 Lessons the Classroom Can Learn from the Design Studio [The Creativity Post] – Innovating the culture of the classroom requires a radical rethinking of how we think about learning and teaching and the contexts within which these activities occur. This articles highlights four key characteristics of the architectural design studio as possible solutions to classroom ills: critical collaboration, interdisciplinary problem solving, prototyping through mini-failures, and balancing the use of digital and analog.

    From the everyday “Hey, can you take a look at this?” to the masters’ critique, learning in a studio is constant and multidirectional, formal and informal. Collaboration means communicating concepts, critiques, and questions for the betterment of the individual designer and the entire team. Studio surfaces are notoriously littered with inspirations, precedents, concepts, and drafts. In the studio, the process-not just the product-takes center stage.

    Hostess’ Twinkie: An American icon in trouble [The Washington Post] – Here’s one for the innovation graveyard, where death (or obsolescence) await products whose time has passed. The Twinkie, originally created in 1930, may be retired this year as Hostess prepares for chapter 11 bankruptcy. Apparently rising costs of labor and ingredient prices are the culprit. I’m guessing the whole unhealthy thing probably isn’t helping either. [*note to Steve- the time is NOW if you ever want to experience a fried Twinkie]

    They’ve been called the “cream puff of the proletariat.” They’ve served as a bed for a cockroach in the animated film, “Wall-E.” They’ve been used as a measurement of psycho-kinetic energy in”Ghostbusters,” and they were the basis of a defense argument in a famous murder trial. They’ve been deep-fried, made into wedding cakes and combined with hot dogs . President Clinton and the White House Millennium Council selected them as an American icon for the millennium time capsule.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Pigs Playing Video Games = Ethical Farming? [Mother Jones] – Redefining the “consumer” in consumer electronics, an interspecies game developed by a team of Dutch researchers at Wageningen University suggests that livestock may become a promising new market. Perhaps someday we will see the high scores of featured menu items alongside information about their diet and dwellings. This would, of course, suggest happy, engaged and intelligent animals, just as it indicates those characteristics in video-game playing human beings. As researchers, we must consider the evolution of our methodologies to gain insights from the porcine point of view. Kidding aside, though, they’ve produced a short video demonstrating pigs and people enjoying Pig Chase together. It’s certainly odd but also a little sweet. Kind of a high-tech remote laser pointer.

    …do take a moment to appreciate this concept in humane farming: As a farmer, you’d get to play video games with your hogs, and the gameplay might actually have the added benefit of making the animal’s life happier and healthier. The system includes a giant screen that broadcasts a swirl of glittering colors and lights next to the pigpen. The human participant controls the wall-sized screen remotely with an iPad, and the pigs react by touching and following the light designs with their snouts. Clement notes that researchers hope that this will all “open up new questions in debates about animal farming and welfare in the digital age…”

    State Farm: Lincoln Park’s new neighbor [Chicago Tribune] – I’ve seen versions of this brewing on whiteboards from time to time. In order to provide financial services and education, learn about their more elusive younger customers (or potential customers) and of course create exposure and build brand good-will, State Farm Insurance has built a highly designed coffee-shop/community center with a slick website to match. No State Farm insurance products are sold through the channel. Access to the space, wifi, qualified financial coaches (by appointment or walk-in), classes and other events are free. Coffee and snacks are not free. I would love to know what it took to foster this concept – open since last fall – through the State Farm organization, and how they are measuring and reporting the success of the investment.

    Next Door’s financial coaches are prohibited from soliciting products or services. “A lot of people want to get help with their finances and didn’t really know where to turn,” Carter said. “So to have a very unbiased person to talk to who can’t sell you anything, people have been really open to that.” The Lincoln Park location is State Farm’s experiment to gather information about how young people manage their money. On warm days, its windows open to the street, welcoming passersby. Next Door’s casual, modern design gives it a youthful vibe: lofted ceilings with wooden rafters; sleek sofas scattered throughout; cafe treats from local companies such as Kickstand Espresso Bar, Hoosier Mama Pie Co. and Noble Tree Coffee & Tea; dry-erase boards as walls; music pumping throughout; paintings from community artists; and long tables made from 1930s wood reclaimed from a South Side factory…”We check judgment at the door. That is the No. 1 rule. You’re making the first step coming here, trying to fix whatever situation you’re in. We’re just going to help you try to improve your situation.”

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Multi-platform rapport [The Art and Craft of User Research Interviewing] – A little story (on my book blog) about an amusing challenge in leading an interview just the other day.

    And this is where I caught myself flicking my eye contact between the two, as a way to (I guess – it was an automatic gesture) demonstrate interest and maintain engagement. Except one person was on the phone. Yes, I was looking back and forth between the guy in the room and the phone. I was projecting all of my rapport building onto a device, using eye contact only. Needless to say this wasn’t very effective!

    Microsoft Patents ‘Avoid Ghetto’ Feature For GPS Devices [CBS Seattle] – Oh, media. How you love to incite and to create a crisis where there isn’t one. Ghetto must be a hot-button word, so even though it’s not exactly accurate, let’s go for it. The fact is we are continually adding more context to our digital interactions (only yesterday, Google announced its plans to include your social network in your searchers), and these are obviously creating new challenges around privacy, but this isn’t much less inflammatory than the Siri won’t find abortion clinics non-story.

    A GPS device is used to find shortcuts and avoid traffic, but Microsoft’s patent states that a route can be plotted for pedestrians to avoid an “unsafe neighborhood or being in an open area that is subject to harsh temperatures.” Created for mobile phones, the technology uses the latest crime statistics and weather data and includes them when calculating a route.

    For some consumers, surveys breed feedback fatigue [AP] – Ironically, an article about quantitative data collecting that suggests we’re experiencing more of something, without any actual numbers to back up their claim. This is an area we’ve done some user research in, and while we didn’t necessarily see fatigue, we did observe a consistent presence of review mechanisms (both creating and consuming) in daily consumption.

    While market-research polls have been conducted for decades, customer-satisfaction surveys have proliferated in recent years because of technology, a growing emphasis on getting data to shape decisions and measure results, and a drive to hold onto customers in a difficult economy, experts say. “People care much more about what the customers think today,” said Brian Koma, VP of research at Vovici, firm that conducts surveys and helps businesses integrate the results with views customers express online, in phone calls and elsewhere. There’s no scientific measure of the number of customer-feedback requests, but questionnaires have percolated into such professional settings as law firms and doctor’s offices and become de rigeur for even everyday purchases.

    Tips to Improve Your Interviewing Skills (and a request for more!)

    I’m working on some of the final chapters of my book about interviewing and am interested in the ways that people have developed their own skills as an interviewer. I’ll list a few but this list can only get better with your input.

    • Practice, man, practice. It’s how you get to Carnegie Hall and it’s how you get better at interviewing.
    • Create your own practice occasions: that chatty seat mate on an airplane, the extroverted cashier – ask them a question and then ask them a follow up questions!
    • Reflect, just like a football coach who reviews the game films; watch your videos, read your transcripts, and look at what worked well and what you might have improved
    • Be interviewed whether it’s for a survey or a usability study or a poll, experience the interview from the other side of the lens
    • Critique the interviews of others (without resorting to your just-got-your-drivers’-license-know-it-all we all were at 16)
    • Observe others at work including great interviewers and poor interviewers – this can be in your work context, or in the media (Marc Maron, Charlie Rose, Terry Gross, and others) 
    • Collect war stories (more on this coming very soon)
    • Try improv 

    That’s my starter list, but what have you done to get better as an interviewer?

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    The Philosophy of Food Project [University of North Texas] – Food is definitely delightfully deep. This ambitious project covers such ground as Food Metaphysics, Gustatory Aesthetics and Food Identity. Rich fare. For a little mental sorbet, watch a meditative video of Andy Warhol eating a hamburger included on their Links page. Sit back, relax, and ponder the meaning of flat meats and reluctant ketchup.

    The Philosophy of Food Project is housed in the Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies at the University of North Texas. It aims to disseminate information about the philosophical investigation of food; increase the visibility of food as a topic for philosophical research; serve as a resource for researchers, teachers, students, and the public; galvanize a community of philosophers working on food issues; and help raise the level of public discourse about food, agriculture, animals, and eating. The role of philosophy is to cut through the morass of contingent facts and conceptual muddle to tackle the most basic questions about food: What is it exactly? How do we know it is safe? What should we eat? How should food be distributed? What is good food? These are simple yet difficult questions because they involve philosophical questions about metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, and aesthetics. Other disciplinary approaches may touch on these questions concerning food but only philosophy addresses them explicitly.

    Airline lets passengers choose seat partners based on social media profiles [Springwise] – A clever concept at first glance, and certainly a perfectly understandable, some might even say natural use of social media, right? But I question the utility here, and the ability to produce repeatable positive experiences in real life. Do they realize that on airplanes you are stuck next to that person for the next x-amount of hours? The mind reels with potential horror stories. I for one still want some part of IRL to be uninfluenced by social media. Maybe that’s particularly so for me, as a middle-aged presumed-introvert. I dunno… do others have a different response to this?

    KLM are reportedly developing a similar service to enable passengers to choose who they sit next to on their flight. However, unlike MHBuddy, which operates solely through Facebook, KLM’s new Meet and Seat service will enable passengers to access their fellow travelers’ LinkedIn profiles as well. The Meet and Seat service will allow passengers to choose their in-flight neighbors based on their occupation, mutual interests and appearance. By connecting to LinkedIn and Facebook during online check-in, passengers will be able to pick their ideal seat buddy, although both parties will have to choose to participate in the service. KLM believe it will provide an opportunity for networking, though other reports suggest it’s more likely to be used as a matchmaking tool.

    The Art of Video Games [Smithsonian] – I am seriously tempted to make a trip to DC to see this exhibit. It takes an art historical approach, considering the video game as a serious art form in it’s own right, both reflecting our culture and in many senses, helping to shape it.

    The Art of Video Games is one of the first exhibitions to explore the forty-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects and the creative use of new technologies. The exhibition will feature some of the most influential artists and designers during five eras of game technology, from early pioneers to contemporary designers…Video games use images, actions, and player participation to tell stories and engage their audiences. In the same way as film, animation, and performance, they can be considered a compelling and influential form of narrative art. New technologies have allowed designers to create increasingly interactive and sophisticated game environments while staying grounded in traditional game types. The exhibition will feature eighty games through still images and video footage.

    This Week @ Portigal

    Monday, Monday…

    We here at Portigal are off to a bustling start of the week (contrary to the wispy, relaxing vibe that tune implies).

    • We spent the morning ideating approaches and tools for upcoming ethnographic interviews. Imagine three dedicated research geeks in a room surrounded by whiteboards, post-it notes, laptops, and lots of markers. In addition to sharing our own ways of thinking about interviewing tactics, we had the chance to explore ways others are are practicing this magic.
    • We are excited to dive back in to the Omni project this week as we welcome back Kristine Ng to review her primary research efforts and craft a plan for more collaboration this year.
    • In lieu of tempting our latent gambling and tech addictions, we will be watching the flurry of CES excitement from the sidelines (er, our desks) this week.
    • Julie is vying for Crock Pot Champion this week but it’s going to take a transformational eating experience to top Tamara’s Beefy Barley Vegetable Stew from last week…
    • Steve has a To-Do list longer than anyone wants to acknowledge as he prepares for Interaction 12 in Dublin. Have you checked out the videos from the four winners of the Student Design Challenge yet? Wow.
    • In the aftermath of last week’s 2012 off-site planning meeting for Portigal, we are building a list of events, conferences, and workshops that look shiny in the new year. Please don’t be shy! Let us know if you can think of something we should attend. Better yet, is there an upcoming event where you’d like to see us present a talk or workshop? As much as we enjoy hanging out in the office together, we are ethnographers and compulsively curious so we love even more excuses to get out of the office and into the wild.

    Curating Consumption: Scenes from the frontlines

    I’ve been collecting evidence of my own experiences as a consumer and offer some here as evidence of missed opportunities to transform messy interactions into meaningful moments.

     

    Hasboro is now using SmartLink Technology to make electronic versions of Scrabble, and a few other traditionally analog board games like Upwords and Boggle. I initially thought this was a clever leap until I realized that the whole game is now limited to 5-letter words. So much for smart technology. This game makes us even dumber. And now back to Words with Friends.

     

    On the left is a tea bag from Traditional Medicinals. On the right is a tea bag from Yogi Tea. Herein lies a gem of an opportunity for a company to surprise and delight me; to nourish my mind and soul as well as my body. I collect those little mantras on the right. They feel like fortune cookies for my kharma. I share them with friends on Twitter and Facebook. Or, you know, you could always use that tiny space to try and get me to visit your website. If anything, get me to visit the website for the tea on the right!

     

    The menu at Chipotle is now designed to help you count calories as you customize your order. Admittedly, math gives me a headache, so maybe it’s just me. I seriously challenge anyone to create an order and utilize this chart to figure out how many calories it actually has. Ironically, Chipotle introduces the nutritional information on its website with this statement: When you’re trying to eat right, sometimes it feels like you need an advanced math degree to keep up with all the numbers. Indeed! This synthetic effort to facilitate calorie counting makes me like Chipotle as little as I like the idea of calorie counting. Add this to their recent ambush attack on my emotions at the movie theater and now I am scrambling to find recipes for vegetarian tacos that my son will eat.

     

    Way to go global, H&M. Apparently the company must put FIVE tags on a sweater to provide consumers with washing instructions in every language on the planet. This is beyond backwards. Jackie Chan and Michael Jordan were pimping tagless at the Super Bowl 8 years ago! Catch up!

     

    Thanks to a Facebook friend (in Germany!) I came across this image of a possible alternative. It’s down to a single tag, one fairly common language, and some icons. Alternatively, H&M, you may wish to consider a combination of icons and “lav en varma akvo” (Esperanto for “Wash in hot water”). Printed on the garment, of course.

     

    I came across this sign during a recent hike through the Redwood trees in Muir Woods. Two enthusiastic (and quiet) thumbs up to these instructions for how to consume nature. I hear you.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Frozen Dead Guy Days, a Festival in Colorado, Stays Put [NYT] – Perhaps Burning Man is now the most famous of a group ritual that evolved to celebrate something other than what it originally intended. Excluding, of course, organized religion. Looking at the irony (or cynicism) that so clearly is at root of this shindig makes me wonder about how extensively meaning can shift over time.

    It was probably not, in the end, an idea with huge franchise potential or a killer smartphone app in its future. After all, a gleefully macabre weekend celebration built around a frozen corpse – complete with coffin races, tours of the shed where the body is kept on ice and, of course, lots of beer – just might not be as fun beyond the skewed sensibility of Colorado’s hippie-tinged mountain belt. But now it’s official: Frozen Dead Guy Days are staying put in the small town of Nederland, about an hour northwest of Denver, as are the mortal remains of one Bredo Morstoel, a Norwegian man whose strange and unlikely saga in death – and long-term storage – inspired the whole thing. The Nederland Area Chamber of Commerce put the rights to the festival up for sale last June, saying it could no longer manage Frozen Dead Guy Days, which had grown rapidly through 10 years of icy, late-winter mayhem and was attracting upward of 20,000 revelers over the course of a weekend in a community of about 1,500.

    Smell-designing Sheffield [Edible Geography] – A long and fascinating interview about smellwalks, smellscapes, and other funny words that are about exploring our sensory experiences in spaces. Brilliant! When is the Pacifica smellwalk happening?

    There were a lot of people who said they didn’t like the smell of fish. But Doncaster is famous for its fish market, and when we went into the fish market on the walk, even those people who said that they didn’t like the smell of fish actually enjoyed it when they experienced it within the context of the market. They expected to smell fish there – it’s a fish market, so how else would it smell? – and it enhanced their experience of the market. In a vacuum, people say that they like and don’t like particular smells, but it turns out that they can enjoy all kinds of odours as long as they experience them in the right context. As designers, that’s quite an important point for us to note. It would be easy for us to say that because our surveys have said that people like smell A but they don’t like that smell B, therefore we’re going to design out smell B and introduce smell A everywhere. But people can enjoy a smell that they say they don’t like when it enhances their place experience.

    Starbucks Frappuccino Bottles as Firebomber’s Tool [NYT] – Kind of a non-story when you go past the headline, but the notion of unintended uses for products is always fascinating. Sometimes that leads to innovation, sometimes that leads to a brand nightmare, I suppose sometimes it leads to both.

    Mason jelly jars, whiskey quarts, wine and beer bottles – all have been among history’s vessels of choice for a homemade gasoline bomb. Now, a less likely vehicle has come forth: the dainty, 9.5-ounce glass container used by Starbucks to house its popular Frappuccino drinks. Investigators believe that in a rash of firebombings Sunday near the Queens-Nassau border, a Frappuccino bottle was the incendiary component of choice in most of the attacks.

    This Week @ Portigal

    People often ask us “Just what the heck are you people up to these days?” (Sometimes they just say “Wassup?” but we just figure they are stuck in another decade). We’ve been enjoying posts like the Weekending updates from our new friend Julian Bleecker and we’ve always wanted people to know that real people work here (not just ridiculously brilliant innovator-bots) so while this might be a bit of a departure for All This Chittah Chattah, let us welcome you to the first in what we intend to be a regular series of updates about what’s going on with our team!

    • We tore into the New Year with an off-site planning meeting to talk about where we want to head with our little team over this next year. While a change in venue meant we didn’t get to sample American Grilled Cheese Kitchen, we did enjoy a little Freedom From Choice cocktail to unwind from an intense day of future-envisioning
    • We’re kicking off a new project with a very tech-forward organization. We’ve been working this team in a training capacity to help them transform their marketing practice into a more user-centered approach, but now they’ve asked us to work with them to bring their professional and consumer customers more deeply into their culture
    • Two of the projects we wrapped up at the end of December come back to life briefly as we meet with more stakeholders to share results and discuss the business implications
    • We’ll be joining our office-mates at Bayley.Co for a Welcome Back soiree at Pacifica’s newly-reopened Moonraker


    Good times!

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Volkswagen turns off Blackberry email after work hours [BBC News] – Technology changes work boundaries and work patterns. Will a technological solution work? The article suggests that they will stop people from receiving email after hours, but will they stop people from sending email after hours? Is the demand for after hours work coming through the email messages or are there other pressures? So many questions about this one!

    Volkswagen has agreed to stop its Blackberry servers sending emails to some of its employees when they are off-shift. The carmaker confirmed it made the move earlier this year following complaints that staff’s work and home lives were becoming blurred. Under the arrangement servers stop routing emails 30 minutes after the end of employees’ shifts, and then start again 30 minutes before they return to work. “It’s bad for the individual worker’s performance being online and available 24-7. You do need downtime, you do need periods in which you can actually reflect on something without needing instantaneously to give a reaction,” said Will Hutton, chair of the Big Innovation Centre at The Work Foundation.

    Manischewitz Creates Kosher Food for Gentiles [NYT] – Having grown up with the traditional meaning of the brand, I find this a bit challenging but am intrigued by the potential to reframe and expand their story.

    “Instead of taking the older products we have out of the kosher aisle and forcing them into the main aisle, we’re creating new products that have a place in the main aisle,” said Alain Bankier. A new line of broths, for example, is being shelved in many supermarkets not with most Manischewitz items but rather in the soup aisle. A new line of Manischewitz gravies also will be stocked with other mainstream brands. Manischewitz ads traditionally have emphasized Judaism, showing yarmulke-wearing celebrants at, say, a Seder. But new ads, by Joseph Jacobs Advertising in New York, the Manischewitz agency for more than three decades, take a decidedly more secular approach. “Don’t miss the boat,” says a print ad for beef gravy, which shows it being poured from a sauce boat onto mashed potatoes – no shofar or Star of David in sight. New ads “make little if any reference to any Jewish holiday,” said Elie Rosenfeld, chief executive of Joseph Jacobs. “There’s a tagline we use, ‘Bringing families to the table since 1888,’ and we want to be part of that family with you whether it’s Rosh Hashana, Hanukkah or Easter.”

    Samoa Sacrifices a Day for Its Future [NYT] – A massive change in infrastructure and function, revealing time (or at least our documentation of it) to be more arbitrary than fixed.

    The Pacific island nation of Samoa and its even tinier neighbor Tokelau are skipping Friday this week, jumping westward in time across the international date line and into the shifting economic balance of the 21st century. The time change is meant to align Samoa with its Asian trading partners; it moves the islands’ work days further from the United States, which dominated its economy in the past. In this giant-step version of daylight saving time, the island’s 186,000 citizens, and the 1,500 who live in Tokelau, will go to sleep on Thursday and wake up on Saturday. The government has decreed that those who miss a day of work on Friday will be paid all the same.

    Portable Cathedrals [Domus] – Dan Hill’s epic articulate review of the Nokia N9 isn’t a gadget review, it’s a (tl;dr) cultural critique of design, where culture is within the producer organizations as much as – if not more than – the consumer society.

    Yet the skeuomorphic nonsense that incomprehensibly pervades apps like Apple’s own Contacts, Calendar, iBooks, GameCenter, Find My Friends et al-all awkward faux-leather, wood and paper stylings-is is of such questionable “taste” it threatens to damage the overall harmony of iOS with its discordant notes. You cannot derive value from the idle suggestion of such textures on screen; they are physical properties and should be experienced as such, or not at all. Yet Apple’s design team will not explore those physical properties, merely sublimating their desire for such qualities into a picture of leather, a picture of wood. It recalls Marcel Duchamp’s critique of ‘retinal art’ i.e. intended only to please the eye.

    For a Corn Chip Maker, the New Spokesman Is the Product Itself [NYT] – The argot of advertising is hilarious and depressing all at once. Zany and authentic spokesbag?

    At the Fiesta Bowl on Monday, the game’s sponsor, Tostitos, will have a new endorser – a “spokesbag” puppet in the form of a chip bag with arms, a mouth and a generous dollop of swagger – to humorously convey the message that it is the tortilla chip brand that enlivens social gatherings. The new life-of-the-party campaign resurrects the top-selling snack’s 1990s theme. ” ‘Tostitos Knows How to Party’ means we are returning to our roots,” said Janelle Anderson, the brand’s senior director for marketing. Tostitos returned to the ’90s theme after marketing research over the last year found that its customers wanted reasons to celebrate and have fun in economically lean times. Tostitos chose a zany character “to get the message across and make it authentic,” said Ms. Anderson. “We wanted something that was magnetic, fun and approachable.” The brand’s new advertising agency, TBWA/Chiat/Day, decided to “bring personality to the brand, and, in one of those rare cases, have the actual product be the actual spokesperson,” said Brett Craig, the group’s creative director for Tostitos. Working with Legacy Effects, a Los Angeles special effects company, the agency developed the hand-manipulated puppet with movable parts and special effects to convey energy, said Mr. Craig.

    Stories behind the themes: Wonderland

    2011 is coming to a close and so are the installments of secondary research for the Omni Project themes. The fifth theme, Wonderland, comes as no surprise. In fact, the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles alluded to it over two thousand years ago when he wrote “And through the future, near and far, as through the past, shall this law hold good: Nothing that is vast enters into the life of mortals without a curse.” Welcome to the future, where the vastness of technology delivers both the promise of possibility and the curse of consequence. Here we share a few examples of how people are consuming, managing, producing, processing and even inadvertently participating in the unstoppable proliferation of technology.

    So You’ve Shared a Link? This is How Long it Will Stay Relevant [The Atlantic] – Here bit.ly discuss a metric they developed called ‘half life’ to measure how long a shared link remains relevant. They analyzed links (shortened through their site) from YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and directly through email and instant messages. The results are not surprising so much as deflating (a feeling which is, after all, only relevant for a few hours).

    Bit.ly analyzed click data for a thousand popular links shortened through their website and found remarkable consistency in how long bitly stay relevant on various sites. The company’s blog summarizes the results in the chart below. The half life of a Twitter link is the shortest, at two hours and 48 minutes, yet Twitter links tend to garner the most traffic. Links shared on Facebook have on average a half life 24 minutes longer. Similarly, “direct links–those shared through email or instant messaging–have an only slightly longer half life of three hours and 24 minutes. The three types of links share the same basic distribution, reaching their peak number of clicks shortly after being posted and gradually tapering off in clicks from there.

    How to stop e-mail overload? Think before you hit send. [Washington Post] – This piece discusses the deluge of information we confront in our email inboxes and the ensuing internal and external battles to stay afloat, which resulted in this Email Charter.

    But the unintended consequence is that communication volume is expanding to the point where it threatens to take over our lives. An e-mail inbox has been described as a to-do list that anyone in the world can add to. If you’re not careful, it can gobble up most of your week. Then you’ve become a reactive robot responding to other people’s requests, instead of a proactive agent addressing your own priorities.

    Spin, Spin, Die Less Quickly [The Wirecutter] – Here’s a techno-topic that many of us can relate to. Following the death of a hard drive belonging to a friend-of-a-friend, the author reflects upon the frailty of the infrastructure that supports data and content exchange and storage. Hence emerge the challenges of managing and maintaining the onslaught of information so that we may reliably refer back to it in the future.

    Data should last forever but individual data storage devices tend to be frail. Just ask the people who run Google’s data centers- In the end, it pays to have your stuff stored the way Google would-in many places at once, in as many copies as you can. Right now, that means having multiple drives for backup, or, having a local drive and an online back up drive like Backblaze or Crashplan. That is the final truth about hard drives.

    What Does It Mean To Be Connected in the 21st Century? [TEDxMarin] – Tiffany Shlain explores the “connective tissues” that now bond us (email, texting, etc.) and some of the biological reasons why we are nearly powerless to resist the gravitational pull of technology.

    I half expected the statue of liberty to have torch in one hand and be texting with the other- I read that every time you click or check your email or your cell phone, you get a squirt of dopamine. Now dopamine, most people think it’s like a pleasure… but they have actually found out this it is about seeking, and finding, and searching, Dopamine is really associated with searching for information.

    TEDxMarin - Tiffany Shlain - What Does It Mean To Be Connected in the 21st Century?

    David Carr: The News Diet Of A Media Omnivore [NPR] – Interview with a media columnist for The New York Times about his own media consumption habits. Focused primarily on Carr’s entanglement with Twitter including the lovely quote “My persistent concern is that I’ll become so busy producing media that I won’t consume enough of it.” Carr probably isn’t the only one who faces the consequences of being a media prosumer, any of this sound familiar?

    This is the first year that I think my productivity has dropped because [of my media consumption]. I’m looking at the coming year and thinking, what am I going to give up? Am I going to give up following the NFL? Am I going to give up listening to music and going out and seeing it? Am I going to give up riding my bike? Or am I going to cut back on some of these digital habits I have that are eating me alive and some of these … endless panels about the future of journalism? The future of journalism is wearing badges and talking on panels, as far as I can tell.

    (for more on the future of journalism, check out the IxD12 Student Design Challenge)

    The Curse of Cow Clicker: How a Cheeky Satire Became a Videogame Hit [Wired] – Can a cow sitting in pasture, making cud of clicks, reflect the insidious nature of gamification? It most certainly can, especially when developer of said cow created said pasture and clicks as a tongue-in-cheek satire of deceptively banal games. Even more so when said developer finds himself hungrily grazing in a Pavlovian pasture of compulsive production, trying to keep the hungry cows ruminating.

    Bogost kept his players hooked by introducing new cows for them to purchase using virtual mooney or real money. They ranged from the crowd-pleasingly topical (a cow covered in oil and sporting a BP-esque logo on its rump) to the aggressively cynical (the Stargrazer Cow, which was just the original cow facing the opposite direction and for which Bogost charged 2,500 mooney). They may have looked simple, but they were time-consuming to conceive and draw. By the end of the year, Bogost was devoting as much as 10 hours a week to Cow Clicker. Drawings of cows cluttered his house and office. “I was spending more time on it than I was comfortable with,” Bogost says. “But I was compelled to do it. I couldn’t stop.”

    ‘Tis the Season… If bit.ly is remotely accurate with their estimates, this post will cease being relevant long before the festivities are done so we better act fast and wish you Happy Holidays! And in case there is any kernel of doubt left in your mind that we are snowed in by a blizzard of techno-possibilities, allow us to regift- er, repost- a little tongue-in-cheek holiday house music to soundtrack this winter wonderland.

    Cadger Dubstep Christmas Lights House - First Of The Year (Equinox) by Skrillex

    Announcing the winners of the IxD12 Student Design Challenge!

    Whew! Our wonderful judges have sifted through the 56 entries! We heard from a number of judges how impressed they were overall with the quality of the entries and the creativity and passion that the group overall had to offer. Of course, this makes the selection process a difficult one. We’ve thought to ourselves “Well, what if we could take them ALL!!!” but of course, we can’t.
    We managed to find four wonderful and inspiring entries among all the bounty of goodness we received from around the world. Our winners are (in no particular order)

    • Diksha Grover – National Institute of Design, India
    • Siri Johansson – Umeå Institute of Design, Sweden
    • Jaime Krakowiak – Austin Center for Design, USA
    • Priscilla Mok – Carnegie Mellon University, USA

    Here are each of their videos

    The Future of News, a film by Diksha Grover

    Diksha


    Siri


    Jaime


    Priscilla
    Thanks to our judges for their wonderful work and for all the entrants who contributed such a great set of videos. Our winners will now be working between now and Dublin where we’ll have a two-day masterclass and design activity before the conference. We are now exceptionally enthusiastic about the upcoming experience in Dublin.

    Julian Bleecker: Creating Wily Subversions

    This interview has been edited, condensed, etc.

    Julian Bleecker is a designer, technologist and researcher in the Advanced Projects studio at Nokia Design in Los Angeles and the Near Future Laboratory where he investigates emerging social practices around new networked interaction rituals. His focus is on hands-on design and prototyping as a way to raise questions about commonly held assumptions about digital media and digital devices so as to explore possibilities for innovation. He lectures and leads workshops on the intersections of art, design, technology and the near-future possibilities for new social-technical interaction rituals.

    the Omni Project: What is is the Near Future Laboratory?

    Julian Bleecker: It’s a place where I can look at what “could be” without the usual encumbrance of academia or industry – I can make, explore and postulate about things that might seem as bizarre as wheels on luggage or starting a revolution in the Middle East with 140 character messages. Anything that people would immediately dismiss as unpatentable or unmarketable or silly or impractical is very interesting to me, because the near future is full of many unexpected things.

    We make these sorts of peculiar things, speculate about them and the worlds in which they might be just ordinary, quotidian objects or little UX moments.

    We are a design collective that comes together in an adhoc fashion around common interests. We’re not a company in the traditional sense.

    tOP: Can you expand on “near future” versus “future?”

    JB: Near future is in the realm of imminently possible. It’s more relevant these days, insofar as our expectations about what unexpected new behaviors, devices, language, means of connecting and communicating and sharing and materializing ideas seems to be trotting along at a fairly good clip. I don’t want to say that change seemed less fast at an earlier point in history, but the nearness of a different, markedly changed future means we can correct things quicker, which is important. We don’t have long to deal with population crises, systemic ecological failures, bad socio-political-philosophical-religious polarizations, an inability for many human brains to accept difference and different points of view. All that is problematic and we need to change those things in the near future. Not the future. The near future as in 18-60 months.

    tOP: What is design fiction? How does it differ from “science fiction”?

    JB: It’s a name for doing design that speculates in the way that science fiction speculates. It’s another way for design to step outside of the constraints of, say – *product* design, where things must be desirable, profitable and buildable. Design Fiction looks at things sideways, or inverts things. It makes fundamentally challenging assumptions. It’s the Twilight Zone of design practice.

    It draws from science fiction because I think science fiction may be the exemplary story telling idiom or form of expression for speculating about what could be. It does that quite seriously, and is often a form of critique or commentary on contemporary conditions – macro and micro conditions; a critique of world-scale circumstances or the misguided interaction idioms built into things like center consoles on cars. It also has this wonderful ability to allow one to suspend disbelief on very weird things, all for the enjoyment of a good story.

    What I hope for design fiction is that it could do the same thing and its outcomes or products would be accepted as, at worse – things around which conversations can be had that may lead to new near future worlds that are hopefully more habitable. At best, that same suspension of disbelief makes it possible to have a design fiction speculation accepted as imminently possible. That means that the guy in the room who has the check book and the decision making power can say about some curious idea or a disruptive thing that isn’t just another uninspired, middling “innovative” device – yes..that’s what we should do.

    Design Fiction differs from science fiction insofar as it makes the things that go along with those future, fictional worlds. I think of it sometimes as making props for those fictional worlds. That is part of the wide world of science fiction because science fiction makes props for itself and its stories as well. For example, science fiction film has an entire professional practice of making the things that will help tell the story. Design Fiction is a material making practice, just as design is in most regards. It creates the things and experiences and moments that are meant to be evocative – they are meant to evoke elements of larger stories about life in these other worlds. I think Design Fiction is particularly effective when those props are just quotidian, no matter how fantastic they may seem. Think of it this way – all the things sitting on your desk right now that would’ve made someone’s head explode 5 years ago, or 10 years ago? They’re quite ordinary today. There’s something about making the extraordinary ordinary that makes it seem all the more possible. Rather than fetishizing the things that may exist in the future and making them gleaming and central to existence, why not make them humble, or even annoyingly stubborn components of the everyday? That’s something that science fiction does and I think it goes a long way towards that crucial element of suspending disbelief because the ordinary is quite believable and therefore possible. And once something seems possible, it becomes easier to seriously consider it rather than laugh and dismiss it.

    [Also see Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact and Fiction]

    tOP: What’s the connection between exploring the future, especially the future of technology, and storytelling?

    JB: The future is that which could be. So, you need a story, some kind of narrative that enrolls people in that vision of what could be and then does so in a way that gets them hopped up enough to start materializing that vision. That’s all the future is. It’s really not complicated – but it’s hard to tell the compelling story. Storytelling is really hard. And there are lots of people trying to create those futures, so you have lots of these stories because everyone is trying to get people to do some hammering to materialize their idea of what they think should become.

    Those stories can be ways of exploring possible futures as long as we understand that the future is wrapped in a story that is compelling enough for people to get to gather and materialize it.

    tOP: The project we have embarked on is about exploring people’s relationship with technology. How do you define technology?

    JB: That’s a good question. Technology is an exemplar of culture in an especially reified material that cleverly cloaks itself. That material is stuff we call a bunch of different names – hardware, software, firmware, ethernet, T-3, MP3, MySQL, Oracle, iPad, mobile phone, MakerBot, Lithium Ion batteries, OLED display. Whatever. All those things are very articulate means of remaking us, which is also remaking cultures. That’s why it’s more interesting to make these forms of culture that are quite deliberate about remaking culture – things that do it conscientiously, without wasting time, energy, materials.

    Technology should be about more than good/fast/cheap or desirable/profitable/buildable. Technologies, if they are ways of making culture, shouldn’t just be last year’s object, only in different colors or with better battery life.

    tOP: Does your work influence the expectations people have from real technology? Or the ideas product developers and technologists have for making real technology?

    JB: I can only hope. At the Laboratory, we deliberately create strange, provocative devices that are designed to be wily subversions of what one might expect from technology. They typically amplify, invert or subdue the usual things that least-common denominator technology might do.

    They become action-oriented thought-provokers. They can get away with doing something strange that then leads to moments where people get new ideas triggered in their heads and say – huh..there might be a kernel of something in that the Ear Freshener device. We’re not going to make Ear Fresheners, but I learned something by making it that can then doing something new and wonderful in this other, more pragmatic mass-manufactured thing that never would have come about had we not started by making devices that freshen the earball. Not many design projects would start with the brief saying – make things that are like Binaca Blast for people’s ears..something that can get rid of the filmy residue of a day of bad listening. That doesn’t even make sense, unless you frame it by doing a bit of science fiction and say – oh..this is for an evolved human or some weird earball-y transspecies for whom hearing is orders of magnitude more significant than seeing. But – not many design laboratories are going to make that kind of assumption because there is no such “market” or “audience.”

    tOP: To what end? What’s the outcome you hope for?

    JB: I was trained as an electrical engineer. So, I’m a real technologist – I got a degree and everything. I’m not just a pantomimic artist wielding a soldering iron. I’m just trying to tell slightly different stories than the ones many electrical engineers or computer science people would tell. They’re different from the old-fashioned technologist’s story of “We’ll make it faster next year” or, “We’re going to make peoples’ heads explode” with a “disruption” that’s really just a mass-produced incantation of a middling idea, like voice control for your car stereo system.

    So, without the normative measure of “real” versus, what..? “fake” technologists – I think there are loads of possible futures. The futures that “real” product-oriented technologists prefer just aren’t that interesting to me. They track too closely to a predetermined notion of what comes next – their future is up-and-to-the-right. The real future is boring.

    tOP: The real future is boring? Do you mean the real future as a creative construct for problem solving and solution envisioning is boring when it’s same-old-same-old, or do you see the future that you are stepping into second by microsecond as boring?

    JB: There was a great all-day thing in London I went to a month or so ago called Thrilling Wonder Stories. I couldn’t be there the whole day, but I caught most of the last few hours. I noticed something – people were showing videos of stuff and apologizing that it wasn’t “real.” Like – it was a “concept video” to demonstrate an idea. I got a little annoyed by the apologies because there’s this implication that a good idea needs to be apologized for if it isn’t powered by a real battery or if the admittedly hard work of materializing that idea – making it “run” in “real” code – has not yet been done. Starting a conversation that sustains and gets people hopped up enough to think about it and try it and work through what they imagine in a variety of forms – there’s nothing to apologize for about that sort of work. It’s as real – or maybe a different kind of real – than having a thing with a bunch of wires and batteries that articulates the idea in other forms like code, or servos twitching or something that breaks when it falls.

    tOP: How do you think technology is changing people’s everyday lives? How is it changing your life?

    JB: That’s an impossible question. It makes the assumption that it is technology that is doing the changing, or that there is even change occurring. If I were flat-footed about it, I’d say technology is changing consumers lives by helping them continue to be consumers.

    For myself, I take a very instrumental view of the things I have around me. They help me do the things I may have done anyway, or have done earlier without the same level of fidelity or refinement. Creative activities, mostly – making things like photography, film, new little weird electronic devices. Those are things that I can do and experiment with – and I have in the past. The material is more readily malleable and available it seems. Or it may be that the conversations are more readily available – you can find the people that can help you do what you imagine.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Art.sy’s ‘Genome’ Predicts What Paintings You Will Like [Wired] – Although the article deals more with the carefully controlled art market, I’m mostly intrigued by this quantitative translation of the ineffable. Pandora is a successful proof of concept (though I suppose we might debate it’s ability to deliver on it’s promise); I am waiting for the donut genome project and its recommendation engine. [Hah. Mere seconds after posting, I come upon this. Pretty close!]

    On its screen, the Warhol painting-that is, the phone’s rendering of the laptop’s picture of the painting-was now surrounded by tiny thumbnails of other artwork, painted or made by diverse artists and dating from multiple eras, including the present day. According to Art.sy, these works all share the same DNA, so to speak. Cleveland and a team of art historians have spent the past year studying thousands of works and compiling a list of their distinct and measurable elements. The result is the Art Genome, composed at present of more than 550 “genes”: attributes of fine art that range from the simply factual (the medium, the color palette) to the undeniably subjective (the “movement” a work falls into, or its “subject matter”). Using these attributes, Art.sy’s recommendation engine can evaluate a piece on the fly and suggest relationships with other works, presenting those results on any device-even, eventually, a phone.

    Saving Humanity from Homo Sapiens [SHfHS.com] – Just from a cultural collision perspective, I like the conflation of techno-nihilism and not-for-profit advocacy. Two great tastes!

    The greatest threats to humanity lie in technologies humans have invented. From the danger of nuclear war or catastrophic global warming to the looming threat of future technologies such as self-replicating nanobots and powerful artificial intelligence, SHfHS is dedicated to finding ways to ensure that humanity continues to progress without snuffing ourselves out along the way. There are people trying to do the good work of saving humanity from potentially destroying itself, but they need our help. That’s what Saving Humanity from Homo Sapiens is all about: finding the people doing the best work to prevent man-made X-Risk and supporting them. You can help.

    The Lester Dent Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot [Dirty 30s!] – Once again, art reduced to a formula. Here, there’s no pretense that doing so remains within the realm of art. In general, I find these deconstructions fascinating as artifacts, whether or not they produce quality output.

    This is a formula, a master plot, for any 6000 word pulp story. It has worked on adventure, detective, western and war-air. It tells exactly where to put everything. It shows definitely just what must happen in each successive thousand words. No yarn of mine written to the formula has yet failed to sell. The business of building stories seems not much different from the business of building anything else.

    Here’s how it starts:

    1. A DIFFERENT MURDER METHOD FOR VILLAIN TO USE
    2. A DIFFERENT THING FOR VILLAIN TO BE SEEKING
    3. A DIFFERENT LOCALE
    4. A MENACE WHICH IS TO HANG LIKE A CLOUD OVER HERO

    One of these DIFFERENT things would be nice, two better, three swell. It may help if they are fully in mind before tackling the rest.

    A different murder method could be–different. Thinking of shooting, knifing, hydrocyanic, garroting, poison needles, scorpions, a few others, and writing them on paper gets them where they may suggest something. Scorpions and their poison bite? Maybe mosquitos or flies treated with deadly germs?

    To thwart porn, colleges are buying up .xxx sites [AP] – The introduction of new domain suffixes means new flavors of pre-emptive domains. It was amusing more than a decade ago when companies like (say) Starbucks bought (or battled over) domains like (say) starbucksucks.com. The likely misappropriations of a college brand are slightly different, a this story reveals.

    The University of Kansas is buying up website names such as http://www.KUgirls.xxx and http://www.KUnurses.xxx. But not because it’s planning a Hot Babes of Kansas site or an X-rated gallery of the Nude Girls of the Land of Aaahs. Instead, the university and countless other schools and businesses are rushing to prevent their good names from falling into the hands of the pornography industry. Over the past two months, they have snapped up tens of thousands of “.xxx” website names that could be exploited by the adult entertainment business. “Down the road there’s no way we can predict what some unscrupulous entrepreneur might come up with,” said Paul Vander Tuig, trademark licensing director at the Lawrence, Kan., school.

    Portigal Consulting year in review, 2011

    Another year is speeding towards its conclusion and we wanted to share our highlights for 2011.

    Really nostalgic? Check out summaries from 2010, 2009 and 2008.

    Out and About: Julie in Portland

    I visited the great city of Portland, Oregon over Thanksgiving week, and noticed some of the ways its denizens use surfaces to communicate and express. Like Steve did earlier in his recent post, Out and About: Steve in Boston, given our recent interactions article about noticing and documenting street art, Kilroy Was Here, I too wanted to share some snaps!


    As elsewhere, the backs of city signage serve as canvas for quick-stick expression. The tiki-figure here is one I commonly see in the Mission neighborhood of San Francisco, where I live, which surprised me and gave me a little charge, a feeling of connection to home.


    A City of Portland sanctioned sticker, which includes a number to call to report damage to this sign, sits alongside its renegade brethren.


    Great juxtaposition of two messages about the dangers of inhaling alongside a DANGER sticker.



    I appreciated the friendly, bubbly, colorful style against the rainy, grey backdrop of Portland. Contributors to the collective urban collage here seem respectful of each others boundaries – not much overlapping of images.


    And, finally, bunnies!

    Curious Cross Brandings of the Day

    A trip to the hairdresser today exposed me to some curious brand extensions and promotions.

    First up, the military:


    What kind of mousse is best for high and tight? Is that a regulation headshave, maggot?


    Comes with its own gunny sack? And dog tags!

    Secondly, The Muppets. Via Muppettes mini nail lacquers. Why the Frenchification?

    Wocka Wocka is now a color! These marketers aren’t even trying! What do you say, Statler and Waldorf? Boooooo!

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Seer of the mirror world [The Economist] – Embedded in this article, along with Gelernter’s thoughts about designing technology and some future-casting (expect more software agent-bots!), is some good drama about patent wars among the tech-cognoscenti.

    “Google is commercially successful and dazzlingly imaginative but I don’t see what I would like to see from them, or Facebook or Twitter,” says Dr Gelernter. “They’re not turning on their imaginations”… As ever, Dr Gelernter’s excitement about the potential of new technology is tempered by frustration that too little attention is paid to aesthetic and social factors. “A lot of convenience and power could be gained, and a lot of unhappiness, irritation and missed opportunities avoided, if the industry thought about design, instead of always making it the last thing on the list,” he says. “We need more people who are at home in the worlds of art and the humanities and who are less diffident in the presence of technology. There are not enough articulate Luddite, anti-technology voices.” It is not the sort of thing you expect to hear from a professor of computer science, let alone the victim of an anti-technology extremist. But as well as having foreseen the future of computing, over his career Dr Gelernter has developed a clear understanding of humans’ conflicted relationship with the technology on which they increasingly rely.

    Making Noise About People Who Talk to Their Cellphones [NYT Bits Blog] – Behaviors and sensitivities are explored and exposed as voice-activated software adds to the out-loud interactions people can have with their mobile devices now. The reaction as people feel subjected to these interactions is much more negative than we’d have (culturally) to the old-fashioned practice of overhearing two people talking, or the more desirable and salacious hobby of eavesdropping!

    “As I was waiting in a Southwest Airlines cattle queue to fly back east for Thanksgiving, I was subjected to 15 minutes of listening to the man behind me as he dictated all the details of a prostate surgery into his ‘personal’ assistant,” wrote Exiled In MO from St. Louis. “People have simply lost all knowledge of what constitutes personal space and appropriate public behavior. What a noisy, sad world we’ve made.”

    From Us, To Steve: The techno present

    For the Omni project we are exploring the impact of technology on people’s everyday lives. This has involved a lot of “looking out” into the world. Of course we are also “looking in” and paying attention to how technology is impacting our own lives, i.e. when it comes to tolerating traffic and making consensual decisions about birthday gifts.

    Julie and I had the best of intentions: Head up to the Ferry Plaza building after a meeting in the city to pick up a gift for Steve for his birthday. We knew (more or less) that we wanted to get he and Anne some sort of serving dish from Heath Ceramics to complement the new tableware they purchased last month. Unfortunately traffic was not in our favor that day. As Julie practiced her patience at the wheel we noticed in the sunroof that a helicopter circled above- definitely not a good sign.

    By the time we got to the Ferry building, Julie’s patience had run out.

    JN: I do not want to deal with parking. Why don’t I just drop you off here and you can run in?

    TC: Okay. Wait a minute. I thought we were gonna pick something out together?

    JN: It’s fine. We talked about it. I’m sure you can pick something out.

    TC: I want us to choose together! Okay, I will text you! Stay tuned!

    I got to the shop and met Monica and Michael (whom I had already spoken with on the phone about our mission). They were ready to help and set to showing me exactly what Steve and Anne had purchased. I found myself in a race against time and battery when I saw the dreaded red percentage in the upper right corner of my iPhone. As a gift-giver I was focused on figuring out the present, but I also felt a bit frantic about making sure I had power enough left to find Julie once the shopping was done. The tingling butterflies in my stomach sang a tune of “you are new to this city, never been to this ‘hood before… if you get to 10% better run for the door…”

    Julie assuages my fears of never finding her should my battery die before I get back outside to her car.

    Monica showed me a bunch of serving platter options that would complement Steve and Anne’s new set. I texted these images to Julie with my suggestion. She agreed and we arrived quickly at a decision. The whole process, including gift wrapping, took less than 15 minutes. I walked out the door directly over to Julie’s car with a perfect present, selected in consensus, and a teeny tiny bit of battery to spare.

    The techno-interventions into our gifting ritual did not end there. We planned to meet at Ho Wing’s General Store in the Mission for dinner on Sunday night (which, sadly, is so new it has no website or relevant hyperlinks as of yet). En route to the restaurant¬† the texts started flying among the three of us. *Nota bene: I typically comply with California hands free laws and do not text while driving. I have, however, trained my 8 year-old to masterfully multi-task between giving me directions via Google Maps and reading/replying to text messages.

    iMéssage a trois illustrating communication of¬† our location, our confusion, our emotions and our search for why.

    During our hunt for a birthday gift for Steve, I was reminded of the simple daily interventions of technology. I take for granted that the ways that technology enables me (and my 8¬† year-old) to find and communicate with friends, learn more about friends, stay connected, pass time, navigate, keep anxiety at bay (or not), and share decision making in a way that ensures we both have the same ‘data’. It’s hard to imagine that less than 10 years ago none of this experience would have been possible or, for what it’s worth, noteworthy.

    Happy ending! Steve and Anne with their new tray (images courtesy of Steve and Anne…and technology)

     

     

    Stories behind the themes: Biological

    Welcome to the fourth installment of an unfolding bibliography of secondary research that fueled our generation of themes for the Omni project. This time around we are focusing on the blurring biological boundaries between technology and our everyday lives (and bodies). We have seen a number of articles and other tidbits that hint at how far technology has advanced towards human behavior, brain function, and biomechanics. We also see quite a bit that suggests how far humans are leaning towards (and on) technology as inspiration, mediation, medication, and meme.

    Is It Time To Welcome Our New Computer Overlords? [TheAtlantic.com] – The human codes of nuance and meaning in language are not yet cracked – they cannot yet be simulated.

    Elsewhere, Ferrucci has been more circumspect about Watson’s level of “understanding.” In an interview with IBM’s own magazine ForwardView, he said, “For a computer, there is no connection from words to human experience and human cognition. The words are just symbols to the computer. How does it know what they really mean?” In other words, for all of the impressive NLP programming that has gone into Watson, the computer is unable to penetrate the semantics of language, or comprehend how meanings of words are shot through with allusions to human culture and the experience of daily life.

    How much is a life worth in pixels? [SocialMediaCollective] – An effort to quantify the value of a human life (or in this case death) as measured by screen space allocated to reporting it on the webpages of various news sites. Not the most rigorous metric, but certainly a clever approach to valuing human presence in the virtual world.

    Frustrated by this, I decided to get a more objective assessment of the coverage by counting the number of pixels different news websites were assigning to the story of the massacre. I know web designers put a lot of work into every single pixel on the screen, especially of high-traffic websites. Visitor’s attention is scarce and every pixel counts. So I took screenshots of the front pages of some of the major news websites and calculated the amount of screen real state assigned to the story of the massacre.

    The Cyborg in Us All [NYT.com] – Tracing the steps we are taking towards a totally hands-free interaction with technology where brains will send messages directly to devices. One less interaction to sit between man and machine.

    Now it was my turn. Mukerjee removed the headset and moistened the tips of its electrodes with contact-lens fluid, then arranged the EEG device on top of my hair. The electrodes poked into my scalp like wet fingers. I held the iPhone in front of me and beamed a blast of willpower at it. “Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs,” I shouted inside my mind. The phone picked George Bush.

    PUMPED UP KICKS|DUBSTEP [YouTube] – Here we see technology influencing body – this guy dances like what you are watching is a video effect; in the way that the audio IS an audio effect – loops, run backwards, etc. very digital. But the video is real – this is his way of moving his body, but the aesthetic is entirely defined by something created elsewhere as technology. Yes, we had The Robot in the 70s, but this is different – that was a human dancing like a machine, this is a human dancing like an effect – something that doesn’t exist except as the manipulation of data.

    PUMPED UP KICKS|DUBSTEP

    You are a robot [TheTechnium] – KK deconstructs dancing like a robot and highlights the myriad ways the human body can be molded to perform like a techno-being.

    Everywhere we look in pop culture today, some of the coolest expressions are created by humans imitating machines. Exhibit A would be the surging popularity of popping, tutting, and dub step dancing. You’ve seen these dancers on YouTube: the best of them look exactly like robots dancing, with the mechanical stutter of today’s crude robots trying to move like humans. Except the imitators robotically dance better than any robot could — so far.

    A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design [worrydream.com] – Bret Victor has his finger (pun certainly intended) on the pulse of our future interactions with technology. The rant focuses on our bodies, namely our hands and fingers, and their place of privilege between humans and technology (I feel a Michelangelo Sistine Chapel reference coming on). If, as they say, all things are created twice (first in the mind and then in reality) then Victor has me wondering if technology has already infiltrated our minds and influenced the pursuit of Pictures Under Glass as opposed to, say, envisioning an experience rich with tactility and manual manipulation.

    There’s a reason that our fingertips have some of the densest areas of nerve endings on the body. This is how we experience the world close-up. This is how our tools talk to us. The sense of touch is essential to everything that humans have called “work” for millions of years.

    Biomimicry’s Greatest Hits [FastCompany.com] – We continue to see blurring of the boundaries between humans and technology in this presentation which offers examples of how nature has inspired and informed some memorable technological advances.

    The idea of taking inspiration from nature may be gaining traction in many industries today, but the natural world has always been a powerful inspiration for designers and inventors. Here are some of the most important objects that take their cue from the world around us.

    Pumping For Thrills

    The other day, my car on fumes, I stopped at a 76 station. While I was filling up, I noticed some amusing signs. One was a taxonomy of bugs, as seen post-windshield. The other suggested some stretches to do while you waited. Master shot and details, below.


    I guess they’ve had this campaign for a while now, but as an infrequent 76 customer, this was my first time seeing it. The tone confuses me: I can’t tell if they are wry or serious. I guess, yeah, it would be good to stretch during a long drive. But why are the names of the exercise all smart-ass driving jokes? And it would be good to learn about the bugs around us, but smushed ones? It seems like something BoingBoing would link to, but not something a mainstream American corporation would post next to the pumps. I’m all for brands unstodgying themselves, but they aren’t taking a holistic approach to the experience (go figure). Other than seeing those signs, everything about my gas station experience was like every other time I’ve filled up at every other station. Except the buyers remorse when I found gas cheaper elsewhere an hour later. If you want to reframe your commodity as a destination, you have to think a little bigger than just swapping out the credit card ads for bug posters.

    Street Art Quickies

    Kilroy Was Here, our column about street art, was recently published in interactions. In the time between finishing the article and its publication we’ve found a range of articles and links that go with it.

    ‘Gold Mountain’ history mural marred by graffiti [SFGate] – Murals, a legitimized and desirable form of street art are still vulnerable to others with spray paint. We call one “street art” and the other “graffiti” or worse, “tagging.”

    Someone has written “easy girls” next to the group of 1940s Forbidden City cabaret dancers. The Chinese Telephone Exchange pagoda is obscured by spray-painted green scrawls. The likeness of 9/11 flight attendant Betty Ann Ong that was added to the mural in 2004 is almost covered by a bright orange tag. In 2004, it cost $25,000 to restore the mural. Even as the artist repainted the mural, taggers continued to mar her work. Security cameras were installed in 2008, but new graffiti appears nearly every week. Now, officials at Chinatown Community Development Center, which owns the apartment building on which the mural is painted, say they’re considering re-creating the mural somewhere else. So far the nonprofit has been cited for the graffiti, but has not paid any fines. “It’s impossible to keep up with taggers, and we don’t have the manpower or the funding,” said Cathie Lam, the center’s senior community organizer. It was “determined not worthwhile and too labor-intensive” to restore it a second time, she said.

    Vigilante Vigilante: The Battle for Expression – We attended the first screening of this film. The movie, despite its extraordinary bias towards street art, was extremely thought-provoking. The screening itself was dramatic and intense, with the post-film discussion devolving into shouting, name-calling, and some gang-related threats.

    A new breed of crime-fighter now stalks the urban landscape: the anti-graffiti vigilante. These dedicated blight-warriors stop at nothing to rid their neighborhoods and cities of street art, stickers, tags, and posters. Yet several of these vigilantes have become the very menace they set out to eliminate. In their relentless attempt to stamp out graffiti, they have turned to illegally and destructively painting other people’s property. VIGILANTE VIGILANTE is the story of two filmmakers who set out to expose these mysterious characters and discover a battle of expression that stretches from the streets to academia.

    Graffiti Taggers Turn to Trees, With Some Possibly Harmful Effects [NYT.com] – Another disturbing example; where self-expression triumphs all other considerations.

    Outside Elixir bar in the Mission district of San Francisco, graffiti taggers have left their mark – not on the wall, but on the living. Every tree on that 16th Street block has been spray-painted in shades of purple, red, white and black. “I can’t imagine why anyone would think that’s O.K.,” said Shea Shawnson, the bar manager. “What do you do to clean up a tree without messing it up?” In a city where graffiti abatement is swift – property owners are fined if graffiti is not immediately removed, and the city spends $20 million on the problem – taggers have discovered a way to ensure that their mark has staying power. Graffiti, taggers believe, is not easily covered or removed from trees without harming them. The vandalism has angered residents, and possibly threatened the health of some trees, which are remarkably rare in San Francisco because very few tree species are indigenous. The tagging also appears to violate one of the tenets of the graffiti subculture: it is supposed to be a reaction to urban life, not an attack on nature.

    Street Art As Provocations To Change The World [design mind] – frogdesign documents a couple of powerful street art examples driving towards awareness, and ideally social change.

    JR is a photographer and artist that describes himself as a “photograffeur.” He flyposts large black and white photographic images in public locations-in a manner that is similar to the appropriation of the built environment by graffiti artists. The idea is to show the world its true face by pasting photos of human faces across massive canvases. One of his most famous projects is called “face2face.” For this, he worked with Palestinian and Israeli citizens to explore the similarities of their daily lives, rather than focusing on the divisions; he highlighted fundamental human emotions. Israelis and Palestinians doing the same job-such as taxi drivers and teachers-agreed to be photographed crying, laughing, and making faces. Their portraits were then pasted without authorization from the local authorities in eight Israeli and Palestinian cities as well as on two sides of the wall that separate the two countries, demonstrating that art and laughter can challenge stereotypes. He explained his concept, by showing two portraits (one Israeli, one Palestinian) and asked them: who is the Israeli and who is the Palestinian. Most people couldn’t answer him. That’s when they understood that behind their cultural differences, they are very similar, and remain human first and foremost, and human with similar values!

    Brian Barneclo painting “Systems Mural Project” [SFGate] – Yet another example of street art crossing over; here with an official authorized sponsored ‘landmark.’

    “It will be a new landmark,” Barneclo said, pointing out that the painting near Seventh and Townsend streets will be the first thing commuter train passengers see entering San Francisco and the last thing cars zoom by as they take the Interstate 280 on-ramp from Sixth Street. “There’s nothing else like it.” Using large-scale icons, the piece aims to illustrate the many relationships between man and nature – from the nervous system to the solar system, computer operating systems to the ecosystem. “I’m just intrigued by how the world works,” Barneclo said. “It’s complicated, but I’m trying to boil it down and make a groovy mural.”

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Separating You and Me? 4.74 Degrees – In 2008, Microsoft found the number to be 6.6; it depends on how one defines a connection. Can we infer anything from Facebook having a looser definition than Facebook?

    Adding a new chapter to the research that cemented the phrase “six degrees of separation” into the language, scientists at Facebook and the University of Milan reported that the average number of acquaintances separating any two people in the world was not six but 4.74. The original “six degrees” finding, published in 1967 by the psychologist Stanley Milgram, was drawn from 296 volunteers who were asked to send a message by postcard, through friends and then friends of friends, to a specific person in a Boston suburb. The new research used a slightly bigger cohort: 721 million Facebook users, more than one-tenth of the world’s population.

    Who Uses SpiderOak? – More Personas Leaking Outside the Enterprise. Just because you have personas in your development process doesn’t mean you need to make that your marketing. It’s bad enough that you think and talk about your customers this way, at least have the good manners not to talk TO them this way.

    Gavin the Geek – Gavin is a geek. He has been for as long as he can remember. Instead of playing with toy guns, he was ripping apart and rebuilding the Atari – a gift to his dad when he was a young boy. In his spare time, he builds servers for friends. In his professional time, he builds servers for friends. And then he gets to administer them all. Making sure they are all backed up, frequently, painlessly, and securely is crucial in maintaining his sanity. SpiderOak bounces into Gavin’s domain. Now, he can load SpiderOak on all of the servers, keep all the data secure, run everything from the command line, keep out of trouble, and never have to worry if, by chance, he didn’t build the server just right…

    5 Ways to Think About Nuisance Fees [NYT.com] – Some great deconstruction of the way we respond to different types of fees, pointing towards some design principles for the creation of fees. The examples in this article are consistent with what we’ve heard in a number of studies.

    The discussion starts with a three-pronged test of whether the fee is reasonable: is it fair, is it disclosed and do you have a choice about paying it? Fairness is the least clear, but Robin Block, a retired actuary in Manhattan, argues that the fee must have some relationship to the actual cost of providing the item or service. By that definition, the 3 percent currency conversion fees that credit and debit card issuers levy are unfair. Ditto the $10 or so a day that rental car agencies charge for GPS devices that retail for $100. Bank of America’s effort to charge $5 a month for debit cards is an interesting case study in this context of cost, given that it said that it all but had to add the fee because of new rules that limited what it could charge merchants for accepting the cards.

    Ambidextrous magazine shuts down – Although their website is not with this sad news, here’s the email I just got. You can see my contributions here, here, and here.

    We know it’s been a while and you’ve maybe wondered what has been going on with us. The global financial crisis, revolutions, The New York Times now charging online… a lot has happened. And with the downturn and the state of publishing, it has been tough. We fought as long as we could and unfortunately must now close Ambidextrous. The magazine has been a labor of love, but it has unfortunately not been organizationally and financially sustainable. Since 2005, we’ve done our best to help designers share their stories and to build a movement around that. As a movement, Ambidextrous will live on, and we should have conversations about what great next steps are for fostering intellectual discussion and sharing in the design community. It’s the community that makes us hopeful and pushes us to find the next outlet, the next forum, the next thing for us to collaborate on. So keep in touch. Share your ideas. Let’s meet again soon.

    Stories behind the themes: Transformation

    Here we offer the third installment of an unfolding bibliography of secondary research that fueled our generation of themes for the Omni project. This time around we are focusing on the transformational role of technology in our everyday lives, both in terms of what is changing (us) and how, i.e. the process of moving ritualistically through the liminal space that sits between what (and how) we once did things and the activities that will become our daily doings. This theme captures not only the place between the old and the new, but also the processes of learning, relearning, and unlearning how to respond to the new and improved version of our lives that technology suggests possible.

    Online Banking Bill Pay Changes Ahead [FastCompany.com] – Remember the last time you had to show up in person at your bank to conduct business? Yeah, me neither. Remember the last time you had a confounding online banking moment trying to transfer funds to or from one account or bank to another (be it yours or someone else’s)? Yep, me, too! We appear to be wading through the growing pains associated with a transition from institutionally-focused financial rituals to customer-driven (and designed) online personal financing that is largely institutionally-agnostic.

    While consumers like seeing all their finances in one friendly place, they don’t like the fact that they can’t do anything about it there–namely pay those bills or move money between accounts–using the same site or app. That capability is gradually coming, with the help of new finance technology, business models and willing, often smaller, banks.

    Collaborative Learning for the Digital Age [Chronicle.com] – Cathy Davidson puts her teaching (and learning to teach in this era of “This is Your Brain on the Internet”) under the microscope in an exploration of how technology is impacting the collaborative nature of knowledge including how it is consumed, crowdsourced, created, communicated, and (perhaps most fascinating of all) subjected to criticism by various stakeholders. Here we can begin to see that a focus on traditional ways of learning has created attentional blindness to the opportunities for new ways of learning.

    Unfortunately, current practices of our educational institutions-and workplaces-are a mismatch between the age we live in and the institutions we have built over the last 100-plus years. The 20th century taught us that completing one task before starting another one was the route to success. Everything about 20th-century education, like the 20th-century workplace, has been designed to reinforce our attention to regular, systematic tasks that we take to completion. Attention to task is at the heart of industrial labor management, from the assembly line to the modern office, and of educational philosophy, from grade school to graduate school.

    A Walk to Remember to Remember [Full-Stop.net] – Anyone who has seen the video of the woman walking into the mall fountain because her eyes are glued to her phone (there’s another walk to remember!) has witnessed the physical (and perhaps more experientially concrete) impact of technology on walking. This piece roots around in some of the more metaphorical and abstract ways that technology has transformed rituals and narratives of bipedal locomotion.

    “When I walk,” he describes, “my impression is that a digital sensibility overtakes me [-] the places or circumstances that have drawn my attention take the form of Internet links.” Referring to associative memory as being like hypertext is a perfect example of how the significance and description of walking changes in reference to the time and culture in which it is grounded. The metaphors we use to characterize things we don’t understand often change with relation to extant technology. For example the human mind once described as a tablet is now popularly referred to as being like a computer. But this use of figurative language also demonstrates how metaphor shapes the way we perceive and experience the physical world.

    In Classroom of Future, Stagnant Scores [NYT.com] – Technology is obviously changing our institutions and, here again,education seems to be a classic meme. There is a defined dream that computers will fix THIS – every generation of tech, from the first Apple PCs to now iPads, are all hailed as “THIS is the thing that will truly, radically improve it!”; but in our measurement-focused education systems, evidence points to “no”.

    To be sure, test scores can go up or down for many reasons. But to many education experts, something is not adding up – here and across the country. In a nutshell: schools are spending billions on technology, even as they cut budgets and lay off teachers, with little proof that this approach is improving basic learning.

    The Gen Y Guide to Collaborative Consumption [Shareable.net] – Technology is enabling alternatives to the mainstream economy that are self-created and subvert standard modes of exchange and value. This easy-to-use DIY guide is a road map for leaving behind ancient rituals of consumption in favor of practices that values possibilities of use over possession.

    American youth are slowly realizing that the old system is broken, and no longer holds the answer to all their dreams and desires. We’re discovering that stable, satisfying careers can be found outside the offices and factories around which our parents and grandparents built their lives. We’re acknowledging that the pursuit of bigger, better, and faster things have plunged our country into a time of despair and difficulty. We’re convinced that business as usual isn’t an option any longer–but what’s the alternative?

    To be who you are, practice being someone else

    Back in June, Rush drummer Neal Peart was interviewed by George Stroumboulopoulos, discussing the recording of their classic album Moving Pictures (now 30 years old!)

    He relates a curious and cool aspect of their creative process, evoking the role-playing techniques (including informance) that we use in user research, facilitation, design, and more, whereby taking on characters can free oneself from a current constraint, including one’s own identity.

    One of the tricks that we were already using then – that we still do – is that we make up other bands. “Today we’re not Rush, we’re The Fabulous Men.” That was our new age band, or we have an ongoing edgy kind of rockabilily band called Rockin’ F so when we want to bring out a different persona we say “Okay, make this part Rockin’ F.” That’s something we still use.

    Also see previously: Eminem, Will.i.am and Jack White

    Reading Ahead Quickies

    While the Reading Ahead project was a couple of years ago, we continue to find stories that resonate with or extend beyond our findings. Here’s a few!

    For Their Children, Many E-Book Fans Insist on Paper [NYT.com] – A key Reading Ahead finding was that people select different content for different environments, situations, etc. By extension, it makes sense to see that people are also making choices among platforms for similar reasons. Reading is a multi-headed beast.

    Print books may be under siege from the rise of e-books, but they have a tenacious hold on a particular group: children and toddlers. Their parents are insisting this next generation of readers spend their early years with old-fashioned books. This is the case even with parents who themselves are die-hard downloaders of books onto Kindles, iPads, laptops and phones. They freely acknowledge their digital double standard, saying they want their children to be surrounded by print books, to experience turning physical pages as they learn about shapes, colors and animals. Parents also say they like cuddling up with their child and a book, and fear that a shiny gadget might get all the attention. Also, if little Joey is going to spit up, a book may be easier to clean than a tablet computer.

    Fulfilling the status role of books [Applied Abstractions] – An admittedly facetious concept that pokes at the ongoing struggle between objects, in this case books, as physical tangible demonstrable symbols versus digital and generally invisible personal content, an issue that arose clearly in the Reading Ahead research

    The Norwegian publishing and bookselling industry yesterday introduced a new concept for e-books that is rather harebrained. They want to sell e-book tablets where you can buy books not as downloads (well, you can do that, too) but as files loaded on small plastic memory cards, to be inserted into the reader. According to their not very convincing market analysis, this is aimed at the segment of the book buying market who do not want to download books from the net (but, for some reason, seem to want to read books electronically.) I initially thought I would make a joke about having to replace my bookshelves with neat little minishelves for the plastic cards, when it dawned on me that perhaps we have the solution here – i.e., a model where we could get the accessibility of digital books with the status display of the paper version. Why couldn’t the publishing industry sell you a digital book (for downloading, if you please) bundled with a cardboard book model, with binding and all, to put in your bookshelf? This would look great, allow you to effortlessly project your intellectualism and elevated taste, while avoiding the weight, dust, and (since these books would only need to be a in inch or two deep) space nuisances of traditional books. You could even avoid physical distribution by letting the customer self-print and cut and fold the “shelf-book” in the right format. You could even electronically link the two, so that you cold pick your cardboard book from the shelf, wave it in the direction of the e-book tablet (using transponder, 2D barcoding or other identifying techniques) and the book would show up in your reader. If you really wanted to show off, you could add a little color coded bar indicated how far you were in each book, much like a download bar for your computer, to be displayed on each book. Moreover, such as book could be lent from one reader to another.

    A Digital Whiteboard for the Kindle [WSJ.com] – Already two years old, this post evoked for me another key tension: are digital book platforms translations (with relevant, reading-related enhancements) of the book reading experience or are they new digital platforms for a range of digital activities? Our research suggested a stronger desire for the former, with fears of distraction around the latter.

    Luidia, the maker of an interactive whiteboard technology called eBeam, is extending its reach onto another screen: Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader. The start-up is launching a system that automatically zaps a copy of notes and scribbles left on whiteboards into people’s Kindle or Kindle DX. It works by turning the notes (captured digitally by the eBeam system) into an image file, and then emailing that file to a Kindle. “We saw the potential not just to read a novel and textbooks, but also have other kinds of content created live in the classroom by students and teachers themselves,” says Jody Forehand, Luidia’s vice president of product planning…But apps that extend or go beyond reading are one of the most anticipated additions to e-book readers in the coming year. Kindle competitor Irex has said it would release a software development kit so that programmers can make their own apps for its e-reading device.

    Stories behind the themes: Relational Connections

    Welcome to the next installment of an unfolding bibliography of secondary research that fueled our generation of themes for the Omni project. Today we are focusing on the relational role of technology as a facilitator, participant, and obstacle. This broadly encompasses relationships between human and technology, humans and other humans, human with self, and even technology with technology. The nature of our relationships are changing, as our the tools that are available for us to make meaning of the data that they embody and generate. The items below begin to unpack this tangled web of interconnectedness along with rituals that arise and recede in response to progress and its discontents.

    The tribesman who Facebook friended me [salon.com] – Really astonishing piece, especially since the whole “picture of a Kalahari desert warrior on a mobile phone” images became totally overdone in our field 15 years ago. Very intriguing characterization of the limited exposure to ideas this tribe had and in a very short time they are on Facebook. This article implicates technology in the evolution and revolution of relationships with (and within) tribes that hitherto were characterized by a lack of interaction with the rest of the globe.

    But, what I am here to tell you is that it’s happening now. We now live in a world in which a tribe that had not even heard of a feathered arrow until two years ago, can access every idea in the world. For the first time in history, humanity is truly open-access. Our entire species is “logged in.” Should we mourn the passing of a phase in our history when bands of human minds still lived in isolation, or rejoice that we are finally all on the same page?

    Life in the Age of Extremes [theatlantic.com] – The internet (which he seems to conflate or equate with processing power and computing capabilities) enables extreme reactions and responses that have great destructive potential. The author argues that interconnectedness via the internet amplifies feedback loops and therefore catalyzes extreme states and transforms the value of individual contributions within these collective contexts.

    Optimists have long dominated the cyber-landscape, firm and vocal in their belief that the Internet creates a more transparent world, and that the quick and easy access to information it provides is bringing the global population together into one enlightened chorus of harmony. I have been deeply concerned that the Internet has created a centrifugal force that has the potential to tear us apart. The Internet’s reinforcement of uncompromising positions during acrimonious budget debate in Washington, the Internet-facilitated, high-frequency trading driving volatility in financial markets, and the use of Twitter to organize the recent street riots in the UK brought to mind Eric Hobsbawm’s 1994 book, The Age of Extremes. The book is about the extreme historical events of what Hobsbawm called “the short 20th century.” But he could just as easily have been writing about the 21st century, the Internet age.

    Pew Internet Research Report [pewinternet.org] – Results of a recent study about cell phone use. Ironically, of the 2,277 interviews conducted about cell phones, 1,522 interviews were conducted by landline phone, and only 755 interviews were conducted by cell phone (that’s about 33%). So here we have a study that evokes questions about how we relate to others via technology and how that very relationship facilitates the study of the relationship. Is this relational research recursion?

    83% of American adults own some kind of cell phone–and these devices have an impact on many aspects of their owners’ daily lives. Half of all adult cell owners (51%) had used their phone at least once to get information they needed right away. One quarter (27%) said that they experienced a situation in the previous month in which they had trouble doing something because they did not have their phone at hand.

    When Roommates were Random [nytimes.com] – How technology is mitigating the influence of serendipity and randomness. Fueled the conversation of X before Y, i.e. how did we do X before Y came along?

    It’s just one of many ways in which digital technologies now spill over into non-screen-based aspects of social experience. I know certain people who can’t bear to eat in a restaurant they haven’t researched on Yelp. And Google now tailors searches to exactly what it thinks you want to find. But this loss of randomness is particularly unfortunate for college-age students, who should be trying on new hats and getting exposed to new and different ideas. Which students end up bunking with whom may seem trivial at first glance. But research on the phenomenon of peer influence – and the influences of roommates in particular – has found that there are, in fact, long-lasting effects of whom you end up living with your first year.

    The Rebirth of the Ringtone [theatlantic.com] – A little ditty about the rise, fall, and rise again of audible cell phone rings, alternatively about the rise and fall of ‘vibrate’ setting. Begins to track some of the rituals of taming technology to comply with social norms and how our personal (i.e. ringtone) choices are reflective of our relationships and (in some cases) responsible for them.

    I rarely hear a phone ring these days. Hell, I’m lucky if I catch a stray beep. Only those without much experience in the wireless world continue to derive pleasure from hearing “Achy Breaky Heart” every time an acquaintance calls. A phone on vibrate gives you a slight informational advantage over the people around you, but at the cost of your public identification with a kind of music. Somehow, putting your phone on vibrate seemed politely self-interested, not just plain sneaky.

    Does The Internet Make You More Or Less Connected? [npr.org] – There are two sides to the coin of constant connectedness. The distraction from immediate social situations is real, but so is the fact that connections with people can be more frequent and relationships can blossom using technology.

    The distractions play an even more aggressive role when it comes to my connection with myself. Most of the moments once reserved for a little alone time have been infiltrated by the realtime Internet. I never just wait for a bus, or just stand in line at a bank, or even just sit and think as I sit stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. At these moments, I pull my phone out of my pocket faster than a gunfighter pulls his weapon out of its holster.

    Information Consumes Attention Focus In The Age of Abundant Stimulus [boingboing.net] – The paradox of focus and how it can be improved by meditation and pleasure. A lovely little respite that suggests strengthening our relationship with the present moment and our Self in order to better navigate the influx of attention-grabbing information.

    The most promising solution to our attention problem, in Gallagher’s mind, is also the most ancient: meditation. Neuroscientists have become obsessed, in recent years, with Buddhists, whose attentional discipline can apparently confer all kinds of benefits even on non-Buddhists. (Some psychologists predict that, in the same way we go out for a jog now, in the future we’ll all do daily 20-to-30-minute “secular attentional workouts.”) Meditation can make your attention less “sticky,” able to notice images flashing by in such quick succession that regular brains would miss them. It has also been shown to elevate your mood, which can then recursively stoke your attention: Research shows that positive emotions cause your visual field to expand.

    Love in the Time of Robots: A Duet With Siri [theatlantic.com] – Interview with creator of the viral song/video duet between human and iPhone. This delightful little duet touches on how we derive meaning from our relationships with our devices and gets us wondering about artificial interpersonal communication.

    Do you think humans will actually fall in love with their robots one day? Is it happening already? OOOOOOh. Yes. I’m really infatuated with the idea of machines eventually being capable of love. I think it’s kind of inevitable, but I don’t really expect to see it in my lifetime.

     

     

    Out and About: Steve in Boston

    I was in Boston earlier this week to speak at UI16. During a bit of downtime, I went for a walk and of course, started taking pictures. Given our recent interactions article about noticing and document street art, I wanted to share some of what I saw.

    One tag (bundtcake? budcloth? badclam?) and stickers for a cutesy-brand pet waste removal service, a skater magazine, a web/movement/thingy, and a beer label that seems to be fake and actually points to a local art collective.


    There’s that tag again, the Eye of Providence (a local reference?), and a DJ promoting himself with an homage to the locally dominant Dunkin’ Donuts branding.


    Some buffing of previous stickers, that same beer cum art sticker, and the random and hilarious Vonnegut and crossbones (I found a better one here).


    Much larger pieces, including Andre. I like how you can see a little bit about how these were done, as they emanate from the fire escape.


    A number of streetlights near here had these colored plastic blocks in letter-like forms. I felt like it was probably “official” since it was in a vaguely design-y district and consistently placed on city infrastructure, but there was no information about it and so it was hard to be sure. And that moment – trying to determine if this is “legit art” or “street art” or one masquerading as the other – was delicious. I passed by here with my local friend Joe and asked him about this. While he didn’t know, for him it evoked the 2007 incident when 8-bit-graphics promoting Aqua Teen Hunger Force caused a bomb scare in Boston.


    Under the bridge. Just a more familiar graffiti scene, one that seemed to typical, unremarkable, and even slightly comforting (despite the broken glass I had to step around to take this picture).

    Put your money where your meme is: #dollars4boobies

    Two nights ago I (and 194 others) received a Facebook message from an old friend. It outlined instructions for a post with the noble intentions of raising breast cancer awareness (spoiler alert) with instructions not to share with men. This conjures up a saying that has become something of a personal mantra for me: We often judge others by their actions and ourselves by our intentions.

    It was undoubtedly with the best of intentions that someone sent me the message below; with the quite noble intention of raising awareness about breast cancer.

     

     

    Sadly, I must turn a critical eye towards the ensuing actions because I genuinely believe they failed to support the noble intention. Why? I hypothesize that, in some ways similar to previous year’s viral FB booby-supporting memes this generates a flurry of chatter that is unfortunately decontextualized from the cause. In fact, in my case it was directed at all of the possible things I could/should or could not/should not do for 18 months in Amsterdam and numerous requests for clarification. And, for the record, I am certain that they do not let you on a plane from Amsterdam to the US with seeds. Fortunately, I believe Steve is still in the midst of a Facebook Fast (and boy, he ain’t alone) and has yet to ask me just how I intend to continue working here if I am overseas. (see? we’ve gotten a little far afloat from breast cancer here)

     

    I recognize that my actions here (i.e. demystifying the meme) may derail the breast cancer awareness mission, but my intention is simply to direct some energy towards activities that have a more direct impact on the National Breast Cancer Foundation’s mission “to save lives by increasing awareness of breast cancer through education and by providing mammograms for those in need”. So, to walk my talk, I just made a (modest little) donation to support the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

    So I’d like to offer up a reframe of this whole meme business: If you love boobies (and quite frankly, who doesn’t?) make a donation and use your FB status to celebrate your own actions! And you can tweet that, too, if you are feeling meme-y and aren’t up in a fuss about the word boobies (because some actually are). Come on people, get a pair. Or give a couple bucks to support someone else’s. #dollars4boobies

    Announcing the IxD12 Student Challenge

    Jeremy Yuille and I are the co-chairs for the 2012 Student Design Challenge, working with Thomson Reuters and the IxDA.

    Entries are open now, and close on December 5 December 9, 2011. Be in the running to win a scholarship to Interaction 12 in Dublin, and take part in an exciting design challenge around the future of news.

    The challenge theme for 2012 is Design the Future of News. We’re in a time of upheaval over how we stay informed. People follow breaking news via Twitter. Tablets, mobile phones, paywalls, RSS feeds, viral videos and other elements have found their way into the current news landscape. The experience has swollen far beyond the icons of the daily newspaper on your doorstep and the 6 o’clock newscast.

    We know that people are consuming news differently, and these emerging practices are changing the news.

    What is the future of the news? What do we even mean by “the news” anyway?

    This year, Thomson Reuters and the IxDA challenge you to look beyond the forms of delivery to address the behaviors, interactions, and goals that surround news.

    We want you to explore the interaction design implications of questions such as:

    • What are people trying to achieve with news?
    • How do we identify that a particular story is important or relevant?
    • What is the relationship between the different types of information that currently make up “news" (e.g., entertainment, local, breaking news, weather, data, etc.)
    • What is the potential for emerging trends in how news is produced, from hyperlocal to citizen journalism?

    The challenge is open to current students and anyone who has graduated in 2011. It runs in two stages: an online entry (see how to enter) followed by an on-site masterclass and design challenge at Interaction’12 in Dublin.

    See http://interaction12.ixda.org/student-challenge for more information on the prizes, judges and how to enter.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Hollandia Produce Launches Squircle Packaging [The Packer] – I was thrilled to come across the term squircle the other day, in the context of this packaging redesign. Of course, Wikipedia has something to say about it and the name has found its way to content and design firms, too.

    Hollandia Produce LLC is launching a clamshell redesign – called the Squircle – for its Living Butter Lettuce. The design incorporates features of both a square and a circle, optimizing space and enabling automated packaging systems. On the shipping side, it gives a 20% increase in units per pallet…Consumer and frequent-user focus group studies showed the new design maintains brand recognition while attracting first-time buyers.

    Thirteen movie poster trends that are here to stay and what they say about their movies [Oh No They Didn’t!] – Compilations of visually similar, to put it gently, movie posters. In the way that the entertainment industry has created tropes within the content of the film that engage us in actively creating the plot at the same time as are following it, the marketing of film has established its own set of visual memes and cultural cues. Repetition and familiarity establish shorthand, and while we may decry the lack of originality, the predictability seems to work financially. Bonus from All This ChittahChattah years ago: Good ideas never go out of style.

    Run For Your Life – Apparently all action heroes run through the same blue-lit, narrow alleyway when trying to escape/catch the bad guys. It’s also possible that graphic designers just re-use the same stock image of the running guy over and over again. The movies themselves are pretty similar to the Black/Orange ones except that all the explosions have been replaced with angst.

    Hunk Gets Chunky: Personal Trainer Vows to Get Fat [ABC News] – While at one point in the article this is dismissed as a publicity stunt, the idea of producers experiencing what their consumers experience is compelling. From Black Like Me to Patricia Moore and now Fat Like Me. It seems unlikely that this trainer can replicate the motivational, cognitive, emotional, gustatory and many other issues that affect body image, diet, and exercise, but at least mechanically trying to lose weight as his clients are should be revelatory. I hope he does something with this experience.

    The 32-year-old former underwear model has ballooned from about 180 pounds to 233 since last month. He has given himself until the end of March to get to his goal of 265 pounds, a weight he intends to keep for a few months. “A lot of my clients have been skipping classes,” he said of the motivation behind his burgeoning pudge. “I decided I really didn’t understand what they were feeling and their emotions.”

    Dinosaur bones an untapped market for luxury set [SF Chronicle] – The recent story about the blinged-out iPad made with crushed dinosaur bones is obviously part of a larger trend towards dino luxe. I really love days when you can’t tell the real news from the fake news.

    “Market value comes down to what a person is willing to shell out for a dinosaur,” says the 60-year-old dino dealer, who has been in the business since 1985, selling Jurassic ribs for $350 each, Cretaceous toes at $295 a digit and a 16-foot-long Camarasaurus tail for $20,000. Wall Street recognition will be fast and furious once he can supply the market with dinosaur genitalia, says Prandi…Hollywood stars Nicolas Cage and Leonardo DiCaprio in 2007 entered into a spirited bidding war at I.M. Chait auctioneers in Beverly Hills over who would go home with a 67 million-year-old T. rex skull. Cage’s $276,000 bid won the day. “Whether a Brontosaurus looks good in your salon is a matter of taste, Lajotte-Robaglia says, “but these customers are young wealthy people who grew up mesmerized by Spielberg’s ‘Jurassic Park’ and find the aesthetics of a dinosaur more interesting than a Picasso.” Prandi says confirming a dinosaur’s provenance is just as tricky as verifying the authenticity of a work by the Spanish master. “A lot of people call me up from all over the country and say, ‘I found a dinosaur in my backyard,’ but it turns out to be a rock that looks like a dinosaur,” Prandi says. Even so, the United States remains the world leader in mining luxury dinosaurs.

    Stories behind the themes: Personal Exposure


     

    We recently shared some of the themes emerging from our secondary research for the Omni project. In lieu of a bibliographic deluge, over the next few days we are offering up a sprinkling of the articles, art, commentaries, presentations and other miscellany that contributed to the pool from which our themes were drawn. You will likely find (as we have) that many of these items are illustrative of more than one theme.

    First up is the theme of personal exposure and how technology is impacting our identities and behavior. Our participation involves a sacrifice of personal autonomy and control as various technologies require us to respond, reply, reveal, disclose, like, comment, protect, sign-in, sign up, secure, backup, manage, mitigate, translate and aggregate. We are making new choices about old behaviors and developing new rituals to replace outdated interfaces. The boundaries are blurring between private and public, at the same time we have more options than ever before for qualifying and segregating all of the different “I”s that we wish to be, depending on the context. Within this theme we are seeing the topics of identity, trust, consumption, production, control, privacy, regulation, and the facts and myths that capture (and perpetuate) it all.

    Tiger Moms and Digital Media [psychologytoday.com] – A psychotherapist who specializes in Internet and video game addiction offers 9 guidelines for raising children who have “a healthy relationship to digital media.” This starts to point at issues of control and autonomy within families and raises questions about the role of the parent (and technology) in childhood development.

    For reasons I cannot explain, I saw the approaching flood, when internet addiction was only a trickle. Now, that flood is upon us. Statistics tell us that between 6 and 13% of the general population meets criteria for Internet Addiction. In the college age population, that number stands between 13 and 19%! That’s a lot of young adults who are addicted to digital technology. In S. Korea and China, the problem is growing so rapidly that those governments have declared Internet Addiction to be their #1 public health threat. Think about it.

    Internet Privacy: Is it overrated? [fortune.com] – A book review of “How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live” by Jeff Jarvis that dives into the challenges of defining the messy term ‘privacy’ and the even messier obstacles associated with information sharing, regulation, and ‘publicness’. Starting to unpack the tangled web of identity and privacy, including expectations of control that accompany acts of exposure.

    Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has tried to recast the desire for privacy as a desire for control over our digital identities. He argues that people want to share information, but we want to determine who gets to see and use it. Jarvis says this definition is too tidy. Privacy is much messier. We live in relationship with other people, after all. How do we even define what qualifies as our own information? If I share information that implicates you, who gets to control that? …. His book is not so much a rallying cry for tweeting your breakfast choices and blogging your company financials as it is a field guide for how to navigate this new technology with optimism rather than fear.

    Where an Internet Joke Is Not Just a Joke [nytimes.com] – In light of increasing numbers of detained internet artists and government critics in China, a discussion of censorship and egao (“mischeivous mockery”) that is employed by many to subvert the internet patrols. Example of governmental control and how it is responded to (i.e. averted) through subversive collective channels. Challenges assumptions of exposure as a privilege rather than a right and describes some consequences for individual identity in that scuffle.

    No government in the world pours more resources into patrolling the Web than China’s, tracking down unwanted content and supposed miscreants among the online population of 500 million with an army of more than 50,000 censors and vast networks of advanced filtering software. Yet despite these restrictions – or precisely because of them – the Internet is flourishing as the wittiest space in China. “Censorship warps us in many ways, but it is also the mother of creativity,” says Hu Yong, an Internet expert and associate professor at Peking University. “It forces people to invent indirect ways to get their meaning across, and humor works as a natural form of encryption.”

    Russian ATM can detect when users are lying [springwise.com] – Depictions of technology can create distorted views of the future and the present; the notion is that this technology exists but it’s in the lab and it may never make it to the market in a reliable consumable form. The mere suggestion of its potential existence raises a number of questions about current practices involving consumer data. How does disclosure of possible futures impact individual understandings of who we are and how our information is managed, regulated and protected from fraudulent misappropriation?

    Though the new ATM design is still in the prototype stages, Sberbank plans to install such machines in malls and bank branches around the country, the NYT reports. Financial institutions elsewhere in the world: time to think about introducing something similar?

    My Emergency Contact Information [mcsweeneys.net] – Delicious little piece on how to contact someone in the event of an emergency. It’s fantatsically and unnecessarily complex with hints on how to guess neighbor’s wifi passwords. Unravels the many ways we have learned to be protected, (dis)connected and affected (by easily consumable disasters around the globe).

    First, if possible, try me on my cell phone. You should all have the number. I’d really prefer an emergency text message instead of a phone call, especially if the incidenct occurs before 8:00 p.m. on a weekday. Also, I don’t have a data plan, so please do not text images, regardless of the scale of devastation. Instead, Tweet or post pictures to your Flickr or Instagram photostreams and I will download or view them later, when I pass through a hotspot. Don’t forget to geo-tag them so I can determine your location.

     

     

    What did you expect?

    ‘You Are Not So Smart’: Why We Can’t Tell Good Wine From Bad [theatlantic.com] – In this excerpt from his book, David McRaney cites research suggesting that expectations are as critical as sensation in how we judge and gauge experience. If we expect that a wine will be high-quality, this will not only inform, but over-ride the actual experience of that wine. This has potential implications on how we talk to people about products and services in our research, relying more heavily on expectations as a lens to consider experience.

    So is the fancy world of wine tasting all pretentious bunk? Not exactly. The wine tasters in the experiments were being influenced by the nasty beast of expectation. A wine expert’s objectivity and powers of taste under normal circumstance might be amazing, but Brochet’s manipulations of the environment misled his subjects enough to dampen their acumen. An expert’s own expectation can act like Kryptonite on their superpowers. Expectation, as it turns out, is just as important as raw sensation. The build up to an experience can completely change how you interpret the information reaching your brain from your otherwise objective senses. In psychology, true objectivity is pretty much considered to be impossible. Memories, emotions, conditioning, and all sorts of other mental flotsam taint every new experience you gain. In addition to all this, your expectations powerfully influence the final vote in your head over what you believe to be reality. So, when tasting a wine, or watching a movie, or going on a date, or listening to a new stereo through $300 audio cables — some of what you experience comes from within and some comes from without.

    Our latest article: Kilroy Was Here


    Our latest interactions column (written by Steve Portigal and Julie Norvaisas) Kilroy Was Here has just been published.

    Reviled or celebrated, graffiti is ubiquitous in even the least-urban environments. With roots in the wall-scrawled slogans of ancient Greece, it is a physical yet ephemeral expression of the personality of a neighborhood. It allows us to see a colorful trail of inhabitants’ interactions with public spaces. Graffiti (or street art, or urban art) has been displayed in (and arguably corrupted by) art exhibitions, influenced fashion and pop culture, and generated revenue for municipalities and the paint-removal industry alike. Of course, it’s largely illegal. It’s everywhere, and we are grateful. Perhaps we are drawn to the element of danger that feeds street art, and the rebellion implicit in its enjoyment (probably the same reasons we loved the Fonz!)…We find ourselves considering the street art of one city, or neighborhood, or corner, as a whole, compared to what we know from other cities, neighborhoods, and corners. What elements make them visually distinct? What might these observations say about the culture or history of the location? How does one graffito fit into the larger context of surrounding graffiti? We can channel our inner visual anthropologist, uncovering signs not only of the times but also of the place.

    Get the PDF here and let us know what you think. Do you follow street art? What do you like about it? Share your pictures with us!

    And, here are some photos to supplement the article

    Previous articles also available:

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    In East Harlem, ‘Keep Out’ Signs Apply to Renters [NYT.com] – When in a large city I often look at the residential spaces above dense commercial/retail and wonder who lives there and what it’s like (I once lived above a real estate office of some type – we never really knew what they did down there – and was constantly pestered by couriers and other delivery people) – but the answer may very well be that nobody lives up there. Naively, it doesn’t make economic sense, but the situation appears to more complex than that.

    East Harlem has been undergoing a resurgence for two decades, yet the neighborhood is still pockmarked with four- or five-story walk-ups where the ground-floor stores are bustling and the apartments above are devoid of life. Their windows are boarded up, blocked up or just drearily empty, torn curtains testifying to no one’s having lived there for years. Although the vacancy rate in Manhattan hovers at 1 percent, at least some of the landlords of these sealed-up buildings are deliberately keeping their buildings mostly vacant, content to earn income from first-floor commercial tenants rather than deal with the trouble of residents. …At the corner of 106th Street and Third Avenue, the boarded-up windows and the remainder of the five-story building have been sleekly painted a rich taupe, allowing the Chase Bank branch below to escape looking as if it were in a forsaken slum. Still, no one lives in the apartments.

    Reinventing Post Offices in a Digital World [NYT.com] – Digital, and all that it encompasses, is remaking every industry. We straddle the opposites of welcoming new services and holding onto traditional ways of receiving familiar services. Nice to see the German post office reframe this away from loss, towards reinvention. The article doesn’t characterize the pain that must have been felt by the organization and the customers but you can imagine it must have been tremendous.

    With mail volumes decreasing 1 to 2 percent annually in many countries, European postal services from Germany to Sweden to Switzerland have reinvented themselves over the past decade as multifaceted delivery and information companies tailored to the virtual age. Though Deutsche Post by law still delivers to every address six days a week, it has jettisoned tens of thousands of buildings, 100,000 positions and its traditional focus on paper mail. “We realized that being a national postal provider was an endangered business, that we had to redefine the role of postal providers in a digital world,” said Clemens Beckmann, executive vice president of innovation of the German post office’s mail division. After selling off all but 24 of 29,000 post office buildings in the past 15 years, the German postal service is now housed mostly within other business “partners,” including banks, convenience stores and even private homes. In rural areas, a shopkeeper or even a centrally located homeowner is given a sign and deputized as a part-time postmaster. At the same time, many European postal services, including the one here, have developed a host of electronic services that are increasingly making traditional post offices and mailboxes obsolete. Bills and catalogs can go first to digital mailboxes run by the post office on customers’ computers, and the customers can tell the post office what they want it to print and deliver

    Ford reintroduces the 1965 Mustang [Yahoo! Autos] – First I’m hearing that Ford has its own business supporting the classic car market. There are obviously design, performance and legal/safety issues why they won’t sell you an actual 1965 Mustang, but the idea of having someone make you a new version of an old car is very compelling. Who will make me one?

    As part of its Ford Reproduction business, Ford revealed today it had approved a new stamping of the steel bodies for first-generation Mustang that buyers could then build into their own 1964 1/2 through 1966 Mustang, using whatever engine, axles, interior and other parts they can find on their own. The first-generation Mustangs rank as America’s most-restored vehicle, and the cottage industry of reproduction parts has grown to where it’s possible to build a Mustang just as it would have appeared on the showroom floor in the mid-1960s, down to the pushbutton AM/FM radio.

    the Omni project welcomes Kristine Ng

    We’re stoked to announce that Kristine Ng, a 2nd year masters student at UC Berkeley’s School of Information, has been assimilated into the hive mind will be helping out with the Omni project.

    Kristine’s studies are concentrating on user experience and HCI, and she hopes to work as an Interaction Designer after graduating next May. Prior to that she worked as a Graphic Designer after achieving her BFA in Design and Visual Communications at Washington University in St. Louis.

    She is fascinated by gaining a better understanding of humans and their behavior, in order to better design user experiences. She thrives on tackling challenging problems and is excited to put her thinking cap on to further investigate the many ways that technology impacts our lives.

    Find her at @kristineng

    Mamas, don’t let your babies…

    With Occupy Oakland confrontations behind us (I hope), Halloween ahead of us, and technology all around us it seems increasingly challenging to navigate the complexities of parenting. Here’s a little taste of what some moms and dads are grappling with today:

    For Children’s Sake, Taking to the Streets [nytimes.com] – Children continue to be a familiar presence in civic unrest in this piece that takes a look at the intersection between protesting for economic justice and parenting. Some supporters believe exposing children to such controversies helps to teach them critical thinking skills and introduces them to fundamentals of civic engagement. Others express concern for children’s safety and fear potential trauma.

    And so it goes in the second month of Occupy Wall Street, where children are becoming an increasing presence as parents try to seize a “teachable moment” to enlighten them on matters ranging from income inequality to the right to protest- A group called Parents for Occupy Wall Street, headed by Kirby Desmarais, a Brooklyn mother and record label owner, even organized a sleepover at the park for more than 80 parents and children on a recent weekend night. (The families had to be moved at dawn to make way for new police lines and barricades.) Spin-off parent groups have sprung up in other cities like Denver and Seattle.

    ‘We’re a culture, not a costume’ this Halloween [cnn.com] – The Ohio University organization, Students Teaching About Racism in Society, have launched a campaign to get people to think twice before donning a costume that reduces an entire culture to a stereotypical caricature. Proponents contend that confronting stereotypes helps combat racism, while opposition in editorial forums has touted that fun and lighthearted nature of the holiday, indicated it’s nothing to be taken too seriously.

    It’s a seasonal point of controversy, but even after widely publicized controversies such as the “Ghetto Fab” wig at Kohl’s and Target’s illegal alien jumpsuit, costumes of stereotypes abound. On Google’s shopping section, several pages of “Mexican costume ideas” are available, from “Mexican donkey costumes” to sexy serapes and tequila shooter girls.

    Tiger Moms and Digital Media [psychologytoday.com] – A psychotherapist specializing in internet and video game addiction offers 9 guidelines to parents who wish to help their children develop normally, with a healthy relationship to digital media. I find myself particularly challenged by number 8, Model what you preach. “Ouch of awareness” from this parent of an 8 year-old who has more apps on my iPhone than I do and yes, he installed the entire entertainment system when we recently relocated.

    I’ve been specializing in this problem for many years. For reasons I cannot explain, I saw the approaching flood, when internet addiction was only a trickle. Now, that flood is upon us. Statistics tell us that between 6 and 13% of the general population meets criteria for Internet Addiction. In the college age population, that number stands between 13 and 19%! That’s a lot of young adults who are addicted to digital technology. In S. Korea and China, the problem is growing so rapidly that those governments have declared Internet Addiction to be their #1 public health threat.

    And then there were themes: Secondary research results

    We read quite a bit on a daily basis here. Once we embarked on the Omni project, everything crossing our screens seemed to relate to the topic at hand. We created a secondary research database to document and collect various articles, blogs, video, blurbs and stories about the role of technology in our lives. We commented on them. We tagged them with keywords. We talked about them. We thought about what we’ve learned from years of doing fieldwork and being curious, and attending conferences and meetings. As they will, patterns and themes began to emerge, which are helping us to ground and organize our thinking as we move forward into our first phase of primary fieldwork.

    We’re excited to share some of what’s occupying our thoughts based on that work. Disclaimers and caveats: we are deliberately not including links to all the articles that informed us, to avoid being overwhelming. We’ll post that detailed bibliography next week. We have, however, added a link or two here and there to give you a glimpse into from whence our ideas came.

    We noticed a powerful, overarching effect: the discourse about how technology is experienced has been characterized by a remarkably strong polarity. We are either becoming dumber or smarter. Being threatened or enabled to greatness. Dehumanized or globalized. Diseased or cured. If we were to think of this as a personal relationship, we’re at a crossroads. What is gained and lost by this alliance? We are making a list of pros and cons as a culture. Some entries in this ledger are tangible and physical, others are emotional and spiritual. We project our fears and our dreams onto our technology-based interactions and experiences. We are inspired and terrified. Some of us want to break up with technology, others are ready to commit.

    Example: Bill Davidow in the Atlantic: Life in the Age of Extremes

    We hear a lot of chatter, and have a lot of questions about…

    …the notion of our own personal exposure. We put our identity (or identities) out there, and our behavior gathers around it in a massive snowball effect, which defines us in this context. So, that’s done then, to a greater or lesser extent. How do we protect ourselves? From who/what? Is it possible to be safe, or have we ceded control of our personal choices and activities in return for participation? The consequences of participation are unclear. We no longer have a clear mental model about the trajectory of our roles. It’s difficult to preview the positive or consider an exit strategy. The fate of our digital lives after our physical death is an example of this uncertainty. How will more exposure resulting from more access, inter-connectivity and integration of our technologies add to the hullabaloo?

    See: CNN Money/Fortune’s Review of Jeff Jarvis’ Book Public Parts Internet Privacy: Is it Overrated?

    …the broader relational aspects of our technology-enabled interactions. One:one, one:many, one:technology, tech:tech. The oft-pondered question: are we now closer or more isolated from other people for all this? Are we more or less human as a result of these interactions? Who is serving who, or what? The data we generate can be seen as more interesting than the content (even to our own “friends”). We are forced to analyze and qualify relationships in new ways. How many friends do you have? As magical as the tools and tech we interact with are, our relationships with each other even is more complex than it can support. We don’t have the inner social tools to deal with technologically fueled communication. New tech-driven awkward situations arise, or olde-tyme situations, such as break-ups, take on another layer to navigate. What are strategies help deal with all our connections and interconnections, both with human and non-human actors? When do they fail?

    Check out: Jonnie Hughes on Salon The Tribesman who Facebook Friended Me

    …the constant state of transformation we’re in, fueled by the rapid and endless development cycle for both experiences and hardware solutions that utilize new tech. We have to first unlearn, then learn and relearn ways to do both common and exceptional tasks on a daily basis. The way I note something on my calendar, for instance, has become orders of magnitude more complex than it used to be. Reinforced behaviors and habits are in a constant state of flux, and complicated by the fact that we are interconnected and affected by what we are doing, relationally, with other people and objects. People, of course, have different levels of comfort and patience with these transformations, thus early adopters vs. laggards. Behavioral change is a notoriously difficult charge for innovators, so how do we address the fact that we are thrusting people into such challenging zones on a regular basis?

    For instance: Cathy Davidson in the Chronicle of Higher Education Collaborative Learning for the Digital Age

    …the physical effects and experiences with technology. Sure, it’s virtual, but it’s also tangible, and is becoming biological. Consumer technologies that intersect with our bodies and minds are increasingly available, allowing us to quantify ourselves. Different poses and postures are being impacted and invented through devices and interactions. Handwriting is on the decline, finger-typing is passé, thumb-typing is prime, gesture and NUI are on the rise. What are the implications as we think increasingly of technology as part of our brains, biology and environment? How are our bodies and environments evolving to keep up?

    As in: Pagan Kennedy in the New York Times Magazine The Cyborg in All of Us

    …the onslaught of information/data/content/feeds/streams/news/media which we are thinking of as a wonderland, in the manner of Alice’s rabbit-hole. The Faustian bargain is on – do we revel in the delight of access or cringe under the burden of the onslaught? Apps (Siri, Evernote) and strategies (in-box zero, digital holidays, gamification) abound to manage.

    No link here… you’re soaking in it!

    Siri’s rising star

    Siri, the scene-stealing voice-activated command center of the new iPhone 4S, has created quite a stir, inspiring at least one love song and a Tumblr documenting her pointed witticisms. She is certainly gaining on Autocorrect in popularity and possibly in perceived utility, if not hilarity.

    Conceptually, voice interface holds great appeal. In our research, when we talk to people about their gadgets, voice is frequently suggested as the imagined ideal interface. People picture immediate interactions that eliminate pesky thumb typing and don’t distract from critical tasks, such as driving. But when we think a little more deeply about the concept of voice-command with people, it’s clear that this kind of out-loud interface is not the interface for all times and places. Even the voice interactions that have been around for awhile are out of favor. People prefer texting over voice-calls for privacy and expediency, and despise talking to automated systems.

    While attending a conference over this past weekend, I personally overheard a man tersely exclaim, “Not NOW, Siri!” in the middle of a presentation. This suggests that relationships being formed with Siri are progressing beyond infatuation at an accelerated pace. We’ll be keeping an eye on how Siri’s use plays out in real-life situations over time and where the real value lies, as her undeniable charms wear off.

    A couple of recent articles with interesting perspectives on Siri’s limits and potential impact:

    Is Siri artificially intelligent or just a robot? [macleans.ca] – How does Siri come by her pithy attitude? This article suggests that it’s much the same way that Crispin Porter + Bogusky set up the hilarious Burger King marketing campaign 10 years ago, Subservient Chicken, in which a man dressed in a chicken suit seemed to respond to even the most ludicrous typed commands via a “live” interactive webcam set up in a shady-looking apartment. This was accomplished by staging clips with pre-programmed responses to a large enough number of imagined inquiries that verisimilitude was achieved.

    The key to AI is the ability to creatively solve a problem. There’s no denying that Siri’s ability to recognize and translate voice plus grammar into usable data or actions qualifies. In that sense, Siri possesses what seems to be a good level of artificial intelligence. However, with the sort of stuff showing up on the websites…a good portion of Siri’s capabilities are likely simple programmed responses. It’s doubtful that even IBM’s Watson supercomputer, which not too long ago whupped human butt on Jeopardy, could construct such creative and funny responses as, “No comment, douche bag” to questions such as “Are you menstruating?” In such regards, Siri is more of a programmed robot than a thinking entity. Somebody somewhere-or more likely, many people somewhere-have spent a good deal of time anticipating and then programming Siri with potential questions and their respective answers, humourous or otherwise.

    How Siri, the Apple iPhone 4S’s ‘Virtual Personal Assistant,’ Could Transform Music [billboard.biz] – Apps are just solutions to problems; this article suggests that, if uptake is significant, Siri might potentially eliminate the need to access specifically branded apps to get stuff done. Implications go well beyond music, obviously.

    If an iPhone user asks Siri what the lyrics to “Don’t Stop Believin'” by Journey are, many people won’t care much whether TuneWiki or any other app fulfills the request. All that matters to them is that their request gets fulfilled in a timely manner, and that they’re soon happily singing, “Just a small town girl, living in a lonely world.” Similarly, if a user is seeking concert listings for the night, which match up to the songs on their iPhone, they’re unconcerned whether Songkick, Bandsintown, or Ticketmaster produces the results as long as they get them fast and accurately. Siri fundamentally changes how iPhone users think of apps, which is the point…Shazam and Pandora aren’t just apps; they’re features. To use them, a person should only need to know that they want to identify a song or listen to a custom radio station and-like magic-the desired process should occur. Siri can be the genie who makes it happen.

    Netflix never even thought to ask about *that*!

    Reed Hastings Knows He Messed Up is a Q&A with the Netflix CEO. The piece is largely snarky pseudo-hardball questions that Hastings dodges by asking us to take the long view, but this nugget about the Qwikster debacle was provocative:

    Q: I’m curious if you could have done any kind of research that could have anticipated this?
    A: Our focus-group work concentrated on trying to understand consumers’ perspectives on names other than Netflix.

    I’m stunned by this and all it implies.

    • Netflix doesn’t think of using research to understand the impact of a concept that would change its user experience?
    • Netflix relies on focus groups as their strategic insight methodology?
    • Netflix didn’t already have knowledge of user work flows, brand affinity, or anything else from their previous work that could have guided them?
    • Netflix tested the Qwikster name and still went with it?

    This is baffling, so baffling that it must not be true. There’s plenty of thought-leader UX types in house at Netflix, this is not a company that doesn’t think about design, experience, or the customer. Now where Hastings sits in that process is another question. Not to mention this quote is condensed from a longer interview and there may be some crucial content lost. But still. Stunned.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Dissident Creates by Remote Control [NYT.com] – Of course this is a political act as much as an artistic or commercial one (and some art theorist can probably explain why it must always be all three, yes?) but this seemed a novel application of remote collaboration software, at least in the way they’ve framed it.

    In an unusual collaboration with W magazine, Ai Weiwi created a story line for a series of photos that were shot on location in New York by the photographer Max Vadukul as Mr. Ai looked on, art directing via Skype on a laptop computer. Mr. Vadukul would set up a shot and look to Mr. Ai for approval. “We could see him on the screen, scrolling through the images,” Ms. Solway said. “What was so interesting was his attention to every detail. There was this big shower in Rikers – we thought it looked very dingy, but he said the grout was way too clean and graphic.”

    Don’t Blink! The Hazards of Confidence [NYT.com] – While the whole article primarily deals with the decisions that financial professionals make (scary scary stuff), the principles on judgement and decision-decision making feel sound, if challenging.

    You are probably an expert in guessing your spouse’s mood from one word on the telephone; chess players find a strong move in a single glance at a complex position; and true legends of instant diagnoses are common among physicians. To know whether you can trust a particular intuitive judgment, there are two questions you should ask: Is the environment in which the judgment is made sufficiently regular to enable predictions from the available evidence? The answer is yes for diagnosticians, no for stock pickers. Do the professionals have an adequate opportunity to learn the cues and the regularities? The answer here depends on the professionals’ experience and on the quality and speed with which they discover their mistakes. Anesthesiologists have a better chance to develop intuitions than radiologists do.

    Personal Eco-Concierges Ease Transition to Green [NYT.com] – Last year we did a research project that looked at “going green” as a journey. We met people at various stages along that transition and what their decisions were like at each of those stages. No surprise to see businesses appear explicitly aimed at facilitating the steps along that journey; indeed we identified other products and services that were or could speak to that goal – beyond usage to growth.

    “The problem with going green is that people think it takes so much work, so much effort, so much conscious decision-making,” said Letitia Burrell, president of Eco-Concierge NYC, a year-old business in Manhattan that tries to make it easy for people to rid their homes of toxins, hire sustainable-cuisine chefs and find organic dry cleaners. It is a niche business, but a clever one. At least a half-dozen services of this type have sprung up around the country in recent years, both to help time-starved consumers manage their lives and to assuage the guilt of those who worry that they are letting the planet down. “There are people who come to us gung-ho and they want to make a sweeping lifestyle change,” said P. Richelle White, who left a corporate advertising job four years ago to start Herb’n Maid, a green cleaning and concierge service in St. Louis. “These are busy professionals who don’t have the time to do the research themselves about different products and services.”

    Sexy, religious images spotted on new money [CBC News] – Getting feedback to designs before going to press is proven once again to be a good idea. Seems like a great application of a focus group, since the feedback needed is shallow and not very nuanced, although interesting to note that the social dynamics of a focus group limit the naturalness of that feedback – so much so that it made it into the report!

    The Bank of Canada fretted that Canadians would find all kinds of unintended images on the new bills. So the bank used focus groups to spot “potential controversies.” “The overall purpose of the research was to disaster check the $50 and $100 notes among the general public and cash handlers,” says a January report to the central bank. Almost every group thought the see-through window looked like a woman’s body, but participants were often shy about pointing it out “However, once noted, it often led to acknowledgment and laughter among many of the participants in a group.” On the other side of the bill, there’s an image of a researcher at a microscope and a depiction of the double-helix structure of DNA. But the DNA strand evoked something else. A Vancouver focus group thought it was “a sex toy (i.e., sex beads).” Others thought it was the Big Dipper. There was no mistaking the microscope, but when focus groups flipped over the bill they noticed the edge of the instrument showed through like a weird birthmark on Borden’s cheek. Respondents also thought the former prime minister was either cross-eyed or that each eye was looking off in a different direction, the report says “Others felt that the PM’s moustache is unkempt.” Every focus group thought they saw religious iconography on the face of the Peace Tower clock. “It was often described as ‘The Star of David.’ Others referred to it as a ‘pagan’ or ‘religious’ symbol,'” the document says-Bank of Canada spokeswoman Julie Girard said the bills got tweaked after the focus groups. “Before and after those focus groups, there were design changes for multiple reasons,” she said.

    Chittah Chattah Quickies

    Innovation: What’s New? [forbes.com] – A sprinkling of what’s happening in innovation practice including 5 dimensions that emerged from a recent study of 100 Chief Technology & Chief Innovation Officers. Topping that list is spending more time with customers to fuel authentic and valuable innovation.(!!)

    Customer-based innovation -seen as the most important concept of all in terms of future investment priority: engaging with customers in deeper and more meaningful ways to create stronger relationships and stimulate a desire to be fully involved in the innovation process. This includes: designing-in emotion, integrating social-networking, and being more sophisticated in open innovation.

    Making informed design decisions [brandpackaging.com] – Some strategies to improve communication and decision making around the often oh-so-subjective task of reviewing design concepts. Written with a he said/she said (aka designer/marketer) focus, the strategies and criteria are absolutely relevant for critical clarifying conversations with researchers, engineers, consumers, etc.

    These failures have been observed at both agencies and large companies. As noted, they lead to inefficiencies and a lack of trust between the design team and the marketing team. There are, however, a small set of strategies that can help the marketing team improve overall decision quality when selecting and refining design concepts…Improved design decision-making is the result of many small strategies, not the elusive, single “big fix”. It is the result of an improved process (decision organization), leadership (transparency/solicitation and critique), and analysis (data collection and point of view).

    A Few Nifty, Unpredicted Uses for Dropbox [theatlanticwire.com] – These are actually pretty nifty. Explore the value of Dropbox through the curated stories of a farmer, artist, theft victim, gamers, and family of an ill loved one. Gets me thinking in new ways how to use a service that most of the time I find cumbersome.

    Fighting crime. The more tech savvy Dropbox users have come up with all kinds of hacks that enable you to do unpredictable things on Dropbox. Among them is a way not only to recover files from but track the movement of a stolen laptop.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    The Solo Cup: How the disposable drinking vessel became an American party staple. [slate.com] – Hmm how did this odd red cup become the undisputed centerpiece of the American party scene? The recent redesign provides an opportunity to explore the question. I wonder, will most users even register, or appreciate, the receptacle’s new “distinctive elements?”

    How did the red cup become synonymous with good times, keg draughts, and sticky-floored basements? “The history is a little sketchy,” says Kim Healy, VP of consumer business for Solo. “We know we were one of the first to introduce a party cup.” So perhaps first-mover advantage played a role, with followers clamoring to emulate Solo’s technological breakthrough? For surely the quality of the design played a part. From the beginning, this has been the Sherman tank of disposable mealware. Made of thick, molded polystyrene, the Solo party cup could be squeezed in meaty frat-guy paws, dropped to the ground by tipsy highschool cheerleaders, and mercilessly battered by Flip Cup contestants-all while maintaining shape and functionality. It was stiffer and more resilient than competitor party cups like Dixie’s. No doubt the cup’s opacity was a selling point for underage college and high-school drinkers who would prefer not to reveal exactly what they’re sipping. But why red?

    Bun-Making Goes High Tech [wired.com] – In other news related to icons that represent our culture’s mass consumption, robots are checking out our buns. The aim here is to eliminate any distinctive elements, to achieve ultimate consistency at scale.

    Engineers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute have devised a system for inspecting breadstuffs automatically, using image-processing technology. A camera trained on the production line captures an image of each bun, and software analyzes its color to determine whether it’s over- or undercooked, then adjusts the oven accordingly. The program also checks the bun’s shape and diameter and the distribution of garnishes, like sesame seeds or a cornmeal dusting. Ovenmaker BakeTech is working to commercialize the prototype, which has been saving Flower’s buns for the past year. May you never get stuck with a unique baked good again.

    Revenge of the nerds

    Everywhere I look today I’m finding examples of how nerds (just like me) have phenomenal divergent thinking skills. Creative superpowers, activate!

    One Up: Gamers Help Scientists Solve Molecular Puzzle That Could Lead To AIDS Vaccine [techcrunch.com] – Experts in one arena (biochemistry) connect with novices, aka experts from another arena (gamers), to solve a challenge they’ve grappled with for 15 years. This is a sweet blend of two of my favorite creativity-inducing activities: expert mind meets novice mind AND forced connections between seemingly dissimilar things.

    And last week, FoldIt became more than just a cool idea, or an exercise for scientifically-minded gamers. Scientists have been attempting to decipher a protein called “retroviral protease” for over 15 years, as the protease is one of the key proteins that allows HIV to multiply and replicate itself in living cells. Using FoldIt, gamers were able to identify the structure of the protein – within a matter of 10 days-With the structure of retroviral protease unlocked, scientists can now begin taking the necessary steps to build a drug that could significantly slow the speed at which HIV develops.

    Spurlock Penetrates The Nerd Herd In Comic-Con Doc [fastcompany.com] – It’s not totally surprising that fantasy and fandom are fantastic catalysts for creativity. Intriguing references to curation as preservation of youth and, consequentially, playful fuel for creative adults.

    In a time when zombies, dinosaurs, knights and night-walkers dominate the network lineups and superheroes are the surest way to box office success (hopes are high for Whedon’s megawatt Avengers film, scheduled for release in May 2012), understanding Comic-Con’s creative alchemy has never been more relevant.

    The 10 most gadgety Halloween costumes [msnbc.com] – These don’t really hold a candle to the Comic-Con costumery, but some of us have to start somewhere. And for the record, my dream is to one day rock out a fairly authentic Queen Amidala costume.

    Stumped about what to dress up as this Halloween? How about your favorite gadget? Don’t think it’s possible? Well then check out these crazy examples. But since there isn’t much time left to make something elaborate, you could always fall back on dressing up like a zombie and carrying around your old VCRs and cassette players. Obsolete gadgets, returned from the grave!

    Recycling recursion

    As a recent transplant to the California coast I am both impressed and confounded by local recycling requirements. Fortunately there are plenty of experts willing to share with me a blend of fact and urban myth (i.e. Will I really get a terrible fine in San Francisco if I don’t put my coffee grounds in the right bin? It seems exaggerated yet entirely possible). I also have instructions provided by the city which are surprisingly thorough and (two enthusiastic thumbs up!) include photos so it serves as a great quick visual reference.

     

    With the exception of outliers like dryer lint (isn’t that compostable? I feel like fabric castoffs should be but the popular consensus among those I’ve polled is that lint is just plain trash), I feel like I am getting the hang of this. Then comes cleaning day here at Portigal Consulting. I head out to the building’s communal recycling bin to dispose of the confetti created by our paper shredder and there, in the recycling bin, I encounter an actual paper shredder.

     

    Is this is my first encounter with recycler humor? A jest from one tenant to another? Is the idea here that consumer electronics which create recyclable waste can, in turn, be recycled with said waste? Perhaps this person did not consult the handy resource guide, which (sadly) makes no mention of consumer electronics.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Take Care of Your Little Notebook [nybooks.com] – This piece reflects on (and gently romanticizes) the instant, tangible, temporal act of jotting down a note. Jotting does validate a thought, document the moment and capture it for future reflection by self or others. The writer suggests that ink on paper is somehow more permanent, or at least more accessible, than similarly documented digital thoughts. The piece relies on the conceit that analogue note-jotting is perilously endangered; this seems exaggerated to me.

    Writing with a pen or pencil on a piece of paper is becoming an infrequent activity, even for those who were once taught the rigorous rules of penmanship in grade school and hardly saw a day go by without jotting down a telephone number or a list of food items to buy at the market on the way home, and for that purpose carried with them something to write with and something to write on…No question, one can use a smart phone as an aid to memory, and I do use one myself for that purpose. But I don’t find them a congenial repository for anything more complicated than reminding myself to pick up a pair of pants from the cleaners or make an appointment with the cat doctor. If one has the urge to write down a complete thought, a handsome notebook gives it more class. Even a scrap of paper and a stub of a pencil are more preferable for philosophizing than typing the same words down, since writing a word out, letter by letter, is a more self-conscious process and one more likely to inspire further revisions and elaborations of that thought…Just think, if you preserve them, your grandchildren will be able to read your jewels of wisdom fifty years from now, which may prove exceedingly difficult, should you decide to confine them solely to a smart phone you purchased yesterday.

    Revolution in a Can [foreignpolicy.com] – Has Western graffiti standardized itself into a visual language that is easily exportable, a global commodity? I disagree with some of his assertions – that Western graffiti is merely aesthetic, that graffiti expressions are cliched and “tired” – but the idea that graffiti has been appropriated by Middle Eastern and other very different cultures around the world as a visual form to communicate back to us on recognizable cultural terms is provocative.

    …it does seem clear that the stylistic clichés of graffiti in the West — the huge loopy letters, the exaggerated shadows dropped behind a word — have become an international language that can be read almost transparently, for the content those clichés transmit. Look at New York-style graffiti letters spelling “Free Libya” on a wall in Benghazi or proclaiming “revolution” in Tahrir Square: Rather than aiming at a new aesthetic effect, they take advantage of an old one that’s so well-known it barely registers. That thing called “art” in the West is essentially an insider’s game, thrilling to play but without much purchase on the larger reality outside. We have to look at societies that are truly in crisis to be reminded that images — even images we have sometimes counted as art — can be used for much more than game-playing.

    Gender Bender

    What do diet soda, strollers, and pink have in common? (hint: not women)

    Dr Pepper Ten: Because Men Don’t Drink Diet Soda? [huffingtonpost.com] A new diet soft drink is out and “It’s not for women”. In explicitly marketing the dudeness of the drink, including a definitive guide to social protocol for men known as the Dr Pepper 10 Man’Ments, the ad campagin has apparently been effective at getting both men and women to give it a try.

    A Facebook page for the drink contains an application that allows it to exclude women from viewing content, which includes games and videos aimed at being “manly.” For instance, there’s a shooting gallery where you shoot things like high heels and lipstick, for example. There is also a “man quiz” with questions on activities like fishing and hunting. “One topic people never tire of talking or arguing about is differences between men and women, particularly if women are excluded,” said Deborah Mitchell, executive director for the Center for Brand and Product Management at the University of Wisconsin School of Business. “That will always get someone’s attention.”

    How To Design “Manly” Household Products For The Involved Dad [fastcodesign.com] ‘More Work for Mother’ comes full circle as designers focus on the domestic dad.

    When out in public, even the most rational dad might shun parenting products that make him feel less “manly.” For instance, my friend Chris is a tough-on-the-outside social worker by day, but he also stays at home part-time with his daughter, Sarah. Every time he goes to daycare, the park, or play dates, he has a routine of emptying the entire contents of his wife’s handbag-like diaper bag into his own duffel. “One topic people never tire of talking or arguing about is differences between men and women, particularly if women are excluded,” said Deborah Mitchell, executive director for the Center for Brand and Product Management at the University of Wisconsin School of Business. “That will always get someone’s attention.”

    Defend Your Research: The Color Pink Is Bad for Fighting Breast Cancer [harvardbusinessreview] Gendered approaches to marketing and branding may actually have the opposite effect desired, aka rejecting the hypothesis of “So long as it’s pink-”

    The finding: Seeing the color pink makes women less likely to think they’ll get breast cancer and less likely to donate to cancer research… In psychology, there’s a lot of literature on defensive responses. How do we deal with threatening ideas, with things that are existentially difficult to comprehend? What happens is, these set off very strong denial mechanisms. By adding all this pink, by asking women to think about gender, you’re triggering that. You’re raising the idea that this is a female thing. It’s pink; it’s for you. You could die. The cues themselves aren’t threatening-it’s just a color! But it connects who you are to the threats

    Adrian Hon: Illustrate a better future

    This interview has been edited, condensed, etc.

    Adrian Hon is co-founder and CEO at Six to Start, specializing in game-like stories and story-like games. Clients have included Disney Imagineering, the BBC, Channel 4, and Penguin, and Six to Start has won multiple awards including Best of Show at SXSW.

    He also writes about technology for The Telegraph, is writing a Kickstarter-funded book A History of the Future in 100 Objects, and is the co-founder of Transmedia London. Adrian studied neuroscience at Cambridge, Oxford, and UCSD, and has spoken at TED in California about Mars exploration.

    the Omni project: What was the impetus for A History of the Future in 100 Objects?

    Adrian Hon: The direct impetus was the British Museum and Radio 4’s brilliant series, A History of the World in 100 Objects. While listening to the series, I almost immediately started thinking that this could be a great way to think about the future in a way that would more concrete and accessible to the public.

    However, my broader drive is to illustrate a better future for humanity. Not a dystopia or an unthinking utopia, but a world in which we slowly, gradually become happier, healthier, and more kind to each other – and of course technology has a role in that, as it has over the past millennia, but so do changing social norms and greater tolerance.

    You only need to open a (western) newspaper to see both the right wing and left wing talking about the imminent collapse of society, financial ruin, global ruin, the notion that our children will have a worse life than us, to see that a very strong and current vision of the future is very negative. Ditto for popular culture. Those are absolutely things we should think about, but it’s not all going to be bad.

    tOp: What’s the connection between exploring the future, especially the future of technology, and storytelling?

    AH: I am especially interested in the impact that technology has on people and their experiences and relationships. Stories are one of the best ways of imagining different viewpoints, whether that’s putting yourself in the shoes of someone with a very different upbringing, or someone in a different time. They have their limitations, to be sure – they can offer a seductively simplistic picture and they often imply that life has beginnings, middles, and ends – but they are far more effective than simply rattling off a list of how fast planes will be able to travel in the future.

    That’s why Apple has been so successful, because both its products and its marketing have focused on what you can do with new technology, rather than the specifications of the technology itself.

    From an engineering standpoint it is certainly interesting to know that a phone might have a dual core processor and 1GB of RAM or whatever, but this isn’t what really matters. It could have a quantum computer inside and if it couldn’t check mail quickly, most people couldn’t care less.

    It’s harder to extrapolate those experiences. You can’t take Moore’s Law and say that in 18 months, people will start falling in love with the Siri ‘personal assistant’ on the iPhone 4S, and than 18 months after that, the number of people will double. People use technology in unusual ways.

    I saw a guy at TEDxSheffield say that we should make humanities degrees cost ¬£90k and engineering degrees cost nothing. What a ridiculous thing to say! Technology without a purpose is just an expensive box. That’s not to say that engineers don’t have ideas, but rather to say that the humanities help us understand what we want to do and why.

    tOp: Does your work influence product developers and technologists in making real technology?

    AH: We’ll have to see – the book isn’t out yet! I hope it does, and I know that I’ve been greatly influenced by authors such as Vernor Vinge and Neal Stephenson when it comes to designing games and technology. Ideas don’t just appear out of thin air, they’re formed out of what we read and see and interact with, and stories help give ideas a more substantial form.

    tOp: Conversely, does the work of real technologists impact the way you conceive of technology in order to tell stories?

    AH: To an extent, yes. I want my book to be grounded in real science rather than some of the completely ridiculous “design fiction” out there (Electrolux is particularly bad at getting designers to make concepts that are totally impractical, not to mention often physically impossible). So I do have to keep current with what real technologists and scientists are doing. But it’s possible to be too current and I have to stop myself from just jumping onto whatever the big idea of the day is.

    tOp: Ridiculous “design fiction?”

    AH: I don’t think they’re trying to make impractical and impossible concepts on purpose. I think they’re just doing it by accident because they don’t care either way. You could say that that’s an admirable thing, an unfettering of the imagination, and in other circumstances I would agree. The issue is that their concepts (like a fridge made of cold green plastic ‘nano goo’ that you can just squish apples into and other food into) regularly get plastered on newspapers as some plausible vision of the future, on par with driverless cars, when in fact they are actually far more difficult to make. That’s marketing, I guess.

    tOp: How do you think technology is changing the everyday lives of mainstream consumers?

    AH: It’s changing people’s lives dramatically. A lot of people seem to think that a) We’ve always had mobile phones and b) They’re not that big a deal. The truth is that most people only got mobile phones 20 years ago, the internet 15 years ago, the iPod 10 years ago, and smartphones 5 years ago. I use the word “only” because if you went back to the year 1000 and looked for the technological changes from 980, I suspect you wouldn’t find a huge number. Yet the difference between 2011 and 1991 is, I think, pretty enormous. I can now talk to a billion people around the world for almost nothing.

    I suppose you could say that none of these things really matters compared to stuff like the car and the washing machine, particularly if you look at economic impact, but that would frankly be bullshit. You only need to walk into a university or a school and take away everyone’s phones and laptops to realise how important these things are.

    And I honestly think it’s only just starting. As we see more and more jobs require fewer and fewer humans – from call centres to cars to supermarkets – we’ll see massive strides forward in the standard of living accompanied by massive and sustained unemployment. That’s a big change.

    tOp: When you look at your personal life, what kind of impact is technology having?

    AH: I find that I’m able to do much more than I could before. Like everyone else, I roll my eyes when I hear the words “social media” but I’m able to make a blog post or a tweet that can go around the world in seconds; and I can now publish a printed newspaper, write a book, or even design a game (with a team!) that can go in front of millions, without being held up by gatekeepers. That’s doesn’t make it easy, but it makes it easier than before. You still need to write a good book.

    The other big change is that I am starting to own less stuff. Perhaps this is because:

    a) I have had to move three times in the last three years
    b) I don’t have any kids

    but I find myself very taken with the idea of owning just a few, very high quality, physical possessions. It used to be a real sacrifice to do that but now I can get all of my entertainment and reading digitally, I don’t feel like I’m giving up much in exchange for the ability to move quickly and worry less about getting stuff stolen. I wouldn’t go so far as to extrapolate my experiences to anyone else, but I definitely feel like I’m at Peak Stuff. From here on out, I only own less.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Locker Decorations Growing in Popularity in Middle Schools [NYTimes.com] – Yet another extremely specific product development area opening up. So many that emphasize the customizing (aesthetically, functionally) of environments (or products that represent environments): digital devices, closets, cars, lockers.

    At middle schools across the country, metal lockers that were long considered decorated if they had photos of friends or the teen heartthrob of the moment – Shaun Cassidy years ago, Justin Bieber today – have suddenly become the latest frontier in nesting. Peek inside, and find lockers outfitted with miniature furry carpets, motion-sensor-equipped lamps that glow when the door opens, mirrors, decorative flowers, and magnetic wallpaper in floral and leopard-print patterns. It is hard to say whether retailers have merely capitalized on or actually created demand among girls for the accessories.

    Related Photo Projects [The Adaption to My Generation] – A photographer who takes a picture of himself every day documents many of the other projects online where people are doing something similar.

    Other ‘Passage of Time’ Portrait Projects (Roman Opalka, after every day of painting numbers in his studio, photographs his face. If only we could see documentation of the entire sequence) and Other Obsessive Photo Projects (Adam Seifer documents everything (not really) he eats.

    A History of Pizza Hut’s New Product Releases, 2002-2042 [McSweeney’s] – Satirical design fiction, echoing both Idiocracy and Wired’s Postcards from the Future.

    2002: Meat Lover’s Pizza
    2007: Crust Craver’s Pizza
    2012: Fat Person’s Pizza
    2017: Overweight Woman’s Pizza
    2022: Obese Child’s Pizza
    2027: Fat Man’s Surprise
    2032: Depressed Couple’s Sad Pizza
    2037: Disgusting Pizza, for a Fat Person
    2042: Just the Thing for a Sad Fat Guy

    Steve Portigal teaching “Immersive Field Research Techniques” at UI16

    Join me for Immersive Field Research Techniques coming up November 7 in Boston at User Interface 16.

    My session will be pretty similar to the recent Rosenfeld Media workshop in Seattle, which was pretty well received 🙂






    If you haven’t registered yet, you can use the code STEVEP for $300 off the whole conference, or $50 of a single day.

    I hope to see you there!

    Forty Useless yet Creepy Security Questions

    Inspired by the passionate critiques I read at Authentical, here’s mine. Today, a horrific experience establishing an online account with a State of California website. Although creating a new account is almost an automatic activity at this point, I had to try 5 times to create both a username (which had to have letters and a number, and be between 8 and 12 characters) and a password (which had to have letters both capital and lowercase and a number, etc.) that would work. I’m not sure how that ended up being hard for me, but it did.

    But the hysterical part was the security questions. This site required me to set up answers to four security questions. My use case for the security questions is for those situations where I can’t remember which particular configuration of password I used and I need to get a reminder or reset it. Isn’t that everyone‘s case? So we need the reminders to be unambiguous. Fact-y type things like the standby Mother’s Maiden Name, or first pet’s name, etc. are pretty common. Obviously, if they are unambiguous, they can be broken. Somewhere someone can find out your first pet’s name. It won’t change. It’s objective.

    These questions are much more personal and I suppose thus are less easily divined by an intruder. But the answers are far from immutable. I had absolutely no confidence I could come up with four questions that I would answer the same way 100% of the time. Even if I could fake out my future password-forgetting self by agreeing with him that I would say the Rolling Stones are my favorite band despite regardless of any wavering in my fandom, I couldn’t successfully negotiate the dialog. What was my dream job as a kid? Well, at one point it was stuntman, then actor, then writer, and I think even director (let’s leave the armchair shrink out of this for now, shall we?). If I put stuntman now, what will I remember when I forget my password?

    The Four Questions









    Taking those sets of questions away from the context of the registration process, I find them quite creepy, evoking some intimacy that doesn’t exist between me and the government website, or those Facebook memes cum virii where your friends exhort you to answer a random set of personal questions and then get other people to do the same.

    Note: there are some wonderful satirical examples of bad security questions on Twitter under #BankSecurityQuestionsIdLikeToSee.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Interview with Patricia Ryan Madson on How Improv Can Change the World [Priya Parker] – As often happens, the principles of improv give us a lens towards larger truths about how life – just being in the world – can or should work.

    Trying produces tension and misdirects our focus away from what we are doing onto an obsession with the result. We are doomed to fail when we try to be smart or witty or amazing. It you think about it the people who actually are smart, etc. are focusing on what they are doing rather than how they are doing. I can make an average painting, story, etc. And if I put my attention on just doing what comes naturally, just making it the most obvious to me then the result is commonly pretty good. Trying is misplaced attention. The idea of excellence robs us of our common sense intelligence.

    Snooping in the Age of E-book [NYT] – There are many reasons we advocate for studying people in their own environment. One of them is the richness of the cues you get from that environment. This short piece articulates those cues nicely.

    A bit of gumshoe in someone’s cupboard or closet can reveal far more about them than an entire evening’s worth of chitchat. “Places reflect long series of behavior,” he told me during a recent visit to my home. “If I have a conversation with you, I just get snippets of behavior. Your books, your chairs, your wall hangings represent an accumulation over many years. A space distills repeated acts. That’s why it’s hard to fake.” Of the five major personality traits, three – openness, conscientiousness and extroversion – are clearly revealed in people’s spaces…Snooping, in other words, instead of being an antisocial activity, is actually prosocial. Our spaces are telling others what we’re like even when we’re not. These days, we need such boosts to communication, because as the demise of the bookshelf shows, our true selves are increasingly retreating from public display and disappearing inside our devices. We are becoming, as Ms. Fadiman lamented, more invisible. “Our obsession with privacy is somehow reflected in the fact that our taste is now locked up invisibly inside all of these little boxes.”

    Can the Cult of Bang & Olufsen Last? [Wired] – Rob Walker catches up with the 2011 edition of this long-standing audio company, known for out of this world design and out of reach prices, as he says, “audiophiles lost out to audio audio files.” The closing paragraph is telling and compelling.

    Mantoni sounds intent on prodding B&O toward a less aloof attitude about the marketplace. “We need to go out and talk to customers,” he says. He recently told 30 of his top executives that they would be working in B&O stores for a while to meet customers face-to-face. There’s a message here about design: Of course the company has to keep producing distinctive wares-but these also have to fit shoppers’ actual lives.

    Nicolas Nova: Scanning for signals

    We’ll be interviewing experts and thought-leaders to uncover a range of perspectives on technology and its impact on society. If you or someone you know would be a good interview, let us know!

    This interview has been edited, condensed, etc.

    Nicolas Nova is a consultant and researcher who undertakes field studies to inform and evaluate the creation of innovative products and services. His work is about exploring and understanding people’s needs, motivations and contexts to map new design opportunities and help designers and engineers. In addition to design ethnography, he is interested in foresight about scanning/analysis of signals about the future of various technologies. He applies his methodologies in the domains of urban informatics, mobile and location-based media as well as video games and networked objects/robots.

    He also teaches interaction design and ethnography in design schools (HEAD-Geneva, ENSCI Les Ateliers in Paris) and is curator at the Lift conferences.

    the Omni project: How do you define “technology?”

    Nicolas Nova: It seems that technology nowadays refers to the design and usage of specific devices (tool, instrument, machine, etc.) to perform a specific function. Given my interest in a people-centered perspective, I use this definition. I don’t make any specific distinction between the digital and the non-digital. I see a vacuum cleaner or a dishwasher as a piece of technology. Perhaps this is because I work in fields related to ubiquitous computing, in which any artifact can be augmented by information and communication technology..

    Finally, a technology is not inert like a stone or a meteorite falling from the sky. As Howard Becker stated “It makes more sense to see those artifacts as the frozen remains of collective action, brought to life whenever someone uses them.” This is important as it means that a technology has been designed and made by people, and thus embeds certain preconceptions that have implications when “users” employ those technologies.

    tOp: Thinking about the many things I’ve seen you curate/aggregate/ observe such as technology failures embodied as dreams (jet packs, smart fridges, smart kitchens, discarded PCs, video phones), what do these stories (and they way they are told) reflect about our culture and our relationship with technology? Are there positives or negatives? Anxieties? Hopes or expectations? Is there humor?

    NN: This is related to the Becker quote. As any piece of technology is the result of a process carried out by humans, some cultural traits are embedded into it, such as: preconceptions about how the technology should be used, the context in which the technology can be deployed, etc. The example of the smart fridge is pretty interesting if you think about all the assumptions designers and engineers made about people’s relationship to food, such as the idea that we don’t want to go shopping and that consumption is just a matter of ordering stuff automatically.

    So, if you take any piece of technology, you can uncover (decipher!?) these sorts of assumptions. They generally reveal the kinds of cultural inclination the people in charge of innovation bring to the table: values about what is important and what is not, hopes about a potential future, the need to go faster, the illusion of being more efficient, etc. It’s hard to say if they are “positive” or “negative” because these are very relative. Even if I dislike the very notion of a smart fridge, I can certainly understand that a bunch of guys with lab coats in an aseptic R&D center really though that their project would be super positive and would change the world. What I mean here is simply that technologies embed some values and that these values are shaped by society at a given point in time and by the companies. It’s clear that the Zeitgeist influences the design of products and services. If you consider that the 50-60s were all about the space race, speed and nuclear stuff or that the early 90s were all about cyber-whatever then you can see that this is necessarily reflected in the way technologies are created.

    The technological failures that I am especially interested in are the one that are repeated over time such as the videophone or the smart fridge. They clearly reflect this recurring tension between technological possibilities (e.g. automation) and a flawed vision of human aspirations.

    It’s interesting you mention the notion of humor, as generally all these projects definitely suffer from a clear lack of this dimension!

    tOp: Are dreams of possible technologies ever realized?

    NN: Yes, but they are never really used as we expected. Something is realized and over time the ideas find their way by being hybridized with others because of contextual or behavioral adjustments by users.

    There’s a perpetual gap between the intents of designers/engineers/marketers and the real use of the product. This is the beauty of human life: we always repurpose artifacts into something different. Fortunately, this is what I am passionate about! Understanding how products are repurposed is a good way to find more user-centered avenues and iterate to create new versions.

    I am really curious to see what the smart fridge will become and how upcoming versions will necessarily include other notion of “smartness” based on more human needs and aspirations. Sadly, I don’t think many companies in this business understood they should adopt this humble stance.

    tOp: When you think about mainstream consumers, how do you think digital technology is changing their everyday lives?

    NN: The biggest change is possibly the use a digital media for a growing set of activities: listening to music, communicating, controlling the heating system of your house, etc. This does not simply mean that any artifact at home gets digital capabilities, but that everything becomes mediated through different channels (generally your computer and your cell phone).

    What technology also does is reveal things that are implicit or invisible. It makes things apparent because there are digital traces: SMS stored in your phone, an email message in your email program, your presence on Facebook, etc. And more and more people are being held accountable for this content.

    Among all the changes brought by technologies, the most conspicuous is what I call the decision trade-off. Technologies are supposed to help people, or at least to be convenient, and possibly prevent you from doing things you did not want to do any more. Interestingly, most of the time, technologies lead to new decisions that we never really had to take. For instance, choosing a TV channel among 350 possibilities is generally painful and somewhat new (it’s curious to think that other industries found solutions for this, e.g. shuffle mode on MP3 players). More and more micro-decisions like this have to be made everyday, and it can be tiresome.

    tOp:
    When you look at your personal life, what kind of impact is technology having? What specific changes are you experiencing?

    NN:
    I don’t have a car (I rent one when I need one), I have no dishwasher, I use a collective laundry (in Switzerland we have one in each building) and I don’t subscribe to any network TV system (mostly because I find them useless and overlapping with what I find on the Interwebs). I have to admit I am very cautious in the way I use digital technologies. That said, I use digital technologies a lot and it forces me to be extra careful about:

    • Work/life balance: I try to shy away from the computer/smartphone in the evening, during weekends and vacations. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I won’t use one of these at those times, but I try to avoid spending a long time browsing the web/reading email/documents, etc. and prefer going for a walk, reading a book, hiking or visiting friends. The more I use digital technologies, the more I need to find moments during which I escape from them.
    • Attention: more and more multitasking, which is bad (for me and the task at hand).
    • Privacy: as I mentioned, digital technologies reveal things that used to be implicit or invisible. This means that I sometimes need to be careful about the traces I leave.


    tOp:
    With the changes that technology brings, what do you believe society is gaining, or losing?

    NN:The population is not equal. People who grew up with these technologies will be less stressed out by the vague micro-decisions we have to consider, simply because they have lived with this new norm. This is a big difference compared to our grandparents, for instance. Also see Steven Johnson’s book Everything Bad is Good for You. Overall, I see a set of tradeoffs:

    • A huge and diverse quantity of material that can be useful or interesting for anyone curious. I grew up in the countryside and it was a pain in the ass to get access to “long-tail” music/books/fanzines/etc. The web is a formidable source of difference for people intrigued by others’ cultures and who want to learn.
    • However, this huge quantity of material makes us run like headless chickens, taking a quick bite from lots of sources of information but we may lose our ability to sit still and think deeply about a certain topic.
    • At the psychological level, the capacity to cope with large amount of information, integrate multiple factors and make decisions. Yet we also suffer from decision fatigue (e.g., bombarded by requests, information and data).
    • Privacy is shifting and we are more and more obliged to share personal information with others.
    • An urge to be reachable (and aware of current trends) 24/7 which is tiresome too.

    tOp: Anything else to share with us?

    NN: “One of the diseases of this age is the multiplicity of books; they doth so overcharge the world that it is not able to digest the abundance of idle matter that is every day hatched and brought forth into the world.” Barnaby Rich (1580-1617) wrote that in 1613. This quote inspires me to ask questions about the situation back then and now: if our ancestors felt this overload, how did they cope with it? What happened then? Did this feeling vanish? Was it a continuous feeling or recurring? What about now? Can we draw some inspiration from what happen in the past? Or should we find new ways to move forward?

    Portigal Consulting welcomes Tamara Christensen

    Today we’re pleased to welcome Tamara Christensen, coming to us all the way from Kansas City!

    Tamara most recently headed up design research and directed integrated innovation efforts at R&D/Leverage. In her last gig she learned to play nice with both designers and engineers, and provided their culture with a creative fuel-injection. In addition to her love of research, Tamara has a few serious crushes on facilitating and teaching. She has taught at the University of Kansas and Arizona State University and given workshops on research and creative problem solving. Tamara is currently passionate about helping her son design the (am)bush costume of his dreams for Halloween and speaking at the upcoming Oklahoma Creativity Forum on November 1.

    We are giddy with excitement over Tamara’s arrival.

    Welcome to the team, Tamara!

    Tech relationship similes

    Over the past week or so, I’ve noticed some of the ways folks in the media frame and express our relationship to entities we interact with on the web. There’s something odd about the murkiness of roles and power dynamics. One thing is for sure – it’s gone far beyond the consumer-producer relationship.

    To Daniel Soar of the London Review of Books, with Google, users are like teachers. By interacting with Google we are unwittingly instructing the machine, giving it lessons on human behavior. I like to think Google, the distributed Google-monster, finds us fascinating, an enormous virtual Andy Warhol.

    We teach [Google] while we think it’s teaching us. Levy tells the story of a new recruit with a long managerial background who asked Google’s senior vice-president of engineering, Alan Eustace, what systems Google had in place to improve its products. ‘He expected to hear about quality assurance teams and focus groups’ – the sort of set-up he was used to. ‘Instead Eustace explained that Google’s brain was like a baby’s, an omnivorous sponge that was always getting smarter from the information it soaked up.’ Like a baby, Google uses what it hears to learn about the workings of human language. The large number of people who search for ‘pictures of dogs’ and also ‘pictures of puppies’ tells Google that ‘puppy’ and ‘dog’ mean similar things, yet it also knows that people searching for ‘hot dogs’ get cross if they’re given instructions for ‘boiling puppies.’

    To Matthew Creamer of Ad Age, with Facebook, we are like disgruntled, unpaid employees. A more pointless, powerless role may not exist!

    Some things are lost with each one of these Facebook changes, but they are not only matters of usability, navigation, privacy and other factors in our part-time but ever-more-involving jobs working as ad impressions for a rich company in Palo Alto, Calif. The stuff that inconveniences you in the short-term may make you rage with a hotness that, if spotted by an alien scout, would either send the visitor whimpering back to Zebulon or alarm him onto war footing, but it’s only so important. You will adapt. Or you will leave.

    So, have they got it right? Are we teachers? Employees? Something else? Have you noticed other examples? How would you describe your relationship to Google or Facebook?

    See Steve’s recent related post on Facebook changes, in which the above Matthew Creamer quote is cited as a comment.

    Bringing truth to advertising

    Questioning the nature of research [research-live.com] – Ogilvy Group UK vice chairman Rory Sutherland advocates for context-based research to inform advertising, which is mostly served now by traditional quantitative market or survey research methodologies. We are messy beings, and straight-forward research approaches yield neat numbers that have nothing to do with the reality of decision making. This is preaching to the choir on this forum, but the interview is chock full of quotables! In the end, he calls for research that gets closer to people, and for an experimental approach to developing marketing and advertising.

    No-one in any research group would ever say, “If there are four brands of shampoo, I’ll buy the one that has most bottles on the shelf”, or “I’ll choose the one that’s on the third shelf up because it’s the one that doesn’t require much reaching down” or “I’ll look at the prices of three products and choose the one in the middle.” In reality, we use heuristics and shortcuts and cognitively miserliness like this all the time. The mistake that quite a lot of advertising methodologies make is assuming that brand preference translates perfectly into purchase behaviour. It’s also making the assumption, of course, that preference is formed in advance of behaviour. Quite a lot of evidence from both behavioural sciences and from neuroscience suggests that we act first and form our opinions in light of our actions.

    I think the way we think we decide and the way we actually decide don’t have that much in common. The conscious rational brain isn’t the Oval Office; it isn’t there making executive decisions in our minds. It’s actually the press office issuing explanations for actions we’ve already taken.

    I’m emphatically not downplaying the importance of fame, awareness, mental availability – whatever you want to call it. What I would downplay is detailed dissections of consumers stated reasons for adopting or planning to adopt a particular course of action.

    Quite often, people within a group will pretend they are a maximiser, when most of our decisions are taken as satisficers. We always claim in the presence of others that we are great connoisseurs looking for the best value for money we can find, but most of the time we simply don’t have the mental energy for that. It would be an insane use of our mental resources in any case. So what we do is look for something that is pretty much guaranteed not to be crap. That’s why in some ways you can never quite make sense of the popularity of McDonalds. Everybody, whenever you talk about food, they’ll always talk bullshit about health and Italy and olive oil. But actually, when it comes to eating, what we want is a place that won’t rip us off, won’t give us food poisoning, the toilets will be clean, the service will be OK, and everything will be pretty good. Paul Dolan, the government’s wellbeing adviser, says: “Nothing is as important as we think it is when we’re thinking about it”.

    We make change. It’s what we do.

    Here’s a snippet from What Was Facebook’s Best Redesign, Anyway? [Technologizer]

    I had fun looking back at the fruitless nature of Facebook redesign backlash. No one is surprised anymore when a redesigned Facebook home page-such as the one that rolled out today-causes an outrage.

    But that made me wonder: what design, exactly, do people want? Was there ever a single home page layout to which Facebook users, given the choice, would happily revert? In other words, have we cooked up in our minds some ideal vision of an “old Facebook” that never really existed?

    I’d like to declare this as a National Week of Umbrage. Between Netflix and Facebook, it’s been a strange few days. And still, we have our share of “It’s just a [blank], get over it!” and (as in that post) “What do people WANT?” Sadly, most of it misses the point. While there are definitely features that suck (wait, I’ve got to manage two queues? wait, you’ve reordered stories from the friends I just recategorized according to what scheme again?) and of course features that are improved, this is really about how you manage change. This isn’t, ultimately, about features. Facebook is the social OS for many many people. Netflix is the entertainment OS for many many people. We invest countless hours in using the thing, including setting it up just the way we want. That’s our choice, in fact, it’s almost an imperative. I can organize my fridge and my sock drawer in a way that I find appealing, satisfying, efficient, or whatever. And no, I don’t have to be on the autism spectrum to do that and to find reward from doing that.

    When things change, without warning, without rationale, without a clear sense of how things are different – and better – for me, without an easy way to adjust to the changes, then we’ve got a problem. Google Docs redesigned something or other the other day. Today I previewed the changes. They are vaguely dramatic, aesthetically. But my workflow hasn’t changed, and I will adjust. I didn’t find myself unable to find my docs, or having to do more work instead. I’d hardly hold up Google as some ideal user-centered culture, but they seem, in general, to roll out redesigns, and even business changes, without a lot of teeth-gnashing on our part.

    The intimate relationships we have with these services are indeed emotional ones. When change is foisted surprisingly on you, it’s unsettling.

    Change is inevitable, necessary, good. But I’d love to see some less-hamfisted rollouts, and I’d love to see these companies understand – at the very fiber of their being – how much we are connected to their products and how their brutish ways make us feel. It’s not the medium, it’s the lack of message.

    How did we do X before Y?

    As I posted previously, we’re looking for examples of how technology has changed an ordinary task so fundamentally that you can’t believe you once did it differently. As I wrote “Even though I was there and did it, it is beyond my power to comprehend now.” Thanks to everyone who contributed:

    Laura Borns: How did I ever figure out how to get places with a folded paper map rather than GPS?

    Cyd Harrell: How did I ever maintain relationships without voicemail and text? Remember when you actually had to get somebody on the phone?

    Chris Gielow: How did I ever get things done (like the bank and the office) when I had to physically go places to do them?

    Grady Karp: How did I ever pick people up at the airport before cell phones?

    Lora Oehlberg: How did we meet someone for lunch at a specific time and place? (cellphones have taken care of a lot of last-minute details of “I’m running late” or “I’m on my way” or “I’m on the other side of the street”)?

    Lora Oehlberg: How did we find out about music we’d like before friends sending YouTube links, or Pandora (I suppose at a music store, at the radio, or mix tapes)?

    Lora Oehlberg (who rocks, if you can’t tell): How did we figure out who was talking to us on the phone before Caller ID? I remember there used to be a polite way of inquiring who was talking, or informing the person on the other end who you were (I’ve forgotten how this exchange goes now). Now we either a) avoid unknown numbers or b) listen to a semi-familiar voice immediately start talking, assuming that we’ll eventually figure out who it is based on what they’re talking about.

    Peter Stahl: How did we ever create a flyer or newsletter without word processing or presentation software; when all we had was scissors?

    Peter Stahl: How did we ever create a photograph or movie without a phone (like I would have believed “phone” 15 years ago!); we had to use film: purchase, load, expose, unload, take to developers, wait, pick up from developers, pay!

    Peter Stahl (who also joins the club of rock stars): How did we make copies before personal printers and scanners? We had to use carbon paper!

    @Kimwolf notes that she never has to wait to get home to check her calendar, because it’s always in her pocket.

    The smartphone makes a prominent appearance here, of course, but really it’s a nice list from information-related tasks, to social norms, to interacting and collaborating with others, to pure production. This is helpful to put together with our other work streams trying to get at the different thematic areas to explore.

    We’ll be running our next crowdsourcing request soon. Meanwhile, feel free to add to this list wherever you are seeing it!

    Updated!
    Cat Macaulay: How did we distract ourselves from important tasks before social media? Guess that what was the executive toys were for, do they still exist or has the pendulum thingie been replaced by Twitter and Facebook?

    Lora again: How did we get into buildings? Or control access to physical spaces over time? I’m at a university where RFIDs in cardkeys are THE way to let people in/out of rooms. Just set students’ cardkey access to the computer lab expire at the end of the semester, no problem.

    Jeff McKown: How did they ever change the channel before the remote control? (Wait, I remember now…my dad would make me get up and do it.)

    Nicolas Nova: How did I locate text in a document before Apple/Ctrl-F?

    Scott Thorpe: I can’t even remember how I sent text-based messages before email. Did I print it out and mail it? Did I fax it? Did I just spend a long time on the phone waving my hands in the air explaining complex ideas?

    Linda: How did we plan vacations without the internet? We relied on travel agents? And how did they know what places were worth visiting and what hotels were attractive and convenient?

    Ryan DeGorter: How did I ever check the time while mobile? I no longer need to have an annoyance on my wrist 16 hours of the day.

    Things that are obsolete

    The modem sound has gone the way of the brabble.

    Robert Fulford: When words die [nationalpost.com] The Oxford Concise Dictionary has been forced to abandon words. Never fear, they will remain in the OED, which is not restrained by promises of concision!

    The Concise has also set aside “threequel,” meaning the third book in a series; it never caught on, perhaps because trilogies are out of fashion. The Concise has likewise abandoned “brabble,” which means a paltry but noisy quarrel, and “growlery,” meaning the private den of a man. I knew none of these words in their prime and now must recognize that they are on their way out. It leaves an odd feeling, a cousin to the nebulous melancholy that accompanies the reading of an obituary of someone you would like to have known…Shouldn’t we have a category for endangered words? Perhaps we need a system of adopting words to keep them safe and well, the way people adopt favourite stretches of highway. We would sign up, promise to use our chosen words as often as possible and of course object when they are misused or threatened with abandonment.

    Bleeoo! #RIPdialup [bleeoo.com] That strange modem sound hasn’t been heard for awhile in most parts, and is not missed, at least by this former dialer-upper. Yet, another strange nostalgia breeds, even for this horrible sound. The bleeoo-crackle meant that you were just sitting there waiting, pointlessly, anticipating the blissful connection. We endured it only because we had to. I guess it’s today’s equivalent of having to walk to school through the snow uphill both ways. Kids today!

    Remember the glory of dialing up? Kids today won’t know the shrill cry of a 9600 baud, or the magical “doodleeedoo” of a 28.8 modem. Help preserve our digital history. Join us in recording your best impression of a “modem handshake” sound.

    (Thanks Steve, for the pointer to Bleeoo!)

    The role of a story

    Evocative example of stories and flow as elements of problem solving from Town of Cats, a Haruki Murakami story in the New Yorker. Note: emphasis mine.

    He had been regarded as a math prodigy from early childhood, and he could solve high-school math problems by the time he was in third grade. Math was, for young Tengo, an effective means of retreat from his life with his father. In the mathematical world, he would walk down a long corridor, opening one numbered door after another. Each time a new spectacle unfolded before him, the ugly traces of the real world would simply disappear. As long as he was actively exploring that realm of infinite consistency, he was free.

    While math was like a magnificent imaginary building for Tengo, literature was a vast magical forest. Math stretched infinitely upward toward the heavens, but stories spread out before him, their sturdy roots stretching deep into the earth. In this forest there were no maps, no doorways. As Tengo got older, the forest of story began to exert an even stronger pull on his heart than the world of math. Of course, reading novels was just another form of escape-as soon as he closed the book, he had to come back to the real world. But at some point he noticed that returning to reality from the world of a novel was not as devastating a blow as returning from the world of math. Why was that? After much thought, he reached a conclusion. No matter how clear things might become in the forest of story, there was never a clear-cut solution, as there was in math. The role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a problem into another form. Depending on the nature and the direction of the problem, a solution might be suggested in the narrative. Tengo would return to the real world with that suggestion in hand. It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell. It served no immediate practical purpose, but it contained a possibility.

    The Robot Costume story

    My town of Montara is one of those over-the-top Halloween communities that dot the October landscape. This place goes all out. Years ago, we moved in on the morning of Halloween and that afternoon the new neighbors stopped by to warn us: “Hope you’ve got a LOT of candy!”

    Last year I saw this robot, now one of the images I chose for our business cards.

    It was only in the last couple of years that we even decided to venture out; this past year we finally made it onto the Montara social register: we were invited to two parties-for-grownups with costumes and alcohol.


    The party-for-grownup vibe permeates the whole town

    As we reached one of our parties, we saw the abandoned robot costume beside their neighbor’s driveway. It was a glorious costume – the heart-shaped light would flash off and on – but obviously not that comfortable. So we passed by during the aftermath. Fortunately our friends showed us some video footage and the occupied costume was indeed wonderful. Still, the costume with its discarded legs has a special bit of the curious about it.

    More Montara at Halloween:


    The line for the “Witch’s House” – a long-standing attraction



    The town also hosts an increasing number of up-and-coming attractions


    Kiddie and grownup flavors of frozen treats on the street



    The neighborhood set decorator turns her front yard into a horrifyingly hilarious (or is that hilariously horrifying) scene. We learned about this place off-season when their garage sale featured a disproportionate amount of ghoulish cast-offs.

    Give us your examples: How did we do X before Y?

    As we begin trying to define the focus and scope of our exploration, we’re in our own lives with our eyes and ears open, immersing ourselves in the space. We’re capturing sources for secondary research, speaking to each other about what we’re reading, and as we always do in in a project, bringing mindfulness and reflection to the topic as we experience it ourselves.

    Last week we found ourselves reminiscing with wonder about our work environments from the 90s, where we were expected to perform as we do now, but without (among many tools) a way to schedule meetings with each other. If I recall, I never had a calendar (before a shared calendar across an office network appeared) of any kind. Other than an informal “Hey, let’s meet tomorrow at 10 about this…” we just didn’t formalize our schedules with the granularity that is common now. “How did we collaborate without a calendar program?” was my head-scratching takeway. Even though I was there and did it, it is beyond my power to comprehend now.

    A few hours later (hooray for serial noticing) I see this post on Alissa Walker‘s Facebook page:

    Aha. This is a thing. How did we do X before Y?

    So what’s yours? (Yes, we’re crowdsourcing!) For you, what’s the thing you marvel at, where you savor the value of Y to help you do X and can’t imagine (even if you’ve experienced it) how it was possible?

    Note that we’re looking for real examples from your own life. We’ll collect ’em and put together another post with the results.

    If you’re seeing this post on our you can comment here. If you’re seeing it on Facebook, you can comment there as well. Or tweet it, using hashtag #XbeforeY. Or drop us an email with your thoughts!

    It’s the little things

    The secret life of pronouns [newscientist.com] – James Pennebaker’s studies show that the use of small, seemingly insignificant “function” words reveal a great deal. We cognitively focus more on the “content” words, which provide meaning and provoke the imagination. Function words are used more unconsciously.

    Function words serve quieter, supporting roles – connecting, shaping and organising the content words. They are what determines style… They are used at high rates, while also being short and hard to detect. They are processed in the brain differently than content words. And, critically, they require social skills to use properly… It seems the use of articles can tell us about the ways people think, feel and connect with others. The same is true for pronouns, prepositions, and virtually all function words. One area this is useful is in personality research. As you might guess, different patterns of function words reveal important parts of people’s personalities. In one experiment, we analysed hundreds of essays written by my students and we identified three very different writing styles: formal, analytic and narrative. Formal writing often appears stiff, sometimes humourless, with a touch of arrogance. It includes high rates of articles and prepositions but very few I-words, and infrequent discrepancy words, such as “would”, and adverbs…Those who score highest in formal thinking tend to be more concerned with status and power and are less self-reflective. They drink and smoke less and are more mentally healthy, but also tend to be less honest…We have also found that function words can detect emotional states, spot when people are lying, predict where they rank in social hierarchies and the quality of their relationships. They reveal much about the dynamics within groups. They can be used to identify the authors of disputed texts, and much more. The smallest, stealthiest words in our vocabulary often reveal the most about us.

    He then turns it on himself!

    Using a recording device programmed to switch on for about 30 seconds once every 12 to 14 minutes, I have been able to analyse my family’s interactions. The first weekend I wore it seemed uneventful. But when I transcribed my recording I was distressed to see the way I spoke to my 12-year-old son. My tone was often detached. I used big words, lots of articles and few pronouns. My language was warmer with my wife and daughter. The experience had a profound effect on me. Thereafter, I made a conscious attempt to be warmer and more psychologically available to my son. I have also analysed my language in emails, classroom lectures, articles and letters. Sometimes my language is predictable, sometimes it isn’t. And when it isn’t, I learn something about myself.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    The Mechanic Muse – From Scroll to Screen [NYTimes.com] – It’s easy to get caught up in the user interface changes that digital technology brings to everyday activities like reading, but of course there are very cool precursors (if you will) in the history of book design.

    But so far the great e-book debate has barely touched on the most important feature that the codex introduced: the nonlinear reading that so impressed St. Augustine. If the fable of the scroll and codex has a moral, this is it. We usually associate digital technology with nonlinearity, the forking paths that Web surfers beat through the Internet’s underbrush as they click from link to link. But e-books and nonlinearity don’t turn out to be very compatible. Trying to jump from place to place in a long document like a novel is painfully awkward on an e-reader, like trying to play the piano with numb fingers. You either creep through the book incrementally, page by page, or leap wildly from point to point and search term to search term. It’s no wonder that the rise of e-reading has revived two words for classical-era reading technologies: scroll and tablet. That’s the kind of reading you do in an e-book. The codex is built for nonlinear reading – not the way a Web surfer does it, aimlessly questing from document to document, but the way a deep reader does it, navigating the network of internal connections that exists within a single rich document like a novel. Indeed, the codex isn’t just another format, it’s the one for which the novel is optimized. The contemporary novel’s dense, layered language took root and grew in the codex, and it demands the kind of navigation that only the codex provides

    Thanks, Ilya!

    Ultrabook: Intel’s $300 million plan to beat Apple at its own game [Ars Technica] – Although a divergence from the main theme of the post, the author’s narrative of trying to make a laptop purchase online is hilarious and depressing all at the same time.

    The options I get are just… meaningless. Yes, I want “Everyday Computing,” so I want an Inspiron. But hang on, I also want “Design & Performance,” so I want an XPS. Wait a second, I want “Thin & Powerful,” too. So maybe I want a Z Series? But the only line that apparently matches my broad search criteria-lightweight, 11-14″-I wouldn’t even consider because I don’t want a “gaming” laptop, and so I’m never going to click Alienware! Is this the best way to sell laptops? Create a bunch of categories with arbitrary, overlapping labels, and just hope that buyers manage to fight through the system to find something that isn’t wretched? Maybe HP will be better… no, not really. Their site has some outright weirdnesses (yes, I’m in the UK, and yes, we’re metric, but no, I don’t want my screen measured diagonally in centimeters; we don’t do that). The same odd labels cover everything-I know I don’t want “Mini/Netbook,” but I want both “Everyday Computing” (that term again) and “High performance” (because I don’t want it to be slow, do I?). And who knows what “Envy” means? When I tick my screen size and weight boxes, I get back a crop of lousy netbooks that are almost the complete opposite of what I want.

    Announcing the Omni project!

    Look out honey, cuz I’m using technology!*

    Today I’m thrilled to announce that Portigal Consulting is embarking on a self-funded study about the impact that digital technology is having on our lives. That’s certainly ambitious, when put that way, and of course we will be refining our direction, our research question, our business question, etc. in the initial steps (and beyond). We know what we think we want to understand, and we know that it’s going to change.

    The impetus for this project is that we constantly hear from research subjects (almost across any project category) that they are challenged by technology, that they are “addicted” to their smartphone, Facebook, their Netflix queue, and beyond, and they struggle to balance the benefits with the more subtle impacts that they don’t understand. Erica (a participant in our previous self-funded study, Reading Ahead), says it well

    For instance, my oldest and dearest friend was in Oregon. And sure, I had to pick up the phone and call her, and interact with her, and listen to her voice and talk to her, and a have a conversation. And I would do that. And gosh, like lately, it’s just horrible because, you know, “Oh, we should call. We should talk.” And then I see her Facebook statuses all the time, so in a weird way I feel like I’m completely caught up with her in ways that I would never have been before, which is great. On the other hand, it makes me very lazy. It’s just like I just don’t want to have a real connection in real life. It’s all just so trying and tired, like, “Oh, I don’t want to have the very like long call where I have to catch her up on all these things that involve lots of stuff.” I never used to be like that, so I’m worried that all of these devices that are supposed to make our lives easier and connect us more are, you know, in a sort of sci-fi-y way, making us a little bit zombied out…

    At the same time, we are experiencing a torrent (if you will) of cultural stories about the positive impacts of technology (especially economically) and the big and small losses (e.g., Bill Keller on The Twitter Trap; Dalton Conley on college students seeking like-minded roommates).

    As I challenged designers, marketers, innovators and product peeps in my interactions column The Hard Work Lies Ahead (If You Want It), these issues exist in much of the work that we are all doing, but they are also being ignored.

    We hope to shed some light and provide some grip points (insights, frameworks, opportunities) that teams can use to deal with this complex situation.

    An Open-Ended Approach

    Unlike many of our engagements, where a specific scope is agreed upon, detailing methodology, timeline, etc. we are going to be a lot more free in our approach to the Omni project. Our priority will always be our client work, so as workflow and capacity shifts around, we’ll be fitting this in as we can. We also are excited about starting with less of a specific objective than in a consulting gig, and figuring it out as we go. We have a lot of ideas about methods already (from inventories of pop culture, to a bibliography and secondary research effort, to in-context interviews purely to try and formulate the problem) and know that those will continue to evolve, as we pick the next step that makes sense from that particular vantage point.

    the Omni project?

    We wondered who our client could be for this project and thought of Omni Consumer Products, the “fictional megacorporation” from Robocop (and not the real-yet-homagey company – see more on this from Rob Walker, if your bag is meta).


    Omni Consumer Products, bringing every sort of technology to the masses, whether they want it or not

    We also thought about OMNI magazine which, during my formative high-school years offered a science fiction/science fact vision of the future, the future we are living in now.


    OMNI magazine – gaze upon just about every sciencelicious cover here

    Of course, “omni” also evokes key attributes to how we’re experiencing technology right now, such omnipotent, omnipresence, and omniscient.



    We’ll be continuously blogging about what we’re doing, what we’re thinking, what we’re learning. Stay tuned!

    Steve appears in two podcasts

    Steve was interviewed about interviewing users by Gerry Gaffney for the User Experience podcast (transcript here, audio here) and by Jared Spool for the UIE Spoolcast (transcript here, audio here).

    The original Clippy

    Mousetraps, Maybe, but Can You Build a Better Paper Clip? [wsj.com] – Embedded in this article about Klix, ACCO’s new entry into the paperclip fray are some fun tidbits about the humble supply, which has been a staple in offices (ahem) since 1903. The subtext of the article seems to question the wisdom of reinventing the poster-child for commodotization at all.

    A bigger mystery is what Americans do with the estimated 11 billion clips sold annually in the U.S. That works out to about 35 per American. “We actually can’t understand how the U.S. consumption can be so huge,” says Martin Yang, a senior vice president at Officemate. Many, of course, “are used to hold papers together temporarily,” as the International Trade Commission, a U.S. agency, helpfully explained in a July report on the clip trade. That isn’t the full story, though. “I use them a lot,” says William Zamstein, a 23-year-old Penn State student who worked as an intern at the U.S. Department of Labor this summer. “Staples are totally permanent, and they leave marks,” he says. Mr. Zamstein also has used paper clips to clean his fingernails. Others report using clips to hang Christmas tree ornaments, clean pipes and unclog tubes of glue. Some bend clips while talking on the phone, then flip them into the trash. Certain types of shredders have been made tough enough to digest all the clips office workers toss out with stacks of old paper.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Mermaids poised for their mainstream splash [SF Chronicle] – Here’s an emergent trend that we’ll all want to get in front of, whether it’s cultural literacy or presents for friends and children, or perhaps cashing in before it the bubble bursts.

    Mermaids are about to swamp vampires and zombies as supernatural rainmakers in popular culture. Photographer Mark Anderson is releasing a book called “M: Mermaids of Hollywood,” that features Anna Faris, the Kardashians, Kristen Bell and others in tails. Carolyn Turgeon, author of “Mermaid: A Twist on the Classic Tale,” has agreed to run a new magazine, Mermaids & Mythology. The true beneficiaries of the mermaid bull market are small-business owners who cornered the mermaid market before there actually was one. Eric Ducharme, who lives near Tampa, makes about seven latex tails a month for $500 to $700 and since December has created 25 silicone ones for $1,600 to $5,000, including one for Lady Gaga. The Weeki Wachee Springs Underwater Theater, also near Tampa, started its mermaid shows in 1947. In danger of closing just a few years ago, it’s now hosting sold-out camps for adults who want to swim with tails.

    Masked Protesters Aid Time Warner’s Bottom Line [NYTimes.com] – The mask wearers have been seen here in the Bay Area recently, in protests against the BART transit system preemptively disconnecting cell service in advance of a protest. There’s clearly a market for knockoff masks, which may lead to some corrective corporate actions, which may in turn lead to more protests and indeed an entire economic turnaround.

    When members [of Anonymous] appear in public to protest censorship and what they view as corruption, they don a plastic mask of Guy Fawkes, the 17th-century Englishman who tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Stark white, with blushed pink cheeks, a wide grin and a thin black mustache and goatee, the mask resonates with the hackers because it was worn by a rogue anarchist challenging an authoritarian government in “V for Vendetta,” the movie produced in 2006 by Warner Brothers. What few people seem to know, though, is that Time Warner, one of the largest media companies in the world and parent of Warner Brothers, owns the rights to the image and is paid a licensing fee with the sale of each mask.

    Come On, Feel the Mud [NYTimes.com] – This interactive feature has some lovely, if muddy pictures, but mostly I was struck to learn that there’s a Polish Woodstock. If nothing else, we are clearly a decades past the dawn of political correctness where that phrase could only be the punchline to an offensive joke.

    The original Woodstock festival was known for both its music and its mud. Although it is no relation to the American festivals, the Woodstock Festival in Kostrzyn nad Odra, Poland, does its best to recreate the experience by building giant mud pits in which thousands of young Poles writhe and wrestle to a hard-driving beat. Now in its 17th year, the Polish Woodstock mixes older Western rock bands like Prodigy and Helloween with popular Polish acts like Laki Lan and Enej. Despite the aggressive music, the vibe in the mud pit is much more summer of love. “We are moshing, we are throwing sand and dirt, but it’s really friendly,” said Michal Knapinski, 16. “When someone falls, there are hundreds of hands pulling him up.”

    Listen to Steve speak with Jared Spool about “Immersive Field Research”

    I was recently interviewed by Jared Spool in anticipation of November’s User Interface 16 conference (where I’ll be leading a full-day workshop).

    You can listen to the interview below, and read the transcript here.

    To download the audio Right-Click and Save As… (Windows) or Ctrl-Click (Mac).

    There’s a great sort of, what I think of as a great myth around that that maybe we can talk about for a sec. Just the oft repeated idea that you can’t ask people what they want because they can’t tell you so that if you’re in the kind of business and design challenge that we’re talking about where you want to break through and innovate and reinvent something you shouldn’t ask people what they want because they can only talk about what is going on today.

    I love hearing that because I feel like I have a good response to that. It’s a conflation of a few things. One is, let’s just say, looking more largely, doing field research to learn about people and asking people what they want. I think if this is not an area that you’re experienced in you think those are the same thing. You think the only thing you can do in field work is to say, “well what do you want?” and then go off and build it.

    And most people would say that’s not an effective technique for learning new things. I agree with that on the face of it. If you, you know, are trying to change the game in a certain space that’s well entrenched you’d better have a more interesting approach to the field than to say, “well what would you want to see different?”

    You have to be looking more broadly at people’s behaviors and their needs and, you know, what are kind of educated people trying to do and how are people solving problems? What are the entrenched kind of challenges there? And so you need to use techniques to gather that information and make sense of that information.

    It’s not a ladle that you dip into the soup, right? Scoop. Oh, here’s what people said they want. We’re going to go off and do it. That’s never a way to do breakthrough stuff. So yeah, I agree when people say don’t ask what people want because they can’t tell you but I don’t agree with the implication of that which is don’t do research to try to innovate.

    The game of life

    Better than Sims [agendabeijing.com] – This interview with Kwestr game creator Frank Yu contains a vision for the future, when things like Kwestr will help us connect “online life” with “actual life.” Kwestr aims to gamify life to facilitate this. I started up on Kwestr beta to give it a try. It feels a little silly at this stage, like a cartoonish, aspirational to-do list. Kind of nice that you can break goals into the steps you need to achieve the goal or kwest. I’m not sure this kind of stuff begs to be shared and socialized. I can vaguely imagine sharing a kwest with friends to compete to achieve it. It hardly feels game-ish though at this stage. I didn’t see a way to add rewards or prizes. Badges? Hm. Yawn. I’m sure they’re working on that aspect of the game. At this point, it comes across more like another means to try to motivate myself to be a better person, which I would probably ignore and feel guilty about. I didn’t pick up on a competitive vibe at all (then again I didn’t connect with anyone on it). Thinking bigger, though, when I consider his goal to partner with brands to provide on-location Kwestr integrated experiences, and this thing might have some spark! Sounds a lot like what foursquare and etc aim to achieve as well (and they’ve done a remarkable job of making it competitive – for instance, don’t even try to be Mayor of Portigal Consulting, or we will bring it). In any case, this iteration has a honey-badger as a mascot. OK, it’s just a regular-badger. Which they admit looks like a raccoon.

    “We can make anything into a role-playing game experience, whether it’s going to a party with your friends, going to a museum, or going on a trip. We can make any kind of event into an RPG experience. You can bring your friends into it by challenging them to be part of your kwest. Once you’ve completed your kwest you receive a badge. The kwest can be anything from “Lose Weight,” “Be a Vegetarian for a Day,” “Learn Chinese,” or it can be fun stuff like “Have a Beer on Fridays.” We have kwests already built into the site, but you can also create your own…I want to help people accomplish their goals and their dreams. I want to help people break down their goals into steps, stay motivated, and help them follow up. For instance, buying a house is hard. How do you do it? We can help people break it down into steps and stay motivated along the way. Also, allowing these kinds of journeys to be shared with other people opens up potential for others to help support you.”

    Speaking of the game of life, just for fun here’s a commercial from the olden times for the Game of Life, by Milton Bradley who, according to this ad, makes the best games in the world. That’s how we used to think about gamifying life!

    The snack whisperer

    Watch Your Mouth: The Sounds of Snacking [good.is] – Peter Smith examines the way marketing and product development have used sound to manipulate consumer response by building in auditory cues (both in the crinkly packaging and words used in naming and branding) and speculates whether these powers can be used for good rather than evil. For creating healthier eating patterns rather than pushing fatty snacks. Not that I personally have anything against fatty snacks. I wonder if this tactic would be sufficient to move the needle on carrot consumption?

    Dan Jurafsky, a Stanford linguist who blogs on The Language of Food, recently performed a “breakfast experiment” on 81 ice cream flavors and 592 cracker brands. He found that the ice cream names tended to employ back vowels-sounds formed in the back of our mouths that generally refer to big, fat, heavy things. Front vowels, on the other hand, tend to be used in words that refer to small, thin, light foods, like crackers. Say them out loud: rocky road, chocolate, cookie dough, coconut-heavy on low-frequency o’s. Now listen to Cheese Nips, Cheez-Its, Wheat Thins, Ritz Bits, Triscuit, Cheese Crisps-you can hear all those little bitty e’s and i’s. These things matter. Sound symbolism appears to be more universal than the kinds of learned cultural associations we pair with colors or odors…In other words, making potato chips appealing goes well beyond the right combination of salt and oil. From the atmospheric crinkling of the bag to the crunch inside your mouth, all these sounds influence our perception of food at the affective level. Even saying the word “chip” forces a smile. It’s easy to see these tools could be used to manipulate and market food deceptively, say, “Snap into an (itty-bitty sounding) Slim Jim!” But it’s also worth thinking about how subtle auditory cues might be employed to encourage healthier behaviors-literally, to make healthier food sound better. If baby carrots were rebranded as “bits” or vegetable stands took a cue from Good Humor’s chirpy ice cream jingles, who knows?

    Vote for “Signal beats Noise”, my panel for SXSW2012

    I’ve proposed a panel session for SXSW, entitled Signal beats Noise: Find your voice thru curation.

    Beyond the emphasis on building your Personal Brand, we believe that today, to be a leading edge professional/creative/entrepreneur/designer/innovator you need to carve out your own territory and have your say. Beyond whuffie, Klout, or other measures of influence, this is in many ways a private activity that takes place out loud and out there. But how do you find what you want to talk about? How do you discover, filter, curate, and consume stories in order to tell your own stories? This panel will look at tools, frameworks, motivations, and plenty of examples.

    I’m very excited about my fellow panelists: Michael Margolis of Get Storied (“evangelists for the global storytelling movement”), Guillaume Decugis from Scoop.it (“Be The Curator of Your Favorite Topic!”) and Ned Hepburn, creator of Fuck Yeah Sharks (read an interview here).

    Me, well, I’ve been curating – whether or not you give it that label – via All This ChittahChattah for almost 10 years. I’ve also got a Museum of Foreign Groceries (read more here (PDF)).

    I’d appreciate it if you’d visit the panel proposal and do two things: 1. Add a comment or question. Share your opinion, offer encouragement, or raise an issue that you want us to cover, and 2. Give us a “thumbs up” vote (the conference committee does indeed “curate” but votes are taken into consideration).

    Keeping it real

    Print vs. Online: The ways in which old-fashioned newspapers still trump online newspapers. [slate.com] – Jack Shafer recounts his rejection of and then ultimate return to consuming the news in good olde print. For him, attention to and retention of the news is much improved. Our old friends tangibility and experience exert their influence on him as well. Recent research seems to support his experiences. How might newspapers create real value out of this burgeoning new respect for the medium? There might be something to Shafer’s sarcastic idea about having his carrier hand-deliver his digital content with cues to the familiar physical form. There’s a little bit of a buzz lately about hybrid digital/physical delivery systems, like the recent Phoenix Down album-delivery system on a sweet flash drive, noted below.

    I started missing the blue Times bag on my lawn and the glossy goodness of the Sunday magazine. Perhaps if I could have gotten my carrier to toss a blue-bagged computer preloaded with the Times Reader onto my lawn every morning, I could have survived. But no. What I really found myself missing was the news. Even though I spent ample time clicking through the Times website and the Reader, I quickly determined that I wasn’t recalling as much of the newspaper as I should be. Going electronic had punished my powers of retention. I also noticed that I was unintentionally ignoring a slew of worthy stories…My anecdotal findings about print’s superiority were seconded earlier this month by an academic study…The researchers found that the print folks “remember significantly more news stories than online news readers”; that print readers “remembered significantly more topics than online newsreaders”; and that print readers remembered “more main points of news stories.” When it came to recalling headlines, print and online readers finished in a draw… Newspapers are less distracting-as anybody who has endured an annoying online ad while reading a news story on the Web knows. Also, and I’m channeling the paper a little bit here, by virtue of habit and culture a newspaper commands a different sort of respect, engagement, and focus from readers.

    Phoenix Down: Brooklyn hip hop trio release their latest album on a pixelated feather [coolhunting.com]

    Besides eliminating clutter, one of our favorite upshots of the post-CD era is the micro-movement of creative USB stick design. We’ve seen Doc Martens, surfboards and Red Stripe bottles among other adorable forms for the little devices, so it’s somewhat surprising that more bands haven’t paired sound and vision like Junk Science and Scott Thorough recently did by releasing their new album Phoenix Down on a mini-hard drive. Loaded with the tracks, as well as instrumentals, a cappella versions and a bonus folder of remixes and more, the limited-edition flash drive is a soft-rubber pixelated feather-a fitting mix of nature and digital for their 8-bit-heavy sound and lyrics like “the future’s pixelated.”

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Ferreting Out Fake Reviews Online [New York Times] – We recently worked with a client exploring how online reviews impact purchase decisions. It’s a fascinating, emergent space . Our focus was more on using reviews than creating reviews but we surfaced a lot of insights around authenticity and more importantly, credibility (choosing who to believe is fundamentally different than identifying what is “fake”).

    “For $5, I will submit two great reviews for your business,” offered one entrepreneur on the help-for-hire site Fiverr, one of a multitude of similar pitches. On another forum, Digital Point, a poster wrote, “I will pay for positive feedback on TripAdvisor.” A Craigslist post proposed this: “If you have an active Yelp account and would like to make very easy money please respond.” The boundless demand for positive reviews has made the review system an arms race of sorts. As more five-star reviews are handed out, even more five-star reviews are needed. Few want to risk being left behind. Determining the number of fake reviews on the Web is difficult. But it is enough of a problem to attract a team of Cornell researchers, who recently published a paper about creating a computer algorithm for detecting fake reviewers. They were instantly approached by a dozen companies, including Amazon, Hilton, TripAdvisor and several specialist travel sites, all of which have a strong interest in limiting the spread of bogus reviews.

    Curator Andrew Robison decides what goes into National Gallery’s emergency box [WaPo] – Extant Cold War scenarios are aging out faster than naming your kids after soap opera characters, meanwhile there’s an overwhelmed-by-stuff story lurking in here. What would you take from your house if you could take 3 things in 30 seconds? If you could take 20 things in an hour? If you had three days to pack a large duffel bag? These decisions are terrifying ones and for all our curation, enthusiasm for collection, etc., the accumulation of analog and digital artifacts alike is continually proving to be one of the defining problems of our time.

    But in an emergency, not everything can be saved, and so he carefully ranks which works should be spared. The Canaletto is an obvious candidate for his top-priority list of 74 works on paper, but if it is included, something else has got to go. In 1979, with Washington worried about 52 hostages in Tehran and terrorist threats at home, Robison’s boss asked him to create a big container for works of the highest value. If catastrophe hit, the container could be spirited away to an undisclosed location. Today, Robison has seven boxes in two separate storerooms – four for European holdings, three for American. These do not include the museum’s 10,000 photographs, 3,800 paintings and 2,900 sculptures, outside of Robison’s purview and mostly too big for any mad dash out the building. In the two storerooms that Robison asked not be photographed or their locations disclosed, the black, cloth-lined boxes, each the shape of very large books, bear the label “WW3,” drawn in calligraphy. These in-case-of-World-War-III containers lie ready for any possibility, and in Robison’s absence, security guards have a floor plan that shows their exact location, like an X on a pirate map.

    Information Overlord

    We are seduced by and dithering with some mind-boggling stuff these days – magical gadgets, apps to enable whatever the hell comes to mind, wireless (!), interleaving social networks, the delight and terror of being geo-located, etc. These objects and experiences are often lumped together and referred to as “technology.” We don’t yet get what we sacrifice or gain by this tech-driven new world order, or how it will ultimately affect us as individuals, as generations, as a culture. Of course, our underlying motivations as human beings remain pretty stable (from survival straight through to enlightenment), but the way we can go about things now is all different. Implications abound. A faceless evil foe emerges from the uncertainty: technology itself (never terribly well defined when the witch-hunt is on). The foe is also the enabler. Agnostic pipes blissfully propagate these ideas, unaware they are being demonized, allowing us to consume them on whatever miraculous screen we happen to be peering at.

    Here are a couple recent examples of technology – in particular the volume of information it allows us to access – being discussed in the popular press.

    The Visionary: A digital pioneer questions what technology has wrought [newyorker.com] – Jaron Lanier has spent his incredible career envisioning ways for technology to delight and empower us, but is disappointed by the dominance of information in the system. We’re not thinking creatively enough. Technology is a harsh schoolmarm. It limits us with its relentless focus on information.

    Such objections have made Lanier an unusual figure: he is a technology expert who dislikes what technology has become. “I’m disappointed with the way the Internet has gone in the past ten years,” he told me at one point. He added, “I’ve always felt that the human-centered approach to computer science leads to more interesting, more exotic, more wild, and more heroic adventures than the machine-supremacy approach, where information is the highest goal.” … Unlike more Luddite critics, Lanier complains not that technology has taken over our lives but that it has not given us enough back in return. In place of a banquet, we’ve been given a vending machine. “The thing about technology is that it’s made the world of information ever more dominant,” Lanier told me. “And there’s so much loss in that. It really does feel as if we’ve sworn allegiance to a dwarf world, rather than to a giant world.”

    The Elusive Big Idea [nytimes.com] – According to the more academic Neal Gabler, information is overwhelming ideas in our culture. Technology is a sandstorm. It blinds us, prevents rational thought. The compelling notion that our culture is drifting towards a post-Enlightenment and post-idea state is undermined by his facile assumptions about how people use technology and in particular in this quote, social networking tools (and why, and for what).

    For one thing, social networking sites are the primary form of communication among young people, and they are supplanting print, which is where ideas have typically gestated. For another, social networking sites engender habits of mind that are inimical to the kind of deliberate discourse that gives rise to ideas. Instead of theories, hypotheses and grand arguments, we get instant 140-character tweets about eating a sandwich or watching a TV show. While social networking may enlarge one’s circle and even introduce one to strangers, this is not the same thing as enlarging one’s intellectual universe. Indeed, the gab of social networking tends to shrink one’s universe to oneself and one’s friends, while thoughts organized in words, whether online or on the page, enlarge one’s focus. To paraphrase the famous dictum, often attributed to Yogi Berra, that you can’t think and hit at the same time, you can’t think and tweet at the same time either, not because it is impossible to multitask but because tweeting, which is largely a burst of either brief, unsupported opinions or brief descriptions of your own prosaic activities, is a form of distraction or anti-thinking.

    Can we please get beyond Twitter-is-for-talking-about-sandwiches? Interaction and ideas on Twitter and other technology-enabled platforms for human communication are as rich and prosaic as humanity itself. It’s quite easy to find “thoughts organized into words” and “grand arguments” on any social networking site on any given day. These are not trivial forums for discourse at any level. To reduce the effects of technology on social interaction in this manner is simplistic. It does not live up to the quality of intellectual thought that the author himself calls for as the central idea of the article. I guess we might interpret this as just more evidence of the ill-effects of Twitter on our culture. The aforementioned Jaron Lanier, himself a player in and product of the world of technology, seems to be, incidentally, the kind of big thinker that Gabler pines for.

    We sacrifice agency when we cast technology as an outside force acting upon us. Technology is still, as of this writing, made by and for human beings. There is no technology. If technology prevents us from having ideas and represses our humanity, then we do that to ourselves.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Reading, writing, and calculations…

    Like Pandora? Try A Literary Offshoot, Booklamp [flavorwire.com] – The folks at Flavorwire gave the book-recommendation engine Booklamp a little ammo, with comic results. Such as the “Lyrics of Sting” being recommended based on enjoying Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.” I tried to play too, but I lost interest after a cursory search for some of my favorite books and authors came up altogether empty.

    BookLamp.org is a new website that is similar to Pandora – it creates algorithms and breaks down your book preferences by main themes. For instance, if you liked White Teeth, then Booklamp discerns that you’re into: Culture, Life/Death/Spirituality, Extended Families, Explicit Language, and “Elements of Time.” This results in some odd recommendations, such as The Cestus Deception (Star Wars: Clone Wars) by Steven Barnes. (Really? Because we are just never going to be in to that.) However, another suggestion was The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis, which makes some sense. So click through and see what hilarious, interesting, and arguably accurate choices we found on our trip through the site.

    Slowpoke: How to be a faster writer. [slate.com] – So it’s not just me! Agger’s quietly funny column includes some aha’s into the process of writing, some moments of vigorous nodding-and-agreeing (such as in the intro, excerpted below) and a rare banana-nut muffin pop-culture reference.

    Hunched over my keyboard, I’m haunted by anecdotes of faster writers. Christopher Hitchens composing a Slate column in 20 minutes-after a chemo session, after a “full” dinner party, late on a Sunday night… So what’s holding us back? How does one write faster? Kellogg terms the highest level of writing as “knowledge-crafting.” In that state, the writer’s brain is juggling three things: the actual text, what you plan to say next, and-most crucially-theories of how your imagined readership will interpret what’s being written. A highly skilled writer can simultaneously be a writer, editor, and audience. Since writing is such a cognitively intense task, the key to becoming faster is to develop strategies to make writing literally less mind-blowing.

    Do you Suffer from Decision Fatigue [nytimes.com] – Daily calculations become more taxing as they mount, to the point of fatigue; the effect is exacerbated by glucose levels. More wild-cards in trying to understand how people make decisions. Lots of great stories of research projects throughout the article.

    No matter how rational and high-minded you try to be, you can’t make decision after decision without paying a biological price. The more choices you make throughout the day, the harder each one becomes for your brain, and eventually it looks for shortcuts…Once you’re mentally depleted, you become reluctant to make trade-offs, which involve a particularly advanced and taxing form of decision making. In the rest of the animal kingdom, there aren’t a lot of protracted negotiations between predators and prey. To compromise is a complex human ability and therefore one of the first to decline when willpower is depleted. You become what researchers call a cognitive miser, hoarding your energy. If you’re shopping, you’re liable to look at only one dimension…When there were fewer decisions, there was less decision fatigue. Today we feel overwhelmed because there are so many choices. Your body may have dutifully reported to work on time, but your mind can escape at any instant. A typical computer user looks at more than three dozen Web sites a day and gets fatigued by the continual decision making – whether to keep working on a project, check out TMZ, follow a link to YouTube or buy something on Amazon.

    Flow in the interview

    Earlier this week the San Francisco IxDa hosted a talk by Peter Stahl about The Rhythm of Interaction. As part of his presentation , Peter talked about Mih?°ly Cs??kszentmih?°lyi’s notion of Flow – “the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.”

    Yesterday I came across a podcast I did a few years ago with the folks from Lunar where we talked about how speed, creativity and innovation intertwine in the design process and about getting results through design research. You can listen to the podcast at the bottom of the post; meanwhile I’ve pulled out a snippet where I describe entering a flow state when interviewing users.

    And all the power of noticing and stepping back and slowing yourself down and just disengaging yourself from the need to be making things happen, is just sort of creating that space and t hat’s where insights happen. That’s where creativity can happen. And I’m sure you guys have seen that moment when you’re in the field, where you have all this responsibility to be managing a session and managing the other people in the session and making sure you stick to your time, and it’s a lot of, lot of work. Your brain is just firing on all its cylinders. And then sometimes for me there’s that moment where you kind of – it’s almost like a hyperspace moment where the starts start to just stretch out. Things just get really, really quiet in my head and suddenly, I’m just riding it. Things are sort of happening and I’m riding it, and that can be – it’s, I guess, a flow moment, right? Things can be really insightful at that moment. I don’t know that I’m bored, but if I had to contrast that to the stimulation of trying to run everything and run everybody, that seems to be a really kind of creative moment for me when that happens.

    Listen to the podcast:

    To download the audio Right-Click and Save As… (Windows) or Ctrl-Click (Mac).

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Children With Autism, Connecting via Transit [New York Times] – Fascinating to learn first that the structure of trains appeals to kids with autism and even more fascinating to see that museums are adapting their programming to address this population specifically, a new mission that presumably reaches far beyond their original charters.

    Like many children with autism spectrum disorders, Ravi is fascinated by trains and buses, entranced by their motion and predictability. And for years, these children crowded the exhibitions of the modest New York Transit Museum, chattering about schedules and engine components and old subway maps. Now, the museum, and others like it, are moving beyond accommodating the enthusiasm for trains and buses among children with autism and trying to use it to teach them how to connect with other people – and the world. The museum created a “Subway Sleuths” after-school program for 9- and 10-year-olds with autism that focuses on the history of New York City trains but seeks to make the children more at ease socially.

    Intel uses sci-fi to understand possible tech uses [San Francisco Chronicle] – Compelling notion (see an interactions article I wrote about a similar topic) but the article is so slight that I have to wonder how exactly they are using these tools to drive a different approach to design or to impact specific products.

    The chipmaker is trying to speed along the [cultural] change by reaching engineers in a language they understand: science fiction. Last year Intel hired four sci-fi writers to study the company’s latest research projects and produce an anthology, “The Tomorrow Project,” envisioning how cutting-edge processors might be used in the near future. The is to help Intel’s engineers design chips tailored to specific consumer uses with wide market potential. Intel’s sci-fi publishing arm is an extension of its 12-year-old social science division. The division assesses technological trends by sending anthropologists and sociologists to hang out in living rooms, senior care centers and hospitals. The logic behind the effort: Understand how technology is used, and you’re more likely to design chips people will buy.

    Nat Allbright, Voice of Dodgers Games He Did Not See, Dies at 87 [New York Times] – I’m impressed with the notion of a broadcaster stitching together a continuous narrative based on tiny fragments of information. While mainstream broadcasting has obviously changed radically since then, there are echoes today in Twitter and #hashtags in breaking-news situations.

    he took bare-bones telegraph messages transmitted by Morse code (“B1W” for Ball One Wide); embellished them with imagination and sound effects; and then broadcast games that sounded as if he were in the ballpark hearing, smelling and seeing everything, from steaming hot dogs to barking umpires to swirling dust at second base. Over a decade, Mr. Allbright broadcast 1,500 Brooklyn Dodgers games without seeing a single one. When so-called progress killed this splendid occupation, he came up with a new business: taping vanity broadcasts of imaginary sporting events, where the customer became the star. Just insert a name.

    Sesame Street pair Bert and Ernie ‘will not marry’ [BBC] – A long-running joke about the mysterious relationship between the two Muppets turned serious recently when it was co-opted by social activist types who wanted to see gay marriage reflected in the show’s narrative. Groups representing blacks and gays have frequently and appropriately called attention to their lack of visibility in mainstream media, but this particular effort attempts to take control over the story direction in order to serve their particular agenda. Let’s not conflate the intent and the method. The producers of the show, after decades of ignoring the “are they are aren’t they” chatter, respond and explicitly acknowledge the reality of Bert and Ernie as characters, only.

    Sesame Workshop, which produces “Sesame Street,” put an end to any wedding planning on Thursday with this brief statement posted on its Facebook page: “Bert and Ernie are best friends. They were created to teach preschoolers that people can be good friends with those who are very different from themselves. Even though they are identified as male characters and possess many human traits and characteristics (as most Sesame Street Muppets™ do), they remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation.”

    Listen to Steve on the User Experience podcast

    I was interviewed by Gerry Gaffney for his User Experience podcast. The topic of the interview was, recursively, interviewing. You can listen to the interview below, and read the transcript here.

    To download the audio Right-Click and Save As… (Windows) or Ctrl-Click (Mac).

    Steve: Yeah there’s something about interviewing. It is such an individual and it’s such a human activity that we can talk best practices, you know, all day. I think there’s something really great that happens when people make it their own. I think this is one of those “find your own style” things. I like to be dictatorial about best practices but I also have to acknowledge very strongly that what people bring is very interesting and different. Along those lines think about introverts versus extroverts and what’s easier or different for introverts or extroverts in these kinds of situations. Extroverts of course get energy from other people, introverts get energy kind of on their own and so that starts to manifest itself in interesting ways or in silence. But also just how much of yourself do you bring to it? And so I’ve seen extroverts be very successful at establishing rapport by talking about themselves, by being very open and genuine and giving.

    My tactic as an introvert is to remove a lot of myself from it and really focus on them, express my interest in them, ask questions, ask questions, ask questions, ask follow-up questions, really drive everything towards my focus on them. So my long answer there is I think there’s a personal style thing that kind of comes out. I think if you reveal things about yourself, regardless of your style, I think it needs to be very deliberate. It’s a great tactic to give somebody permission.

    Adventures in Consumption

    Here’s a bunch of examples of surprise, delight, dismay and beyond from my recent interactions in the consumo-sphere.


    From the travel section at The Container Store. Lots of fun little bottles for packing your unguents and potions for travel. Nalgene bottles are guaranteed not to leak, even in the unpressurized airplane cargo hold. Given that the most you can carry onto a plane under TSA regulations is 3 oz., that seems like a likely size. Nalgene doesn’t make that size, despite sufficient demand that The Container Store has printed up a special sign to try and deflect the inevitable inquiries. What are those conversations like between the Nalgene sales rep and the buyer from The Container Store?




    Paying online for the San Francisco Chronicle. In addition to the cost of the paper, I can also add a tip for the carrier, or donate some money to NIE. Not a misspelled Monty Python reference, it’s Newspapers in Education (I Googled). You’d imagine they’d get more uptake if they told us what it was they are asking for money for.




    From the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. “No peeking” (and “come back”) is so much nicer than “keep out.” And so knowing; of course when you see an installation-in-progress you are curious! The SFMOMA acknowledges that curiosity and harnesses the energy behind it to encourage you, rather than discourage you.



    The menu at Oyaji in San Francisco. We see the risk of software that uses default form entries when you end up with Spider Roll that consists of “Give a brief description of the dish.”



    At Crate and Barrel, shoppers can send a text to the manager to give feedback about their shopping experience. I hadn’t heard of this service (from recent Google acquisition TalkBin) before.



    A travel poster advertising Alaska. And bears. Funny, friendly bears. Who, if you read the news, keep eating people.




    A poster from a local cafe advertising Elizabeth’s range of services. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a more tangible demonstration of the importance of specializing in your positioning. While I’m sure Elizabeth is wonderful and if I got to know her I’d trust with everything including yard maintenance and meal preparation, but to a new customer, someone who is qualified to look after precious offspring isn’t therefore qualified to look after precious animals (and in fact my be less qualified…do you want your toddler in a house full of someone else’s dogs?). Pick what you are good at and sell the one thing. If you need to diversity, create a range of separate messages.



    Rooms at the Edgewater Hotel in Seattle have lovely specialized bottles of hair care products that reflect their brand and overall attitude. Unlike most hotels with their tiny (3 oz.) sample bottles, these are big, easy-to-handle bottles like you might have at home. A sign warns you that it’ll cost you $25 to take them home, so you know it’s good stuff. Mind you, on the housekeeping cart are these ketchup-and-mustard-evoking-bottles with stick-on labels that are used to refill those lovely bottles. Delightfulness denied.



    Pike’s Place Market in Seattle. Past the faulty grammar (How the elephant got in my pajamas, I’ll never know!) the motivation for this extreme warning is clear enough.



    The ice cream menu at Cold Stone Creamery. Random, unfunny, unintegrated product name puns. One evokes James Bond, but why? None of the others do. Other names are silly but decidedly not clever. My favorite is Cookie Minster, made with mint, so you’d think it’d be Cookie Mintster but no. Not that.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Analog Infoviz: Handmade Visualization Toolkit [brainpickings.org] – Columbian designer Jose Duarte creates fresh DIY lo-fi information visualizations, expressed “in the wild,” using a basic toolkit. What do you think – how does this treatment affect the data, versus a standard pie-chart or a slick design-pornish infographic (IMHO, a trend verging on the overbearing. This was reinforced when the trend spawned the term infauxgraphic to describe cases where the visual treatment takes primacy over the accuracy of the information.)?

    Using ordinary materials like chalk, string, stickers and balloons, you can experiment with various visualization techniques, from area charts to bubble graphs to – yes, you guessed it – Venn diagrams. Using the kit, he made these lovely lo-fi visualizations of data from the 2010 State of the Internet report, revealing, among other things, that Lady Gaga is bigger on Twitter than Obama and the majority of the world’s email volume is spam.

    Above is just one example – the article has plenty of others…and an offer for a free Handmade Visualization Toolkit of your own!

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    You Can’t Innovate If You Ignore Your Real Problems [FastCoDesign.com] – I wish more thought leaders in our fields would be as honest as Sohrab is here. It’s a nod-your-head-with-pained-recognition piece that acknowledges the limits of the aspirations that drive so many of these programs.

    After a week of intense exploration and discussion, the executives thanked us heartily. They then went back to doing business precisely as they had before. This outcome is depressingly common, not just for Ziba but for any organization that seeks to build innovation capacity in businesses. The clients in this example are masters of efficient production, making incremental improvements to their product line every year as they steadily lose market share. But they expected a seminar to give them the sudden capability to innovate, without changing any other part of their business practice. It doesn’t work like that. An innovation consultancy cannot turn you into an innovative company.

    Heello is Twitter for Pretending [Waxy] – Andy brilliantly reframes fakery as he inventories the startling range of misbehaving accounts flying the flag of established businesses, brands, or web personalities.

    It’s easy to write off Heello as a Twitter clone. Created by the founder of Twitpic, the shameless knockoff looks and behaves like a stripped-down version of Twitter. But it’s shaping up to be more than that. Creative fakesters are using the blank slate to turn Heello into the parallel-universe version of Twitter. Heello is like a blank-slate Twitter with no moderation or verification. I doubt the Heello team wanted or expected this behavior, but they inadvertently created a perfect playground for parody and meta-commentary

    Win Your Subjects Over with Genuine Enthusiasm

    Parallels to interviewing users crop up all over the place. Just like us, portrait photographers ask their subjects trust them, as they go on a journey that might be uncomfortable at times. I don’t want to overwork the comparison, of course. You’ll see more differences than similarities in this video, but what struck me was the core notion that your own sincere enthusiasm will serve to build that trust.

    Chris Buck promotional video

    (via PetaPixel)

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Overdone: Why are restaurant websites so horrifically bad? [Slate.com] – It’s true! Restaurant websites are terrible! Farhad Manjoo gives us a fun and interesting analysis of what has led to us having to endure music and pdfs and pointless flash dohickeys and long page-load times to get to things like the food and prices and what the restaurant looks like.

    Over the last few weeks I’ve spent countless hours, now lost forever, plumbing the depths of restaurant Web hell. I also spoke to several industry experts about the reasons behind all these maliciously poorly designed pages. I heard several theories for why restaurant sites are so bad-that they can’t afford to pay for good designers, that they don’t understand what people want from a site, and that they don’t really care what’s on their site. But the best answer I found was this: Restaurant sites are the product of restaurant culture. These nightmarish websites were spawned by restaurateurs who mistakenly believe they can control the online world the same way they lord over a restaurant.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Cross-sectional Chocolate [Edible Geography] – Here’s food science framed as both a structural design and experience design problem. See many delicious pictures at the original link.

    Chocolate bar designers work with a limited repertoire of ingredients (nuts, crisped rice, chocolate, biscuit, coconut, nougat, and caramel), manipulated through technological innovation (enrobing, extruding, and moulding machines), to develop a wonderful variety of creamy, crunchy, tongue-coating creations.

    Sometimes the design challenge is practical, as the Twix cross-section allows us to appreciate. The thin layer of chocolate between the shortbread finger and the caramel topping acts as architectural insulation, preventing water migrating from the caramel into the shortbread and softening it.

    The Baby Ruth and 100 Grand bars demonstrate variations on the idea of a crispy/crunchy exterior surrounding a smooth interior, while the Oh Henry! and Snickers bars mix nuts with caramel above a smoother, denser layer of fudge or nougat, with the whole ensemble enrobed in a thin chocolate coating. The Lion bar combines both approaches, embedding a filled Kit-Kat-style wafer inside a 100 Grand exterior, turducken-style.

    Mouth-feel, texture, taste, and even shareability are among the aspects of consumer experience that can be engineered through permutations of the basic chocolate bar template. The snap-off wafers of a Kit-Kat encourage more leisurely, social consumption, for example, while the interior chewiness of a Snickers creates a perception of satisfaction that the exterior crunch of a 100 Grand bar could never match.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Rate This Article: What’s Wrong with the Culture of Critique [Wired.com] – Are mounting (and recursive) reviews and opinions on every-little-thing blinding us with tidal waves of bias and robbing us of fundamentally human experiences such as the joys of discovery and failure?

    Our ever more sophisticated arsenal of stars and thumbs will eventually serve to curtail serendipity, adventure, and idiotic floundering. But more immediate is the simple problem of contamination. When the voices of hundreds of strangers, or even just three shrill ones, enter our heads, a tiny but vital part of ourselves is diminished. Suddenly we’re breached, denied the pleasure of articulating our own judgment on this professor, or that meal, or this city… There’s an essential freedom in being alone with one’s thoughts, oblivious to and unpolluted by anyone else’s. Diminish that aloneness and we start to doubt our own perspective. Do I really think Blue Bottle coffee is that great? Or Blazing Saddles that funny? Do I really not like that pizza place because it isn’t authentic New York-style? Sure, it’s entirely possible to arrive at one’s own opinion amidst a cacophony of others. But it’s also possible to bend, unknowingly and imperceptibly, toward a position not naturally our own.

    Radical Sharing Works: This Guy Lets the World Use His Starbucks Card for Free [Good.com] – Accidental, experimental business model proves effective, adds unexpected value.

    On July 7th, Stark loaded $30 onto his card and posted the image for his friends to use. Within hours, the money turned into caffeine and prefab sandwiches. So Stark added another $50 and invited a few more friends to see if they liked paying for things with their phones, creating an informal user experience focus group. But this time, the money didn’t vanish. People started adding money as well as spending it. And since then, it’s become an experiment in anonymous collective sharing. Buying a cup of coffee on the card becomes a special act of participation, and giving back so a stranger can do the same just feels good, and certainly better than the average frappuccino. In that way, the technology Stark created is adding value to the coffee people purchase. “Overall it’s working,” he says. Stark created a little program that would check the value on the card and post it to Twitter, so experimenters could see if there is enough for a cup o’ joe before heading out to Starbucks. More and more people joined. As of about 11 a.m. PST today, Stark said that about $3,664.24 had passed through the card.

    The Dolores Park graffiti artist story

    Here’s a photo I took in San Francisco during the Summer of 2010, my first summer living here. The image now appears on my business cards in our “What’s Your Story?” series.

    I don’t know who this man is. Where he is, that’s easier: Dolores Park is a small park, two blocks by one block, in the middle of the city. It serves as a gathering place for a variety of inhabitants hailing from the colorful neighborhoods the park borders and defines: the always festive LGBTIQQ contingent from the Castro, picnicking families from Noe Valley, Old Style-sipping hipsters and slouching Hispanic teens from the Mission, and drumming hippies from the nearby Haight…and various intersections of the aforementioned. On this day, a festival sprung up on the hill involving DJs and street artists.

    The angle of the sun was just right to catch this artist in a reflection of his own process.

    Here’s a broader shot of the scene.

    Street art, which usually happens under cloak of darkness, had a light shining on it that day.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    The Saddest Movie in the World [Smithsonian.com] Describes the rigorous process of choosing clips that will reliably evoke various emotions for clinical research purposes, and how the use of movies to elicit unpleasant emotional responses is considered humane and ethical. It’s incredible that a Ricky Schroder scene from the rather obscure The Champ has been scientifically deemed sadder than, say, Bambi’s Mom dying or Old Yeller. Can’t argue with science! (But I’d bet that the first 5 minutes of Up would beat them all.) Another gem here: the two clips that are proven most effective in generating feelings of disgust – yes, I’m on about disgust again! – are an amputation and… Pink Flamingos!

    The story of how a mediocre movie became a good tool for scientists dates back to 1988, when Robert Levenson, a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and his graduate student, James Gross, started soliciting movie recommendations from colleagues, film critics, video store employees and movie buffs. “Everybody thinks it’s easy,” Levenson says. Levenson and Gross ended up evaluating more than 250 films and film clips. They edited the best ones into segments a few minutes long and selected 78 contenders.

    Scientists testing emotions in research subjects have resorted to a variety of techniques, including playing emotional music, exposing volunteers to hydrogen sulfide (“fart spray”) to generate disgust or asking subjects to read a series of depressing statements. They’ve rewarded test subjects with money or cookies to study happiness or made them perform tedious and frustrating tasks to study anger. “In the old days, we used to be able to induce fear by giving people electric shocks,” Levenson says. Ethical concerns now put more constraints on how scientists can elicit negative emotions. Sadness is especially difficult. How do you induce a feeling of loss or failure in the laboratory without resorting to deception or making a test subject feel miserable? “You can’t tell them something horrible has happened to their family, or tell them they have some terrible disease,” says William Frey II, a University of Minnesota neuroscientist who has studied the composition of tears. But as Gross says, “films have this really unusual status.” People willingly pay money to see tearjerkers-and walk out of the theater with no apparent ill effect. As a result, “there’s an ethical exemption” to making someone emotional with a film, Gross says.

    To win, deliver relevance

    HP recently ran a series of full-page newspaper ads for its TouchPad. The different ads trumpeted different aspects of the product. Here’s one:

    This particular ad focuses on the movie-watching benefits. Unfortunately, they ad begins poorly: The all-new HP TouchPad with the HP MovieStore powered by RoxioNow(TM).

    The classic tech marketing mistake: brand soup (with a base of presumed relevance). Who is Roxio? Yes, readers of this post probably know, but let’s agree that most people don’t, and those who did haven’t heard of them for 5 years. What the heck is RoxioNow(TM)? We can infer that HP has struck a deal for some ingredient technology. Wonderful. But they shouldn’t presume that adds credibility to their offering. In the same way “HP MovieStore” is not a known brand and isn’t exactly dripping with credibility. At least you can figure based on the name that it’s somewhat like that other Pad company’s SomethingStore.

    But it gets worse. Here’s the promise

    It’s Hollywood’s recently released big screen movies and current TV episodes on your HP TouchPad. Catch up on something you missed or get hooked on something new.

    But in this ad, where they can show whatever they want to highlight the compelling benefits, what movies do they display?

    The highlighted films: Knockout, 8 of Diamonds, Being Michael Madsen, 3 Backyards, 30 Years to Life, Baby on Board, Mistaken Identity, and Kalamity.

    Okay, anyone? 3 Backyards is a very recently released indie film. IMDB tells me 30 Years to Life is from 2001. Where are the recently released Hollywood big screen movies (note: direct-to-video doesn’t count) that I can get from the HP MovieStore powered by RoxioNow(TM)?

    Next time you are sitting in a meeting and someone brings up Apple and wonders how it is they are so darn innovative, remember this example. This is how their competitors behave. This is their advertising – where they actually promise a wonderful experience; what does this portend for the actual delivery of the experience in the product itself?

    Put the muffin down

    Interesting ritual-gizmo from Fresh Choice (an all-you-can-eat chain). At a buffet, how do you stop the staff from clearing your plates when you stand up to get more (or visit the restroom), especially if you dine alone? Here’s their solution, a two-sided laminated muffin card that you keep next to your plate.


    I believe these are available as you arrive (at Fresh Choice, upon arrival you go through a cash line to pay and get your plate) although I didn’t see them. I saw the muffin cards around the restaurant as I walked back and forth to get more food.

    While it does seem like a workable solution, it seems like a half-measure, shifting the service responsibility onto the customer. At a “nice” restaurant, the staff are attentive, but here you are doing self-service what with retrieving your own food, so maybe they figure why not give the diner another task to manage.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    The Writer of a Cat Food Commercial Confronts a Focus Group [McSweeneys.net] – This “Short Imagined Monologue” by Mike Gallagher has a little fun with the unfortunate power dynamics of a focus group, and the struggle those behind the glass can have accepting the feedback that they are asking (and paying) for. Fault must lie at the feet of the participants, who are clearly incapable of understanding!

    I don’t mean to startle you by barging into your focus group like this. Everything’s cool. I’ve been watching you guys from behind the one-way mirror there and I thought I’d make my presence known. Normally I’m content to just chill behind the glass, make disparaging comments to my fellow observers, and eat handfuls of M&Ms. And while I know this is “highly irregular” I feel like I have to say something to help you better understand the overall messaging, the gestalt if you will, of the TV commercials we’re testing here today. Not to take anything away from Fiona, your lovely and talented focus group moderator. Hey, she’s doing a great, great job… I don’t think you people truly appreciate what’s at stake here. We, all of us, are tasked with “redefining” the pet food commercial from the bowl up… What’s concerning me is that my work may be too- strong for you groundlings. Too avant-garde. So this one time I’m going to explain it very slowly and in terms you can all understand. Like captions for the “Thinking Impaired”.

    Discomfort, reframed (almost)

    Two examples of hotels in noisy environments, where they each acknowledge (and try to reframe) the situation in order to provide the solution (earplugs).


    Seattle’s Edgewater Hotel

    Railroad Development in the Puget Sound Area is much more than just steel tracks and cars, but rather the network that helped lay the foundation for Seattle, the modern trading metropolis you see today. The lights, the tunnels, the tracks and cars are quintessential reminders of Seattle’s charm and history. Enjoy your stay where it all began…

    Should the sounds of the passing trains disturb your sleep, please take a pair of earplugs, on the house.


    Austin’s Hilton Garden Inn

    Thank you for choosing the Hilton Garden Inn when staying in Austin the “Live Music Capital of the World.”

    While we cannot control the music we would like to provide you with this complimentary amenity to help ensure a good nights rest.

    We hope this will make your stay more comfortable.

    This is a design challenge we often encounter: in order to present a solution, you have to raise the possibility of the problem. Perhaps you wouldn’t even know about the problem if we didn’t tell you about it! In Seattle, I never heard the trains. In Austin, I did hear the music late late into the night.

    I’m pretty sure I couldn’t sleep with earplugs in, so the actual solution is limited, but the gesture towards the solution is definitely interesting. The four-star-ish Edgewater hits the history hard as if somehow you – with all the supposed noise – are connected with that. The Hilton Garden Inn, bad punctuation aside, takes a straightforward, three-star approach, but still reminds you that the reason you even need the earplugs is because of the experience you are part of. Hilton does better for relevance, but Edgewater weaves more of a story.

    What you don’t see here is the presentation at the Edgewater. The card and the little box of earplugs were tucked away on a bit of molding such that I thought for at least a day that it was some sort of item left behind by a construction worker doing room maintenance.

    The earplug packaging can be kinda ugly and both hotels are ceding total control of their presentation to their supplier. See Method on Virgin here for a related exmaple.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    The science behind disgust [Salon.com] – I am fascinated by what our individual disgusts say about us. Disgust is a great reaction to evince during an interview, and reflect on; to unpack it with that person! Culture, physiology, personal history, emotion, instinct…disgust has got it all.

    Humans are evolved creatures, but we’re also spectacularly different from most other creatures in the natural world. Humans went down unique evolutionary pathways when we were evolving, and part of what happened was that we became more reliant on culture. When some new issue comes up, Mother Nature doesn’t start from scratch; she tinkers with what already exists. When people began to get more social and more reliant on cultural information, some problems came up. So Mother Nature did her tinkering thing and made disgust one of the mechanisms to help regulate social interactions. You would think that our peers have a lot of influence on what we find disgusting and what we don’t, but past a certain point, they may be fixed. Let’s say you grow up in the Midwest like I did, and you go to state fairs where you eat elephant ears and fried Twinkies. Then as an adult, you move to San Francisco where you hang out with people who find state fair food revolting. Can their social influence make you disgusted by the foods you used to love as a kid? I tend to think you can make an effort to present as though you’re disgusted by something or aren’t, but I don’t know that you can ever actually fully change your sensibilities once they get calibrated.

    We have a thing for disgust. Previously. And again.

    Postcards from Edge of Personalization

    Not so long ago it was commonplace to receive junk mail that attempted to make a personal connection by including your name or other salient facts in the body of the pitch. But they were always outed as inauthentic by the multiple printing processes, as your name would show up in ALL CAPS, or in a different type face, or a different ink color. As printing (and other back-end) processes become more sophisticated, that has basically gone away and now the pitch looks perfect.

    New York’s Eventi hotel (a Kimpton property, known for their extra attention to detail in customer service) is going the other direction, with hand-written welcome letters to their loyalty club members. However, they bungled the task; instead of the warmth of a personal note, they reveal the simulated fakery. Let’s pretend I didn’t watch the check-in staff shuffle through a pile of identical envelopes to pull out the one with my name on it…the note itself is written by two people, using two different pens! The handwriting is different, and the thickness of the ink is different. One staff member is asked to write a bunch of blah-blah-we’re-so-glad-you’re-here notes, maybe weeks in advance? When they are preparing for that day’s guests, someone else adds the name at the top.

    It’s odd to see the signs of the mechanized system’s shortcomings rearing their head in what we’d expect to be a personalized, hand-crafted alternate.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    You’ve Been Left Behind – Another niche offering, online: a service that will, after the Rapture, deliver a final message to those who weren’t pulled up to the sky. The name is a bit misleading: “you” refers not to the customers but to those who the customers are reaching out to.

    Q:How are the emails sent out after the rapture if you are all Christians?

    A:I have a team, of Christian couples, scattered around the U.S. 4 active couples and one alternate. One of each, of the active couples, are required to log into the system everyday. They are scattered to protect us from having the team wiped out by attack, natural disaster, or epidemic. They are couples in case one is sick, injured, killed, and to assure their walk with God. If they (3 out of 4) fail to log in for 3 days the system figures the Rapture has taken place. There are then notices sent out to each of us daily, for 3 more days, warning us we must log in to prevent the sending of documents. If, we do not, then the system sends out all of the stored data to all of the email addresses. There is one alternate team member to ready as a replacement for a lost teammate. Also one team member is located near enough to the server bank, with access, in case the net goes down, or malfunction.

    Trade in Pork Bellies Comes to an End, but the Lore Lives – Like seeing the obituary of someone you thought was already dead, there’s a bit of a surprise here that pork bellies really are a thing (well, if you dine out fancy, you already know that), and they are a thing that actually does get traded. Or used to.

    When the Chicago Mercantile Exchange announced the other day that pork belly futures would no longer be traded, it was hardly a shock. Trades had shrunk to almost nothing. Volatility was too much. The frozen bellies, used to make bacon, were, in the view of some, losing relevance.

    Pork bellies have long held a puzzling mystique to the public. Experts in the field offer a range of sometimes conflicting explanations: everybody likes bacon; the word “belly” sounds funny; no one actually knows what a pork belly is. Whatever the reason, pork bellies pop up in an inordinate number of references in magazines, popular culture and movies, like “Trading Places,” the 1983 film in which Eddie Murphy’s character used pork bellies to explain, in unforgettably bare terms, how a market works.

    Steve to lead “Interviewing Users” workshop 9/28 in Seattle

    As part of the Rosenfeld Media UX Workshops Fall 2011 Tour, I’ll be leading a full-day workshop – Interviewing Users: Spinning Data into Gold.

    You can choose up to 3 workshops, including ones from Lou Rosenfeld and Steve Krug. Early registration (with a decent discount) ends September 9.

    Bonus: the event will held at the amazing Seattle Central Library!

    I hope to see you there!

    Steve leading Immersive Field Research Techniques workshop at UI16

    I’ll be presenting a full-day workshop on Immersive Field Research Techniques at User Interface 16 this November in Boston.

    Registration gives you

    • Two full-day workshops: The UI16 experts will dive deep and get to the nitty-gritty details that make any designer into a pro.
    • One day of short talks: This is where you’ll discover the latest UX ideas and techniques from each of our expert speakers. Don’t forget Jared Spool’s entertaining and educational keynote.
    • Complete conference materials: We’ll send you the PDFs of every session and workshop just before you leave for the conference. Then you can focus on insights and not note-taking.
    • Recordings of the short talks: The benefits keeping coming after the conference. Through the recordings, you can relive every short talk at your office with your entire team.

    Right now they are offering 100 registrations at a sneak-preview price of $1349. They are (as of this posting) down to 79 sneak-spots, after that it goes up $300.

    I hope to see you there!

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    An Uh, Er, Um Essay: In praise of verbal stumbles [Slate] – I love it when something I think of as inarguable, indisputable – like this one: it’s bad to say “um” in speech, especially when public speaking – is outed as a recent invention and/or sham. Also, this is a huge relief.

    “Uh” and “um” don’t deserve eradication; there’s no good reason to uproot them. People have been pausing and filling their pauses with a neutral vowel (or sometimes with an actual word) for as long as we’ve had language, which is about 100,000 years. If listeners are so naturally repelled by “uhs” and “ums,” you’d think those sounds would have been eliminated long before now. The opposite is true: Filled pauses appear in all of the world’s languages, and the anti-ummers have no way to explain, if they’re so ugly, what “euh” in French, or “äh” and “ähm” in German, or “eto” and “ano” in Japanese are doing in human language at all. In the history of oratory and public speaking, the notion that good speaking requires umlessness is actually a fairly recent, and very American, invention. It didn’t emerge as a cultural standard until the early 20th century, when the phonograph and radio suddenly held up to speakers’ ears all the quirks and warbles that, before then, had flitted by. Another development was the codification of public speaking as an academic subject. Counting “ums” and noting perfect fluency gave teachers something to score.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Park guests instantly share photos on Facebook [Springwise]. – This direct-to-Facebook publishing service does well by first addressing a real need: the difficulty waterpark visitors have toting electronics around the sodden environs. It also points to how key Facebook has become as a repository for photos. Might as well just eliminate a bunch of steps and put the images of you and your soaked friends right where they’re gonna end up anyway! Back in the olden days they might have provided kiosks to print the photos out upon exit, or even sent them to guests’ emails. This blurb doesn’t address it, but having fallen victim to the RFID-driven pricing schemes of waterparks myself, I would bet they are charging handsomely for this service. If so, through adding value, Great Wolf has figured out how to make guests pay for to provide the park with an authentic social-advertising engine.

    At the Great Wolf Lodge chain of waterpark resorts, visitors can use RFID-enabled wristbands to transmit photos to Facebook over the course of their stay. Guests at Great Wolf Lodge resorts already use RFID wristbands as room keys and in-house charge accounts. Now, beginning at the chain’s property in Grand Mound, Washington, its new Great Wolf Connect service allows guests to register their wristbands at a dedicated kiosk and link them directly to their Facebook account as well. Then, when they stop to pose for a photo at any of the park’s five camera-equipped “Paw Posts,” guests simply scan their wristband and their photo can be automatically posted to their Facebook wall.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    The Mystery Worshipper [Ship of Fools] – Part market research technique, part Yelp, here’s a niche example of online reviews. The headlines are gently self-effacing, with a post-modern take on reviewer umbrage, say “Cleaning lady plays iPod at Santiago el Mayor, Zaragoza.”

    Since ancient times (ok, 1998), Ship of Fools has been sending Mystery Worshippers to churches worldwide. Travelling incognito, they ask those questions which go to the heart of church life: How long was the sermon? How hard the pew? How cold was the coffee? How warm the welcome?

    The only clue they have been there at all is the Mystery Worshipper calling card, dropped discreetly into the collection plate.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    The “Flashed Face Effect” Makes Normal People Look Monstrous – GOOD.is – This demonstration shows pretty dramatically that direct focus creates dramatic distortions in our perceptions of peripheral objects. Specifically here, faces. For me, the faces turned into Second Life-type avatars. The video here proves this optic effect beyond a doubt; the psychological implications are even more interesting. This effect is why it is so important for us to go back to the recordings or transcripts of our interviews to reshift that focus. In the interview itself we are so fully focused on our unfamiliar surroundings and the project objectives and questions, and on responding to body-language, and on all the crazy things that can happen in someone’s home like crazed husbands and bugs, that a lot of interesting stuff in the periphery can easily be lost or misunderstood.

    If you’re like most people, you’ll notice that the women you thought had hideous deformities while looking at the center of the screen are actually completely normal looking. Researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia are calling this the “flashed face effect.” How it works is that your brain focuses in on the main differences in each juxtaposition, thereby augmenting that difference to grotesque proportions. “If someone has a large jaw, it looks almost ogre-like,” write the scientists. “If they have an especially large forehead, then it looks particularly bulbous.” The researchers say they don’t yet know why the effect occurs, but they’re attempting to find out now. In the meantime, hard as it may be, remember not to always trust your brain and eyes.

    Speaking of crazed husbands and bugs, and surprises in the field, we’ve written of them before: What To Expect When You’re Not Expecting It.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Woods+ [Ftrain.com]. – Absurdist reaction to Google+. I love how slightly changing names/words and bluntly feeding back common behavior on social networks conjures such a sinister vision of the social landscape, while at the same time belittling the battle. It’s bringing on flashes of A Clockwork Orange.

    I know it’s confusing. But this is their competitor to Facebook basically. Except you can list your friends. That’s the circles. But it’s easier to remember if you call them holes. Like I could have a friend hole and an acquaintance hole and a K-hole. And they give you a list of friends and you stuff them in the hole, like Silence of the Lambs, except you are sending them images and text messages and hanging out with them on video chats…Anyway, the new thing from the Gootch makes it really easy to sort people into the holes, which is good, because this lets you divide people into clusters and lie to each group in different ways, which makes it easier to preserve the fictions that make up our polite racist society. And it looks pretty sweet and works well so far, which probably means that there will be a huge battle-in-earnest between the Gootch and the Books, between Circles and Friends.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    The Unemployed Worker’s New Friend: Outsourcers [WSJ] – As consumers are exposed to automation, bots, telemarketer scripts, recommendation engines, semi-personalized banner ads, and other intermediaries, is it any wonder that they will begin to harness those tools for their own ends? And perhaps tolerate misfires on their own behalf? The exploration of what can’t be outsourced continues.

    For a $10 monthly fee ($40 for the first month) an automated service called MyJobHunter.com sent out more than 500 job applications in five months on Mr. Moomjean’s behalf. Within a day after a job opening hit the Web, the service scanned it for certain keywords. In Mr. Moomjean’s case, the words included “sales” and “retail.” If the listing was a match, the service would fire off a résumé to the employer without so much as showing it to the applicant. MyJobHunter is unique in its reliance on software. Customers of JobConcierge.com pay $30 a week to have their job applications sent out by workers based across the U.S. and abroad.

    At JobSerf.com, candidates pay up to $98 a week for one of a team of workers in Visakhapatnam, India, to find openings and apply for jobs. Many of JobSerf’s workers join the company because their English is too rudimentary for them to work in a call center, says CEO Jay Martin. So language difficulties do crop up. When JobSerf six years ago first tested its service with a few U.S. executive clients, its Indian workers applied on their behalf to a number of adult-entertainment companies.

    The shotgun approach to applications has other drawbacks: When recruiters call candidates about a job, they often don’t realize that it is something they have applied for. A district manager for a Krispy Kreme doughnut franchise was taken aback when she called Mr. Moomjean about his application only to learn he had no idea what she was calling about. “He didn’t know who I was or where I got his application,” recalled Melissa Surby-Curtin, the franchise group’s district manager. “I thought ‘Oh, this isn’t a good start.'”

    In a span of 240 hours over three months last summer, JobSerf’s staff applied to 711 jobs on behalf of IT manager Colin Campbell, 34, of Cincinnati. Mr. Campbell said he got dozens of calls from potential employers. But he didn’t get his current job that way; he got it through a personal connection. On a single day last summer, Greg Moffitt, 47, of Houston, sent out more than 100 applications via MyJobHunter. An irritated recruiter, who got his résumé three times, eventually called to ask him to stop.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Could the Cindy Sherman of Monkeys Accidentally Revolutionize Copyright Law for Artists? [Art Info] – Questions about process, artifact and IP are complicated once the animal kingdom gets involved. Is putting the means in the monkey’s able hands enough to translate to ownership? BTW – it’s worth clicking through to see the monkey’s expressions!

    While working in an Indonesian national park, British nature photographer David Slater had his camera purloined by a clever macaque monkey who took several self-portraits, apparently fascinated by her own reflection in the lens… Copyright is generally held by the person who takes the picture, and since the author was in this case the monkey – Slater explicitly stated that he had no hand in creating the image – Techdirt wondered by what basis Caters could have acquired the copyright… Only humans get copyright, whether in Indonesia, the United Kingdom, or the United States. “In order to be entitled to copyright registration, a work must be the product of human authorship,” says a quote by the U.S. Copyright Office. “Works produced by mechanical processes or random selection without any contribution by a human.” All of this leads to big questions for the world of contemporary art, where works generated by “mechanical processes” and “random selection” are established parts of the vocabulary.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    Kenny Powers Takes Over K-Swiss [Fox 9] – A hilariously audacious video, by shoe-purveyor K-Swiss, depicting a fictional reality where their company is now run by Kenny Powers, comedic douchebag athlete from HBO’s “Eastbound and Down.” In brainstorming sessions we encourage our participants to come up with bad ideas as a way to feed the creative flow. Here K-Swiss reveals all their bad ideas – more bad ideas than you thought possible, not through a leak of a secret company PowerPoint but in a deliberate marketing campaign. This is some ballsy corporate culture. I don’t care what kind of edgy ad agency put this together, a lot of people at K-Swiss signed off on it and they’ve got to have enormous confidence to be able to toy with the image of the company so aggressively. I don’t know a lot about any K-Swiss precursors (so let me know in the comments!) but I’m suitably impressed with this. It’s very funny, very NSFW, very confident, and actually seems very authentic (i.e., the pitch is pretty low-key and doesn’t get in the way of the funny). It begs the question for all of us, “How willing would you be to pretend to poop all over your brand, in service of your brand?”

    Kenny Powers - K-Swiss CEO video (Uncensored)

    The Colosseum guards story

    We recently redesigned our business cards. While business cards are hardly the sexiest of collateral and perhaps of questionable relevance in the West, we were excited about the opportunity to take a simple instance of our identity and play with it, without worrying too much about impact on other elements like our site, and so on, that might be more challenging for us to take on ourselves.

    Our new cards consist of a few different designs, each with a photograph on one side and the question “What’s your story?”, pointing to this series of blog posts. Over the next while, we’ll be presenting each of the images we chose and offering some of the background, context, or what we saw in the image. Of course, we welcome your own interpretations, questions, examples, etc.

    Here’s a photo I took in Rome, in May 2010, while walking through Trastevere.

    What’s the story? The body language says heading home from a day at the office, but the outfit suggests a man lost in time. This juxtaposition is the sort of thing that amuses me a great deal.

    Later in our trip we made it over to the Colosseum, where we saw costumed, muscley fellows posing for pictures with tourists, presumably for tips.

    You can’t even see the poor tourist in this picture as he’s being aggressively dominated. It was getting close to a private moment as this guy seemed to be having the time of his life pretending to be abused, manhandled and perhaps even slaughtered!

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Eating alone: There’s nothing quite like sharing a meal with someone you love – yourself [The Denver Post] – [Fascinating how this person celebrates going against one strong cultural norm – she will happily eat alone at a restaurant in public – then turns right around and limits that new-found freedom by restraining her behavior in that context with a bunch more. Going against the grain is a tenuous act.] The meal itself is company enough for Vicky Uhland. "It's my reward at the end of the day," she says. "I like to have good service, have a nice drink. The atmosphere matters, too. It doesn't necessarily have to be quiet. But it has to be comfortable." Uhland sits at a table, not at the bar. "That's where I draw the line, the bar. A good girl alone at the bar? For some reason it's kind of sleazy." More red flags for Uhland: "I would never do Valentine's Day or any time I would look like a giant loser," she says. "If it was a really trendy restaurant I probably wouldn't go there on a Saturday."

    Out and About: Julie in New York

    My aimless wanderings between meetings and meals in Manhattan last week led to observing these collisions of order and chaos.

    Cupcakes at Dean and Deluca (Greenwich Village) bear a resemblance to the tiered visuals and colors of the crowd (Times Square).

    Impact emerges from the pattern of repetitive elements in street/sidewalk art (SoHo) and tagged signage (Chinatown).

    Out and About: Steve in New York

    After wrapping up a few intense days of work with a client, we decided to stay in New York an extra day. Our meals were certainly beyond a typical office day (Balthazar for breakfast and Joe’s Shanghai for lunch); meanwhile we huddled at a Starbucks in SoHo to get some work done. The only available seats were in the window, so we propped the laptop on the countertop and did our thing. So there we are, two professional noticers in front of a window in a busy part of Manhattan. You can imagine the staccato work conversations we had, as we constantly interrupted ourselves with “Did you see that sign?”, “Did you see that person?” or “Did you see that truck?”

    We did see a lot of lovely trucks. I wonder if NYC-area businesses have figured out the business benefit of the business end of the truck? As above, a delicious reinforcement of the pig hippo branding specifically for the back of the truck. Earlier, a rear graphic that read “I [pretzel] N Y.” Before that, the Meat without Feet truck.

    Trucks, part of a great day.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Bright Colors Struggle to Bloom in South Korea’s Silver-Car Nation [WSJ.com] – [Product aesthetics, over functionality, become highly codified] Car colors around the world have been trending monochromatic. In the U.S., black, white and silver cars now account for about 60% of new-car sales, up from 38% in the late-1990s, according to Kia. But no nation has as high a proportion of the three colors as South Korea does. China and Japan are next, with just under 80% of new cars sold in the three colors. Oh Suk-geun, chief designer at Hyundai, theorizes that the East Asian affinity for muted car colors is rooted in the monochromatic painting, calligraphy and printmaking of centuries past. Layered onto that tradition, older South Koreans remember the limits on self-expression, and even clothing, imposed by the authoritarian government that led the country after the Korean War of the early 1950s. In those days, with the country rising from poverty, most people didn't own cars. For those that did, a color code arose: black for company cars, white for family cars.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Tracing Unscooped Dog Waste Back to the Culprit [NYTimes.com] – [Here's an example of CSI-level technology trickling down at least to the prosumer level.] Canine DNA is being used to identify the culprits who fail to clean up after their pets, an offense that Deborah Violette is committed to eradicating at the apartment complex she manages. Everyone who owns a dog in her complex in Lebanon, NH., must submit a sample of its DNA, taken by rubbing a cotton swab inside the animal’s mouth. The swab is sent to BioPet Vet Lab, a Knoxville, TN company that enters it into a worldwide database. If Ms. Violette finds an unscooped pile, she can take a sample, mail it to the lab and use a DNA match to identify the offending owner. Called PooPrints, the system costs $29.99 for the swabbing kit, $10 for a vial to hold the samples and $50 to analyze them, which usually takes a week or two. About two dozen apartment complexes around the country have signed up for the service. In 2008, the Israeli city of Petah Tikva created a dog DNA database for the same purpose.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Odd Color Names Offer a Primer in Marketing [NYTimes.com] – [Questionable strategy to break through meaningless by piling on the irrelevance with a smidge of quirk. How's about "help me choose" over "confuse and provoke me"?] Some paint companies are hoping to distinguish their brands with names that tell a story, summon a memory or evoke an emotion — even a dark one — as long as they result in a sale. What they do not do is reveal the color. “For a long time we had to connect the color name with the general color reference,” said Sue Kim, the color trend and forecast specialist for Valspar. “But now we’re exploring color names that are a representation of your lifestyle.” Sherwin-Williams offers Synergy. From Ace Paint comes Hey There! Benjamin Moore has Old World Romance…“I am perfectly fine if a certain name gives them a perplexed, thoughtful moment,” Ms. Kim said, “if the three-second glance gets us another five seconds as they pause to think, ‘Why is that Metro at 5?’ I think that’s a good thing.”

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] National Onion Labs, Inc. – [Bet you didn't know that there was a national onion lab, or that there were standards for onion certification. Now you do. You're so very welcome!] People use onions for their unique and distinctive flavors and by looking for the appropriate NOL certification you can be assured that the onion you choose will be appropriate for your use. Look for NOL’s trustworthy quality certification Certified Extra Sweet®, Certified Sweet®, Certified Medio™ and Certified Sizzler™ when selecting onions.
    • [from steve_portigal] From Muses To Music: Where Ideas Come From [NPR] – [Transcript of a Talk of the Nation episode at the Aspen Ideas Festival, with a broad cross-section of participants.This was my favorite snippet.] Q: Joining us now is Eric Fischl. He's a painter and sculptor…Not where do your ideas come from, but how do you come up with them? A: I'm a painter of people, so one of the sources of my inspiration is body language. And when I see people sitting, standing, moving, twisting, turning in very specific, very idiosyncratic ways, I'm riveted by it. I don't know why. If I have my camera with me, I take a photograph of it. And then back in my studio, I look at that photograph and try to find a context for explaining why I was fascinated by that particular gesture.[They don't all work out] but the process is always fascinating.
    • [from steve_portigal] Technological Superstition [The Technium] – [KK takes a direct look at how we imbue objects with meaning, although he frames it as "superstition." Funny how that word really agitates me, whereas my term (meaning) is pacifying. In our work, perception often is reality, but I'm refreshed and challenged by Kevin's close reading of reality, just plain reality.] They honestly believe that artifacts can transmit the aura of a human who uses it. In this case, the steel transmits the bravery of the firemen rescuers, and the innocence of the civilians who died. But it can also transmit cooties. They believe that wearing Hitler's sweater would be a bad idea, while sleeping in a room (completely remodeled) that Lincoln slept in is a good idea. This is magical thinking….In the end, a historical technological artifact is one of the reservoirs in the modern world where superstition still flows freely.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] rep.licants.org – enhanced virtual self – [I'm trying this although I may come to regret it; meanwhile the notion is so fascinating, giving virtual extensions of our presence and personality to make us "more" human in our interactions rather than less human!] rep.licants.org is a web service allowing users to install an artificial intelligence (bot) on their Facebook and/or Twitter account. From keywords, content analysis and activity analysis, the bot attempts to simulate the activity of the user, to improve it by feeding his account and to create new contacts with other users…The bot does not born with a fictitious identity, but will be added to the real identity of the user to modify it at his convenience. Thus, this bot can be seen as a virtual prosthesis added to an user's account. With the aim to help him to forge a digital identity of what he would really like to be and by trying to build a greater social reputation for the user.
    • [from julienorvaisas] Venture Inside China’s Tiny Public Housing Cubes [Flavorwire] – [A surprising variety is borne of extreme domestic constraints: approaches and techniques for featuring and concealing objects, decoration and overall effect or mood.] The dwellers of the Shek Kip Mei Estate public housing project in Hong Kong occupy just ten feet by ten feet of living space. The humble rooms that originally served as relocation units for fire victims in the 1950s are furnished with bunk beds. The crowded units balloon with dozens of plastic bags for all-purpose storage and are decorated with a varying amount of patriotic paraphernalia.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Did My Brother Invent E-Mail With Tom Van Vleck? [NYtimes.com] – [Errol Morris' series is a fascinating. personal history of computer technology.] Batch processing…was like taking your clothes to the laundromat. You’d take your job in, and leave it in the input bins. The staff people would prerecord it onto these magnetic tapes, they would be run by the computer. The output would be printed. This cycle would take at best, several hours. It was maddening, because when you’re working on a complicated program, you can make a trivial slip-up ­ you left out a comma or something ­ and the program would crash. You would try very hard to be careful, but you didn’t always make it…A process that could take a week, weeks, months. People began to advocate a different tactic called time-sharing. Have people at typewriter-like terminals. It certainly seemed feasible. But no manufacturer knew how to do it. And the vendors were not terribly interested, because it was like suggesting to an automobile manufacturer that they go into the airplane business.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Short Cuts [London Review of Books] – [The application of number-crunching style analytics to cracking a cultural code.] Spies aren’t known for their cultural sensitivity. So it was a surprise when news broke last month that IARPA, a US government agency that funds ‘high-risk/high-payoff research’ into areas of interest to the ‘intelligence community’, had put out a call for contributions to its Metaphor Program, a five-year project to discover what a foreign culture’s metaphors can reveal about its beliefs…The teams that get funded will collect large amounts of text in four languages, representing four cultures: Iranian Farsi, Mexican Spanish, Russian Russian and American English. With the help of heavy-duty computer analysis, they will spend the first couple of years identifying conceptual metaphors in each language and listing them in a ‘metaphor repository’ along with their associated ‘affect’,

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] New book about recurring technological failures [Pasta&Vinegar] – [Nicolas Nova has written a lot of great articles, presentations, and blog posts about failure, technology, society, and design. Now he's got a book. Let's hope an English version appears before too long?] My new book about recurring technological failures has been released two weeks ago. It’s called “Les flops technologiques: comprendre les échecs pour innover” which obviously means that it’s written in French. Based on the analysis of several cases (the intelligent fridge, the visiophone and e-books), the book describes the notion of recurring technological flops, discusses the very notion of failures and their underlying reasons. It also addresses strategies and design tactics to take them into account.
    • [from steve_portigal] The Art of Garfinkling [Splunderousnoog] – [We tend to conceptualize experiments and research as dispassionate or disconnected endeavors, but there's so much that can happen when we as experiments or researchers risk our presumptions and comfort level in order to get deeper understanding. In describing ethnography, I often refer to the researcher as the "apparatus" who is embedded and gathers data through that experience.] Carry out a simple experiment. When you are on the bus or the train, ask a person to give up her seat. Make sure you're young and fit. To make it easier, ask someone who is as fit or fitter than you. It is a hard thing for most to do. There is emotional distress involved. The fear of opprobrium, the need to be liked, to be nice…This sort of experiment is known as a "breaching experiment". It involves violating social norms. A famous, pioneering exponent of breaching experiments was a chap called Harold Garfinkle. So much so that "breaching experiments" are known as "Garfinkling"!
    • [from steve_portigal] Jeter’s 3,000th Hit Will Bring About as Many Marketing Possibilities [NYTimes.com] – [Merchandising a celebration.] Tablespoonfuls of the dirt will be poured into capsules to dangle on key chains; ladled into disks to be framed with photographs of the hit (in what is called a dirt collage); and glued into the interlocking NY carved into commemorative bats…The selling of Jeter’s hit…is quite a list: T-shirts, caps, jerseys, bobbleheads, decals, cellphone skins, wall murals, patches, bats, balls, license plates and necklaces made by licensees…Jeter will share royalties with M.L.B. and the players’ union; Already, he has designated proceeds from the sale of a silicone bracelet to benefit his Turn 2 Foundation. Everything Jeter touches or wears as he pursues his 3,000th hit carries value. So will the bases he steps on. In deciding what to provide for sale, Jeter controls his cleats, wristbands, bats and batting gloves. The Yankees control what they provide to him, like his uniform, warm-up jackets, and caps, as well as the dirt, the bases and the pitching rubber.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] 5 Reasons Why E-Books Aren’t There Yet [Wired.com] – [Echoes the work we did in our 2010 Reading Ahead project, "The unabridged reading experience includes crucial events that take place before and after the elemental moments of eyes-looking-at-words" https://portigal.com/blog/reading-ahead-research-findings/] E-books are still falling short of a promise to make us forget their paper analogs. For now, you still lose something by moving on. I have never owned an e-book reader, because I have an ingrained opposition to single-purpose devices. But since getting an iPad on day one, I haven’t purchased a print edition of anything for myself. I am hooked — completely one with the idea that books are legacy items that may never go away, but have been forever marginalized as a niche medium. With that in mind, however, here are five things about e-books that might give you pause about saying good riddance to the printed page. 1) An unfinished e-book isn’t a constant reminder to finish reading it…5)E-books can’t be used for interior design.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Invasion of the body hackers [FT.com / FT Magazine] – [Opportunities for data visualization abound! I find these trends simultaneously compelling and terrifying.] Over the last weekend of May, in the heart of Silicon Valley, 400 “Quantified-Selfers” from around the globe have gathered to show off their Excel sheets, databases and gadgets. Participants are mostly middle to upper class, mostly white. Europe is well represented. There are plenty of nerdy young men, nerdy older men and extremely fit men and women with defined muscles and glowing skin. There is also a robust contingent of young urban hipsters in military boots, hoodies and elaborate tattoos. A quiet middle-aged man walks around with a pulse monitor clipped to his earlobe, a blood pressure cuff on his arm and a heart rate monitor strapped around his chest, all feeding a stream of data to his walkie-talkie-like computer. Someone from the UK unrolls a 12ft line graph charting the fluctuations in his mood over the previous year.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Data Visualization/Communication [Lauren Manning Design] – [Manning has done a lot of work to provide these instructive visualizations. The approaches privilege different aspects of the data. Which ones tell the strongest story? I am a fan of those that include actual images of the foods; they seem to require one layer less to decode. French Fry Consumption by Month is terrific!] Data sets vary tremendously, so one man’s brilliant solution can be another’s complete failure. Instead of seeing many excellent visualizations of all different data sets, what if you could see tons of visualizations of the same data set? Using a data set created from two years of meticulous life documenting, I visualized one point of data – food consumed – over forty ways. Exploring various methods, techniques, styles, degrees of complexity, degrees of additional context and many other elements, a true “apples to apples” comparison has emerged.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Posters Promoting Non-Events, Everyday Life [DesignTAXI.com] – [Delightful celebrations of the stuff of everyday life!] These posters don’t advertise a gig, a club night or any worthwhile event. They’re for the mundane things: enjoying a sunny day, singing in the shower, or anything that we do everyday but don’t realize. Created as part of the EDPED (Each Day Posters Every Day) project, the posters are designed to highlight how 'no activity in your life is too boring or mundane.The idea is to take trivial activities and promote them with posters to give them a sense of importance they ordinarily would not have.'
    • [from julienorvaisas] Customizable Stencil Lets Anyone Make Street Art Infographics [GOOD] – [Pretty cool idea, but we all know that the power of statistics in the wrong hands can be dangerous. I can't help but notice that the kit doesn't include a spot for a citation of source! I imagine this kit being mostly used for humorous imaginary statistics ala thisisindexed.com rather than political commentary.] With the help of a new pie chart stencil by interactive media artist Golan Levin, creating politically charged graffiti just got a bit easier. The fully customizable "Infoviz Graffiti" toolkit allows users to quickly swap out the numbers and letters and adjust the slice of the pie. 

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] The Sorcerers and Their Apprentices [WSJ.com] – [This review of Frank Moss's new book about the MIT Media Lab includes commentary on Moss's exaltation of "undisciplined" and "antidisciplinary" methods and their single-minded application of science in the service of developing devices and machines, at the expense of more traditional research methods.] Everything looks promising and possible at the demonstration and prototyping stage, when even sponsors may be willing to excuse the recalcitrant model hastily assembled to meet a deadline. But what will be the long-term implications of antidisciplined and undisciplined new technology that might be loosed upon the world? Do either sorcerers or apprentices caught up in the rush of casting spells have the time to ponder the consequences of their magic? Frank Moss appears to be aware of the potential problems with rapidly expanding technology. He has said that "today, society is awash in digital affordances" but admits that "paradoxically, we feel less in control of our lives."

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Empty trash. Buy milk. Forge history. [The Boston Globe] – [Of course, I'm a big fan of looking at the seemingly-mundane to examine what it means to be human and bring meaning.] A household list might seem a fairly modest starting point upon which to build a whole theory of economic development. But in fact these types of lists are becoming increasingly important to historians — documents produced not as a message to posterity, like a memoir or diplomatic record, but as a simple snapshot of everyday life. Taken as a group, lists offer a rare window into the building blocks of society, economy, and culture — one that is becoming only more valuable as historians gain the processing power to make sense of them. “Something as innocuous as a list turns out to be incredibly fruitful if you bring both a sense of historical questions and context."

    Our latest article: Elevator Pitch


    Our latest interactions column (written by Steve Portigal and Julie Norvaisas) Elevator Pitch has just been published.

    It seems only yesterday that the VCR and its flashing 12:00 was the go-to whipping boy for the interaction field. “Gosh almighty,” the lament would rise. “What does it say about us if we can’t even make a usable digital clock, one that won’t blinkingly admonish us for our failures?” Note to younger readers: The VCR, now obsolete, was an entertainment device that “streamed” video information directly from physical media, not unlike its successor, the nearly obsolete DVD player. We’re stoked to propose an alternative that isn’t likely to be obsolete for a while: the elevator.

    Get the PDF here.

    Previous articles also available:

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Mary Sue [TV Tropes] – [Fan cultures and their depth and specificity highlight the gap between outsider presumptions about groups and the more complex insider truths.] "Mary Sue" is a derogatory term primarily used in Fan Fic circles to describe a particular type of character…These traits usually reference the character's perceived importance in the story, their physical design and an irrelevantly over-skilled or over-idealized nature…The prototypical Mary Sue is an original female character in a fanfic who obviously serves as an idealized version of the author mainly for the purpose of Wish Fulfillment. She's exotically beautiful, often having an unusual hair or eye color, and has a similarly cool and exotic name. She's exceptionally talented in an implausibly wide variety of areas, and may possess skills that are rare or nonexistent in the canon setting. She also lacks any realistic, or at least story-relevant, character flaws — either that or her "flaws" are obviously meant to be endearing.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Facebook Policy Spurs Big Pharma to Rethink Social Media [Advertising Age] – [Beyond challenges such as authenticity, relevancy and voice, social media presence is a regulatory risk for brands in some industries.] Being forced to enable comments on its Facebook pages puts pharmaceutical companies at risk of running afoul of the current FDA regulations, even if it's just consumers making the comments. For instance, if a company has a branded page for an antacid, and a consumer comments that it helped lower his blood pressure as well, that's considered off-label promotion. "The Facebook decision is entirely consistent with what Facebook is designed to be — interactive. A Facebook page with the interactivity turned off is just a static web page residing on an interactive platform. And that isn't what Facebook is all about. It's time for regulated industry to step up to the plate and embrace the powerful tool that is real-time interactivity."
    • [from steve_portigal] Focus Groups That Look Like Play Groups [NYTimes.com] – [The lede, emphasizing focus groups, is misleading. The article explores a range of methods that market researchers are using. Maybe some novel ideas in here but also a good artifact of the popular press discourse about how we work.] Mr. Denari’s agency takes a different tack, interviewing consumers in their homes and leaving them with journals called “Little Truth Books” for a week or two. “It forces people to think a little more deeply than they normally would,” Mr. Denari said. When Ugly Mug Coffee wanted to retool its brand, Mr. Denari’s agency asked consumers to use the journals to draw family trees showing which family members were coffee drinkers. They were also asked to list some of the worst things about coffee, what their coffee “cut-off time” was and why they drank it at all. “The whole goal is the get to the heart,” Mr. Denari said. The research helped Ugly Mug create new packaging and expand distribution. [via @serota]
    • [from steve_portigal] A gelato-less June [Gelatobaby] – [Interesting to see how blogs can structure/support deliberate habit changes.] I wrote an essay pledging to fly less to reduce my environmental impact. (I’m actually only allowing myself one round-trip flight per month, compared to the 23 trips I took last year.) My friend Greg Lindsay, author of the new book Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next pointed out that my air miles were nothing compared to the footprint of my gelato habit. A United Nations report from last year noted that “agriculture accounts for 70% of global freshwater consumption, 38% of the total land use and 19% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.” I’m hoping that I can fill my gelato-less days with facts and information about where my dairy is coming from, how it’s produced, and if­if!­I might even come to love some dairy-free options. Suffice it to say, this is going to be an extremely enlightening 30 days. Especially since I have just discovered that the LA Weekly has embarked upon 30 Scoops in 30 Days project.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] The Art of Design Research (and Why It Matters) [design mind] – [Lovely piece by Jon Freach on what design research brings to design and innovation.] And sometimes design teams don't have the patience to see the value in dragging out a study in an effort to make it scientifically or statistically significant. We're just not wired that way; we prefer to make and experiment and then analyze later. So what is research good for? 1. Learning about people's behavior; 2. Understanding and analyzing culture; 3. Defining context; 4. Setting focus…Design research is not "a science" and is not necessarily "scientific." It gives designers and clients a much more nuanced understanding of the people for whom they design while providing knowledge that addresses some of the most fundamental questions we face throughout the process. What is the correct product or service to design? What characteristics should it have, and is it working as intended? "The research" won't necessarily provide cold hard answers. But it will generate some good and feasible ideas.
    • [from steve_portigal] CBS Radio Tells Its D.J.’s to Name Titles and Artists [NYTimes.com] – [Tying together the fortunes of radio and record sales?] Last week the head of a major radio company felt compelled to instruct its programmers to identify more of the songs played on the air, by title and artist name…at some indeterminate point in history ­ the mid-1980s ­ song identification began to vanish from the air as programmers struggled to squeeze out anything considered “clutter.” “You were always conscious about the amount of talk you would put on,” he said. “But the truth is that people tune in and tune out, and it was probably underestimated at the time how much people really wanted that information.” For record companies, having a song’s title and artist’s name mentioned on the air ­ especially if new and unfamiliar ­ is crucial marketing…“At one point in our culture there were well-schooled retailers who could help people figure out what that song was, because they wanted to buy it,” said Greg Thompson, VP at EMI Music. “In this day and age that doesn’t exist.”

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Who benefits when New York upgrades its ‘user experience’? [Capital New York] – [Somewhat rambling but interesting piece that – I think – compares the gentrification of the web to an app UX with the types of city changes New York is seeking to improve its user experience.] Try navigating most news sites and you’ll be dodging all kinds of digital equivalents to roadblocks, tourists and construction. Reading an article can sometimes require a mastery of mouse acrobatics, requiring you to steer from funny-looking links that, with just a graze over a photo, will awaken a sleeping giant ad that pop-ups up and takes over your screen, blocking the very words you were simply trying to read. Or a video will start playing, unprompted, somewhere in that digital box, and, although its sounds are blaring from your speakers, you can’t find it. You have to scroll and maneuver to figure out where the dang thing is and find that tiny pause button before your coworkers groan and tsk.
    • [from steve_portigal] VW Camper Van Tent [Firebox.com] – [File this one as another entry under things-that-look-like-other-things. While the design approach here is more of a gimmick, it reveals itself as a powerful way to play with meaning and irony.] If you love music, mud and Mother Nature you’re probably heading to a camp site at some point this summer. But why take shelter in some dull, conventional tent when you can recreate the Summer of Love in the hippie-tastic VW Camper Van Tent. Officially licensed, this stunning four-man (or lady, natch) tent is a luxe, full-size replica of the iconic 1965 VW Camper Van synonymous with 60s counterculture. It’s so evocative you can almost hear the Mamas and the Papas singing California Dreamin’ every time you feast your eyes on its beautifully breadloaf-ish form. Indeed we half expected Mama Cass to tumble out when we first saw this groovy Vee-Dub. You’ll be the envy of the campsite! [Thanks, Jeff Fox!]

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] My Notes on Steve Portigal’s presentation – Design Fieldwork: Uncovering Innovation from the Outside In [The Pam] – [Pam pulls out the key points from my UIE WAMT presentation that most resonated with her.] The knowledge “You’re not your user” creates empathy, but going out to the field makes you listen and understand what your users are going through. Through fieldwork you can detect unmet business goals. Doing fieldwork can accomplish many research goals at the same time, not only about the users but also about your organizational goals.
    • [from steve_portigal] Web App Masters: Uncovering Innovation with Fieldwork [LukeW] – [Luke's summary notes from my 75-minute talk.] Be a methods-polygamist. Choose, mash-up, or create a methodology based on the problem you are trying to solve. Integrate with other methods. Create a library of methods and artifacts that you can call on and modify as needed. Different methodologies tell you different things. It’s not an either or.
    • [from julienorvaisas] Let’s Be Frank: Divisadero Public Discussion Board [The Bold Italic] – [Building on yesterday's quickie – here's a local example of the use of public space as a form for gathering thoughts of residents.] I think it's cool that people can participate after the event by writing their thoughts on the chalkboards. This neighborhood has evolved so much in the last few years, and I'm sure everyone who lives here has thoughts about the transformation, good and bad. I'm personally worried that the changes will leave out members of the old neighborhood, but I'm hopeful when I see the community come together on projects like these. However you feel about the change, I think it's a positive step when people are asked to voice their opinions in the process. So neighbors of Divisadero, don't be shy, what do you think the community needs?

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Artist Posts Neighborhood Surveys and Infographics on the Streets of Boston [GOOD] – [Together at last, street art and research. redefining guerilla research.] Since March, Devin, an artist based in the Boston neighborhood of Somerville, has been making small posters and taping them up on phone poles and other public fixtures. They come in three varieties (or "flavors," to use his term). "Mappy Facts" show people demographic data, like average income levels by neighborhood, on colorful maps. "Street Surveys" are more participatory, asking passersby questions about their relationship to their neighborhood, with tear-away tabs for them to answer with. A third flavor features poetry. The surveys aren't scientific, of course, but it's possible that people who encounter Devin's art will come away with a better understanding of their city, or be prompted to think about their own relationship to the place they live. You can download and print the survey posters and put them up in your own city if you're curious about how your neighbors perceive their home.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] A Scientific View of Why Ideas Go Viral [BNET] – [Refreshing if daunting to be reminded that commonly assumed tropes don't play out] Marketers and executives have no clue what an influencer is. Watts points out we all talk so much about influencers, we’ve accepted the term without knowing its definition. Are influencers ordinary people with extraordinary reach? Are they celebrities or “opinion leaders” as they were named in earlier stages of pr theory? Even if we were to exclude bloggers, media, and Oprah from our definition – how then do we measure how an influencer impacts the opinions of others? Watts says some studies measure an influencer as someone whom at least three people say they would turn to for advice. But that scale — reaching people who are three times better connected than others — does not move the millions of people marketers, political campaigns, and brands need to reach. Stripped of the media spin, an influencer’s clout is limited without the amplifying power of the Internet. [Thanks, @nodesign!]

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Delta-Northwest Merger’s Long and Complex Path [NYTimes.com] – [While there's humor at the banality of decisions, the successfully merged experience worships the God who lives in the details.] Airlines have specific working rules, flying procedures, maintenance schedules and computer programs. And all have their own cultures…Pilots at Delta used to ring the cabin bell four times as they began their final approach, while those at Northwest rang it twice. The food catering operations of both airlines had 8,000 pages of one-line codes describing everything from soda orders to the price of strawberries. Each airline had different codes and paid different prices. Delta used to cut its limes in 10 slices while Northwest cut them 16 ways. The lime debate was even mentioned at a meeting attended by the chief executive, who was told it saved Northwest about $500,000 a year. In the end, Delta stuck with its 10 slices. But the airline also realized that it had been loading more limes on its flights than it needed. So it is now carrying fewer limes.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Shit Painted Gold – [Post-modern detachedly-ironic consumerism makes the brain work hard. We'll tell you these products are crap and that we've not added any value by changing the color, but we have transformed them nonetheless. So, we hope you'll be happy to pay a bit extra for them. Now, please exit through the gift shop.] Nothing looks fancier in your home, office or garbage than shit painted gold. these amazing one of a kind art pieces will legitimize your ability to say to people, "why yes, that shit IS gold" [Thanks, Jeannie Choe!]
    • [from julienorvaisas] What comes after One Day for Design? [AIGA] – [Along with many others, we participated and commented on the 1D4D experience. AIGA hints that they are analyzing conversations and data gathered that day to guide their very reinvention. Stay tuned…] On April 13, we reached out through the existing networks of several prolific tweeters who led exchanges on the future of design, the concerns of today’s designers and the opportunities for design communities…Together with our partners in this project, the independent branding collective VSA Partners, we are now synthesizing the comments and discussions generated through this event. We will share the results here as we summarize them and develop ways for AIGA to respond. In June, our national board and chapter leaders will review all of this research from the past year—including the results from “One Day”—and work with us to outline the next steps. This is the year that AIGA will pivot toward new forms of serving the profession and its members.
    • [from steve_portigal] Pink Tools for Women: Learn today, Teach tomorrow, Build forever. – [Had this one sitting around forever. Love the message of empowerment; I'm willing to buy the pink-as-brand and NOT pink-as-shallow-way-of-feminizing-design but what else are they doing (besides Tupperware business model) to make these products specifically for women?] Founded by three women deeply entrenched in do-it-yourself projects, Tomboy Tools was launched in 2000 as the dream-turned-reality of being able to provide women with hands-on education, high quality tools and a fun way to make a living from home. Our Mission Statement: To build confidence and empower women through education, quality tools and an independent business opportunity. Today, while our mission statement rings as true as ever, our slogan is shorter and more concise. Our slogan underscores the power of Tomboy Tools in the marketplace and the value we provide both to female customers seeking hands-on education with high quality tools and Home Consultants looking for a great career.
    • [from steve_portigal] Conversations With Bert: Andy Samberg [YouTube] – [As a fellow introvert, I recognize Bert's slight shift into a more deliberate and mannered "interview mode." While he's not quite Terry Gross (and has a way to go to do the type of interviewing that we do), this short clip is a good source for a number of interviewing techniques, mixing equally between "what to do" and "what not to do." I'll have to use this in my next workshop and ask people to make note of the ways that Bert is successful or unsuccessful as he asks open-ended questions, reveals his own perspectives, redirects the conversation, feeds back, acknowledges what Andy says, and asks follow-ups.] Sesame Street's Bert sits down with comedian and Saturday Night Live cast member, Andy Samberg, to talk about life, literature, cuisine and of course, socks.
    • [from julienorvaisas] Memories destroyed in a flash [The Independent] – [Nice discussion of pros and cons, and implications of the broad transition to digital photos. This cultural shift will have huge implications generationally.] Spend a few minutes watching a Facebook feed and you quickly see it is not just our viewing experience that has changed. The way we store and display our pictures has radically altered the nature and type of photograph we take. A high proportion of photos on social networking sites tend to be posed self-portraits, the telltale arm holding the camera often hoving into view at the side. The breadth and scope of the pictures we display has decreased. We've moved away from Sontag's idea of photos as being accessories to our memories, towards photos as a brag – a way of telling the world what fun we're having, and how good we look having it. "You can guess it's taken for the benefit of an audience: It's not necessarily better or worse – just different. It was never so much the case with your personal album."

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Blu Develops a Social Networking Device for Smokers [NYTimes.com] – [While it's a bit of a weird idea, it seems to fit with the already weird e-cigarette better than the very old-school tobacco experience] The new “smart packs" ($80 for 5 e-cigarettes) emit and search for the radio signals of other packs. When they get within 50 feet, the packs vibrate and flash a blue light. Packs can be set to exchange information about their owners, like contact information on social networking sites, that can be downloaded to computers. The packs also conveniently vibrate when a smoker nears a retail outlet that sells Blu cigarettes. Later versions will be tethered to a smartphone through an app. Adam Alfandary, 24 was skeptical. He said that the social aspects of smoking were a part of the reason he continued to light up, but he scoffed at the idea of a cigarette that would do the social part for him. “I think that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. And I’m saying that in full acknowledgment that smoking is one of the dumbest things I can do.”

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from wstarosta] There are no such things as “Insights” [PLH] – [Pretty Little Head contributor, Farrah Bostic, shares her opinion on what an insight is and what it isn't. In doing so, she makes the point that insights are not things that can be gathered. Rather, the best we can hope for is to be insightful through research, immersion, observation and questioning.] I was recently asked to put together some “insight generation” exercises for a training workshop. This is pretty standard fare for a planning director, the person who ‘owns the insights.’ Creative briefs now often feature sections that are titled something like, “What’s the key insight?” – into which, the planner dutifully fills in some text in order to earn her wages. For some reason, on this particular request, I just completely stalled out. I often, at conferences and in client meetings, or with other planners, remark on how “insights” is another crime against the English language that Adland has perpetrated upon corporate culture.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] The WhatWasThere Project – [It's exciting to see these sort of audacious projects start to emerge and to actually believe that they are possible. There's already a wealth of similar data on Flickr and presumably on Facebook as well; is there a way to tap into the existing data ethically?] The WhatWasThere project was inspired by the realization that we could leverage technology and the connections it facilitates to provide a new human experience of time and space – a virtual time machine of sorts that allows users to navigate familiar streets as they appeared in the past. The premise is simple: provide a platform where anyone can easily upload a photograph with two straightforward tags to provide context: Location and Year. If enough people upload enough photographs in enough places, together we will weave together a photographic history of the world (or at least any place covered by Google Maps). So wherever you are in the world, take a moment to upload a photograph and contribute to history!

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from wstarosta] Food trucks in Los Angeles [latimes.com] – [It was only a matter of time before corporations like Jack-in-the-Box and Sizzler recognized an opportunity to exploit the growing food cart scene. Sad.] There are other issues too, including a wealth of copycat trucks and the sense that many entering the business have no culinary experience but expect to make a fortune.
      That's not to say that there isn't a silver lining to the movement's adolescence. Hiller, other truck owners and a ravenous public believe in the food truck's promise — the realization of a street-food culture that unites a disparate city and encourages a community that lingers outdoors together over a plate of food. It's a concept long understood by the loncheras, or taco trucks, that have operated for decades without stirring the beehive of debate that these flashy new trucks have generated.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from wstarosta] How to beat Apple [Kottke] – [Apple's fu is strong. But Kottke has some thoughts on how to beat Apple. I would add to his list: Design integrity. Apple didn't invent it, but for some reason their competitors have allowed them to own it.] In the near term, companies making iPhone and iPad competitors are never going to beat Apple at their own game. Apple has supply chain advantages, a massive number of their customers' credit card numbers (why do you think Jobs brings this up at every single Apple event…it's important!), key patents, one-in-lifetime personnel like Steve Jobs and Jony Ive, solid relationships with key media companies, and an integrated ecosystem of stores, apps, applications, and hardware. They are an imposing competitor.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] This Tech Bubble Is Different [BusinessWeek] – [Mathematicians are behind the ad-driven business-models defined in this article as the next bubble. They're tremendously successful in predicting behavior; a fact I find both intriguing and terrifying.] On Wall Street, math geeks are known as quants. They're the ones who create sophisticated trading algorithms that can ingest vast amounts of market data and then form buy and sell decisions in milliseconds. Hammerbacher was a quant. After about 10 months, he got back in touch with Zuckerberg, who offered him the Facebook job. That's when Hammerbacher redirected his quant proclivities toward consumer technology. He became, as it were, a Want. At social networking companies, Wants may sit among the computer scientists and engineers, but theirs is the central mission: to poke around in data, hunt for trends, figure out formulas that will put the right ad in front of the right person. "The most coveted employee in Silicon Valley today is not a software engineer. It is a mathematician."
    • [from steve_portigal] Steve Portigal – You’ve Done All This Research… Now What? [UIE Podcast] – [A 24-minute podcast for your listening pleasure and edification] Conducting research and gathering data are crucial parts in the process of creating great design. But once you have all of the data, what do you do with it? How do you know you’re extracting the right conclusions and not leaving anything important on the table? Steve Portigal of Portigal Consulting uses the methods of synthesis and ideation to approach this crucial next step. During his virtual seminar, Steve explains that synthesis is the process of turning field data into insights and then how you move to ideation to turn insights into solutions. So many questions came up during the seminar that Steve ran out of time to answer them all. He tackles the remaining questions in this podcast.

    Come on out to the Seattle UIE Web App Masters Tour!

    I’ll be presenting Design Fieldwork: Uncovering Innovation From The Outside In as part of the two-day UIE Web App Masters Tour, in Seattle on May 23/24. The whole agenda (which is jam packed with some smart folks talking about interesting things) is here.

    Register now and use speaker code SPKSEATTLE to get $100 off the price. If you register by May 6 you’ll get the recordings of last year’s event for free.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] A Quandary for Swatch – It’s Too Popular [NYTimes.com] – [They are also looking to stop being the parts supplier to all of their rivals] Swatch, the world’s largest watchmaker, is rushing to add factory capacity so that it can make enough watches to meet demand. It wants to add as many as 2,000 employees this year ­ about 1,500 of them at home in Switzerland. But it is struggling to find enough qualified people. “Managing our stock is at the moment not an issue for us because demand is so big that we unfortunately don’t even have the time to build up any stock”… Swatch’s production and hiring problems reflect the overall health of a sector that has rebounded from the world financial crisis. Demand for watches has soared in Asia ­ a region that accounted for more than half of Swiss watch exports last year ­ with makers of mechanical watches capturing an increasingly large slice of the market. Exports of mechanical timepieces rose 32 percent in unit terms last year, compared with an 18 percent increase for less expensive quartz watches.
    • [from steve_portigal] Remembering the XFL, a 1-and-done league in 2001 [SFGate] – [Lessons from a failed attempt to innovate against an established competitor] While some ideas (trash-talking announcers, no penalties for roughness) didn't work, McMahon was a visionary in how he let fans inside the game. Players and coaches were miked up during games, and cameras were allowed into the locker room and behind the scenes. The XFL used the Skycam, the camera held up by wires over the field, and the NFL adopted that almost immediately. McMahon also did away with extra-point kicks, fair catches and coin tosses. At the start of the game, a player from each team would line up at the 30-yard-line and race to the ball at the 50 and fight for it in a "scramble." However, a member of the Orlando Rage separated his shoulder in a scramble the first week…In the end the XFL was caught in the middle. The football product on the field wasn't good enough to lure NFL fans, and there wasn't enough of the "personality-driven stories or crazy characters" to attract wrestling fans.

    Dwelling on One Day for Design

    April 13th was the one day for One Day for Design (1D4D), an event conceived of by AIGA to “bring together a global community of designers and design enthusiasts to exchange ideas, challenge viewpoints and push boundaries in a real-time, online global debate” about the future of design, led by an impressive line-up of moderators.

    What a fantastic notion! For our part, we were excited to be part of the conversation, and to see how AIGA pulled it off. When the day arrived we were ready. We dutifully signed onto the website and Twitter and TweetDeck, ready to talk design… and were paralyzed. Random content was scrolling by at a feverish pace, too feverish to manage. Tweets we could grab ahold of felt disjointed and distracted (as did we). The velocity of tweets is a testimony to the power of the idea, certainly, but also made for an unsettling user experience. Other people felt similarly. A series of responses and critiques have since surfaced.

    • One Day for Design – Deep Dive by DoubleThink out of Minnesota is a great analysis of 1D4D Twitter data showing how much work it takes to pull patterns and value out of the “waterfall,” as Phong puts it.
    • MJ Broadbent posted AIGA’s One Day for Design Conversation to the IxDA discussion list, calling the event laudable, but “kind of a mess to follow and participate in.”
    • Frank Chimero focused on the content of the 1D4D conversation (calling his post Designers Poison) but noted first that “Twitter seemed like the wrong place for the discussion, because it presented a conversation on design that required holistic thinking in a fragmented manner.”
    • On GOOD, Dylan Lathrop wrote in Global Twitter Conversation Proves Designers Don’t Get It that “try as hard as they might, moderators couldn’t contain the endless barrage.”
    • Equally pessimistic was Lindsay McComb on TheMetaQ, in Why design can’t be described in 140 characters:”I felt as though my tweets were a drop in a massive ocean of irrelevance.”

    We felt similarly. Back here at the ranch, it was only a matter of minutes before the impulse to analyze and think about improving the experience kicked in. How could this be better? What exactly felt so daunting? The event’s energy was exciting but it was unclear what people were trying to accomplish on this day and how this energy would/could be harnessed to do that. So many different types of people were taking part; surely their objectives differed. And underlying it all, how was Twitter faring as the de facto forum for this event?

    Based on our brief brainstorming, we identified a few generative ideas and themes (in other words, we’re staying away from the “put the comment box near the newest not the oldest tweet” UI tweaks that others are so much more qualified to address, and sticking with our sweet spot – teeing up the questions that lead to a broad swath of new solutions). After all, what’s possible when you have 3,900 engaged designers (and design enthusiasts) from all fields eager to talk?

    Let Moderators Moderate!
    Allow a little lag time (think about broadcasting’s 7-second delay) to give moderators a chance to filter, sort, and respond. This could result in something like moderated “channels” to follow.

    Segment the group
    Allow people to self-identify as being affiliated with certain disciplines, areas of interest and/or years of experience, enabling participants to establish and dwell in affinities and also to make targeted connections beyond them.

    Anticipate and Seed Topics
    The topic of design is broad (understatement alert!). AIGA and/or moderators could anticipate or encourage certain topics. Participants and the community at large could benefit by a little time prior to the big day to pull thoughts together and perhaps even engage in dialogue outside of the event.

    Better Control Content
    There are numerous ways to imagine enabling people to organize the information stream. Self-tagging? Content-bots? Anything that would allow people to create their own “channels” based on individual interests. Essentially Twitter’s existing “Trending topics”, we imagined a dynamic hashtag cloud that would guide people towards what others are talking about and help to get them there.

    Twitter-fu?
    There are three of us in this office. Our interest in 1D4D, which we all shared, bore no relationship to our interest in (and experience with) Twitter, which varies wildly. Master and neophyte alike should be able to participate in the conversation without a black belt in Twitter. Help people by providing a semi-curated experience.

    There are many good reasons not to include some of these ideas into general Twitterings, as they introduce constraints on the free-form and user-generated stream of consciousness experience that defines Twitter. We’ve weighed in elsewhere on the challenges Twitter faces in general and those factors can be exacerbated when large numbers of people convene with a larger purpose for a time-bounded conversation. Perhaps some scaffolding would improve the ability for more meaningful exchanges, enabling serendipity without letting serendipity reign as the organizing principle.

    With all the fertile design minds out there as part of this conversation we’re sure that others have ideas. Let’s hear ’em!

    You’re Soaking In It

    From the unpublished archives, services offered in 2009 at the Vida Spa at Vancouver’s Sutton Place Hotel. It’s worth nothing that they no longer offer this particular package! Has the commercialized bromance already expired?

    'Bro-mance' your man with Beer Therapy

    The Beer Therapy Treatments at Vida are designed to naturally calm and detoxify the skin. Launched in June 1, 2009, Men who enjoy beer therapy treatments at Vida will unwind with a cold Organic beer in one of Vida Spa’s signature relaxation lounges. With their beer, they enjoy Vida organic nut mix (ok not beer nuts but much healthier) and men’s’ magazines such as men’s health, automobiles, economist, and more! Next, he will enjoy one of two Beer Therapy Treatments.

    Beer Soaked Hot Towel Compress Facial

    Vida Estheticians perform a deep cleanse, exfoliation, extraction, mask and massage. Beer Soaked Hot Towels are wrapped barber style and using press and release movements, products are removed while facial muscle tension is eased. His skin is left soft, calm and vibrant. 60 min / $115

    Deep Tissue Massage with Beer Soaked Compress

    Vida Therapist begins with deep Swedish massage movements, followed by localized beer soaked hot towel compresses to relax and detoxify the muscle further. 60 min / $120

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Kraft Dinner mentions must stop, teacher told [CBC News] – [Kraft Dinner is a Canadian-specific brand for packaged macaroni and cheese, known among the pastacenti as KD.] Kick the KD teaches students how to avoid convenience foods and eat healthier. Clapson received a notice from Kraft Canada demanding the name be changed and any references to Kraft Dinner be removed. "We understand that the focus of the cooking program is to encourage students to prepare meals which are healthy and delicious. Please note that Kraft Dinner macaroni and cheese is a nutritious food that can be part of a balanced diet. In addition to being delicious, it is also a source of calcium and iron and a good source of protein." Clapson said he didn't know "KD was trademarked and personally enjoys the occasional bowl of Kraft Dinner." Clapson said he intends to keep running the classes and has taken suggestions for a new name. The most popular one so far has been "Kick the Crap Dinner."
    • [from steve_portigal] ‘Cinema Verite’ review: ‘American Family’ revisited [SF Chronicle] – [Fascinating article on how a recreation bio-pic of the filming of the original reality show reveals shifting cultural contexts and the challenges of authenticity] In 1971, Craig Gilbert and Alan and Susan Raymond, set out to document the lives of an everyday American family. Viewers may have subliminally understood that reality was somewhat altered through editorial choices, but they more or less accepted what was on their TV as life as it actually and naturally happened. But was it? That's the question posed by "Cinema Verite" directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini as they look back at "American Family." Did Gilbert direct the Louds' actions to make his film more dramatic? In "Cinema," Gilbert (James Gandolfini) is shown inserting himself into a scene and telling the family what to do. We also see the Raymonds (Patrick Fugit and Shanna Collins) revolting when Gilbert begins to cross the boundaries of documentary filmmaking, perhaps because he's developed a crush on Pat.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Make Your QR Codes More Beautiful [Mashable] – [This will be fun! It stands to reason that treating QR Codes as a design element rather than slapping the ugly things on will improve uptake. Better response can be encouraged through visual stimulation, then designers will have to encourage people to download an app, learn it, and get in the habit of using it as another set of related experiences to design well.] Creating branded QR codes is as much art as it is science. The mathematical qualities of a QR code and the impact of a clever design can truly elevate a QR code to the point where the code becomes the central artwork of a piece of marketing collateral. Applying designer best practices will enhance scanning conversion rates and effectively augment an offline item with online capabilities. Knowing how to innovate both in technology and design, and how to implement a QR code in the right way for your business, will keep your brand on the cutting edge of marketing and technology.
    • [from steve_portigal] Tech mogul? Nope. Any old hack will do. [WaPo] – [The lead stat is enticing but I suspect is grossly skewed/misleading] Recent studies show consumers spend more money tweaking and inventing stuff than consumer product firms spend on R&D. It’s more than $3.75 billion a year in Britain, and U.S. studies under way now show similar patterns. Makers are even morphing into entrepreneurs, with some of the best projects raising money for commercial development uvia self-funding Web sites such as Kickstarter. Major companies such as Ford are, after years of resisting inventor gadflies, inviting makers to submit product tweaks. “This is the democratization of technology,” said K. Venkatesh Prasad, a senior engineering executive at Ford. “Policymakers and economists always assumed that consumers just consumed and that they don’t innovate,” said Eric von Hippel, who studies technological innovation and makers at MIT. “What’s clearly happening now is that all of a sudden it’s easier for us to make exactly what we want.” [via PuttingPeopleFirst]

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] No.4 Secret Soles – Rosso Solini [I Am Hiawatha] – [Louboutin shoes start at $300 and go up to several thousand dollars. Their red sole is a distinctive design mark that signifies the wearer's brand choice. A 15-year old student has designed and is marketing an aftermarket red sole that can add that signifier to any pair of shoes.] Rosso Solini ‘Secret Soles’ is a shoe customisation kit that gives you the tools and equipment to turn any high-heel into a red soled, Louboutonesque shoe.
    • [from steve_portigal] WET Design and the Improv Approach to Listening [NYTimes.com] – [Mark Fuller, chief excellence officer of WET Design explains what is unusual about his company’s culture] Improv is really about listening to the other person, because there’s no script. It’s about responding. If you have an argument with [your] wife or husband, you are just waiting for the other person to finish so they can say what they’re waiting to say. So usually they’re these serial machine-gun monologues, and very little listening. That doesn’t work in improv. If we’re on the stage, I don’t know what goofball thing you’re going to say, so I can’t be planning anything. I have to really be listening to you so I can make an intelligent response….You’re sort of in this gray space of uncertainty. Most of us don’t like to be uncertain ­ you know, most of us like to be thinking what we’re going to say next. You get your mind into a space where you say, “I’m really enjoying that I don’t know what he’s going to ask me next, and I’m going to be open and listening and come back.
    • [from steve_portigal] Open Source Electronics Pioneer Limor Fried on the DIY Revolution [Wired Magazine] – [I've long wondered if our experiences consuming software have changed our expectations for the updatability and customizability of all products] People do want very specialized technology, and they just couldn’t get it. Now they’ll be able to get it. When I make stuff, I make it for only one person, myself. And, like, two of my friends. But it turns out that hundreds of thousands of people want the same thing. And I think that’s how good design starts. So instead of having to just put up with whatever Sony comes out with, consumers will have more choices made by people who are more like them. And they’re not just trying to manufacture as Sony; they’re manufacturing as a small company that is trying to fulfill the needs of a small community…We have no idea [where this movement will go]. It’s going to be weird and completely surprising, and we’re going to be just shocked, and it will be awesome.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Teaching Children the Basics of Saving and Spending [NYTimes.com] – [We've explored people's attitudes and behavior around money in a number of projects. The power of education and influence at a young age is a clear takeaway from all that work, so this initiative is encouraging.] In the wake of the financial crisis and the realization that individuals share at least some blame for the bubbles, a number of people and organizations have taken up the cause of helping the next generation of grown-ups form better habits at an earlier age. Sesame entered the fray with a series of videos and other material aimed at teaching its audience about spending, saving and sharing. There is no definitive proof that any of this will make a lasting impact. “It would be 20 years before we would know the results,” said Laura Levine, JumpStart’s executive director, who served on Sesame Street’s advisory panel. But the beauty of watching young children absorb these lessons and answering their questions is that it can make you more aware of the financial examples you set.
    • [from steve_portigal] Lady Liberty Stamp Depicts a Vegas Replica [NYTimes.com] – [A failure of traceability/transparency, when a representation of a replica is mixed in with the original. But the USPS claiming to prefer the replica is confounding (as they apologize) – does sexy trump authentic here?] The United States Postal Service has issued a new stamp featuring the Statue of Liberty. Only the statue it features is not the one in the harbor, but the replica at the New York-New York casino in Las Vegas. The service selected the image from a photography service and accidentally used the 14-year-old statue that presides over thousands of weary gamblers a week. “We still love the stamp design and would have selected this photograph anyway,” said Roy Betts, a spokesman. Mr. Betts did say, however, that the post office regrets the error and is “re-examining our processes to prevent this situation from happening in the future.”

    Julie’s presentation on “Finding the Right People”

    I recently had the privilege of guest-lecturing for an undergraduate class at the Center for Design Research at the University of Kansas taught by Julia Eschman and Tamara Christensen. The topic was the importance of recruiting the right people as participants to drive powerful insights for design research. I addressed the strategic reasons why, as well as tactics for doing so.

    Recruiting is a key component of the design research process. It is to the detriment of project outcomes when it doesn’t get the attention it deserves. I know, I know… it’s a lot more fun to talk about sexy new methodologies and while away our days ideating, but before any of this can happen teams need to think hard about the source of the inspiring data and stories: people.

    The presentation is below:

    This was the first time I’ve presented this material, so take a look and please share some of your key experiences, snafus, complaints, challenges and learnings and etc. as you find the right people for your projects.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Side View Mirror Project – [Love Erik Dahl's deep dive on the ordinary to find ot the extraordinary, as he has spent years taking pictures of side view mirrors. He discovers some great themes and patterns although he acknowledges he didn't know where it was going to go when he started.] Taking these pictures changed the way I drive. I used to be very end-state oriented when I would drive. When I started taking pictures for this project I stopped thinking about where I was going, and started watching mirrors and looking for red lights. As designers, its important to remember that the goal and orientation of the user dramatically impacts their experiences.
    • [from steve_portigal] Two years after buying Pure Digital, Cisco ditches the Flip [Ars Technica] – [I always thought this was about driving a consumer-facing innovation culture into the org. Let's hope that this persists even without the specific line of products.] Cisco is killing off the line of pocketable video cameras in order to refocus the company around home networking and video. The news was a surprise to even Flip critics, leaving everyone wondering why Cisco bothered to buy Pure Digital (the Flip's former parent company) for $590 million just 2 years ago. The marriage never fully made sense, but we accepted it­most assumed that Cisco was making its own attempt to compete in the handheld market by simply gobbling up one of the hottest little gadget startups at the time. Two years later, Cisco's feelings about the acquisition have changed. Cisco announced that it's expanding the Consumer Business Group, but that the Flip business will no longer be part of it. There was no formal explanation given as to why Cisco chose to shut the group down instead of selling it.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from wstarosta] Status displays: I’ve got you labelled [The Economist] – [Evolutionary biology helps to explain why luxury branded objects, even counterfeit ones, are so appealing.] DESIGNERS of fancy apparel would like their customers to believe that wearing their creations lends an air of wealth, sophistication and high status. And it does—but not, perhaps, for the reason those designers might like to believe, namely their inherent creative genius. A new piece of research confirms what many, not least in the marketing departments of fashion houses, will long have suspected: that it is not the design itself that counts, but the label.
    • [from steve_portigal] The Future of Books. [McSweeney’s Internet Tendency] – [As usual, McSweeney's does razor-sharp mockery, but you could read this as straight-ahead prediction and it would sadly almost pass for believable] 2050: Analog Reading Will Be Digitally Simulated. As people spend more and more of time immersed in massively multi-player role-playing games, they will begin to crave some downtime. Virtual simulation worlds will start to include hideaway "libraries" you can lock yourself into. There you'll be able to climb into a virtual bath and lovingly turn the pages of a pixilated representation of one of those dog-eared tomes—reliant on old-school linear narrative— that by this time will have been made illegal in the real world. Perfectly reproduced will be the sensation of turning the pages, the crack of the spine, and even the occasional paper cut.
    • [from steve_portigal] When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink? [Smithsonian Magazine] – [Fascinating cultural history] The march toward gender-specific clothes was neither linear nor rapid. Pink and blue arrived, along with other pastels, as colors for babies in the mid-19th century, yet the two colors were not promoted as gender signifiers until just before WW I—and even then, it took time for popular culture to sort things out. In 1927, Time magazine printed a chart showing sex-appropriate colors for girls and boys according to leading U.S. stores. In Boston, Filene’s told parents to dress boys in pink. Today’s color dictate wasn’t established until the 1940s, as a result of Americans’ preferences as interpreted by manufacturers and retailers. “It could have gone the other way,” Paoletti says..Nowadays people just have to know the sex of a baby or young child at first glance, says Jo B. Paoletti, a historian & author of Pink and Blue: Telling the Girls From the Boys in America. Thus we see a pink headband encircling the bald head of an infant girl. [Via @boingboing]
    • [from steve_portigal] In Sweden’s frigid north, auto testing is hot [SFGate] – [Obvious car companies do a ton of lab and simulation testing, but they are also big advocates of real world testing] Arjeplog, a region in northern Sweden is is important to car makers eager to optimize their vehicles for driving in extreme weather, This winter, temperatures have hovered around -4 F, making ice on the lakes consistently thick enough for driving. About 180 engineers convened at the test center at one point this season to work on making cars more fuel-efficient in cold weather and to optimize their anti-spin function. While Arjeplog is the world's largest winter testing area, rival locations include Ivalo, Finland; West Yellowstone, Mont.; Carson City, Nev.; and Millbrook, England. Francisco Carvalho, an analyst at IHS Automotive, says such tracks provide automakers with "the ultimate test for the little things they can't detect or predict in a lab." Almost 9,000 car industry officials visit Arjeplog each winter, with about 2,800 engineers working on any given day.

    AC4D: Applications for next year are open

    Last fall I had the opportunity to give a guest lecture to the students in the first class at the Austin Center for Design (AC4D). Over the past few years, a number of innovative programs have sprung up and I’ve spoken at a number of them. What I enjoyed specifically about the AC4D was the feeling of being at a start-up and the slightly up-start attitude. I got the sense that students and faculty were united by someone, somewhere along the way, telling them that they couldn’t do this. And they are doing it. The school is focusing on applying design to social change, but the discussion is about the problem solving power of design – to understand, reframe, and innovate, rather than the an excess of earnestness or worrying. I suspect their point of view is maybe what you could call post-worldchanging…of course you want to address homelessness, let’s use the tools we’ve got to look at it.

    Later this year I’ll be one of many IxDA peeps who volunteered to mentor the winning team of the Interaction ’11 Student Competition: AC4D’s Kat Davis and Ruby Ku (while I didn’t know they would be the winners when I volunteered, I couldn’t be more pleased).

    If you or someone you know would be interested in attending AC4D next year, check out their site. They are now taking applications.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Disney Reviving Muppets Franchise With Movie This Fall [NYTimes.com] – [As rock star's kids become rock stars and classic films get remade, rebooted and prequels, that trend combines here with the fan-enthusiast-consumer-becomes-producer trend, suggesting a slice of Hollywood culture is a microcosm or reflection of mainstream culture. Kevin Smith and Seth Green are possible precursors to this.] “This is the first Muppet production of any size that is really being spearheaded by fans instead of hard-core Muppet professionals,” said Lisa Henson, Jim Henson’s daughter and chief executive of the Henson Company….“As it turned out, nostalgia for the brand went way beyond our little circle,” he said of the unusual wave of interest that eventually swept celebrity after celebrity into the project. In a single scene, Whoopi Goldberg, James Carville, Neil Patrick Harris, Judd Hirsch and Selena Gomez all make cameos.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Top 40 Hand Gestures Of Silvio Berlusconi [BuzzFeed] – [A thorough taxonomy; includes "The Mr. Burns" and "The Hey Gurrrrl." Yesterday Wyatt shared a great observation here at the office about how hand gestures, and the ways in which people handle objects can communicate so much about their emotional state and personality. It's something specific to notice in research as a "tell." This collection of Berlusconi's gestural expressions provides ample opportunity to practice your interpretation!] Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is a man of many gesticulations.
    • [from steve_portigal] The Inflatable Crowd Company – [Wonderful niche service with a crystal-clear positioning statement. Another business out there doing something cool, crazy, and curious] We have 30,000 realistic, inflatable torsos that are used to economically expand the scope of any crowd scene at any venue worldwide. We create custom crowds that are dressed and accessorized to match the look of your real extras. It is this texture – real clothes, wigs, etc. – and attention to detail that can make the illusion seamless. We provide all materials from the stock at our warehouse. We are able to create crowds for any type of scene – from a formal theater crowd to fans at large sporting events.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from wstarosta] Disney Helps Reboot Commodore and Amiga Brands [Brand Channel] – [The Commodore 64 is getting a re-boot from Tron, the movie. The company is updating the old school computer with a 1.8Ghz processor, Blu-ray drive, and HDMI! ] When Tron: Legacy was released in December, the product tie-in that drew all the attention was for Ducati. It's a product placement the Italian motorcycle maker told us was unpaid, but highly valuable. Now, the release of Tron: Legacy on DVD introduces a whole new marketing tie-in. This time for… Commodore 64?! That's right — Disney is helping promote the relaunch of the Commodore and Amiga brands, with the relaunched computers going on sale the same day (April 5th) as the DVD went on sale.
    • [from steveportigal] How To Steal Like An Artist (And 9 Other Things Nobody Told Me) [Austin Kleon] – [While the frame of reference is being an artist, you could substitute a lot of other descriptors and it’d work just as well – designer, innovator, ethnographer, what-have-you. The riffs here manage to be wide-ranging and incredibly concise.] Your job is to collect ideas. The best way to collect ideas is to read. Read, read, read, read, read. Read the newspaper. Read the weather. Read the signs on the road. Read the faces of strangers. The more you read, the more you can choose to be influenced by. [Thanks @anneincal!]
    • [from steveportigal] Recreating the Legendary Commodore 64 [Commodore USA, LLC] – [Many of my favorite themes here: reviving dead brands, retro technology, enthusiast fans become producers instead of just consumers, and of course, boat-loads of irony] The new Commodore 64 is a modern functional PC as close to the original in design as humanly possible. It houses a modern mini-ITX PC motherboard featuring a Dual Core 525 Atom processor and the latest Nvidia Ion2 graphics chipset. It comes in the original taupe brown/beige color, with other colors to follow…[We were] founded by Barry Altman in April 2010, with the express purpose of reviving and re-establishing the famous Commodore computer brand. We are Commodore and AMIGA fanatics, just like many of you. We ask ourselves what could have been, and we are appalled by Apple revisionism. Commodore is back, and we’re determined to bring the much loved brand back to the mainstream and restore its prominence in the tech industry to that which it richly deserves. It ain’t over ’till we say so.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Before I die I want to… [Creative Review] – [Flat-out inspiring and deeply moving public art in New Orleans. One brilliant comment after the article observes that the installation proves that: "…design work is incomplete without an audience."] "I believe the design of our public spaces can better reflect what's important to us as residents and as human beings," says Chang.
    • [from julienorvaisas] New Version of Madden 12 Called a ‘Teaching Tool’ on Concussion [NYTimes.com] – [Video games largely exist to allow people to immerse in fantasy, unbounded by physical constraints and free to indulge in acts not possible – or advisable – in real life. Madden NFL takes a different tack.] Player animations, now sophisticated enough to depict Peyton Manning’s throwing motion and Randy Moss’s gait, will not display helmet-to-helmet tackles, hits to the heads of defenseless players or dangerous headfirst tackling, said Phil Frazier, the executive producer of Madden 12. John Madden, the coach for whom the game is named and who is involved in its development, said that the impetus for the changes was twofold: to further hone the game’s realism, and to teach youngsters to play football more safely. “Concussions are such a big thing, it has to be a big thing in the video game. It starts young kids — they start in video games. I think the osmosis is if you get a concussion, that’s a serious thing and you shouldn’t play. Or leading with the head that you want to eliminate."
    • [from julienorvaisas] Crimes against design: Airport carpets [ICON MAGAZINE] – [Apparently I'm not the only one noticing and often lamenting commercial carpet patterns inflicted upon us in airports, convention centers, and movie theaters. I marvel at the number of deliberate choices that must have led to these tragic outcomes and how many dark souls are complicit.] Those travellers who turn their eyes away from the skies and look down at the ground of their immediate present will be richly rewarded. For unbeknownst to many, beneath each traveller's feet is a knotted kaleidoscope of shapes and colours, a flat-weaved cornucopia of scintillating signs and sigils, a polypropylene sea awash with dark and hidden beauty. I speak, of course, of the airport carpet. As the world's largest interior visual design medium, airport carpets have spread a multi-faceted but uniform aesthetic to the furthest reaches of the globe In their geometric precision, sensitivity to colour, and ability to absorb and hide stains. The link between carpeting and flight stretches back millennia.
    • [from steve_portigal] The Lighter Side of Plutonium; Energy Group Mascots Include Little Mr. Pluto [WSJ] – [Interesting that in the land of cute the nuclear mascot was seen as going too far even before the disaster] But perhaps the most controversial of all promotional characters is Pluto-kun, or Little Mr. Pluto, who represents the friendly side of one of the most toxic substances known to man, plutonium. The brainchild of a now defunct government research organization, the apple-cheeked animated Little Mr. Pluto debuted in the mid-1990s wearing a green helmet with a pair of antennae and the chemical symbol for plutonium, PU. Promising to “never be scary or dangerous,” Little Mr. Pluto extolled the benefits of plutonium, which Japanese nuclear authorities have viewed as a fuel of the future for fast breeder reactor technology. But an animated video used in educational materials included a widely criticized scene showing Little Mr. PU shaking hands with a boy who safely downs a plutonium-tainted beverage to make the debatable point the substance would pass through a body without doing harm.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from wstarosta] A Retrospective View of 50 Years of Advertising Research) [ARF.org] – The Advertising Research Foundation is celebrating its 75th year of being in the business of marketing research. When asked about some of the industry's advances in the previous 50 years, chairman Gian Fulgoni owes many of them to technology that allows marketers to more effectively communicate their message and measure it's impact. His sentiments and even the industry terminology he uses highlight the fundamental differences between market research and design research.] In the 1980s, for example, the availability of point-of-sale scanner data provided a much-needed solution for Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) and other industries. For the first time, marketers had the tools needed to quickly and accurately measure the impact of price, promotions and print / TV advertising on brand sales, develop sophisticated market mix models, and link sales lift to various promotional and advertising levers.
    • [from wstarosta] PSFK Asks the Purple List, What are the Limits of Digital? [PSFK] – [The next time you are brainstorming and you come up with an idea to make an analog object, action or experience better by digitizing it, pause and consider this fact that I just learned: Your brain can recognize the time faster on an analog watch than a digital one! More about the trade-offs of going digital here…] There’s another way to approach this question, by venturing to guess that there’s nothing un-digitizable, rather there are deeply human things that will just be conveyed in different forms. For example, our need for feedback as in the above is one representation of a “deeply human thing,” but another interesting manifestation comes up when you start thinking about digital books. There’s a lot of social data encoded into the act of carrying a physical book. If I see you on the metro and you’re carrying a book I’ve read, it makes me want to talk to you. And if I don’t, I’m at least subtly comforted knowing that I’m in the company of someone likeminded.
    • [from julienorvaisas] Plastics News Executive Forum: Human behavior holds clues to design [Plastics News] – [Is it possible to avoid a reference to The Graduate? I'll try. We often see design thinking methodology applied to development efforts of end-products and services, of consumable things. When it's already soup. Here the plastics industry is having a dialogue about inspiring innovation at the "ingredient" level. Interesting question about where the responsibility for innovation lies.] It may be tempting to think of concepts like “design thinking” or “open innovation” like they’re just new business buzzwords. But designers and many OEMs have embraced the ideas for years, and plastics firms would be smart to join the party, experts said at the Plastics News Executive Forum. One molder in attendance pointed out that, in his experience, some OEMs are bad at innovation. “Many of our customers come up … with new designs that are horribly flawed. What’s the fundamental breakdown organizationally, where companies [that] are supposed to do this for a living are really bad at it?” he asked.
    • [from steve_portigal] R2-D2 makers an attraction at WonderCon in S.F. [SFGate] – [The devotion of fans is a constant source of wonder and delight.] A fully functional droid can cost as much as a Toyota Corolla, and takes half a decade or more to complete…R2 builders study the movies frame by frame to mine the tiniest details for their droids. Builders say they get asked two questions all the time: "Can it fly?" and "Does it project a hologram of Princess Leia?" Neither of those visual-effects-enhanced features from the movies is practical or possible because the technology doesn't exist. Builders also get frequent requests to sell their droids, and to perform at parties. That answer is "no," too. The R2 Builders Club operates with the blessing of Lucasfilm, with the understanding that the droids are not produced for sale. There's also a Jedi-like code among the builders, who consider profiting from the droids a trip to the Dark Side.

    Next week – Steve’s webinar on synthesizing user research data

    I’ll be presenting my webinar User Research Analysis: You’ve Done All This Research, Now What on Thursday, April 7. This webinar is based on a workshop that I’ve led in Savannah, Atlanta, Hong Kong, Portland, Vancouver, and San Francisco, among other many other places. I’m always hearing from people who are interested but who aren’t in those cities at those times, but with a webinar, anyone anywhere can participate. I’ve adapted the workshop to suit the webinar format and added a bunch of new content based on what I’ve observed working (or not working) in the workshops, not to mention some of the latest techniques we’re using in our work.

    Use the promotion code PORTIGAL when you register and get free lifetime access to the webinar that you can share with everyone in your organization. (A $40 value.) If you can’t make the webinar when it happens (time zone challenges? conflicting meetings?) you can use this code when register and watch it later at your convenience.

    Check out a quick preview, below

    Also available: last year’s UIE Virtual Seminar on Deep Dive Interviewing Techniques.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] One Day For Design 2011 – [I'm always impressed by the enthusiasm and creativity that folks like this show in order to bring people together, build community, evolve a profession, and infect others with that same enthusiasm] On April 13, 2011, add your voice to an open, digital dialogue on design. One Day For Design brings together a global community of designers and design enthusiasts to exchange ideas, challenge viewpoints and push boundaries-collaborating in real time on the future of our profession and the organizations behind it. Spread the word. Join the conversation.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Design Research with Sam Ladner [Johnny Holland] – [Looking forward to checking out this podcast. Sam always has smart things to say.] Jill Christ and Andrew Harris talk with Sam Ladner about design research, and the theories behind research design. They discuss how to choose the right research method, the differences between qualitative and quantitative research, and why certain research methods are used at certain times. "What I think designers can learn from sociologists primarily is …for two centuries now, sociologists have been thinking about how people interact with each other. And all of those findings, those theories, that deep research, that deep insight, they are still valid, and they do have a great amount of applicability in the online space. …Designers could learn a lot about this idea of the “Presentation of Self”…or where sociologists have thought about “how do we work in groups together?” …there are all sorts of sociological research and theory that would help designers."
    • [from julienorvaisas] Nokia Pure Typeface [Design Boom] – [This celebration of their bespoke font will surely reach a very limited audience. Their slow-font approach and aesthetic has appeal but seems a bit misplaced.] Citing the varied but expansive demands of smartphone usage as a design consideration, alongside the potentials opened by the clarity and sharpness of contemporary smartphone screens, Nokia has worked with Maag to develop a sans serif typeface that references the varying stroke weights and more rounded flow of handwriting, creating a more open effect than the classic 'Nokia Sans'. In an interesting return to analogue, Nokia celebrates the release of the font with the commissioning of a woodblock version of the typeface. Documented in the mini-film 'Pure Reversal' the blocks were created and used for a limited-edition print run. Designed specifically for digital and mobile devices, the 'pure' typeface is expected on Nokia devices and in advertisements beginning this year.
    • [from julienorvaisas] Defend Your Research: Imitation Is More Valuable Than Innovation [Harvard Business Review] – [Shenkar makes some bold statements. Bringing discipline to "imitation" and surfacing it as an form of innovation is intriguing. However, aspects of this phenomena are integrated into most robust innovation initiatives now (competitive analysis, landscapes, reverse engineering). They also occur quite naturally in human behavior (mirroring, transference) and culture (trends, memes). In art, it's known as appropriation and is perfectly acceptable; it may be a more apt analogy for this process than imitation. I do question his characterization here of imitation as taboo.] Q: If copying is so effective, why isn’t it embraced more? A: We’ve been socialized from a young age to treat imitation as undignified and objectionable, something done by those who are unoriginal. Even in companies that embrace imitation, many executives are reluctant to use the “i” word because of its stigma. The result is that imitation is done in the dark without the strategic and operational attention it deserves.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Marvel faces mighty foe: publishing world uncertainty [New York Times] – ['Prototyping with comics' usually refers to a UX method on smaller scale, but as Marvel grapples with its own massive scope in both comics and film, they have natively derived an analogous method, or at least mindset] Though Marvel’s publishing side does not directly control the content of Marvel films, Kevin Feige, the president of production at Marvel Studios, said the storytelling in the comics had a strong influence on the movies “because it’s a hell of a lot less expensive to take a chance in a comic than it is take a chance in a movie.” Repeating a phrase he said he had heard from Quesada, he added, “It’s the cheapest R&D there is, but the best R&D there is.”

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Deconstructed: Aesir’s Perfect Cell Phone [Fast Company] – [What's this? Heirloom consumer electronics? Less is more? Is this a trend or an anomoly? Many products start out as carefully crafted one-offs and move towards disposable, commodity mass-products over time – watches, razors, even food. Are mobile phones playing this out in reverse? How will this gadget incorporate unpredictable technological advances that will enable must-have functionality? Does it need to?] "Instead of more, we proposed better and longer lasting," says designer Yves Béhar. "It became a way to answer questions like, Why do I need a new phone each year? And why does it have to be complicated?" For answers, Aesir founder Thomas Møller Jensen spent two-plus years gathering an army of materials specialists, engineers, and craftspeople. The result, the AE+Y, has exceptionally clear audio and parts that are fully replaceable ad infinitum. "We want the phone to be as interesting and relevant in 10 years' time as it is today," says Jensen.

    Sign up for Steve’s upcoming webinar on User Research Analysis Techniques

    On April 7, I’ll be presenting a UIE Virtual Seminar called User Research Analysis Techniques: You’ve Done All This Research, Now What?. Sign up here!

    Steve will explain synthesis, or how you turn field data into insights. Simply put, Synthesis is an iterative approach to sense-making. Steve will show you that it’s about both the experience you have as a researcher gathering that data AND the rigor of processing that data. You’ll learn the steps and types of output and deliverables that we produce as we go through the process.

    Steve will help you explore ideation, where turning insights into solutions actually happens. Here’s where your hard work pays off! Ideation is about creating a wide-range of possible solutions across a wider set of areas than you can act on.

    Oh, and if there’s really no such thing as a bad idea, how do you benefit from the ones that feel like they are? Steve will show you the power of “bad ideas ” and how they help you get unstuck.

    Check out a quick preview, below

    Also available: last year’s UIE Virtual Seminar on Deep Dive Interviewing Techniques.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Pop-up dining takes residency atop major European landmarks [Springwise] – [Very inventive, experiential PR effort by Electrolux; seems ripped straight off the whiteboard of an ideation session.] The Cube is an aluminum-clad 140 square meter dining area including a 50 square meter terrace, soon to be based in the Parc du Cinquantenaire, Brussels. The highly portable restaurant — which can be transported by helicopter — plans to move from this Brussels base to a different European City every four to twelve weeks. Each location is selected to offer the 18 diners within The Cube a unique panoramic view of the surrounding area, whilst creating an eye catching new addition to the cityscape for onlookers on the outside. Lunches are available from EUR 150 and dinners from EUR 200, including wine and champagne. During dinner, the head chef — selected from the local area for a short residency in The Cube — takes center stage, with the Electrolux kitchen fully on show.
    • [from steve_portigal] New MFA in Products of Design [School of Visual Arts] – [I'm stoked for this new program and looking forward to my guest lecture spot] More and more we are recognizing that designed artifacts all live within dynamic systems, and that the creators and users of these artifacts must negotiate their value, purpose, and impact in an ever-changing world. We also recognize the limits of seeing designed objects as simply things; designers, who create multiples of their outputs, aren’t actually in the artifact business at all—they’re in the consequence business. And if we consider consequences first, above materiality or ergonomics or aesthetics, we are more likely to arrive at design offerings that are purposeful, thoughtful, sustainable, and wondrous. It is from this perspective that the Products of Design program addresses the needs and desires of the world at large. Through a combination of design thinking, design making, and design doing, we immerse our participants in hands-on physical exploration, rigorous investigation, and strategic intent.
    • [from steve_portigal] Take A Self-Portrait Every Day. Every Day. Every Day [Technologizer] – [This is brilliant: an application of technology that puts the astounding within reach of everyone. Leverages the "smart" aspect of smartphones to enable new activities!] If you’ve spent any time at all on the internet in the last few years, you’re probably responsible for one of the 18 million (now approaching 19 million) views of his video, mashing together years’ worth of self-portraits into a few minutes of thrashing hair and regular shaving. His name is Noah Kalina, he’s a New York-based photographer, and he has teamed up with some other people to create Everyday an iPhone app that makes it super-easy to create your own version of this video. The app thinks about everything, so you don’t have to. It helps you line your face up in roughly the same position every time you take a shot. It reminds you to take your photos on a regular basis. It saves them all for you, and when you’ve taken enough, it automatically turns them into a timelapse video, ready for posting online.

    From SXSW – Diving Deep: Best Practices For Interviewing Users

    I spoke at SXSW recently about the interviewing process in user research. As I’ve been working on a book about this topic the timing was great for me.

    While we know, from a very young age, how to ask questions, the skill of getting the right information from users is surprisingly complex and nuanced. This session will focus on getting past the obvious shallow information into the deeper, more subtle, yet crucial, insights. If you are going to the effort to meet with users in order to improve your designs, it’s essential that you know how to get the best information and not leave insights behind. Being great in “field work” involves understanding and accepting your interviewee’s world view, and being open to what they need to tell you (in addition to what you already know you want to learn). We’ll focus on the importance of rapport-building and listening and look at techniques for both. We will review different types of questions, and why you need to have a range of question types. This session will explore other contextual research methods that can be built on top of interviewing in a seamless way. We’ll also suggest practice exercises for improving your own interviewing skills and how to engage others in your organization successfully in the interviewing experience.

    Slides



    Audio

    Presentation (45 minutes + 15 minutes Q&A):

    To download the audio Right-Click and Save As… (Windows) or Ctrl-Click (Mac).

    Also see

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Oh, Etsy. How could you? [Authentical] – [Smart take on process failures in Etsy's recent misstep. User research can make a big difference] It's hard for me to believe that if Etsy had conducted user research and even informal but realistic usability testing on the idea that they would not have quickly seen the privacy violation. They could have avoided the damage control they now have to deal with because of the breach of trust they've had with buyers who already love the experience of shopping there.Etsy could have avoided the problem and discovered a possibly great idea for engaging buyers even more. Where was the business plan for allowing search of users? How does having social "circles" support the business model, exactly? How would the social media strategy be supported on the back end? More than all that, let's look at others who have gone before us: Beacon on Facebook and Boden USA come to mind. What happened there? What could the Etsy team learn from those mistakes? Oh, and, why duplicate Facebook in any way?
    • [from julienorvaisas] The Art of the Police Report [Utne Reader] – [Collett provides a fascinating exploration of one cop's ability to achieve expression while governed by the formidable constraints of police report writing.] Writing is the one constant in a cop’s daily life. As with everything in the department, strict rules govern report writing, and as with any dangerous undertaking, the department will train you to do it properly. The most despised class at the police academy is the one that teaches writing. The incident report he’ll learn to write is the factual narrative account of a crime. Every event a cop responds to generates a report. Crime reports are written in the dispassionate uni-voice that’s testament to the academy’s ability to standardize writing. They feel generated rather than authored, the work of a single law enforcement consciousness rather than a specific human being. So how can I identify Martinez from a single sentence? Why do his reports make me feel pity, terror, or despair?

    Unfinished Business lecture: Culture, User Research & Design

    I was recently in Toronto to speak at OCAD (Yes, we were in this awesome building) as part of the Unfinished Business lecture series. My talk looked at the notion of culture and it’s importance for user research, and design.

    Culture is everywhere we look, and (perhaps more importantly) everywhere we don’t look. It informs our work, our purchases, our usage, our expectations, our comfort, and our communications. In this presentation, Steve will explore the ways we can experience, observe, and understand diverse cultures to foster successful collaborations, usable products, and desirable experiences.

    Slides



    Audio

    I’ve split out the presentation itself from the Q&A, which was fun, challenging, and filled with big-picture type questions.

    Presentation (1 hour, including a quick intro by host Michael Dila):

    Q&A (40 minutes):

    To download the presentation audio Right-Click and Save As… (Windows) or Ctrl-Click (Mac). For the Q&A audio, Right-Click and Save As… (Windows) or Ctrl-Click (Mac)

    Note: In the talk (and the Q&A) I refer to my interactions article, Persona Non Grata. You can find that article here.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] What the Luddites Really Fought Against [Smithsonian Magazine] – [Conniff re-contextualizes the term "Luddite" for the digital age. Rather than a rejection or ignorance of technology, being a Luddite is about deliberately and continuously questioning its role in our lives.] The original Luddites lived in an era of “reassuringly clear-cut targets—machines one could still destroy with a sledgehammer”, making them easy to romanticize. By contrast, our technology is as nebulous as “the cloud,” that Web-based limbo where our digital thoughts increasingly go to spend eternity. The original Luddites would answer that we are human. Getting past the myth and seeing their protest more clearly is a reminder that it’s possible to live well with technology, but only if we continually question the ways it shapes our lives. It’s about small things, like cutting the cord, shutting down the smartphone and going out for a walk. But it needs to be about big things, too, like standing up against technologies that put money or convenience above other human values.
    • [from julienorvaisas] Observed: The Death of the File System? [Johnny Holland] – [The question of digital file management and navigation is one we find ourselves pondering here from time to time. Our mobile lifestyle and shift to an app-oriented way of interfacing with devices suggests that a new vision for navigating files is in order. But in the end, is the staid but flexible file-folder metaphor holding up OK?] “Projects” are just one type of organizational scheme. As a user experience designer, I’ve seen a lot of professionals in other fields organizing a lot of stuff in a lot of different ways. So even attempts at inter-app organization around the concept of a project, such as Microsoft’s Project Center, are not effective replacements for an infinitely flexible organization scheme like simple folders. …We still need a high-level organization system of some kind. And that is the challenge. It’s a challenge because that problem has already been solved by the file system. The challenge is to solve it better.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] A Memory of Webs Past [IEEE Spectrum] – [The French National Library is updating their technical ability to archive absolutely everything ever published.] "We have a lot of so-called crap, and we're happy about that," says Illien, an archivist. His colleagues in other countries might turn up their noses at hard-core porn, advertisements, and obscure newsletters, but not Illien. "In a hundred years, what's totally irrelevant or dirty today will end up becoming of extreme interest to historians." The archivists here aren't after just printed material; they're preserving the electronic, too. It's his daunting task to archive French Web sites—all of them, in all their evanescent, constantly changing, and multimedia splendor. "I'm convinced the Web as we know it will be gone in a few years' time. What we're doing in this library is trying to capture a trace of it." Illien sees himself as a steward of an ancient tradition; he believes he is helping pioneer a revolution in the way society documents what it does and how it thinks.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] An iPhone App Helps the Blind Identify Currency [NYTimes.com] – [Feature Evolution: Clever use of built-in iPhone camera and speaker to provide a critical service to the blind.] For the millions of blind people living in the United States, paying for something in cash can pose major challenges because there is no difference between the size and shape of a $1 or $100 bill. To tackle this problem, many blind people set up systems to identify a bill’s value by folding the notes into different sizes and shapes, which then make them easily identifiable later. A new application, the LookTel Money Reader, available for $2 on the Apple iOS platform, hopes to help solve this problem by taking advantage of the devices camera to “read money” and speak the value of the currency out loud.
    • [from julienorvaisas] How Designer Marc Ecko Is Using Foursquare to Spank School Spankers | Fast Company – [App Evolution: Foursquare is being employed as an tool of activism – a check-in at a school gets you user-generated reports of the school's record of corporal punishment. An interesting evolution of the application, potentially turning regular users/consumers/players into citizen-heroes, broadcasting more than just location.] Beyond the Foursquare integration, there's a larger game element at play. "Think of Unlimited Justice as a game, where you're the hero. But, instead of saving some far away, imaginary land, you're doing good, right here, in America," Ecko says in his promotional YouTube video. Users of the service not only find out about school that practice spanking, they rack up points on a leader board as they watch videos, connect over social networks, and voice their discontent over the practice to leaders. "Go viral, spread the word, and build your credibility as the ultimate activist."
    • [from steve_portigal] Core77 Design Awards – [Bring distributed collaboration to the awards game, Core enters the game just as the game is changing. Well done!] Instead of bringing everyone to one location, we took a new approach to assembling the jury, distributing the field globally. No plane fuel, more legroom. Our Jury Captains are based in 13 cities spread around eight countries. Each will recruit four people from their area to form a locally-based multidisciplinary Jury Team. They get to do the judging in their own location, and we’ll provide the snacks. Once their results are finalized and validated, the teams will reconvene for a live web broadcast revealing their Winners, Runners-up and Notables, and the reasoning behind their choices. And they’ll do it all without jet lag.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Armies of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software [HeraldTribune.com] – [Spin in this article is that using computers to manage super-human levels of complex data will have employment consequences.] When five television studios became entangled in a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit against CBS, the cost was immense. As part of the obscure task of “discovery” ­ providing documents relevant to a lawsuit ­ the studios examined six million documents at a cost of more than $2.2 million, much of it to pay for lawyers and paralegals who worked for months. But that was in 1978. Now, thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, “e-discovery” software can analyze documents in a fraction of the time and cost. In January, Blackstone Discovery of Palo Alto, CA., helped analyze 1.5 million documents for less than $100,000. Some programs can extract relevant concepts ­ like documents relevant to social protest in the Middle East ­ even in the absence of specific terms, and deduce patterns of behavior that would have eluded lawyers examining millions of documents.
    • [from steve_portigal] PG&E launches huge paper chase for pipeline data [SF Chronicle] – [You think you have a lot of data to process? Obviously their record-keeping incompetence is just now being surfaced and they have taken on a data task that is beyond human scale. We can create systems that we can't manage!] For the past couple of days, forklifts have been carting pallets loaded with 30 boxes each into 3 warehouses outside the 70-year-old Cow Palace arena in Daly City. Friday afternoon, there were still more than 100 pallets stacked outside the warehouses waiting to go in. "There are 100,000 boxes in there, and you can't believe the papers spread everywhere," one PG&E employee said …"There are records in there going back to the 1920s. "We're looking at all kinds of parameters, and our data validation efforts are going on throughout the service area,…We're doing a 24-7 records search involving at least 300 employees and contractors, and we're working to confirm the quality of our data through collecting and validating our gas transmission pipeline records."
    • [from steve_portigal] Hong Kong, 2011 [Flickr] – [My pictures from our recent trip to Hong Kong for the UXHK Conference]
    • [from steve_portigal] Understanding Culture, User Research and Design with Steve Portigal – [Reserve your tickets now for either Toronto event: a lecture on March 8 and a workshop on March 9. The lecture will focus on culture, insights, and design while the workshop will be a hands-on opportunity to practice synthesizing user research data into opportunities and concepts. Hope to see you there!]

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Revealing the Man Behind @MayorEmanuel [Technology – The Atlantic] – [Professor/former punk zine publisher comes clean as author of Rahm Emanuel's apparently epic fake Twitter feed. Atlantic makes a case that it represents a new kind of fiction.] @MayorEmanuel is a new genre that is native to Twitter. When you try to turn his adventures into traditional short stories or poems, they lose the crucial element of time. The episode where the mayor gets stuck in the sewer pipes of City Hall just does not work when the 15 tweets aren't spaced out over 7 hours. It's all over too fast to be satisfying. There's no suspense. This is also a piece of fiction that could interact with reality in real-time. So, when right-wing Michelle Malkin lauded @MayorEmanuel, he could tell her to eff-off. The character could be right there with you when the Bears lost, when snow blew in or as Rahm visited Google. He created fiction both out of what was happening and out of what you, yourself, were living. And he did it for five months. It was serialization in a sense, but alive.

    Our latest article: What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting It


    Our latest interactions column (written in collaboration with Julie Norvaisas) What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting It has just been published.

    We are inevitably astounded and affected by what exists outside of explicit research project constraints.We indulged in a little reflection on some of the people we’ve met and how meeting them took us outside of the business questions at hand but had a real impact on the team and reframed the way we thought about the business questions. This opportunity to dwell on the exception provides a reminder of how these experiences deliver a potent dose of humanity to the business of providing products for people.

    Get the PDF here.

    Previous articles also available:

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Hong Kong’s Couples Invited to Wed at McDonald’s [NYTimes.com] – [We did visit a McDonald's in Hong Kong the other week but we didn't see anything like this!] McWedding starts at $1,280, which includes food and drinks for 50 people. The package includes a budget version of the usual trappings: a “cake” made of stacked apple pies, gifts for the guests and invitation cards, each with a wedding photo of the couple. (Hong Kong wedding photos are taken in advance, with the couple in rented finery.) McDonald’s employees dressed in black suits mimic the actions of hostesses at upscale hotels. They greet guests at the entrance, usher them to the signature book and deliver food, even if it is just a Big Mac and fries. McWeddings were devised in line with local customs, particularly Chinese numerology beliefs that determine the best dates for weddings or other important events. The engaged couple was given a photo frame shaped like Ronald McDonald, marked with the “limited edition number” 138, an auspicious figure.
    • [from steve_portigal] Stalking insights with Steve Portigal [Foolproof] – [Lovely concise report from our UX Hong Kong workshop. Thanks, Tom!] Even a novice UX researcher knows the dangers of moving too swiftly to draw conclusions from fieldwork. It’s important to maintain a state of openness and observation. Leaping to solutions and recommendations can bias your view. This could cause you to miss something really revealing or valuable simply because it doesn’t fit with the way your view is developing. It shouldn’t be true, but in fact the older and more experienced you get the more danger there is that you’ll fall into this trap. Firstly you’re instinctively calling on experiences and patterns in user behaviour that you may have seen before. Secondly, the more senior you are, the more impact your (wrong-headed) views may have on the situation. The antidote? Spend some time with Steve.

    Easy Listening

    [Note: I was asked by a national print publication to join their crowded roster of design bloggers; Over a few months we worked together on my pitch and eventually I wrote and shared my first post. They were quite keen and ran me through all the technical and style guidelines for using their site. But then they asked me at the last minute to hold as they relaunched their blog. Then, silence. The discussion of my series fell down a hole. Given that almost a year has gone by, I’ve realized that it ain’t happening anytime soon. So here’s the piece!]

    Rahul turned to Amanda, his eyes sparkling with excitement. “Hey, I saw a very strange dog today. You wouldn’t believe it!”
    Amanda placed a finger in her novel and looked up. “What?”
    “A strange dog. I saw a strange dog today.”
    “Oh yeah-?” Amanda trailed off, her eyes dipping back to her book.

    This is how we live today (I’m not saying it was always this way; did loquacious primitive Thag grunt enthusiastically while Klag scratched drawings upon the cave wall?). Sometimes we’re distracted, busy, tired, or just not that interested. Hearing these stories takes energy (isn’t that right, introverts?) or maybe we’d rather share our own story (isn’t that right, extroverts?). Even when we do engage in conversation, we’re often thinking about what we want to say next, and listening for those breathing cues that indicate it’s our turn to speak. Listening is a limited resource. No wonder we pay people to listen to us talk about ourselves!

    And while companies acknowledge the value of listening to customers (what new feature, good or bad, isn’t announced without mealy-mouthed PR justification that “We listened to our customers and they told us-“), even at best that’s often just lip-service. As an individual skill that is crucial is so many business interactions, it’s woefully underdeveloped. While we’d all likely check off “good listener” on a self-assessment, it’s something we should probably get better at.

    We don’t have the space (nor the qualifications) to help you get to a point where you care about what your client, customer, colleague or loved one has to say, so let’s just take that as read. But once you’re in the conversation, how do you stay in? One tactic involves your body.

    Maybe you’ve heard the phrase “act as if” from the worlds of life coaching, personal growth, or therapy (i.e., acting as if you aren’t anxious is a tool for dealing with anxiety). By the same token, if we act as if we are listening, we’ll find it easier to listen.


    The body language of good listening


    Not so much

    In The Naked Face Malcolm Gladwell describes the work of psychologists who developed a coding system for facial expressions. As they identified the muscle groups and what different combinations signified, they realized that in moving those muscles, they were inducing the actual feelings. He writes

    Emotion doesn’t just go from the inside out. It goes from the outside in-In the facial-feedback system, an expression you do not even know that you have can create an emotion you did not choose to feel.

    It’s a likely extension of this finding to imagine bodily expressions that demonstrate emotion and intent similarly creating those matching feelings in us. Even if it isn’t true, these postures send strong signals to our interlocutor, further encouraging them to share with us.

    One of my favorite ways to practice listening is via serendipitous encounters with loquacious taxi drivers, airplane neighbors, or social-cue-missing party chatters. Even if we can’t repair society’s listening inequity, we can use it to provide endless practice space.

    For more about listening, you should check out

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Lifelike Craig HD [Cool Hunting] – [An app that makes Craig's List look like an olde-fashioned classified section, complete with circling capabilities, on an iPad is "fantastic" indeed! What goes around comes around.] Lifelike Craig HD is a fully functional Craigslist browser that offers a fantastic visual interface. The app transforms your local Craigslist from the mundane list of links into an iPad browsable paper, complete with newspaper fonts and a classic layout. If something catches the eye you can add it to your favorites, circling it for later reference.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] User-Led Innovation Can’t Create Breakthroughs; Just Ask Apple and Ikea [Co.Design] – [This old saw again! As if user insights and strong vision are incompatible? Shame on FastCo for this hyperbolic crap.] We asked friends on the Apple design team about user-centric design. “It’s all bullshit and hot air created to sell consulting projects and give insecure managers a false sense of security. We don't waste our time asking users, we build our brand through creating great products we believe people will love." IKEA designers don’t use user studies or user insights to create their products. “We tried and it didn’t work..”Of course, neither will say this publicly since both are extremely closed companies and would risk offending users (and the design community) by speaking out against user-centeredness. Since no one will speak up, the false value of the user-as-leader has spread. The best brands are guided by a clear vision for the world, a unique set of values, and a culture that makes them truly unique and that no user insights could ever change.

    Welcome to the product marketing battleground

    Yes, it turns out that All This Chittah Chattah is the place to wrestle for the hearts and minds of today’s consumers. With our frequent discussions of the consumer’s perspective as well as innovative technologies that respond to cultural shifts, we’ve developed a reputation as the place to be seen and read by the alpha-influencers who make any product a success.

    Three years ago I blogged about a dual-flush toilet (and it’s explanatory memo).

    What followed were a number of “comments” from people championing this product or its competitor, sometimes with a less-than-transparent reveal of their identity as someone who works for the company itself.




    And in a similar vein, just the other day, I blogged about a device that would let you open a bathroom door with your toe. Immediately a competitor jumped in to defend his product as the “original” (and while you can’t tell from here, he posted from the domain name he’s championing).

    A few days later, a devastating riposte from someone who is clearly not a fan.

    Now, we don’t know if Elise (who goes by fuzzygirl89) is authentic or not, but I’m definitely suspicious (extraneous specific detail rings false to me). The gloves are definitely off here in the Chittah Chattah Product Death Match. Seriously, is this what it means to be an entrepreneur (or worse, a sales guy)? Sitting at home with your alerts, fingers in the ready position, inches above the keyboard, ready to pounce on any mention of your product in any corner of the web?

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Book Lovers Fear Dim Future for Notes in the Margins [NYTimes.com] – [While there's a bit of 'Death of Print! Oh noes!' at work here, the impact of digital technology on archiving is, in general, a mounting challenge (and frequent blog fodder)] Twain was engaging in marginalia, writing comments alongside passages and sometimes giving an author a piece of his mind. It is a rich literary pastime, sometimes regarded as a tool of literary archaeology, but it has an uncertain fate in a digitalized world. “People will always find a way to annotate electronically,” said G. Thomas Tanselle, a former vice president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and an adjunct professor of English at Columbia University. “But there is the question of how it is going to be preserved. And that is a problem now facing collections libraries.” [Thanks, Stacey G.]
    • [from steve_portigal] Bidder wins `lucky’ car registration number 16 for cool $8.5m [The Standard] – [Arbitrary extrinsic value for meaningful symbols, albeit for charity] Suen was willing to shell out such a large sum because 16 is his lucky number. More than HK$18.5 million was raised at the auction, where the proceeds go to charity. Suen also tried to get 668 as a gift for his wife but was outbid by number plate collector Ngan Man-hon, who paid HK$3 million for it. Ngan said that he liked 668 as it sounds auspicious in Cantonese. In recent years lucky car plates have become popular among mainland collectors so the prices for the better ones remain high….The sale trumped Saturday's auction under the Personalized Vehicle Registration Marks Scheme. Then, car plate B0NUS was sold for HK$220,000 while 201314, which sounds similar to "Love you forever" in Putonghua, went for HK$22,000…Suen's lucky number trails 18 and 9, which were sold for HK$16.5 million in 2008 and HK$13 million in 1994, respectively. The third most expensive number was 2, which went for HK$9.5 million in 1993.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Your Life Torn Open, Sharing is a trap [Wired UK] – [Academic and a little shrill at times, but provocative. In this essay, Keen shares his harsh, apocalyptic perspective on the nefarious implications of the increasingly social and open lives we live online, complete with case studies.] Today's digital social network is a trap. Today's cult of the social, peddled by an unholy alliance of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and communitarian idealists, is rooted in a misunderstanding of the human condition. The truth is that we aren't naturally social beings. Instead, as Vermeer reminds us in The Woman in Blue, human happiness is really about being left alone. On Liberty, the 1859 essay by Bentham's godson and former acolyte, John Stuart Mill, remains a classic defence of individual rights in the age of the industrial network and its tyranny of the majority. Today, as we struggle to make sense of the impact of the internet revolution, we need an equivalent On Digital Liberty to protect the right to privacy in the social-media age.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Apple Says Chinese Supplier Made Changes After Suicides [NYTimes.com] – [The awkward truths revealed by increased transparency around our fancy gadgets is a topic we've discussed before. Here, Apple's investigation is admirable, but hotlines and nets to catch suicidal employees do not seem to be adequate solutions reaching towards the core of the problem.] Apple said that Mr. Cook and a team of independent suicide prevention experts conducted a review of Foxconn’s factory in Shenzhen in June and made a series of recommendations. Mr. Cook and the team also reviewed changes that Foxconn had put in place, which included “hiring a large number of psychological counselors, establishing a 24-hour care center and even attaching large nets to the factory buildings to prevent impulsive suicides,” Apple said in the report. “The investigation found that Foxconn’s response had definitely saved lives.” Apple said it recommended areas for improvement, including “better training of hotline staff and care center counselors and better monitoring to ensure effectiveness.”
    • [from steve_portigal] Create with people, really! [InternetActu.net] – [Google Translate excerpt from a French review of our innovation session at Lift11] But this is not the most important, says Steve Portigal, because all these methods can be acquired by whoever wishes. No, the most important thing is to change the culture, the process by which we do things. "Companies often think they know the problem and are confident they know to solve it, better than anyone." It is their products, services, customers, suppliers, engineers … But a little humility does not hurt, the consultant recognizes the height of his experience "It is actually rather sit back and see that the problem is not what we thought. We must confront the ambiguity and be tolerant to other approaches, to reach the measure of data (and methods). "
    • [from steve_portigal] Shorter E-Books Show Promise for Mobile Devices [NYTimes.com] – [In ReadingAhead we called for the creation of *digital* reading experiences] The Atavist is (publishing) stories that are longer than a typical article but shorter than a novel ­ in the hope that they will find a home on the glassy screens of mobile devices. The dimensions of mobile devices are quite limited. So it’s important to exploit the advantages that the devices do have. Success depends on thinking beyond a “one-to-one transition from book to e-book,” and on doing more than replacing paper with pixels. The Atavist integrates clever tools into the text, like interactive timelines and character biographies to help a reader quickly find her place without spoiling the plots…But it’s much too early to know whether the Atavist and its brethren will become permanently rooted in our reading culture or become a “fossil, embedded in the archaeology of the medium of reading…We are seeing a new category take shape that reflects a new paradigm of what it means to read on a new device.”
    • [from steve_portigal] Geneva and Lyon, 2011 [a set on Flickr] – [Photos from my trip to Geneva (with a side trip to Lyon) for Lift11]

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Non-Jews Begin to Embrace Ketubah Wedding Tradition [NYTimes.com] – [Cultural appropriation of religious traditions as we continue to seek meaning through symbols] The decade of non-Jews discovering the ketubah coincides with three relevant social trends: the rise of Christian Zionism, the growth of interfaith marriage, and the mainstreaming of the New Age movement with its search for spirituality in multiple faith traditions. As a result, an increasing number of gentiles have taken up Judaic practices: holding a Passover Seder, eating kosher food and studying kabbalah, the Jewish mystical movement. “A lot of these things are grass-rootsy,” said Prof. Jenna Weissman Joselit, a historian at George Washington University, who has written extensively on Jewish popular culture. “They have to do with the growing popularity of intermarriage — openness, pluralism, cultural improvisation. And for those who are more religiously literate, they add another level of authenticity or legitimacy.”
    • [from steve_portigal] More Focus Groups for ‘Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark’ [NYTimes.com] – [What is the meaning of using consumer research? Do we admire producers for being user-centered or do we decry them for being desperate?] The producers of the Broadway musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” are offering $60 goodie bags to people who serve in focus groups that will respond to several performances. Two focus groups attended Thursday night’s performance, and four more are scheduled to be at Friday night’s show and the Saturday matinee. It’s not unheard of for Broadway producers to use focus groups, and the musical has used them before since preview performances began on Nov. 28. But these are the first since largely negative reviews of the show by theater critics across the country were published on Tuesday. OnTrack Research, a marketing and consulting firm, is coordinating the focus groups, and here’s the rub: participants only get to see Act I or Act II, not both. They are then asked to fill out surveys and join in discussions in a “V.I.P. room.”

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] New record label hands decision-making over to fans [Springwise] – [This is exactly what Devo did in 2010 with their Devo 2.0 initiative which we blogged about extensively. Love how rapidly an experiment/social commentary becomes a "straight" idea in someone else's hands] Crowdbands is offering users the chance to become record label executives from their homes. Established by Tom Sarig and Peter Sorgenfrei, the Crowdbands label has already signed LA-based band The Donnas. By signing up as a Crowdband member for USD 25 a year, users are entitled to vote on major decisions in The Donnas’ career, from which songs are included on their albums, which artists they should collaborate with, where and where they tour, and even ideas for album cover art. In exchange, not only do members get to see their decisions implemented, they also receive the band’s releases before the general public.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] A History of the Future in 100 Objects by Adrian Hon [Kickstarter] – [I'm in! Who else will throw some cash at this kickstarter project, crowdsourced funding for some exciting research and writing?] Let's imagine it's 2100…What are the 100 objects that future historians will use to sum up our century? 'Smart drugs' that change the way we think? A fragment from suitcase nuke detonated in Shanghai? A wedding ring between a human and an AI? The world's most expensive glass of water, returned from a private mission to an asteroid? I want to write a weblog that will explore all of these ideas, with 100 posts for 100 objects. Along the way I'll produce a newspaper and a podcast, and when it's finished, I'll publish it as a book. But it's not just going to be about technology – I'm going to focus on the deeply human effects of our fascinating future, from religion to advertising to wars. I want to tell the story of individuals, families, countries, and the human race, as we venture from 2011 to 2100.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Toepener — Hands Free Solution – [While this smacks slightly of "gadget" I like the idea of simple improvements to everyday activities based on a) shifting social norms and b) observed behaviors. Text from related news article] The Toepener is a pedal designed to open a public washroom’s door with one’s foot rather than having to touch the door handle. It is the brainchild of Max Arndt, a student at the Carson School of Management. Arndt and his classmates were asked in the Entrepreneurship in Action class to come up with ideas for a new business product or service. Arndt, 22, came up with the Toepener. He hated the idea of opening a public restroom door after he’d washed his hands. It was such a simple idea but he figured it would have tremendous draw. He was right. His class was equally enthusiastic and it was chosen as the product the entrepreneurship class would attempt to market. The product was launched in mid-January. Arndt said the company has sold close to 100 toepeners, which go for $50 each.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] The Super Bowl of Social Media? Maybe Next Year [Advertising Age – DigitalNext] – [It is a bit shocking that innovative thinking in marketing has not yet leveraged – or even experimented with – the promise of social media on the big stage.] There was not one spot that actually asked us to do anything. Or suggested that we do something. These ads could have all run before the internet was even invented. Nothing acknowledged that we had any other connections at our disposal other than the one between us and our televisions. We were expected to visit the brands' websites because we found those brands and their commercials interesting. The irony is that those brands will look to social media to gauge their audiences' reaction. They'll count views on YouTube. They'll ask their interns about what Twitter had to say. Their PR firms will be watching the Google Alerts roll in. But none of them will reap the benefit of actually building a meaningful connection… Coca-Cola could have actually helped some real people make some real people happy.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Need More Calm? [Do Nothing for 2 Minutes] – [If you do give up PowerPoint this week, you may find yourself with a little time on your hands. In that case, consider spending two minutes at donothingfor2minutes.com. It seems to be as much about taunting you for your inability to leave your mouse and keyboard alone for two minutes as it is about encouraging relaxation and meditation. If you achieve the modest goal they set forth you are met with some marketing. If you don't you are told that you FAIL.] Need more calm? We're thinking about additional tools we could create to aid relaxation. If you'd like to know if we launch something, pop in your email below.
    • [from julienorvaisas] Say No to PowerPoint Week [Fast Company] – [Though PowerPoint certainly can be a powerful communication tool, are we turning to it too often out of collective habit? It is the expected medium; we deliver it. But do we really need the same tool for every objective? Storytelling, sales, reporting… it's rare that PowerPoint is questioned as the go-to move for any of the above on projects, for business meetings or at conferences. Edward Tufte has been on this for years of course: http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint] Suffering from PowerPoint fatigue? You're not alone. Tech conferences, including Demo and Finovate, have banned boring slide shows in favor of short, fast-paced product demos.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Robonaut 2 to meddle in Super Bowl pregame [CNET] – [Before they throw it into outer space, they'll test this bot first, to see how it does in the challenging atmosphere of a FOX Sports studio. The description of the thing sounds like it could fit any one of a number of the Packers' offensive line!] NASA's experimental humanoid bot took a break from training at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston earlier this week to tape a segment with Fox Sports analyst Howie Long. The 330-pound R2 has a torso with a head, two arms, two dexterous humanlike hands complete with four fingers and one thumb each, and its own Twitter account. When it's not sending tweets or pondering football stats, it's learning skills that eventually will be uploaded to its twin, which is already packed in special casing aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. Once inside the ISS' Destiny orbiting laboratory, the robot will be tested by engineers to see how it operates in microgravity and the station's radiation and electromagnetic interference environments.

    A trip to MacWorld: Going mobile

    A relative newcomer to the Bay Area, I decided it was mandatory to attend MacWorld. I was not as much on the look-out for the latest whiz-bang technological innovations, as I was interested in where small-scale entrepreneurs were putting their energy. Where are people are going with this whole iThing?

    Focus was squarely on the iPad and iPhone, with Macs getting little attention. They chould call it iWorld. Let’s go mobile!

    The now-iconic iPad billboards always made me laugh because I thought, “No one sits like that!”

    But I was wrong. This guy does!

    Of all the many, many (many) stands and cases at the show, the product he’s demonstrating, PadPivot, was actually among the most inventive, folding up into a tight little package. It’s a versatile combo stand/lapstand/pivot that can help you orient the iPad to an angle that is comfortable to use no matter where, or how, you’re sitting. Bonus points for not having an “i” in their product name. Of all the wonders that the iPad has unleashed, it possible that one of them is an altogether new way to sit?

    iFusion must think that we have very short memories. This iPhone docking-station that strongly resembles an old-school phone is being marketed as “revolutionary.” Useful? Yes. A good idea? Probably. But revolutionary? Complete with “i.”

    Your wife is tired of kicking and nudging you when you snore.This app will now do it for her.

    Act quickly! iGrill is perfect for the big game, enabling you to check out various SuperBowl-related marketing gimmicks, watch highlight videos and keep tabs on the turkey, which is, against all logic, talking to your grill and your iPad. It took the spokesman a while to explain the concept to an interested couple, who nodded agreeably. iTurkey?

    With the TVHat you can enjoy “adult entertainment” whenever you want, and your friends, colleagues and wife will be none-the-wiser. Careful with your hands though – they are not covered by the privacy shield. It’s worth checking out the flyer they were distributing, which is remarkable for the both implications of the photos and the fearless copy (“Privacy and watching what you want where you want is a basic right! Enjoy adult content anywhere.”). The TVHat has been around; curious why they chose to market it for it’s adult-entertainment-enjoying potential at this particular event. Are they in possession of some revealing market research data on MacWorld attendees?

    This man and his friends had the most “Off Tha Chain” idea at MacWorld, though they weren’t eligible for a statuette claiming such a prize as they were handing out flyers and marketing their incredible product unsanctioned. The kits they promote through their Dallas-based company Digital Trend Setters turn your iPad/iPhone around to face the world. With flair. The group was proudly broadcasting their favorite music videos and personal graffiti-esque art. While everyone else in the hall had the devices turned onto themselves, using them to create and enchance their own personal world, these guys literally turned it around.

    I saw a lot of good, bad and ugly in my spin around MacWorld, but running into this crew at the end rendered the rest of what the show offered rather drab and dull by comparison. Their relatively simple, low-tech spin on the technology really is revolutionary. It may not be for everyone, but for some, it can fundamentally change motivations for purchasing, as well as the way the product is used and perceived. In their own words, here’s what Digital Trendsetters is all about:

    This group of highly-motivated individuals insist on working together to inspire the world through creative works of art and talent using the latest high-tech gadgets as part of fashion. Our main objective is to offer outstanding ideas and styles to secure cell phones, iPods, and other mobile devices while on the go. The skills we have obtained are utilized through these devices to show, express, or promote media as an inexpensive way to create awareness. Our mission is to constantly be innovative & expand our products into different markets to create a cycle for generations to follow. The products we sell provide the best marketing solution for promotional use & enjoyable moments during events, ad campaigns, workouts, and performances as a fashionable idea.

    And all with nary an “i.” Rock on!

    Check out the end of Steve’s post from last year’s SXSW festival, Cutting through Clutter at SXSW for another iPad-wearing observation!

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Le Laboratoire des Nouvelles Lectures (LNL) – a community centered around the future of reading – This week Lift is launching a new project: Le Laboratoire des Nouvelles Lectures (LNL) – a community centered around the future of reading. LNL is an open platform designed to inspire and incubate new forms of reading experiences based on all the new technologies now available. The LNL is an initiative of the Salon du Livre et de la Presse de Geneve (the Geneva Book Fair), and is produced by LIFT, Edipresse and Bookapp.com.
    • [from julienorvaisas] Tablets Rekindle Our Love of Reading–Books, Too [Fast Company] – [MFD is used here by the survey companies Brock Associates and iModerate Research Technologies – quite a name, that one! – to signify a Multi-Function Device which includes ebook readers as well as tablets. And possibly smartphones. You know, personal electronic devices. Mobile technology. We don't know what to call things anymore. In any case, here's more research to suggest that though people enjoy reading on and read more on their "MFDs," it's an additive effect, encouraging non-digital reading activity as well. Ereading does not replace non-ereading. Reading begets reading.] Despite the fact that the survey showed MFD users had great "affinity" for their devices, "struggling to to come up with significant shortcomings to reading ebooks on them" they were also inspired to read more old-school books. Perhaps they were reminded of the pleasures of reading, and were reluctant to haul their Kindle into the bath with them for a book-accompanied relaxing soak?

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Plantronics and The Infamous Wall of Ears [SlashGear] – [The wall of ears is admirable in it's attempt at thoroughness, and it makes a disturbing visual impression in the bargain. Makes me wonder how they rely on it in the process – to give a "rough idea" of fit or to quantify fit and by association comfort? It's easy to see how it would give designers an idea of how well a headset fits in/onto the ear but cannot show how it actually feels to said ear.] This wall contains rubber molds of ears of every size, shape and form they could possibly throw together in order to cover as wide a range of ear shapes possible. Plantronics tests all new headset designs rigorously in order to put on the market the most comfortable headset for all shape and sized ears. Ears are notoriously difficult to create a mass market product for due to the level of inconsistency in human ear shapes. This wall is the “database” Plantronics has created in order to hit as many variables in headset design possible.

    Don’t Bother, Braun

    Today, I am proud to carry on the lively tradition of eviscerating… I mean, learning valuable lessons from other folk’s attempts at research. I will be examining a Braun-fielded poll that appeared on my Facebook page. (Recent notable additions to the oeuvre include Jared Spool’s 19 Lessons from United Airlines on How To Build a Crappy Survey and Steve’s imagined reaction to a Netflix survey, Effective Concept Testing: Getting the Answers You Want to Hear!)

    OK, here it is:

    I have a few questions.

    1) Who? The pollsters don’t seem to care that I am neither a fan nor a consumer of Braun shavers specifically, or of electric shavers in general. They’ve got the audience all wrong. To respond would merely be to sabotoge their data-set in response to the absurdity. Which of course I wouldn’t dream of doing!

    2) What is the purpose of this (Part I)? What is the marketing or social media team going to do with this information? What is the business question behind this? Knowing, as they must, that the data will be terribly corrupted, they can’t possibly believe that they’re actually getting useful information. So maybe it’s just one of these crazy social media ploys that appears to be important research but is really a bit of marketing designed at the level of a made-you-look joke?

    3) What is the purpose of this (Part II)? If they just want me to look, then what did they want me to think upon having seen this survey/ad/poll? Is is supposed to intrigue me into thinking, “GOSH now I do wonder how new and different Braun shavers actually are! Let me look into that and then get back to them on this relevant question.” (If so, where’s the link?) Or is it, “Wow – Braun makes electric shavers!” Or is it merely an unconscious, Pavlovian Braaaaauuuuunn they’re trying to get? “Oh yeah, Braun is a brand. I need a shave.” Or do they really just want me to answer their ridiculous question?

    4) Can it make sense, please? Don’t ask me to compare Braun, a brand responsible for a wide variety of consumer products, to the more specific but still questionable category of “other electric shavers.” I can’t compare things that are not comparable.

    5) “New and Different?” Really? New and different are not necessarily positives, especially as those attributes relate to whirring blades that come into contact with your body parts. Is this the most important consumer response that the marketing team is really hoping to understand, if, in fact, they are hoping to understand anything at all?

    6) Wait… anonymous or not? The question mark there, which (I know, I know) is a what-does-this-mean question mark probably linking to a privacy policy still reads like a sleazy wink. Fingers crossed! Your response may or may not be kept anonymous.

    Even though I’ve no doubt that this is an insignifiant throw-away in the overall universe of Braun marketing, it definitely made an impression. If you’re going to bother to ask people questions, know who you’re asking and make it seem, even just a little bit, like the whole exercise matters to you.

    We’ve learned quite a bit from other people’s surveys many times before:
    Bad Survey Design. Please Stop!
    Son of Survey
    Son of Survey Madness
    Thank You For Voting
    The Space Between Yes and No
    Does Calling it a Report Card Make it Not a Survey?
    Survey Revenge

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Japan’s Smokestacks Draw Industrial-Strength Sightseers [WSJ.com] – [This sub-culture is exerting economic influence. I'm looking for the American equivalent.] What started as a fringe subculture known as kojo moe, or "factory infatuation," is beginning to gain wider appeal in Japan, turning industrial zones into unlikely tourist attractions. It's the Japanese equivalent of going sightseeing at industrial stretches along the New Jersey Turnpike. Unlike the tourists who visit the factories of Toyota Motor Corp. and other Japanese manufacturers, the kojo moe crowd has little interest in the inner workings of the plants. They get excited by the maze of intricate piping around the exterior of a steel plant or the cylindrical smokestacks sending up steam. [A book on the topic] lists 19 questions to test one's kojo moe credentials, including "Do you like Blade Runner?" and "Can you stare at a factory you like all day long?" Now, industrial regions across Japan are working to create factory sightseeing tours.
    • [from steve_portigal] Stop Blaming Your Culture [Strategy + Business] – [A must-read. This could become the article on the topic, a companion to Porter's classic What is Strategy? REad it and pass it along.] Fortunately, there is an effective, accessible way to deal with cultural challenges. Don’t blame your culture; use it purposefully. View it as an asset: a source of energy, pride, and motivation. Learn to work with it and within it. Discern the elements of the culture that are congruent with your strategy. Figure out which of the old constructive behaviors embedded in your culture can be applied to accelerate the changes that you want. Find ways to counterbalance and diminish other elements of the culture that hinder you. In this way, you can initiate, accelerate, and sustain truly beneficial change — with far less effort, time, and expense, and with better results, than many executives expect.
    • [from steve_portigal] Steve Portigal to write book on interviewing users [Rosenfeld Media] – Interviewing users is fundamental to user experience work but, as Steve Portigal cautions, we tend to take it for granted. Because it's based on talking and listening, skills we think we have, we often wing it. Sadly, we miss out on many of the wonderful opportunities our interviews should reveal. So we're thrilled that Steve, who's contributed regular columns to interactions and Core77, has signed on to write a new Rosenfeld Media book, The Art and Craft of User Research Interviewing, to help UX practitioners really succeed with interviewing. Steve's book will focus on helping practitioners to better understand users' perspectives, and to rely upon rapport as the main ingredient in successful user interviews.
    • [from steve_portigal] Intel Teams with will.i.am, Black Eyed Peas Front Man [Intel] – [Is there a nomenclature convention emerging? If your corporate title is surrounded by quote marks, you may not receive the same HR benefits as others. Although it looks like he's got a badge? See you at Friday's Beer Bust!] He’s best known for being a multi-platinum music artist, producer and front man for The Black Eyed Peas, but will.i.am is also an innovator, technology fan, entrepreneur and philanthropist. With today’s announcement at the Anaheim Convention Center, the seven-time Grammy winner has added another title to his multi-faceted resume: “director of creative innovation.” As an extension of his insatiable fascination with technology, which plays a significant role in his professional and personal lives, will.i.am will engage in a multi-year, hands-on creative and technology collaboration with Intel Corporation. He already sports an Intel ID badge, which he proudly showed off at a news conference in Anaheim, where Intel is holding an internal sales and marketing conference.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] A manifesto for the simple scribe – my 25 commandments for journalists [guardian.co.uk] – [These are just a couple of Radford's commandments, written based on his years of experience as an editor at the Guardian. Most of these apply beautifully to any kind of writing.] Here is a thing to carve in pokerwork and hang over your typewriter. "No one will ever complain because you have made something too easy to understand." And here is another thing to remember every time you sit down at the keyboard: a little sign that says "Nobody has to read this crap."

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Crewspace – a social network for roadies – [The Internet provides a regular reminder of surprising or niche communities, connecting people that might otherwise remain disconnected, and revealing that these seemingly fringe groups can have significantly large membership. But how does a specialized social networking site differentiate from Facebook or LinkedIn? Do users inhabit both? How will all of us manage the different facets of our lives? How does a site like Crewspace adapt to its users in its user experience? Plus, how can I get backstage tonight?] Crewspace is the private social network for professional road crew (roadies) in the music industry worldwide. Membership is by invite only, so no time-wasters! Anyone who tours can become a member of crewspace (crew space) – tour & road mgrs, production mgrs, audio engineers, sound engineers, LD's, light techs, electricians, backline techs, road crew, catering, carpentry, riggers, security, transport, roadcrew, merch, wardrobe, make-up, crew, roadies.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Inside the Real 2011 Detroit Auto Show [www.insideline.com] – [A detailed and amusing insider's take on the theater of the absurd, the self-caricature that is the Detroit Auto Show on Press Day. Time to rethink, perhaps?] Mini, which Scion-like seems more and more in danger of losing the thread, had one of the most peculiar press conferences: After obligatory brand back-patting, it was time to see the Mini Paceman concept, but wait! First, an auto show model named Brandy, which probably narrows down which model we are talking about by half, comes out with a huge white cardboard cartoon thumb on her hand. Narrated by an overly enthusiastic announcer, Brandy is first presented with a flexing muscleman: Big cardboard thumb down. Then a very limber acrobat: Thumb down. Then a sneering pretty boy: Thumb down. Then the Mini Paceman: Thumb up! Interesting that everyone seems to have run out of auto show ideas at the same time.

    Steve interviewed in Digital Book World

    I was interviewed for an article in Digital Book World. Anne Kostick and I spoke about the Reading Ahead project and what has or hasn’t changed since then. The whole article is online but here’s an excerpt:

    We discussed what’s happened in the months since the project ended more than a year ago. Although the study gathered great feedback from individuals and professionals, he still doesn’t see a lot of people trying to really rethink what it means for “analog activity to become digital activity.”

    Still, the primary goal of digital-book development should be creating good user experiences: creating things people can use that don’t disappoint on some social, physical, or conceptual level that the designers and manufacturers hadn’t known about or taken into account.

    There exist, of course, basic principles, but Portigal notes that “we’re at that inflection point where we bring our analog expectations to digital. It’s hard to adopt new technology if it’s not done really well, and we don’t have a model for a digital reading experience.

    “New behaviors are emerging as a result of digital experience,” he explained. We can handle operations that change-for example, that have preference settings-and there are actions that are moot now (for example, removing the jacket from a hardcover book before reading). But there’s so much potential for new functions and innovations; are readers ready for that? They lose something from not having the physical book, but don’t yet know how much they may have to gain.

    Portigal suggests we tease and challenge the reader to learn more about what a digital reading experience can offer, and then let us know how they like or dislike a feature. Maybe readers will be able to navigate content based on reading expectations: What kinds of books do people read in bed? before sleeping? In transit? Readers may want to choose their content based on feeling, word length, density of prose, device and platform, for different situations and activities.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Your Mom Hates Dead Space 2 [RipTen Videogame Blog] – [If we needed more proof you can get anything you want out of a focus group, here it is. "Actual" focus groups with mom/grandma types reveals that they hate the graphic intense new video game. The authenticity of market research is blatantly co-opted; this isn't new, it's just completely unsubtle. What message do you want to send to your boss or your customers? Market research can help you collect the right soundbites! Call now, operators are standing by!] When your Mom doesn’t like something, well you’re nearly lawfully obliged to like it – Drinking? Yeah that’s fun! Going out with girls? Of course! Horrific monsters vomiting on poor souls lost in space? Fucking awesome! EA has launched a new viral campaign for their upcoming survival-horror title “Dead Space 2″ depicting a number of Mom’s being subjected to pre-recorded footage of the horrific game. Seeing these old ladies truly scared by a video game is something that you really have to see to believe.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Removing "Add to DVD Queue" from Streaming Devices [Netflix] – [This is quite the PR challenge – reframe the removal of features as something that's of benefit to the customers. There are hundreds of comments from unhappy users indicating how this change will impact their particular use cases.] An update for members who add DVDs to their Queue from the device they use to watch instantly. We’re removing the “Add to DVD Queue” option from streaming devices. We’re doing this so we can concentrate on offering you the titles that are available to watch instantly. Further, providing the option to add a DVD to your Queue from a streaming device complicates the instant watching experience and ties up resources that are better used to improve the overall streaming functionality. This change does not impact the Netflix Web site, where most members manage their DVD Queues.
    • [from wstarosta] How children perceive vintage technology [Core77] – [A humorous example of the role that semantics plays in our perception of what something is and how it works.] Design is all about context. When that contextual information is removed, products can be very confusing. As designers we often see this when people are introduced to a new technology that is manifested in a design that breaks so strongly with tradition that they don't know how to use it. We often try to build in affordances that allow them to relate their current technology to their new technology. Think of how the play button from your Walkman went straight to you Discman, then to your iPod, and as a digital button on interfaces.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Second City Customizes a Show for Rochester [NYTimes.com] – [Successful experiment where a comedy troupe immerses in local culture, then creates a show that resonates locally but still holds true to their existing brand of humor. Playing in Peoria, indeed!] They arrived in October for a 4-day insider’s tour of Rochester, The 16-hour days (built around writing time) included dinners with politicians and radio personalities, a tour of the Genesee beer brewery, a meeting with students at Bishop Kearney High School and a foray to the public market. “We tried not to do too much tourist stuff,” Mr. Furman said. “Ideally we shop and eat and go where the residents do.”…Early table-reads of the script brought a promising sign: the director, Jim Carlson, who knew nothing of Rochester, didn’t get a lot of the jokes. “I knew, based on the rhythms, where the punch lines were, but I didn’t understand them."

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Problem With Studies: Why They Get It Wrong [ABC News] – [Food for thought as we analyze, synthesize, prioritize and report our own study results.] People, including journal editors, naturally prefer papers announcing or at least suggesting a dramatic breakthrough to those saying, in effect, "Ehh, nothing much here." The availability error, the tendency to be unduly influenced by results that, for one reason or another, are more psychologically available to us, is another factor. Results that are especially striking or counterintuitive or consistent with experimenters' pet theories also more likely will result in publication. Even such a prosaic occurrence as clock-watching provides illustration of this. I don't think I look at the clock more than others do, but I always seem to notice and remember when the time is 12:34, but not when it's 10:56 or 7:41.
    • [from steve_portigal] Making culture, provoking culture (by making pie) [Grant McCracken] – [Grant sees in design-provocations the possibility to go beyond wishful-social-change-thinking and uncover rich new insights about people and culture. Plus, pie. Mmm, pie.] Our interest is sincere. We do want to know about them. We want to seize this opportunity to find out who they are, to listen to anything they're prepared to tell us. We are doing ethnography in tiny bite size bits. (Here too we want to consult the work on methodology.) Some people who wish to make a social difference don't really care to hear from the Pie recipient. They have a vision of the new world, and they mean to keep banging away at this vision until the pie recipient embraces it. But if we have learned anything about engaging the world it is that it can't be about us. Our best efforts must begin with a study of them.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Honey buns sweeten life for Florida prisoners [St. Petersburg Times] – [Hollywood had convinced us that cigarettes – dangerous, tough, addictive – were the currency in prison. This article suggests a cultural shift with doughy sweet comfort food taking the place of jailhouse smokes] Inmates in the Florida prison system buy 270,000 honey buns a month. Across the state, they sell more than tobacco, envelopes and cans of Coke. And they're just as popular among Tampa Bay's county jails. In Pasco's Land O'Lakes Detention Center, they're outsold only by freeze-dried coffee and ramen noodles. Not only that, these honey buns — so puffy! — have taken on lives of their own among the criminal class: as currency for trades, as bribes for favors, as relievers for stress and substitutes for addiction. They've become birthday cakes, hooch wines, last meals — even ingredients in a massive tax fraud.

    How are you enjoying your FLDRV, Steve Portigal?


    Today I received an email from online tech goods vendor Newegg with the subject line “Newegg.com – Product Voting Invitation.” The message reads, in part:

    Dear steve portigal,
    Thank you for shopping at Newegg.com.

    We thought you’d like to know that your recent purchase contains one or more items currently nominated for Newegg’s Customer Choice Award:

    Sales Order Number:
    Sales Order Date: 12/31/2010 11:30:09 AM

    FLDRV 16G|OCZ FLDRV OCZUSBDSL16G R

    We’d like you to rate your satisfaction level for the nominated product(s) that you have purchased.

    I’m not sure I remember ordering a FLDRV, especially a 16G|OCZ FLDRV OCZUSBDSL16G R.

    Who talks to their customers like this?

    Also see a similar experience with Lenovo

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] A gadget’s life: From gee-whiz to junk [WaPo] – [An interactive graphic that shows the price-adjusted adoption curves of consumer electronics (TVs, phones, fax machines, mobile phones, printers, computers, modems, VCRs, camcorders, digital cameras, DVD players, boomboxes, radios, CD players, MP3 players). Via @Waxy]
    • [from julienorvaisas] Boredom Enthusiasts Discover the Pleasures of Understimulation [WSJ.com] – [Kindred spirits celebrate the benefits and glory of all-things boring! For the researcher not much actually qualifies as boring.] For seven hours, 20 speakers held forth on a range of seemingly dreary diversions, from "The Intangible Beauty of Car Park Roofs" and "Personal Reflections on the English Breakfast," to "The Draw in Test Match Cricket" and "My Relationship With Bus Routes." Meanwhile, some of the 200 audience members—each of whom had paid £15 (about $24) for a ticket—tried not to nod off. Karen Christopher of Chicago, who now lives in London, found at least one presentation so wearisome that she stopped paying attention. "I started thinking about Swedish police procedurals instead," she said. The organizers did their best to keep the audience alert. Many viewers brought coffee, and each received a goodie bag containing an energy bar. After a much-needed break, a drawing was held. Some of the winners got a DVD called "Helvetica," a 2007 documentary about typography.
    • [from steve_portigal] Verizon iPhone Won’t Fit Many Existing iPhone 4 Cases [Technologizer] – [Technology designers giveth, and they taketh away. The process of shopping for accessories just got more complex; Yes, you have an iPhone but what KIND of iPhone?] It appears the Verizon iPhone uses a slightly different antenna design that repositions the gaps between the phone’s multiple external antennas (found in the metal ring around the phone’s outer edge). Along with this change, the phone’s Ring/Silent switch has been moved ever-so-slightly closer to the bottom of the phone. While the difference between the switch positions may seem small, it’s enough that a protective iPhone case made for the original iPhone 4—the version sold by AT&T here in the U.S.—may not work with the Verizon iPhone 4. Specifically, if a case covers the edges of the phone, providing separate precision openings for the Ring/Silent switch and the volume buttons, there’s a good chance that the switch opening will be in the wrong location—in other words, the case will block access to the Ring/Silent switch.

    Join me at Lift11 in Geneva

    I’m very excited to have been invited to speak at Lift11 (with the tagline “What can the future do for you?). My talk is titled Discover and act on insights about people. I was interviewed by Nicolas Nova about our approach to understanding people in order to drive innovation.

    I’ve got one free registration to share with a reader here.
    If you think you might be in Geneva in early February (the conference runs Feb 2-4), let me know you’re interested via the comments.

    Hope to see you there!

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Steve Portigal on "Discovering and acting on new insights about how people innovate" [Lift11 Conference] – [Nicolas Nova interviews me in advance of my presentation at Lift11 in Geneva in February. Thrilled to be part of it!] Q: I am always fascinated by people's creativity and their tendency to find solutions for their own needs. Is this something you A: I think the phrase “their own needs” is a crucial part of your question. Often we are asked to study people where we’ve been given a basic hypothesis of what people’s problems are, or even what the solution is going to be. Often what we end bringing back is some perspective about where our client’s products and services fit – or don’t – into people’s lives. Our clients are trying to innovate in spaces where people aren’t paying much attention, and while that’s challenging, it does help focus the problem a great deal! I’m continually fascinated by two different archetypes with people’s own solutions: the first is a massive tolerance for a non-optimized situations..The second archetype is a massive investment for a customized solution.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Radio Johnny: Steve Portigal on UX Hong Kong [Johnny Holland – It’s all about interaction] – [Very excited about UX Hong Kong, coming up in February] Steve discusses the need for all designers to take more time to understand the mountains of data we are forced to sift through before starting into our various processes and methodologies, including the implications of learning about the value of this data in the context of not just the user, but also our respective teammates. Steve also articulates the need for people to become comfortable with ambiguity and how a workshop setting provides a “new lens for looking at these tools”. "The more mature I feel I become as a professional, the more I feel I need to embrace certain kinds of ambiguity and go towards that; not knowing what the answer is. I think there is a lot of pressure on us in our professional lives to say, we’ve got some data, we did the process, and now we’ve got the answer…it can be very threatening to say, I don’t know what’s going to happen…"

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] My Year Without Star Wars [io9] – [Screenwriter/producer reflects on the lessons learned from stepping back from his beloved Star Wars] How many modern blockbusters seem like cargo cult versions of that childhood inspiration? How many times do I have to walk out of a theater thinking "I just paid to see a laundry list of beats that "worked" in Star Wars" before wondering if our collective doorway to archetypal storytelling hasn't become a Trojan Horse? Star Wars may have taught the Hero's Journey to entire generations, but it is our responsibility to use the paradigm and to forge something with its own emotional integrity. All creators imitate, emulate and steal. All maturing artists engage in a dialogue with what came before… but I can't think of a single instance in history when so many of us are so actively engaged in paying homage to a single work of art. Bluntly: we are all cribbing our best moves from the same two-hour movie and it has to stop. There just isn't enough meat on the carcass.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Wake Up, Geek Culture. Time to Die [Wired] – [Provocative musing on what the Internet has wrought to outsider enthusiasts, but the piece falls off a cliff after this. I yearned for Chuck Klosterman to make this funnier/insightful] With everyone more or less otaku and everything immediately awesome (or, if not, just as immediately rebooted or recut as a hilarious YouTube spoof), the old inner longing for more or better that made our present pop culture so amazing is dwindling. The Onion’s AV Club—essential and transcendent in so many ways—has a weekly feature called Gateways to Geekery, in which an entire artistic subculture—say, anime, or the Marx Brothers—is mapped out so you can become otaku on it but avoid its more tedious aspects. Here’s the danger: That creates weak otakus. Everything That Ever Was – Available Forever doesn’t produce a new generation of artists—just an army of sated consumers. Why create anything new when there’s a mountain of freshly excavated pop culture to recut, repurpose, and manipulate on your iMovie?

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] 19 Lessons from United Airlines on How To Build A Crappy Survey [UIE Brain Sparks] – [Jared's detailed deconstruction of a badly written and entirely inappropriate survey – on board a United flight before he can get to the WiFi login screen – let alone find out if there's even a charge for the onboard WiFi – reveals the tragic limitations of badly written surveys and puts the lie to people who shrug off bad questions with "Well, at least you learn *something*". Even more this blog post reveals the emotional and intellectual state of someone who is taking a survey; the external orientation most surveys lack or deny. Required reading.] My biggest worry is the next flight I’ll get on with wifi service will have the exact same survey. If that’s the case, I’ll probably answer all the questions differently, just to mess with their heads. After all, if they’re going to waste my time…

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] NoseDial iPhone app – [The craziest workaround I've seen. Also reveals the cost of producing WTF solutions is falling to near zero] Whether you're at the Christmas market, taking a winter walk or out skiing – you don't have to take off your gloves when you want to call your friends on your iPhone anymore. Now you can dial using your nose. NoseDial isn't just a favorites list you can style individually. The app also shows you pictures of your friends and allows you to navigate through your contacts by tilting your iPhone and to then call them using your nose. Forget special touchscreen gloves and iPhone input pens, just call using your nose. This saves money and is a lot more fun.

    The Dog Days Are Over


    Warning, Portland, OR, December 2010

    Last week I stopped at a Safeway store in Portland, OR. On my way to the bathroom, I passed through a backstage area with the various HR notices, schedules, and so on. And then, I see this sign, depicting a crazy-eyed dog, and the exhortation: Warning – A customer who wants a sample looks like this. Don’t Forget The Selling Suggestion.

    I’m astounded that Safeway would put this sign where customers can see it. I would hope that companies wouldn’t be using anti-customer imagery as motivational posters, but if they are, I would expect that they wouldn’t put it where customers can see it.

    Really, Safeway? You think so little of us that you don’t even care if we know how little you think of us?

    Portigal Consulting year in review, 2010

    2010 has been an amazing year for us. While we can’t talk about many of the incredible experiences we had doing fieldwork and working with clients, below are some of the highlights that we can share:

    You can also see previous summaries from 2009 and 2008.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Marrow Donor Campaign Relied on Flirtation, Officials Say [NYTimes.com] – [Guerrilla marketing tactics from the past (?) being used for slightly more virtuous purposes] The recruiters were actually flirtatious models in heels, short skirts and lab coats, asking passers-by for DNA swabs. The registry, Caitlin Raymond International, was paying up to $60,000 a week for the models. The state’s senior assistant attorney general said the registry had hired models based on their photographs and had given them “explicit instructions” to wear heels and short skirts. The registry paid the models to approach potential donors at dozens of malls and events throughout New England. “The models worked the crowds, if you will,” he said. “We were told basically they would engage a lot of younger men with some sort of flirtatious thing: ‘Hey, don’t you want to be a hero? Come on, do this!" If people expressed interest the models — who, for reasons that remain unclear, sometimes also wore electric-blue wigs — would hand them off to registry employees who would take mouth swabs.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Overwhelmed Online Shoppers in UK Can Justbuythisone [Advertising Age] – [Beta site leverages online reviews of many products to lead online shoppers directly to a product.] The explosion of consumer choice makes the internet a giant playground for some, but for the many people who find themselves paralyzed by too many options, Justbuythisone.com is coming. It offers consumers the opportunity to "stop shopping and start enjoying life" by providing just one search result for each category of electrical goods. So if you're looking for a TV for less than $500 it will tell you which one to buy, and give you three concise reasons why. Kyle McGinn was part of the team that came up with the idea during an offline brainstorming week. "We knew that 25% of people are overwhelmed by the choice on price comparison sites and inspired by TED talks on the paradox of choice and the need to sweat the small stuff, we decided to create something utterly simple and extremely useful." It is also built around principles of data visualization.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Stephen Hawking’s Radical Philosophy of Science [Big Questions Online] – [Mental models are described as quantifiable manifestations of various interpretations of reality. There can be more than one, but some more closely represent reality.] Model-dependent realism argues that there is no privileged position in the universe — no Archimedean point outside of our brain that we can access to know what reality really is. There are just models. It is not possible to understand reality without having some model of reality, so we are really talking about models, not reality. The tools and methods of science were designed to test whether or not a particular model or belief about reality matches observations made not just by ourselves but by others as well…nearly all scientific models — indeed, belief models of all sorts — can be parsed in such a manner and, in time, found to be better or worse than other models. In the long run, we discard some models and keep others based on their validity, reliability, predictability, and perceived match to reality.
    • [from steve_portigal] Is Yahoo Shutting Down Del.icio.us? [Update: Yes] [Techcrunch] – [This is our platform for easily and collaboratively assembling ChittahChattah Quickies. Not sure how we'll carry on, but hopefully we'll figure something out]
    • [from steve_portigal] Reclaiming the rainbow [OneNewsNow.com] – [The battle for meaning: the dispute over who defines and controls a symbol as a stand-in for the larger debate. This about taking ownership of the story away from the other side. The irony of the rainbow as symbol of diversity and inclusion appears to be lost, however.] An activist fighting for traditional marriage in California is urging Christians to reclaim the rainbow from homosexual-rights activists who have hailed the symbol as their icon of "gay" pride. Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse of the San Diego-based Ruth Institute rightly argues that the rainbow is a sign of God's covenant with man, and she says "We are the real rainbow coalition. The gay lobby does not own the rainbow."

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] The future of books is a real page-turner [Sydney Morning Herald] – [With so much prognostication going on, this government effort to foster a conversation about the future of books is refreshing] When in electronic form, storytelling may benefit in ways that no one can yet articulate. This is one reason why the Book Industry Strategy Group, established last year by Kim Carr, the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, is seeking public submissions about the future of the industry. It is seeking ideas from writers, educators, librarians, publishers, retailers and – most importantly – readers about how to enhance the Australian publishing industry as an important sector of our economy, society and culture. Will the "deregulation" of the publishing industry, where anyone can self-publish, result in more stories of highly variable quality? Of course it will – just as the printing press did. But it may lead to some new and innovative ways of storytelling, ways that engage the reader in different or deeper ways. [Thanks, Wyatt!!]

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Romance Books Are Hot in the E-Reading Market [NYTimes.com] – [We've commented extensively on how printed books are a means of conveying identity by displaying a key to their contents; something that is lost with e-books. Now here's an example where that limitation provides a benefit] Sarah Wendell is passionate about romance novels. Except for the covers, with their images of sinewy limbs, flowing, Fabio-esque locks or, as she put it, “the mullets and the man chests “They are not always something that you are comfortable holding in your hand in public,” Ms. Wendell said. So she began reading e-books, escaping the glances and the imagined snickers from strangers on the subway, and joining the many readers who have traded the racy covers of romance novels for the discretion of digital books.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] The time-warp room and other medical breakthroughs [CultureBy – Grant McCracken] – [A fascinating example but as usual it's Grant's gentle pokes in his analysis that offer the most value in this post] Coombe End Court, a retirement center in Marlborough, Wiltshire has a "time-warp" room. It’s outfitted with a gramophone, manual typewriters, a telephone made of Bakelite, and furniture from the 1950s. That this "reminiscence room" is loved by residents is not surprising. Who doesn’t like to see the return of an "old friend" from the object world? What captured the attention of the gerontological community (and the magnificent website Retronaut) was that this room as lead to a "dramatic" drop in the need for the anti-psychotic drugs given those who suffer from Alzheimer’s.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Snowclone [Wikipedia] – A snowclone is a type of cliché and phrasal template originally defined as "a multi-use, customizable, instantly recognizable, time-worn, quoted or misquoted phrase or sentence that can be used in an entirely open array of different variants". An example of a snowclone is "grey is the new black", a version of the template "X is the new Y". X and Y may be replaced with different words or phrases – for example, "comedy is the new rock 'n' roll". Both the generic formula and the new phrases produced from it are called "snowclones". [Thanks @mulegirl]
    • [from julienorvaisas] The Business of Unfriending People [inc.com] – [Suggests that the social media footprint in our lives is contracting, voluntarily, and explores cultural trends informing that. Is the social media bubble about to burst (or at least diffract)?] New evidence suggests that as social media gets bigger, we're getting smaller. This is the growing trend of descaling—the pruning of our social lives on the Internet. Here we take a media, which is structurally perfect for massive scaling at low cost, and use it to make the Internet a more meaningful, emotional, and intimate experience.This new sense of intimacy derives from two places. The first is our growing sensitivity and sophistication about privacy. Secondly, this trend to intimacy isn't relegated to the digital world. It's happening across our economy. The pre-crisis consumer has become a smart shopper, more concerned with maximizing both the value of his or her purchase, but also actively supporting the brands, ideas, and friends that share his or her values.

    Keeping it Weird

    I made my second trip to Austin a couple of months ago and was struck again by the Keep Austin Weird ethos. Once you start seeing it, it’s fairly pervasive (i.e., tie-dyed souvenir shirts, tote bags, bumper stickers, keychains, etc. at the airport). Of course, memes become co-opted and corrupted. Here are two examples I found


    A McDonald’s mural by David Soames gives new meaning to the term “counter culture”


    Keeping Jesus Weird – a different and unpredictable faith conversation – offers a Ladies’ Night event, where women are the topic. I count two memes being repurposed here

    I’m not sure that “Keep [thing that you’re selling] Weird” is going to work (even in Austin) for every possible brand, product, service, religion, or combination thereof, but it’s amusing to watch the purveyors try real hard to make it happen!

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Tesla Motors resolves nagging trademark dispute [MarketWatch] – [Good contrast between brand meanings] Tesla Holding is a successor to the massive, state-owned Tesla conglomerate that churned out ubiquitous, communist-era electronics. Prior to the overthrow of the totalitarian regime in 1989, visitors to what was then Czechoslovakia were often treated to hotel rooms outfitted with a small, black-and-white Tesla TV, capable of picking up only a few channels. According to Tesla Holding’s website, the company also at one point provided transceivers for more than 60% of the radio and TV broadcasts in the former Soviet Union. In its current form, the Czech firm offers technologies for water treatment and military communications, while guarding a trademark it claims to have registered in dozens of countries…In spite of its frequent identification as a household name from the communist era, the modern Tesla Holding has sought to popularize its brand. The Tesla name adorns Tesla Arena in Prague where recent events have included a concert by 50 Cent.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] StatSheet Is Writing Sports Stories With Software [NYTimes.com] – [And you thought mainstream sports writing was formulaic now…] I asked Michael W. White, a specialist in the field of natural language generation, for his professional opinion of the quality of the writing. We visited the StatSheet site for Ohio State’s team and looked at the write-up of its Nov. 12 season opener, written expressly for Buckeyes fans: ”Ohio State Gets 102-61 Monster Win Over North Carolina A&T.” “Ohio State has already started living up to monumental expectations with a good first game,” it began. “On November 12th on their home court, the Buckeyes waxed the Aggies, 102-61.” The story had 10 sentences and 156 words. Over all, Professor White said, it read “pretty well.” He praised the first sentence as very good and said the use of “waxed” in the second was a nice touch. Then he pointed out some glitches. It was a bit overeager to show that Ohio State was undefeated so far this season, when its record was still just 1-0.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Steve Madden’s Comeback [Barrons.com] – [Steve Madden puts real-time rapid shoe prototypes in front of customers for instant feedback communicated through sales and interest. It's research that asks people to put their money where their mouth is, and provides significant financial efficiencies.] Madden is also responsible for what many think is the shoe merchant's biggest asset—its ability to quickly create cutting-edge footwear. After he and his team come up with a design for, say, new boots, a mini-factory at their headquarters can turn it into a trial product within hours, produce a limited number of the boots by the end of the day, and place them in a few of its own retail stores by week's end. The shoe merchant then gets feedback from the stores. If the footwear is a hit, it can be on retailers' shelves throughout the U.S. in six to eight weeks.
    • [from steve_portigal] TidyPSD – Get your PSDs organized! – [A fascinating example of a service. Upload a Photoshop (PSD) file to this site and they will organize it for you, grouping layers and renaming them in a coherent fashion. You can imagine digital professional organizing services that will clean up your files, organize MP3s or photos, but this is a very specific offer, akin to a professional organizer who sorts out your spice rack only.] It’s very difficult for coders to work with someone else’s PSD files if they’re not organized correctly. We help fix that problem by organizing your PSDs for you.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] LCARS Standards Development Board – [Library Computer Access/Retrieval System is the name of the operating system used by ship systems on Star Trek. As fan sites and other bits of consumer-developed tech emulate the look and feel of interfaces from Star Trek, this site is an effort to create a set of UI standards around colors, fonts, animation, sounds, and other interactive elements.]
    • [from steve_portigal] How Kanye makes his musical sausage [Kottke] – [If you've been enjoying our recent examples of inspiring or provocative thoughts on creativity from performing artists, here's another one] Interesting piece on how Kanye West's latest album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, got made. Lots of good creative process bits

    New symbols for new times


    Medical marijuana dispensary, Sausalito, CA, November 2010

    I was unable to find out about this symbol’s history or affiliation. Green Cross is a common term/symbol for medical pot, but seems tied to various local organizations (including a delivery service in San Francisco), while this specific graphic didn’t show up anywhere in my searches. Meanwhile, as new symbols and meanings emerge they can sometimes conflict: Green Cross is also an international organization, based in Switzerland whose mission “is to respond to the combined challenges of security, poverty and environmental degradation to ensure a sustainable and secure future.” When multiple groups appropriate and recontextualize an existing symbol (in this case the Red Cross) that collision is ever more likely.


    Unisex bathroom sign, San Francisco, CA, August 2010

    While this sign, seen in the Commonwealth restaurant, may actually be a branding icon for the restaurant (since it appears on their menu) and not a new symbol for men-plus-women, given its visual insinuation, and application (appearing on two adjacent doors, just where you’d expect to find the bathrooms), it begins to suggest a broader meaning. Unisex bathroom signs are typically denoted by the icons for men and women, together but the idea (intentional or not) that this usage has a gestalt not fully addressed by combining existing symbols is a powerful one.

    What new symbols and new meanings are you seeing?

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Lessons Learned in 10 Years on the Tech Beat [NYTimes.com] – [David Pogue with an insightful summary of consumer technology: adoption, production, integration. Read the whole piece!] Things Don’t Replace Things; They Just Splinter. I can’t tell you how exhausting it is to keep hearing pundits say that some product is the “iPhone killer” or the “Kindle killer.”TV was supposed to kill radio. The DVD was supposed to kill the Cineplex. Instant coffee was supposed to replace fresh-brewed. But here’s the thing: it never happens. There will be both iPhones and Android phones. There will be both satellite radio and AM/FM. There will be both printed books and e-books. Things don’t replace things; they just add on….Some Concepts’ Time May Never Come. The same “breakthrough” ideas keep surfacing — and bombing, year after year. Nobody wants videophones! Teenagers do not want “communicators” that do nothing but send text messages, either. And give it up on the stripped-down kitchen “Internet appliances” Nobody has ever bought one, and nobody ever will.

    Thanks Bolt | Peters, for a great URF10


    All of us here at Portigal Consulting participated in Bolt | Peters’ mostly-annual User Research Friday conference (URF10) last week. URF is a conference designed to be

    A full-day conference all about user research! This time it’s also two optional half-day workshops on advanced research techniques you can choose from on the preceding day. There has been an explosion of apps and services to conduct research over the past year, and so this year’s theme is “Vendor Circus.” We’ll bring user research experts together for advanced discussion, beverages, relaxed learning, and heavy socializing.

    Steve and Julie also co-led an aforementioned half-day workshop on the preceding Thursday (you can read more about that here).

    Friday’s line-up of presentations was interspersed with just the right amount of mingling and networking. Thoughts were provoked! Here, in no particular order, are some of them:

    Steve sez
    I’ve been part of “user research” type events for well over a decade, but on Friday I finally felt that our field has reached a point of maturity where events like these are effective venues to address some of the issues we’re facing. I saw a remarkable absence of posturing, very few “Gaze upon our perfect case study!” presentations, and none of the “Here’s why we can’t do research in my organization” whining. The best presentations of the day were those that explicitly raised (and often didn’t answer) questions that we should be thinking about. They brought out a certain collective humility that I found refreshing and compelling. Of course, organizers Nate and Cyd helped set the right tone through their deliberate planning to make that possible.

    Julie goes on
    The day featured great pacing and a spectrum of perspectives and styles of presentation. And cake-pops. I enjoyed the tension between the group’s characterizations of User Research as sometimes highly qualitative and sometimes very technology-driven/quantitative. Both camps were represented without bias. Nice! I guess we can all just get along. Several conversations I had touched on the challenge of selling the value of qualitative, consumer-based insights in a world increasingly influenced by complex tools that derive assertive analytics. Why do numbers seem to have more credibility than stories? Naturally, this seems counter-intuitive to me. Jared Spool gave some compelling ammo in his discussion of the importance of inference as a step in the analysis process of quantitative data. From a methodology standpoint, Dana Chisnell’s simple but provocative observation will stick with me: when research requires people to “pretend” to do something it exposes its flaws.

    Wyatt burbles
    The highlight for me was Dana Chisnell’s presentation, which reminded me to check myself before I wreck someone else’s user experience- specifically, pointing to something I would call “legacy metaphors” (although I’ve just learned they are actually called skeuomorphs), which are things like the “cc:” and “bcc:” fields on an email, the 12 key configuration on mobile phones, or the clicking sound when you take a picture on a digital camera. These conventions, appropriated from the analog world, may be a step forward in aiding adoption of the new and unfamiliar, but the question Dana threw out to the audience (and I’m paraphrasing here) is, “Are we really helping people, or are we propagating some archaic interaction convention because it’s easier than figuring out a better one?”

    Recap of Steve and Julie’s URF10 synthesis workshop

    Our friends at Bolt | Peters hosted their (mostly) annual User Research Friday event last week, bringing together practitioners from the client-side as well as consultants to share stories and discuss best practices. Some of our takeaways from the day are here.

    The day before the conference, Steve and Julie co-led a sold-out workshop titled “We’ve Done All This Research- Now What?” for a group of 20 enthusiastic researchers and designers.


    Julie and Steve in action

    The purpose of the workshop was to practice the process of moving from the data and observations we gather in fieldwork toward opportunities and ultimately to ideas.

    We framed this as a research project to inform a neighborhood redevelopment/gentrification effort. Before the workshop, participants first wandered their own neighborhoods…


    Thanks to Nick Leggett from Zazz for this aerial shot from their Seattle offices


    Noe Valley scene (a San Francisco neighborhood) captured by Julie

    …and then when we got together, they the explored neighborhood surrounding Bolt | Peters for more data.


    This machine shop just down the street from Bolt | Peters has been there for decades


    6th street buzzes, about two blocks from the conference

    Break-out groups took the synthesis tasks to heart and, in a very short period of time, collaboratively surfaced promising opportunities and strategies and solutions to address them.

    We were humbled by the gentle empathy and creativity of the folks in the room. The morning served as an inspiring reminder of just how much progress a handful of smart, dedicated people can make on seemingly-intractable problems in a very short period of time.

    More amazing photos, observations, output, and thoughtful commentary can be seen on the blog we created for the workshop.

    The workshop slides are below.

    See previously: Steve Portigal’s presentation from User Research Friday 2008

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Mobile Mandate: Tribute to Cultural Connectors [design mind] – [frogdesign's Kate Canales and Lauren Serota adventure in Zambia revealed some crucial truths about accessing other cultures. As much as I'm advocate for having my mind blown as an outsider, the importance of the bridge – the people who can help you make sense of it all – is paramount] As we traveled with her, she grew to truly understand why we were there and could see we were missing pieces. She found opportunities to fill those gaps, taking time to explain things to us and immerse us in the culture..We were reminded that if you are open to it, you can learn as much from insightful people like Lister as you can through days of fielding. More than that, she might have been our most powerful in-field synthesis tool. A sounding board for questions, validations, curiosities and stories. There's not much better than having multiple observations tied together in an understandable way by someone native to the culture.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Yes Men Attack Apple, Advertising Special "Conflict-Free" iPhone [Fast Company] – [I blogged earlier this month about the increasing but not-always-pleasant transparency emerging around the ingredients and manufacturing practices that enable our beloved gadgets. Well, the Yes Men have taken hold of the idea. Their fake web site raises some good questions. What do we do, now that we know?] The Yes Men, the group of clever activist/designer pranksters, struck again this week–or tried to. Their target this time? Apple. They launched a website that was a spitting image for Apple's, and professed to be announcing a new product: the iPhone4CF. 'CF' stood for conflict-free, and the site promised that the new phone was exactly like the normal iPhone 4, only it didn't source its minerals from conflict-ridden regions like the Democratic Republic of Congo, thereby fueling atrocities there. The Yes Men has taken on some very big targets in the past–Chevron, the US Chamber of Commerce–but they seem to have met their match in Apple.

    Because you *want* the words to rhyme

    Eminem, interviewed recently in Rolling Stone magazine, reveals just a bit of his creative process, linked to a childhood impulse. While his “compulsion” isn’t one we all share, it evokes other behaviors from that time in our lives. Nice that Marshall has managed to use his to inform, if not define, his art.

    How do you go about putting together a verse?
    Even as a kid, I always wanted the most words to rhyme. Say I saw a word like “transcendalistic tendencies.” I would write it out on a piece of paper – trans-cend-a-list-tic ten-den-cies – and underneath, I’d line up a word with each syllable: and bend all mystic sentence trees. Even if it didn’t make sense, that’s the kind of drill I would do to practice. To this day, I still want as many words as possible in a sentence to rhyme.

    Also important is the idea of a simple activity that will help you develop your creative muscles, an idea I explored in Skill Building for Design Innovators

    I also enjoyed this insight about Eminem’s approach because it reminded me of some fun fieldwork a few years ago, where we met a young rapper who demonstrated his process for us, flowing from using looped music to freestyle against, a workbook where he’d write up a ton of lines, picking and choosing based on what worked when rapped aloud.

    Sometimes I’ll write a song in just one sit down and it’s perfect, I don’t even touch it. For me, like I’ll feel good about it. Sometimes it’s just crap, and that’s fine, because I feel like you get out the crap and then you can pull the little gems out of it. Or even if it’s just one paragraph of a song I wrote, I’ll take that and piece it into other songs. In this case, I would sit down and open a file and then I’d just listen through it, see if there’s anything worth keeping.

    His process (which developed into some exciting design implications for our client’s products) became a bit of a meme around the office, eventually becoming iconified thusly:

    See thoughts on creativity, previously from Jack White and Will.i.am.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] You’re Reading That Book Too? Marry Me: How Young People and Online Dating Services Look for Love Matches Based on Reading Habits or Artistic Pursuits [WSJ.com] – [As we spend time on social networks announcing what we "like" this seems an obvious extension] alikewise.com, a free dating site that matches singles based on books and has amassed 4,000 users, mostly in their 20s and early 30s, since it launched in July. The site facilitates matchmaking by notifying users when someone adds a book of the same title or genre….The focus on matching people based on what they've read (or what they'd like to read) could change the online dating lexicon from "she's hot" to "she's interesting."…But are books really a Rorschach test for compatibility? Dennis Palumbo, a psychotherapist and author of the novel "Mirror Image," believes people in their 20s and 30s are too concerned with shared interests, as evidenced by the growing number of niche dating sites. "As we get older, we want a kind, caring person who cares how we feel," he says. Not necessarily someone who has read "The Cornish Trilogy." [via Springwise]

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Start-Ups Follow Twitter, and Become Neighbors [NYTimes.com] – [The supposed demand to be co-located in the same office building as Twitter, hoping for some f2f meatspace benefits from proximity to a virtual powerhouse] And so he snagged an office at 795 Folsom, Twitter’s headquarters in the SoMa neighborhood. There, he has been stalking executives on — where else? — Twitter, to see who is to visit Twitter’s offices. When he finds out, he pounces and “hijacks the meeting,” he said, by asking them to swing by his company, Klout. By doing that, he has met Robert Scoble, the influential technology blogger, and Steve Rubel, director of insights for the digital division of Edelman, the big public relations firm, and has spotted Kanye West in the lobby on his way to Twitter. Through elevator and lobby run-ins, he has also forged a close enough relationship with Twitter’s chief executive, Dick Costolo, that Mr. Costolo is helping Klout raise venture capital. “Now I have his cellphone, and I text him,” Mr. Fernandez said.
    • [from steve_portigal] User-centered Innovation in Stanford’s Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability class [SF Chronicle] – [The article mostly focuses on a specific innovative design – a low-cost incubator-type-solution for Nepal; but the most quotable bits were towards the end, where they discuss the operating framework of this class.] About to start its eighth year in January, the class has completed about 60 projects for 15 partner organizations in 10 countries. It brings together students from different academic backgrounds…They all have one goal in common: to design products for the poor and to treat them as customers rather than handing them our leftovers and castoffs. "We are trying to figure out what they want and need," said Jim Patell, the Stanford professor who leads the class. "It is not our job to tell them what they want."

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] a new analog take on the book [Influxinsights] – [In our Reading Ahead project we encouraged designers and publishers to consider the possibilities for design in the traditional book, and not just focus on what digital can bring. So this was exciting to see!] These are reactions to a radical new book design from Visual Editions, a UK based publisher with a new take on the reading experience. The book is "Tree of Codes" and it's author Jonathan Safran Foer's experiment to cut-in, using die-cuts to his favorite book, "The Street of Crocodiles" by Bruno Schultz.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] book lovers never go to bed alone – [A Tumblr blog consisting only of photos of bookshelves, from homes and bookstores. Why? Because they can.]
    • [from steve_portigal] Ideal Bookshelf – [More examples of books as a identity system] This is an ongoing project called "Ideal Bookshelf". I paint sets of books as a form of portraiture: a person's favorites (of all time, within a genre or from a particular period in their lives); the ones that helped make them who they are today. We show off our books on shelves like merit badges (the ones not on our Kindle, at least), because we're proud of the ideas we've ingested to make us who we are, as we should be. The spine of a book is a sort of code for the giant cloud of ideas the author included within it. Just ten of them together on a sheet of paper tells the story of the mind that picked them in a way that is easily digestible but allows for endless study. We also display our books hoping to connect with others. When I paint someone else's bookshelf and they have the same book I do, it instantly makes me happy.
    • [from steve_portigal] Mr. Peanut’s New Look? Planters Went Old School [NYTimes.com] – Mr. Peanut is getting a voice as part of efforts to revitalize the character and brand for contemporary consumers. [Also] a new look, meant to give him a more authentic appearance by evoking designs of the character from the 30s & 40s. He is now brown, rather than yellow, and sports a gray flannel suit…Nostalgia is not what it used to be, particularly when it comes to younger consumers, so the goal is to be perceived not as old-fashioned but rather as old-school ­ from an earlier era and worthy of respect…Mr. Levine hastened to reassure fans that “he’s still Mr. Peanut, with the top hat and monocle and cane….We’re taking him back to his roots.” In addition to getting a voice, Mr. Peanut has a new sidekick. Mr. Peanut’s buddy is named Benson, shorter than Mr. Peanut ­ one nut in his shell rather than two. “Benson is quite enamored of Mr. Peanut,” Mr. Levine said, but they are, as the saying goes, just friends. Benson does not live in Mr. Peanut’s house, Mr. Wixom said.
    • [from steve_portigal] White poppies banned from P.E.I. market [CBC News] – [Disruption – whether innovative or not – starts with ideas. The poppy itself is not harmful or otherwise objectionable, but the idea it – arbitrarily, mind you – represents is transgressive enough that the establishment reacts as only the establishment can – by banning the representation of that idea. I assume, for further irony, that these are plastic poppies, not "real" poppies. The power of symbols!] The Charlottetown Farmers Market turned away people selling white poppies on Sunday for Remembrance Day. Volunteers with the Island Peace Committee had arranged to hand out the controversial poppies at the farmers market for the second consecutive week. Committee members say the alternative poppies stand for peace and are also to remember civilians who die in war. The white poppies have drawn an angry response from the Royal Canadian Legion, saying they detract from the original red poppy…For now, people will have to contact the Island Peace Committee directly to get a white poppy.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Geoffrey Crawley, 83, Dies; Gently Deflated a Fairy Hoax [NYTimes.com] – [The lasting power of popular mythologies, especially when tied to a new technology. It reads quaint now, but do we have any current analogs?] Were there really fairies at the bottom of the garden, or was it merely a childhood prank gone strangely and lastingly awry? That, for six decades, was the central question behind the Cottingley fairies mystery, the story of two English schoolgirls who claimed to have taken five pictures of fairy folk in the 1910s and afterward. Set awhirl by the international news media, the girls’ account won the support of many powerful people, including one of the most famous literary men in Britain. From the start, there were doubters. But there was no conclusive proof of deception until the 1980s, when a series of articles by the English photographic scientist Geoffrey Crawley helped reveal the story for what it was: one of the most enduring, if inadvertent, photographic hoaxes of the 20th century.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] The Pyramid to Enlightenment is Upside-Down [design mind] – [Jon Kolko questioning Maslow as a framework. In my just-published interactions article (editor: Jon Kolko) I leverage Maslow as a framework for considering the consequences of product development/experiences] I've been thinking a great deal about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the one we all learned about in our introduction to psychology class in college. It's shaped like a pyramid (no, not the food pyramid – that's yet a different iconic reference that's been diluted through misuse and only partial understanding), and it describes the various artifacts, emotions, and qualities that we need to survive. At the base are things that most of us take for granted – basic needs like food and water, and needs tied to safety, like clothing and shelter. After these core elements, we move into more convoluted spaces where objects stop being so immediately provocative – things like love, self esteem, and the holy grail of self actualization, where we find things like creativity and ethics.

    Our latest article: The Hard Work Lies Ahead (If You Want It)


    My latest interactions column The Hard Work Lies Ahead (If You Want It) has just been published.

    Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” from 1943 is a well-known psychological framework that has been applied (directly, or through derivative versions) to thousands of diverse problems. Our work often brings us back to his hierarchy as we consider addressing a richer set of needs through the stuff we’re making. And while I like to look at and think about people more than stuff, I feel as though we’ve come to a point where we aren’t thinking hard enough about the “stuff.” It’s high time to leverage this style of hierarchy to challenge the types of user experiences we’re enabling with the stuff we’re making.

    Get a copy of the PDF here

    Previous articles also available:

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Awful elevator panel design [Boing Boing] – [Another entrant in what is becoming a theme on this blog: how-complicated-does-it-have-to-be-to-go-up-and-down?] Robyn Miller took this photo of a poorly designed elevator control panel.
    • [from julienorvaisas] David Hockney’s instant iPad art [BBC News] – [Now that's a convincing interface and experience.] "Who wouldn't want one? Picasso or Van Gogh would have snapped one up," the artist David Hockney tells me at the opening of his latest show in Paris called Fleurs Fraiches, or Fresh Flowers. "It's a real privilege to make these works of art through digital tools which mean you don't have the bother of water, paints, and the chore of clearing things away," he says. "You know sometimes I get so carried away, I wipe my fingers at the end thinking that I've got paint on them."
    • [from steve_portigal] Doonesbury Turns 40 [Rolling Stone] – [One of the most surprising bits in this Chip Kidd interview with Garry Trudeau. As consumers, we constantly make the mistake of conflating the artist with their art, the producer with their product. We know the material – sometimes very well – and so we really think we know the maker equally well. Trudeau reminds us, once again, that in least one critical way, we don't] I'm never happier than when I'm not working. The strip is a job ­ that's why I take money for it. It's a job I'm passionate about, but it's a job I totally leave in the studio when I walk out of here, unless I'm late and I have to work at home. I never think of the strip unless I'm compelled to.

    Cupcake Take: Steve


    Broken fridge, San Diego, July 2010

    Imagine running a commercial kitchen that produces your flagship product. What do you do when a key piece of equipment breaks? While there was probably some freaking out, this gourmet cupcake shop found a necessarily-small-business solution: move everything to a new refrigerator, in this case, the beverage cooler right inside the front door. Doing this effectively brought the backstage into the frontstage. Not only is there transparency here about their process of making cupcakes (as Julie describes here), they are also transparent about their challenges in running a small business. While companies like Google can get away with the Beta label currying forgiveness for the not-ready-for-prime-time-but-we’ll-use-it-anyway-for-free line of products, we probably wouldn’t be charmed by a sticky note on a broken server that contains our data. Some things are mission critical, but having to reach around some eggs to get my can of Mountain Dew isn’t one of them. It’s kinda fun and surprising to see the backstage appear frontstage (see the kitchen design at In-N-Out Burger) and charming that this business could take what was nominally a failure and create a gentle celebration around it.

    Also see: Vodafone celebrates construction around their retail outlets here and a far less celebratory sign from the same store here.

    Cupcake Take: Julie

    We believe in the power of transparency at many different levels. We regularly advise our clients to leverage transparency as a design strategy. Over the years, our research repeatedly shows that people are more comfortable when they know where their stuff comes from, what’s in it, and who’s making it, and that this comfort leads to good things like loyalty, brand affinity, adoption.

    Transparency around gadgets is getting some attention these days. Some of the spotlight has been focused on

    While our shiny devices have made our individual worlds more transparent through features such as GPS, augmented reality and user reviews, the devices themselves still feel magical. Their origins and inner workings are utterly mysterious. As our relationships with these devices deepen, as a culture we are becoming more interested in what we’re consuming.

    Take a look at how transparency feels in this much lower-tech analog: gourmet cupcakes. At a cupcake shop in San Diego, ingredients were featured rather than hidden because of a refrigerator malfunction. The backstage became front-and-center, as Steve talks about here.

    As a customer, it felt great to have a window into the process, in a kind of “Stars: They’re Just Like Us!” way. Gourmet cupcakes are made of the same things we use at home! Wholesome! Recognizable! Comforting! Trustworthy. When I took a bite of the finished product my enjoyment was subtly enhanced by knowing what I was sinking my teeth into.

    Transparency as a policy is risky in some cases, of course. Knowing more about my cupcake felt good; finding out about what’s inside my iPhone is not producing those same reassuring feelings!

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] A big admission ahead of bigger mission for Batman [AP] – [While the reporting here is primarily about Bruce Wayne revealing his secret identity as Batman, more interesting is the fictional franchising/crowdsourcing approach. The creators of the Batman product are talking about the brand within the story of Batman, but in fact by incorporating real-life businesses themes, they are refreshing the actual Batman brand within our world. Layered!] The confession..is part of a detailed effort that puts into motion a plan for Batman Incorporated, a global network of Batmen from China to Argentina to fight crime worldwide…In doing so, Wayne is free to take his crime fighting international by building what Morrison calls a "global, international army of Batmen. Batman in China, Batman in Japan, Batman in Russia. Expanding the Batman brand to areas where he really hasn't been before."

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Why Evan Williams of Twitter Demoted Himself [NYTimes.com] – [Creating a small but deliberate interaction – say, logging onto a computer – that serves as an engine of culture change in an organization] Twitter’s executives talk about the “Dunbar number” — the maximum number of people, generally believed to be 150, with whom one person can have strong relationships. This effort, mind you, comes from a company with a business model that fosters a multitude of ever-growing — and largely glancing — interactions among Twitter’s users. “I’ve never seen a company so focused on avoiding the Dunbar number,” says Adam Bain, who recently joined Twitter from the News Corporation as head of global revenue. “You can tell Ev planned it out.” Each time employees log on to their computers, for instance, they see a photo of a colleague, with clues and a list of the person’s hobbies, and must identify the person. And notes from every meeting are posted for all employees to read.

    How a gut feeling becomes a hunch

    A bit of inspiration from a recent New Yorker – Tree Line, Kansas, 1934, a story by David Means.

    That afternoon, as he crawled back to Barnes, the gut feeling worked its way up his throat and struggled into his head. Note: A gut feeling finally becomes a hunch when it is transmuted into the form of clear, precise, verbal statements uttered aloud to a receptive listener-internal or external-who responds in kind. A hunch twists inside the sinews and bones, integrating itself into the physicality of the moment, whereas a gut feeling can only struggle to become a hunch, and, once it does, is recognized in retrospect as a gut feeling.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Music and speech share a code for communicating sadness in the minor third [Scientific American] – [We unconsciously employ culturally-imbued musical cues and tonal differentials with each other to convey emotion, sadness being one. This seems so obvious once it's stated, and so important to our methodologies, as we search for emotional response and connection.] The tangible relationship between music and emotion is no surprise to anyone, but a study in the June issue of Emotion suggests the minor third isn't a facet of musical communication alone—it's how we convey sadness in speech, too. When it comes to sorrow, music and human speech might speak the same language. Since the minor third is defined as a specific measurable distance between pitches (a ratio of frequencies), Curtis was able to identify when the actors' speech relied on the minor third. What she found is that the actors consistently used the minor third to express sadness.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] The Lady Rocks: Empowering Women One Pair at a Time – Crystal and Gemstone Balls and Spheres – [While the artifacts are nice, I'm sure, this is a company trying to sell pure meaning, building a tangible realization of colloquialism and hoping to imbue it with meaning. Their execution is a little slight but I'll submit that acknowledging a woman's successes with balls is doing more good than having a pet rock sit on your desk] ]Who among us hasn't wished on occasion that they had more courage… more guts…more confidence to follow our dreams and reach for the stars…Stones… Cojones… Balls! We’ve all heard the metaphors. Now these metaphorically correct crystals are available to all! Because when the going gets tough, the tough get BALLS! Perfect for the mileSTONES in life. Give them for CELEBRATION or INSPIRATION For the Personal Power Successes, the Extra-ORB-inary Accomplishments, or when Support is needed for: Graduation, Career, Marriage, Motherhood, Divorce. GIVE THEM ALL BALLS…[via Mom]

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Lessons from the 50s Housewife Experiment [Jen But Never Jenn] – [Jen chooses to spend a week doing like a 50s-era homemaker would have done, writing about the experience as it happens. Here's where she wraps it up] I'm not sure if it's residual resentment from societal expectations / limitations like the one above, a new set of expectations that you're not really contributing (to society / your home / womanhood, even) unless you bring home a paycheck, or new standards of living that insist we need to be making more money – but the appreciation for the homemaker has dwindled along with the number of people who actually earnestly take on the role. You don't hear of many people who have chosen a career in homemaking. Yes, there is the stay-at-home mom (although of the stay-at-home moms I personally know, all but one brings in some revenue through at-home businesses, part-time work or consulting – so even she often wears a career hat). But the stay-at-home wife (and not the trophy-wife-with-a-maid variety)? She's officially on the endangered list.
    • [from steve_portigal] Sears.com for Zombies – [When you think of the Sears brand, you probably don't think of edgy, humorous, ironic, or meta. But this landing page for their e-commerce site is full-on zombified, with all the product and model shots replaced by zombies, benefit statements, messaging, navigation, etc. all tweaked to suit the undead. There's even a multi-language option, replacing English with Zombian gahhhrs and gaaahks. This is very much the type of parody humor we find online, but we never see a major retailer all-in like this. It's really refreshing. Probably won't be active much past Halloween.]

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] End Of An Era: Sony Stops Manufacturing Cassette Walkmans [Crunchgear] – [I share the author's surprise that this product was still being manufactured! The CD Walkman – its successor – has long been quaintly outdated, so cassettes? Perhaps there was a retro market, or perhaps other countries discarded formats differently than we have here] Sony announced it will stop manufacturing and selling these devices in Japan – after 30 years. Sony says the final lot was shipped to retailers in April this year, and once the last units are sold, there will be no cassette Walkmans from big S anymore. The first Walkman was produced in 1979. The TPS-L2, the world’s first portable (mass-produced) stereo, went on sale in Japan on July 1 that year and was later exported to the US, Europe and other places. Sony says that they managed to sell over 400 million Walkmans worldwide until March 2010, and exactly 200,020,000 of those were cassette-based models.
    • [from steve_portigal] PlumWillow Is Making the Customer Part of Its Culture [NYTimes.com] – [Employment criteria: do you represent our target customer? Hiring for insight as an internship strategy] They’re part of a team of 15- and 16-year-old interns who are being tapped for their own special brand of expertise and insight: a bird’s-eye view into the life and mind of high school teenagers, exactly the audience that PlumWillow is seeking. “They definitely aren’t shy about telling us what they like and don’t like,” says Lindsay Anvik, director of marketing at PlumWillow, who helps oversee the internship program at its offices in Manhattan. The interns are also emblematic of how Web-based businesses are doing more than merely shaping their products and services around customer preferences. The companies are corralling those customers in the workplace and making them part of the design and marketing process, according to Susan Etlinger, a consultant at the Altimeter Group, which researches Web technologies and advises companies on how to use them.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Lending Coming Soon for Kindle [Kindle Forum] – [This announcement from Amazon produced a lot of skepticism on the important caveat – that lending will be dependent on the publishers. Nice move that allows Amazon to raise their eyebrows innocently, "Oh, sure, we're allowing people to share eBooks. It's those greedy publishers that won't let you do it. But don't look at us!"] Later this year, we will be introducing lending for Kindle, a new feature that lets you loan your Kindle books to other Kindle device or Kindle app users. Each book can be lent once for a loan period of 14-days and the lender cannot read the book during the loan period. Additionally, not all e-books will be lendable – this is solely up to the publisher or rights holder, who determines which titles are enabled for lending.
    • [from steve_portigal] Proposing a Taxonomy of Social Reading [Institute for the Future of the Book] – [Bob Stein opens the conversation on how we can further the dialog about what it means to be social in reading. The wiki-like format he's used allows for discussion but is pretty difficult to navigate. I've linked here to the overview page that summarizes the current entries in the taxonomy] In recent months the phrase “social reading” has been showing up in conversation and seems well on its way to being a both a useful and increasingly used meme. While I find this very exciting, as with any newly minted phrase, it’s often used to express quite different things…In order to advance our understanding of how reading (and writing) are changing as they begin to shift decisively into the digital era, it occurred to me that we need a taxonomy to make sense of a range of behaviors all of which fit within the current “social reading” rubric.
    • [from steve_portigal] Cross-examining your interview skills [Slideshare] – [Discovered through Google Alerts since it quotes me, but shared here because it's a great reference for a lot of fundamental interpersonal (and other) aspects of interviewing]
    • [from steve_portigal] Some crayons belong in kids’ mouths [Seattle Times Newspaper] – [Old news perhaps, but new news to me. A surprising brand name for a beverage!] In 2003, Seay bought the Crayons trademark for use with food and beverages from someone who had been tinkering with using it with juices on the East Coast. The crayons trademark is not the same as Crayola, a company that sells a popular brand of the colorful writing instruments known as crayons. Coincidentally, another local company — Advanced H2O on Mercer Island — uses the Crayola brand name for a bottled-water line called Crayola Color Coolerz.
    • [from steve_portigal] HP’s Slate specs slated by bloggers [Boing Boing] – [As Homer Simpson said, it's funny cuz it's true] it's just a pretty keyboardless netbook. Its most interesting characteristic is a bizarre slide-out tray that exists only to display the Windows 7 licensing information. It's like something from some kind of screwball comedy about awful product design: HP was apparently obliged to do this because it didn't want to mess up the exterior with this compulsory information panel.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] An App for Sharing Photos With Friends [NYTimes.com] – [Instagram is betting on word overload, predicting that people will want to share and see their friends' mobile visual feeds rather than text-based snippets.] Instead of following people’s 140-character thoughts, Instagram users can follow their photo stream and get a glimpse of what they ate for lunch and the view from their office. Instagram also plans to introduce a Web site soon. Building a mobile app before a Web site would have been a foreign concept just a few years ago, but Instagram’s founders say that communicating in quick snippets with a phone, on the go, is a new form of communication. The app is free now but Instagram plans to eventually charge a dollar or so for extra filters. “Filters are not the billion-dollar business,” Mr. Systrom said. “It’s photography. The next network is people interested in sharing life visually.”
    • [from julienorvaisas] Check Out Tagxedo, A Ridiculously Cool Word Cloud Generator [Tech Crunch] – [Yet another great visualization tool, this one highly customizable, combining word-clouds with images. The impulse to make sense of the word-avalanche on the web by morphing it into infographics is fun and beautiful, for sure, but I wonder whether conveying pretty word-frequency charts is actually providing useful information.] You can use the app to create visually stunning word clouds by inserting words (e.g. speeches, news articles, letters, slogans, themes, and so on). You can do so by uploading a document, entering a URL or simply by pasting text into the appropriate field. Tagxedo will size words appropriately to highlight the frequencies of occurrence within the body of text, leaving out small words like “is”, “are”, “do”, etc. With just one click, you can rotate the cloud, modify its colors and font, and also alternate between themes and shapes as you please. You can even upload your own images and have the word cloud assume the shape of the image.
    • [from steve_portigal] A Spray of DNA to Keep the Robbers Away [NYTimes.com] – [Technology offers new detection methods but the social performance of the tech serves best as prevention] The new system involved a device that sprays a fine, barely visible mist laced with synthetic DNA to cover anyone in its path, including criminals, and simultaneously alerts the police to a crime in progress. The mist — visible only under ultraviolet light — carries DNA markers particular to the location, enabling the police to match the burglar with the place burgled. Now, a sign on the front door of the McDonald’s prominently warns potential thieves of the spray’s presence: “You Steal, You’re Marked.” The police acknowledge that they have yet to make an arrest based on the DNA mist, which was developed in Britain by two brothers, one a policeman and the other a chemist. But they credit its presence — and signs posted prominently warning of its use — for what they call a precipitous decline in crime rates (though they could not provide actual figures to back that up).

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] ThatsMyFace.com – [Technology continues to trickle down, where image processing and digital printing previously associated with movie special effects and commercial printing now enable little businesses to crop up, offering fairly unique types of products] Gifts with personalized faces, including custom action figures, celebrity action figures, 3D portraits, masks, jewelry, papercraft, and ornamental heads.
    • [from steve_portigal] How to Have an Idea [Frank Chimero] – [A little comic that amuses as it inspires and teaches, suggesting that creativity is tied to doing, not just thinking or (gulp) talking. Manifests so adroitly while we believe user research really comes alive when you use it to start generating concepts for things to make and do] No one crumples a blank sheet of paper.
    • [from steve_portigal] The Medium – E-Readers Collective [NYTimes.com] – [A Kindle feature takes advantage of the inherently digital nature of the medium, but has consequences for the experience] But many writers don’t write aphoristically, and many readers don’t read for aphorisms. In a popularly highlighted world, we all may begin to. The dotted line, like the distinctive hue or underscore that signals a word is clickable on the Web, may be a new kind of punctuation that affects contemporary style. (Amazon's most heavily highlighted books include Gladwell’s “Outliers” and Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture”) Readers coming to e-books freshly purchased from Amazon might be taken aback to find them already marked up. Stumbling on a passage that other people care about, framed as though you should care about it too, can seem like a violation of virgin text. It’s bad enough that vandals have gotten to your “new” edition before you have and added emphases unendorsed by author or publisher. What’s worse is that they invariably choose the most Polonius-like passages.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] It’s a Book – By Lane Smith [NYTimes.com] – In a memorable two-page spread the jackass reads the thing. A clock runs above him, counting out the hours, and his ears and eyes, with wonderful caricatural economy, express first puzzlement, then absorption and at last the special quality of readerly happiness: a mind lost in a story. Those of us for whom books are a faith in themselves — who find the notion that pixels, however ordered, could be any kind of substitute for the experience of reading in a chair with the strange thing spread open on our lap — will love this book. Though it will surely draw a laugh from kids, it will give even more pleasure to parents who have been trying to make loudly the point that Smith’s book makes softly: that the virtues of a book are independent of any bells, whistles or animation it might be made to contain. That two-page spread of the jackass simply reading is the key moment in the story, and one of the nicest sequences in recent picture books. (via @Anthropunk)

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Dog Scouts of America honors Milpitas dog Jasper [SFGate] – [For all the talk of game-like motivations online, here's a great offline example] Merit badges for dogs are the latest thing Jasper is the first dog in the Bay Area to earn five merit badges from the Dog Scouts of America, a real organization that has quietly been issuing merit badges to deserving dogs for 11 years. Five merit badges, it turns out, are not very many badges in the Dog Scout world. There are no fewer than 76 badges – Frisbee catching, herding, canoeing and bicycling are all badges (the dog doesn't actually bicycle, he must run alongside the human cyclist, sensibly and without making the typical dog-versus-bicycle fuss). Disaster preparation is another dog merit badge, although some might say that preparing for disaster is what you do before you get a dog. Verdahl, who is going after merit badges the way some kids go after baseball cards, said he is just getting started. The next badge he and Jasper are shooting for, he said, is the badge for fundraising.

    More on airplanes and elevators

    Riffing on Steve’s recent observations…

    I noticed this signage on a Southwest Airlines flight a couple of weeks ago (apologies for the poor photo quality). Certainly we need to be crystal clear on something as mission-critical as an airplane door. But does repetition mean clarity? In this case I think it could create some uncertainty – which one REALLY means it’s armed? The state of being “disarmed” is alarmingly de-emphasized.

    And what’s this? A new concept in elevators? This calls for a new word altogether, as elevator no longer applies. Of course, this conveyance does in fact carry folks up and down in the usual manner; reasons for the whimsical orientation of the arrow are unclear.

    Steve’s earlier posts on elevators can be found here and here, and on airplanes here.

    Ups and downs

    After writing recently about managing the adoption of a new type of elevator UI, I found a particularly bad implementation of the norm at my hotel in Austin last weekend.

    Unusually, there are two elevators on either side of two rooms.

    Beside each elevator is this cautionary/alarmist admonishment:

    “This button” refers to “these buttons – those ones down there” despite the horizontal arrow. But we can probably figure that out. The reason for this sign – an obvious afterthought is that there’s no place where you can stand and easily see both elevators at once. You must approach one elevator to press the button, and if you stand there and wait, you are likely to miss the arrival of the elevator if it doesn’t come to that door. There is a standard solution: a light near each elevator door that lights up just before the elevator arrives and the door opens. But (other than in the hotel lobby) they’ve neglected that and instead the hotel guest must be “alert” when doing a basic task like trying to get down for breakfast.

    This is a well-known and long-solved situation; why the builders would choose to put the elevators around two rooms and then create such a poor experience would be interesting to explore. What were the design and other decision processes that led to this sub-optimal solution?

    The package is the brand. Now what?


    Method soap in here, Virgin America, June, 2010

    On a recent Virgin America flight, I saw they were featuring Method hand soap in the bathroom. But (as they have obviously realized) Method’s brand is more recognizable via the uniquely designed dispenser than the name, so the identifying sticker shows a picture of that shape. You don’t have the opportunity to use that container, but by interacting with the generic goo dispenser in the bathroom, perhaps you are supposed to associate somehow with the visual and tactile interaction with the iconic dispenser.

    The Virgin America experience seems to be partly about aggregating a hip, design-y, youthful set of other brands for travelers to experience (e.g. BoingBoingTV), but I’m not sure this is a win for Method, or Virgin America. VA seems to have rethought so many traditional aspects of air travel (such as their fantastic safety video) but this compromise evokes the overcompensating-unhelpful-infographic-signage common in commercial aircraft interiors, where you can’t help but feel trapped in a world of call-outs (like the Ikea Catalog scene in Fight Club). And Method takes a straddle position, suggesting that their goo is just goo, if they are forced to offer a visual reminder of the container to help us connect with what is different – and better – about their product.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] UX Hong Kong 2011: Q&A with Daniel Szuc [Core77] – UX Hong Kong 2011 will be held at the Innocenter in Kowloon Tong (Hong Kong) on Friday 18 Feb 2011. The program has been deliberately designed to be intimate and give attendees plenty of opportunity to talk with other people and get one on one time with the invited speakers, including Steve Baty and Janna DeVyler on UX strategy; Steve Portigal on design research, Rachel Hinman on mobile design, and Gerry Gaffney on the UX Toolkit. On the day after the conference the fun continues as we all plan to go out and experience Hong Kong with the speakers including the harbour, a ferry ride, walking the streets, a dim sum and perhaps a visit to the Big Buddah on Lantau island (weather allowing) so we get out of the confines of the conference facility.
    • [from julienorvaisas] Trends "unlock" consumer needs [trendwatching.com] – {Reverse-engineering consumer needs via trends?] Here's our definition of what constitutes a (consumer) trend (we came up with this years ago and it still holds pretty well): "A novel manifestation of something that has unlocked or serviced an existing (and hardly ever changing) consumer need,desire, want, or value." At the core of this statement is the assumption that human beings, and thus consumers, don't change that much. Their deep needs remain the same, yet can be unlocked in new ways; these 'unlockers' can be anything from changes in societal norms and values, to a breakthrough in technology, to a rise in prosperity.

    Steve interviewed for “Innovative Solutions” book


    My thoughts on understanding and designing in emerging countries has just been published in Apala Lahiri’s Innovative Solutions: What Designers Need to Know for Today’s Emerging Markets.

    Q: When traveling through and experiencing emerging countries, do you feel that designing for users in these countries needs to be done with any different methods than those used when designing for users in developed countries?

    A: The answer is yes, but there are two different cases: design by insiders and design by outsiders. Obviously design by outsiders needs to be handled very differently. As outsiders, we so clearly have no clue as to what is going on: how do you design personal grooming accessories for a society where someone might have trimming or cleaning done by the side of the road? That’s not to say that it can’t be done, but that simply exporting existing solutions, or making small localization tweaks is probably not going to be enough. I know that as recently as 2 years ago mobile phones in India were a shared household item (although I wonder if increased penetration is changing that); there are tremendous implications for the interface design (from login screens to privacy management). Existing Western models for pricing, usability, features, and so on won’t apply. So there’s a real effort that outsiders need to make to really get at those core differences. From the inside, I suspect that the designers are often not going to be designing for themselves (an approach I discourage, anyway), but for another class or culture within their own society; and while they’ve got a leg up on understanding their fellow citizens over us foreigners, there’s always going to be use cases, mental models, and meaning that is new to the designer. By the same token, for categories that are being imported from the developed world (i.e., mobile phones), the designer will have to do some cultural translation, say discovering that mobile phones are not shared among household members in the West. This is probably here more about an approach to design than an actual method, but once you’ve got the approach down, then the methods can follow easily.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] I Own An iPad, So What Do I do With It? [NPD Group Blog] – [If you think about it, this makes sense – people who are motivated to buy a product the day it comes out have different motivations, intentions, and ultimately, experiences. So who are we building for? Are we segmenting our approach with an understanding of these different customers and their expectations/experiences?] Almost 80 percent of early adopters were very satisfied with their iPad versus 65 percent of those who bought it after launch.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] A Badge That Tells Consumers, ‘Trust This App’ [NYTimes.com] – [Privacy concerns on the web have spawned a certification system. Does this really address the problem, curb the practice, or provide enough assurance/information to consumers? Or is it really more just a band-aid for providers to feel like they're doing enough to address mounting consumer concerns?] The certification process is a little bit different for mobile sites, said Chris Babel, chief executive of TRUSTe. People are worried about sites and apps using information that identifies them, like name, address and birth date. They also worry about geolocation services, whether Web companies can track where they are and whether they share that information with others, he said. And because many apps pull information from the phone, like calendar entries, people do not know exactly what information apps can access. “When it’s sitting on your mobile device, which has your contacts and calendar, what is it accessing? What’s it doing?” Mr. Babel said he hears customers ask.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Homeless World Cup – [An interesting reframe of sporting championships and an interesting reframe of 'charity'] The Homeless World Cup is an annual, international football tournament, uniting teams of people who are homeless and excluded to take a once in a lifetime opportunity to represent their country and change their lives forever. It has triggered and supports grass roots football projects in over 70 nations working with over 30,000 homeless and excluded people throughout the year. The impact is consistently significant year on year with 73% of players changing their lives for the better by coming off drugs and alcohol, moving into jobs, education, homes, training, reuniting with families and even going on to become players and coaches for pro or semi-pro football teams.
    • [from steve_portigal] In Scholastic Study, Children Like Digital Reading [NYTimes.com] – “I didn’t realize how quickly kids had embraced this technology,” Ms. Alexander said, referring to computers and e-readers or other portable devices that can download books. “Clearly they see them as tools for reading — not just gaming, not just texting. They see them as an opportunity to read.”… “The very same device that is used for socializing and texting and staying in touch with their friends can also be turned for another purpose,” Mr. Chen said. “That’s the hope.” But many parents surveyed also expressed deep concerns about the distractions of video games, cellphones and television in their children’s lives. They also wondered if the modern multi-tasking adolescent had the patience to become engrossed in a long novel. “My daughter can’t stop texting long enough to concentrate on a book,” said one parent surveyed, the mother of a 15-year-old in Texas.
    • [from steve_portigal] Get a Geek in Five Easy Lessons [AMD at Home] – [AMD tries for humor on their corporate blog but ends up with an awkward, dated, false, sexist and generally alienating tone. Was this wise?] It’s hard to find a good man, but not impossible if you’re willing to make a little effort. Working in high tech, I’m mostly around guys all day. And I can tell you that – in general – technical guys are pretty cool. If nothing else, they will always be able to fix the TV, your PC, and the sprinkler system in a pinch. Yes, they have way too many gadgets, but come on, how many shoes do you have? How about just the black ones? So, if you’re single and find yourself at a TweetUp chatting with the cute geek in a backpack, here’s how to speak his language, appreciate his hobbies, and potentially snag a date at Fry’s. (Leslie Sobon is corporate vice president, product marketing at AMD. Her postings are her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions.)

    Portigal Consulting welcomes Wyatt Starosta

    We’re very excited to welcome Wyatt Starosta who has joined the Portigal Consulting team through the rest of 2010.

    Wyatt is a Bay Area returnee, recently back here after several years in Columbus where he worked as a design researcher at Lextant. He finds himself taking pictures of manhole covers lately (a seemingly random noticing act that we can all relate to), negotiating social norms with the doggie parents at local dog parks, and exploring interpersonal dynamics in the Bay Area’s casual carpooling scene.

    Welcome, Wyatt!

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Six scientists tell us about the most accurate science fiction in their fields [Mad Science io9] – [Brief interviews with scientists discussing where some of the real science resides in our science fiction. Great comments thread, including this one: "The other side of the coin is how has science benefited from science fiction stories."] Ronald Arkin, director of the Mobile Robotics Lab, Georgia Tech: "Realistic depictions of robots are pretty boring, so there's not much to say on what is accurate or not. No positronic brains, no running amok killing everyone and everything. I guess that's the fiction in science fiction. You watch enough videos of robots at real research conferences and it's hard to stay awake… Anyway, [one] comes to mind that is a bit more accurate than most: Hal 9000, in 2001, apart from his apparent psychotic episode, is a robotic system that people live inside. Current research agendas, in human-robot interaction, task planning, command and control, etc., could conceivably lead to such an intelligent system."
    • [from steve_portigal] Will You Try My Paper iPhone App? [Techcrunch] – [Stanford HCI student gets soundly criticized for seeking feedback on paper prototype with actual users! The drama – as often on the web – really takes off in the comments.] When I looked down at his hands, however, instead of an iPhone, he held a few pieces of paper with wireframe drawings in pencil. This was his app. I was supposed to pretend the paper was an iPhone screen and press the hand-drawn buttons as I shuffled through the flow. The idea is that you could point your camera at a magazine rack and get digital versions of the magazines, which you could preview on your iPhone and then purchase individual articles or the entire magazine. It made a lot more sense when he did it (see video). Now, there is nothing wrong with getting your ideas down on paper or paper prototypes to work out the kinks before you start coding. But you might want to wait until you have an actual working app on an iPhone before testing it out in the wild and asking for feedback from normal people.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] DVRs Can’t Handle New Show’s Title [NYTimes.com] – [A UI edge case that wasn't designed for ends up becoming a mainstream concern. "What are the chances that'll happen?" comes true, and now workarounds must be created] It turns out that the search tools on some DVRs cannot find the new show, “$#*! My Dad Says,” because the symbols cannot be read. (Maybe some DVR developers could not foresee a world where TV shows would have a dollar sign in the titles.) Before the show’s premiere on Thursday, CBS released a viewers’ guide of sorts on Wednesday to help people program their DVRs accordingly.

    Cupcake EULA


    Warning Sign, Haute Pink Cakes, San Diego, CA, July 2010

    The text of the sign:

    IMPORTANT POLICIES!
    *If cupcakes are dropped by customers it is our policy to refrost them, and place them in a new box for $1/box. That’s the cost of the box – this could take probably 15 minutes depending on how busy we are)
    We do not offer new cupcakes. If you wish to purchase new cupcakes you may receive 10% off the total, but only for that visit, same order.
    *Offers cannot be combined. One coupon or offer per customer per day. Military discount not to be combined with Buy One-Get One Free coupons. Coupons will not be taken for day olds.
    *We do not take American Express. Also, no credit cards will be accepted for amounts under $7.00.

    One has to wonder about the frequency and severity of the exceptions that led this small bakery to break from their pink/fluffy/hip/indulgent vibe with this pre-emptively admonishing lists of warnings and do-nots. The owners have failed to internalize the brand experience they are trying to create with their flagship product.

    Conceptual Collision


    Dissertation Bootcamp, San Diego, CA, July 2010

    It’s a fine line between credible and ludicrous when you take concepts with different affordances and smush them together to make a new concept. It’s a fantastic idea generation activity, but let’s think carefully before moving forward (and let’s think about how to make these mashups believable and viable). What does “dissertation” connote? What does “bootcamp” evoke? Do they work together? OKAY, MAGGOT, DROP AND GIVE ME 20….BIBLIOGRAPHIC CITATIONS!

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] DarkPatterns.org – [This site seems aimed at designers but could also be the seed of a User Literacy effort to raise awareness among consumers] This pattern library is dedicated to Dark Patterns: user interfaces that have been designed to trick users into doing things they wouldn’t otherwise have done. Normally when you think of “bad design”, you think of laziness or mistakes. These are known as design anti-patterns. Dark Patterns are different – they are not mistakes, they are carefully crafted with a solid understanding of human psychology, and they do not have the user’s interests in mind. The purpose of this site is to catalogue various common types of Dark Pattern, and to name and shame organizations that use them. [via @kottke]
    • [from julienorvaisas] How to shrink a city [The Boston Globe] – [The shrinking economy has forced a new way of looking at strategic planning and innovation in the housing and urban planning sector.] “It’s so contrary to what most planners do, it’s contrary to what we spend our time teaching students, [which is] all about how do you manage growth and accommodate growth,” says Joseph Schilling, who teaches urban affairs and planning at Virginia Tech University and helped launch the National Vacant Properties Campaign. “The challenge for planning is how do you adapt existing tools and planning strategies to deal with an economy and market that is either totally dysfunctional or will have maybe slow, modest growth at best.”
    • [from julienorvaisas] Americans Demand Crispier Outside [The Onion – America’s Finest News Source] – [Alas, if only the elusive consumer would come out of hiding and just tell us what they want, nay, what they need!] Irate citizens have rallied in front of shops and drive-thru windows nationwide to outline their demands, which include extra chunks, meltier bits on top, that classic buttery flavor the whole family can enjoy, and a wider array of sizes, shapes, and colors to mix and match. Sources are also calling for cleanup to be a breeze.
    • [from julienorvaisas] What If Google and Bing Waged a Search War and Nobody Noticed? [Advertising Age – DigitalNext] – [Full of quippy critiques of the nutty design evolution of search, reviews, online advertising from a "real person's" perspective, this slightly ranty column by Kevin Ryan is really a lament to how beholden so many of our experiences are to today's digital monoliths.] Instant search is another one of those solutions created by engineers completely out of touch with humans. Like instant coffee, it sounds like a good idea until you have to consume it. My guess is boredom and fatigue from all that free food and the happiest work environment on the planet has finally taken its toll. In other words, idle hands solve problems that don't exist.

    Putting the brand into the details

    We had a fun strategy session yesterday with a local small business owner, uncovering their unrealized business goals and exploring how they can grow. One area that we kept coming back to (and one that honestly I think we could always do a better job at in our own practice) was to consider all the ways that people interact with your brand and to approach each of those creatively, considering how that interaction could be differentiated, improved, and made more relevant to your brand. Here’s a couple of examples.


    In Amsterdam, Albert Heijn is the leading grocery chain. As tourists, we needed a cheap SIM card to drop into our unlocked mobile phone. The different options were commodities, all priced identically. But this packaging swayed us. It’s a grocery store’s branded mobile phone service and it is packaged like something you’d find at a grocery store! How charming! Sadly, the printed instructions and the voice prompts were all in Dutch. Worse, even our Dutch-speaking friends weren’t able to get us up and running; we had an account with a zero balance. So while the packaging was persuasive at purchase time, the idea of getting mobile service from a grocery chain now seems rather stupid and I’m only reminded of how we wasted 15.00€.


    The bathroom signage at the Belgian Comic Strip Center in Brussels use the same vernacular that the organization celebrates. This is a very simple detail, inexpensively realized, that added a small moment of delight to a necessary errand.

    See more pictures from Amsterdam here and from Belgium here.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] You Too Can Be Masterful at Analyzing Data (Go Dirty) [Cheskin Added Value] – [Darrel Rhea on the importance of outliers in analysis] At some point we grow the confidence and skill to look beyond the “tidy patterns” (however useful they might be) and focus on the anomalies. We become fascinated by data that doesn’t fit the patterns, or that doesn’t support our hypothesis. What the beginner discards as noise in the data, the master focuses on. That is where the big “Ah Ha’s” are – and where the big proprietary insights come from that can drive innovation. It’s often in weird, dirty data that we make our best discoveries.
    • [from steve_portigal] Facebook’s ‘Like’ and Conspicuous Consumption [Lone Gunman] – [Agreed, but what are our expectations for outcomes of displaying our identity and values. To connect with others who share our likes? To have our likes acknowledged and even complimented? I think there's a lot more here, no doubt that social psychologists have been studying for decades] I feel that the ‘Like’ functionality is an expense-less method of conspicuous consumption: signalling your likes and brand preferences without having to actually purchase anything (we are saying “I aspire to be the type of person who likes x, y, z” or maybe more accurately “I want you to think I’m the type of person who likes x, y, z”).

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] University to Students: No Facebook, Twitter for A Week [Technologizer] – [Asking people to stop doing something they often do is also a research technique, ask people to make a change and then reflect on it. This implementation is a bit paternalistic but hopefully very valuable for participants] The provost of Harrisburg University of Science and Technology is taking an unusual step to teach his students a lesson on how social media is impacting their lives: he has banned both Facebook and Twitter on campus for an entire week. Provost Eric Darr doesn’t look like he’s anti-technology, rather he believes that students may take these technologies for granted. “Often, there are behaviors or habits, ways that we use technology that we may ourselves not even be able to articulate because we’re not aware of them,” he told the NPR in an interview. “If someone feels the need to borrow their friend’s phone to go check Facebook, it’ll be interesting to ask the question at the end of the week: Why did you feel the need to do that? What compelled you to do that?”

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] What’s up with ewwww? [Lunapads Blog] – [Thoughtful response by the Lunapad folks triggered – in part – by my Core77] What we call the “ewww” factor is a fact of life here at Lunapads (although most of the feedback we receive is overwhelmingly supportive, when it does come up it can kind of wreck your day.) Recently however there have been some interesting examples that have given me pause for thought about how we respond to it. Are washable cloth menstrual pads gross?And yet I certainly didn’t start my journey of consciousness around menstruation where I am today. In fact, I’m sure that once upon a time, had you asked me what I thought of the idea of washable menstrual pads I might well have been totally icked. Apparently, what is and is not gross/disgusting etc to us today is not necessarily true for tomorrow.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] William Gibson On the Future of Book Publishing [Speakeasy – WSJ] – [Sci-fi author William Gibson lays out a vision for an alternative bookstore/publishing model, a response to the rise of eBooks… and it involves actual books.] "My dream scenario would be that you could go into a bookshop, examine copies of every book in print that they’re able to offer, then for a fee have them produce in a minute or two a beautiful finished copy in a dust jacket that you would pay for and take home. Book making machines exist and they’re remarkably sophisticated. You’d eliminate the waste and you’d get your book -– and it would be a real book. You might even have the option of buying a deluxe edition. You could have it printed with an extra nice binding, low acid paper.]

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] A Morose and Downbeat Woman is My Co-Pilot [Boing Boing] – [Nass and Yen on Boing Boing talking about their body of research, of which we've long been fans, around the social behaviors that emerge in our interactions with technology. Back in the day, their research was under the branding Computers are Social Actors, but this latest offering seems to be positioned a bit more broadly in focus and in appeal] In my new book, The Man Who Lied to His Laptop: What Machines Teach Us about Human Relationships, I describe almost one hundred rules for social behavior that can be derived from experimental studies of how people use technology and that can make people more likeable, effective, and persuasive. The current study gives us two principles to guide interactions with people (as well as technology): telling upset people to "look at the bright side of life" can be off-putting, and "misery loves miserable company."
    • [from steve_portigal] There is a Horse in the Apple Store [Frank Chimero] – [A lovely story that delivers on so many levels, from pure observational humor to an insightful treatise on how we engage – or not – with the world] THERE IS A LITTLE PONY IN THE APPLE STORE. What the hell? A beautiful little pony, with a flowing mane, the likes of which my sister would have killed to get for Christmas when she was 7 or 8. And, NOONE is looking at this thing. I wondered: if there were kids in the Apple Store, would they notice? “Yes,” I say. “Yes, they would.” Kids have a magnetic connection to animals. But there are no children in the Apple Store, for the same reason you would not see a child in a jewelry store: things are small and fragile and expensive and shiny. And if you have a child, you probably can not afford Apple products. But, if a child were here, they would see the pony, because when you’re a kid, you notice everything, because everything is new.
    • [from steve_portigal] Does Your Language Shape How You Think? [NYTimes.com] – [Some of the latest thinking on this evolving exploration] French and Spanish speakers were asked to assign human voices to various objects in a cartoon. When French speakers saw a picture of a fork (la fourchette), most of them wanted it to speak in a woman’s voice, but Spanish speakers, for whom el tenedor is masculine, preferred a gravelly male voice for it. More recently, psychologists have even shown that “gendered languages” imprint gender traits for objects so strongly in the mind that these associations obstruct speakers’ ability to commit information to memory.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Driving a message home with an optical illusion [The Globe and Mail] – [I'm curious how persuasive the illusion is; does it really cause driver alarm, or is it just something different that jars drivers from a state of complacency] Motorists travelling on 22nd Street in West Vancouver will be confronted with a 3D image of a little girl chasing a ball in the street starting next Tuesday…The 3D image will look like an indistinguishable mark from far away, but by the time the driver is within 30 metres, the image of the girl and ball will become clear…“You’ll see this image start to rise off the pavement and it will look like a little child is crossing the street. As you get closer to the image, the image recedes into the pavement,” Mr. Dunne said….Mr. Dozzi said the drivers will be able to tell something is on the road at a far distance and will have enough time to stop safely when they realize it is an image of a little girl – if they are travelling at the posted speed limit of 30 km/h.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Laptops Look like Race Cars — And Not in a Good Way [NYTimes.com] – [Pogue on the ridiculous sticker-on-laptops package] As A.M.D. points out, it’s like buying a new, luxury car­ and discovering that it comes with non-removable bumper stickers that promote the motor oil, the floor mat maker, the windshield-fluid company and the pine tree air freshener you have no intention of ever using….A.M.D.’s research shows that consumers hate the stickers (duh). But they’re not going away, for one simple reason: There’s big money involved. I(Apple famously refuses to put Intel stickers on its computers, even though there’s Intel inside. In doing so, it leaves millions of dollars a year on the table.)…In 2011, A.M.D. will switch to new stickers that peel off easily, leaving no residue; after that, it’s considering eliminating the sticker program altogether. In the meanwhile, it’s going to make affixing its stickers optional. If a computer company chooses not to use the A.M.D. stickers, A.M.D. will still pay it the same marketing dollars to use in other ways.
    • [from steve_portigal] DROID DOES – [Of course this advertising copy is at least partly tongue-in-cheek but I really have to wonder why – even as a joke – this is the sort of thing that we supposedly want out of our devices. The radio ad goes even further, giving voice to the implicit message here by promising to turn you into a machine. Verizon's raison d'etre is to sell phones, I know, but ulp, people, ulp. As we grapple with where we're at with this digi-firehose, Droid is putting a mecha-stake in the ground for us] Turns your eyes into captivated apertures of ecstasy. Its web-busting speed turns your arms into blistering, churning pistons. It’s power, intelligence and intuition. It’s not a better phone. It’s a better you….Its power, ability, brains and skill turn you into a web-rocketing, message-crafting super-you…with web-browsing speed that shoots you from zero to sixty in nanoseconds. It has an intuitive QWERTY keyboard that turns your thumbs into twin, text turbines and steaming diesel email engines.
    • [from steve_portigal] Robert Krulwich on Wondering [Frank Chimero] – Noticing is tough, yet rewarding work, and it begs to be documented. We’ve more tools than ever to do so…Maybe if the noticing started to arrange into larger patterns or there got to be a lot of documentation, I could maybe even print up a book of all the things I had noticed. And wouldn’t that be a nice thing to have on the bookshelf? My Year of Noticing and Wondering — 2010. As a person constantly in a position to produce words or designs or ideas, or whatever it may be, it feels good to give myself permission to kick back and inquisitively absorb things as they come. Part of noticing isn’t seeking, it’s highly reliant on serendipity and unexpected relevancy.

    Colloquial is not Authentic

    We frequently encourage clients to make their language accessible, get out of their own heads, talk to people in/on/around products and services using words their customers can actually understand, and to keep in mind that just because a room full of product managers, brand gurus, software engineers and consultants know what certain words mean, doesn’t mean that their intended market will. At best the wrong language can confuse, at worst it can make people feel intimidated or condescended to.


    BMW does a pretty good job here of both using the geeky jargon and then telling folks what it does for them.

    There is an irony to this, of course, as we work within a tribe of business consultants known for using obtuse and sometimes even made-up vocabulary to impress our clients. Rob Walker of the New York Times Magazine treated us to a glimpse of what this language feels like outside the tribe in his recent Consumed piece on Chiquita

    Ciafardini says Chiquita is particularly interested in communicating to the under-25 crowd that the company offers the ‘convenient healthy snacking platforms that people are looking for these days.’ (I believe that means bananas.)

    Our friends at Mule Design have even developed a business-consultant-jargon translation engine to treat the problem: unsuckit.com.

    This irony humbly set aside, check out the graffiti beset upon this advertisement from Blackberry, which refers to people’s “Homies, Mates, Buds and Bros.” This was snapped in San Francisco’s Mission District, where people certainly do refer to each other in some of these terms unironically.

    It demonstrates that the message, colloquial as it is, is not quite connecting. Instead, it resulted in an angry action using terms both colloquial and authentic: these people don’t give a fuck about you. A dose of process consultation (which unsuckifies as “free advice”) to the ad agency that surely tested this ad with focus groups of homies, mates, buds and bros. Next time, consider asking, “Does the wording of this advertisement make you feel like we give a fuck about you? If not, why not?”

    See also:

    Steve’s thoughts on this whole authenticity thing in a column for interactions magazine.

    Another failed communication attempt – a bunch of people no doubt spent a lot of time coming up with a low tire warning symbol that no one can figure out.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] On The Media: "Debunk This!" (August 27, 2010) – [Pervasive myths affect product adoption as well as political or cultural stories. This is an area we are sometimes asked to explore] BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now, this study is building off previous research that you've done on correcting misperceptions, research. But can you give us just a quick rundown of what those earlier experiments showed?
      BRENDAN NYHAN: My coauthor, Jason Reifler, and I looked at can the media effectively correct misperceptions, which seems like a simple question, but no one had really tested that scientifically.
      BROOKE GLADSTONE: And you found actually that when people had their misperceptions challenged certain people, at least, were more likely to become more firmly entrenched in that belief.
      BRENDAN NYHAN: People were so successful at bringing to mind reasons that the correction was wrong that they actually ended up being more convinced in the misperception than the people who didn't receive the correction. So the correction was making things worse.

    Lunapads or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Discomfort


    My second column for Core77, Lunapads or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Discomfort is up. Here’s a potentially knee-jerk-reaction-inducing excerpt, so I recommend clicking through to see the whole piece.

    There are so many signals here that buck the mainstream norm for “feminine hygiene.” Where current imagery might feature billowing swathes of diaphanous fabric, smiling models and free birds winging on high, here we have two enthusiastic, potentially sexually aggressive women. Instead of handling the product discreetly, they are thrusting it towards us in celebration? Challenge?

    If they were selling, oh I don’t know, maybe ice cream, I’d find this pretty hot. If I’m accurate in picking up (subtle for someone with my too-too-straight life) lesbian cues, then even more so. I’m kinda freaked out by these women, but mmm, sexy. But oh, no, it’s not ice cream. It’s definitely not ice cream. It’s menstrual cups (umm, what?) Good Lord, boys, head for the hills!

    Also see previously on Core77 Homer Simpson’s Duff Beer: Barley, Hops and Cultural Stories?

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Star Wars Uncut — Emmy Winner [Digits – WSJ] – [More collapse between consumer and producer. The resulting film is compelling as iconic storyline transcends lack of visual continuity, trumped by radical creativity. Definitely worth checking out.] When a member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences called 26-year-old Web developer Casey Pugh five months ago and told him he should apply for an Emmy award, Pugh wasn’t sure what to make of it. But despite his initial disbelief, Pugh now has a golden statuette, won this weekend at the creative arts portion of the Primetime Emmy Awards. Pugh and his team — including Annelise Pruitt, Jamie Wilkinson and Chad Pugh — launched Star Wars Uncut last year, dividing “Star Wars” into 15-second clips and allowing people to choose scenes to remake. Several different groups could claim the same scene, and people could choose as many as three scenes to make. The submissions were then put up for a vote by the fans, and the team edited them together to make a full movie.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] At The Movies, A String Of Futures Passed [All Things Considered – NPR] – No matter how accurate they may be, all fictional futures — especially alarmist ones — lose urgency as the concerns that fueled them fade. The Cold War paranoia of 1984 and 2001 now feel distant, even if the tech-boom fears in Blade Runner may be a bit more current. This decade, we're uptight about the environment and our increasing decrepitude, so we get Wall-E. In the flower-power era, we were skeptical about social conformity, so we got A Clockwork Orange.
    • [from steve_portigal] Fusion: The Synergy of Images and Words [Steve McCurry’s Blog[ – [Photjournalist assembles series of images of people reading, across the planet]
    • [from steve_portigal] Coca Cola Village Like Facebook [The Inspiration Room] – [The ability to "post things" to Facebook or similar from far away (online or offline) is provocative but perhaps limiting, when the feedback loop – I post and I see what I post appear- is broken as badly as here] Coca Cola Village in Israel is a summer holiday resort designed for teenagers finishing their school years. For its third year experiential marketing agency Promarket provided residents with RFID bracelets (Radio Frequency Identification) to help them share their experiences on Facebook. Teens were able to put a digital ‘like’ on their choice of forty facilities in the camp, from the pool, the spa, to the extreme activities and sport section. If photographed by one of the official photographers, the RFID technology would automatically tag everyone in the photo and upload it to the relevant Facebook profiles…Real world Liking resulted in up to 35,000 posts per cycle…On average each visitor was posting 54 pieces of Coke branded content to their Facebook profile.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Do You Know What This Symbol Means? [Yahoo! Autos] – [If people can't figure out what a warning symbol is warning them about, does it still qualify as a warning symbol? Should warning symbols require a public education effort? How does one measure whether a symbol is idiot-proof? How many idiots should be queried?] The issue here seems to be that the public hasn’t been properly educated on the warning symbol, which is supposed to be “idiot proof” and understandable across a wide variety of cultures and languages. Yet 46% of drivers couldn’t figure out that the icon represents a tire and 14% thought the symbol represented another problem with the vehicle entirely.
    • [from steve_portigal] The importance of futility in innovation [Pasta&Vinegar] – [See our various rants against finding "pain points" as the pathway to innovation.] This discussion echoes with the notion of “needs” and the desperate quest lead by big companies to find “new needs”. Looking for these so-called new needs is not a matter of asking people what they want or asking them what they would crave for. Instead, observing how products and services that may seem futile at first can be adopted, domesticated, appropriated and tweaked for other purposes is a better strategy.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Shoppers videotape their ‘haul’ [San Jose Mercury News] – [Head-slapping superficiality, scandals, self-reflection, spoofs and thousands of subscribers define the world of haul video mavens. Haul videos are defined by one hauler herself as, "videos about crap I bought." Solid gold for marketers.] These young women, and thousands more, are cranking out "haul" videos — as in, "here's all the stuff I hauled home from Forever 21 and the Walgreen's makeup department" — and inviting friends and strangers alike to check out their latest purchases. The videos, which range from oddly captivating to crashingly dull, represent yet another way in which the Internet is both nurturing new communities and redefining retail.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] Is the Web Dying? It Doesn’t Look That Way [Bits Blog – NYTimes.com] – [There's always a way to get the same data to tell a different story. ] Mr. Anderson of Wired magazine argues that a world of downloadable apps, which work through the Internet and arrive via gadgets like the iPhone or Xbox, are quickly cannibalizing the World Wide Web as consumers prefer buttoned-up, dedicated platforms, designed specifically for mobile screens. Is he right? Should we plaster R.I.P. signs all over the Web? Not exactly.
    • [from steve_portigal] The Tragic Death of Practically Everything [Technologizer] – [You can hum Jim Carroll while you read this short piece that tries to dehype tech media a teeny little bit] Wired Editor in Chief Chris Anderson is catching flack for the magazine’s current cover story, which declares that the Web is dead. I’m not sure what the controversy is. For years, once-vibrant technologies, products, and companies have been dropping like teenagers in a Freddy Krueger movie. Thank heavens that tech journalists have done such a good job of documenting the carnage as it happened. Without their diligent reporting, we might not be aware that the industry is pretty much an unrelenting bloodbath.
    • [from steve_portigal] BK to offer shareable Pizza Burger [Nation’s Restaurant News] – [While results won't appeal to all, exciting to see Burger King with an appetite for innovating – crazy-sounding products – and a place to sell those non-core products] Burger King plans to introduce a giant hamburger shaped and flavored like a pizza to its new Whopper Bar in NY, adding to the list of extreme sandwiches at restaurant chains. The NY Pizza Burger is made with four 1/4-pound Whopper patties, mozzarella, marinara and a Tuscan Herb Mayo. They are placed on a 9.5-inch bun, which is sliced into 6 wedges, selling at $12.99. Burger King said the pizza burger, which is intended to be shared, would likely be introduced next week. Each wedge is about 400 calories, they said. The NY Pizza Burger is currently planned just for the New York City Whopper Bar location, which opened July 31 near Times Square. The pizza burger will join the Meat Beast Whopper, also exclusive to the New York City Whopper Bar. The Meat Beast is a Whopper topped with pepperoni and bacon and sold for $6.99.

    We need your votes for our SXSW proposals!

    The conference lineup is chosen partially based on input (i.e., voting) from the community. Even if you don’t attend, you still have a voice about what the discourse should be in our various fields. Not to mention, it’s a great way to support us! Visit each of the two talks below and click on the “thumbs up” icon. Add your thoughts, or comments as well!

    Diving Deep: Best Practices For Interviewing Users

    While we know, from a very young age, how to ask questions, the skill of getting the right information from users is surprisingly complex and nuanced. This session will focus on getting past the obvious shallow information into the deeper, more subtle, yet crucial, insights. If you are going to the effort to meet with users in order to improve your designs, it’s essential that you know how to get the best information and not leave insights behind. Being great in “field work” involves understanding and accepting your interviewee’s world view, and being open to what they need to tell you (in addition to what you already know you want to learn). We’ll focus on the importance of rapport-building and listening and look at techniques for both. We will review different types of questions, and why you need to have a range of question types. This session will explore other contextual research methods that can be built on top of interviewing in a seamless way. We’ll also suggest practice exercises for improving your own interviewing skills and how to engage others in your organization successfully in the interviewing experience.

    For more on interviewing, you can check out our UIE Virtual Seminar and the follow-up podcast we did with Jared Spool.


    Mommy, Where Do Good Products Come From?
    (with Gretchen Anderson)

    Business case studies are the ultimate in reductionism: A complex business activity rooted in a specific context of people, company culture, time, and place is boiled down to a few key ideas. Consultants, designers, students, and people who read Malcolm Gladwell are especially prone to this form of simplification. While these simplified stories can be helpful as touchstones, we just need to remember that they are often apocryphal archetypes more than investigative summaries. Or people confuse the terms innovation and invention; looking for breakthrough ideas sends companies into a frenzied search for “new” things not great or disruptive things. In this session, we will explore some different pathways to creating great product ideas. As designers and researchers, we’re experienced enough to know that design research isn’t the only approach or even always the best approach (a point of view that Don Norman vehemently argued in recent writings). For instance, design research wouldn’t be sufficient to create a disruptive innovation like Gowalla. We’ll outline a framework that looks at different approaches to idea generation, including corporate competencies and culture, customer needs and cultural context, and technological innovation.

    For more on this topic, you can check out our interactions column Some Different Approaches to Making Stuff (PDF). Also, listen to Steve and Gretchen in conversation about the speed of innovation.

    Thanks for your votes!

    Also see:

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] The opposite of user experience design [Jorge Arango] – [I've experienced the bewildering confusion of bureaucracy in another country but have always assumed implicitly that for "those people" it was tenable. Jorge's tangible frustration and brilliant insight puts the lie to my ridiculous parochialism] One of the advantages of living in the developing world is that I am exposed to a wide variety of UX disasters. If you find it hard to define UX, try dealing with a Panamanian government office. You will quickly see what a lack of UX thinking looks like, and this will in turn aid your appreciation and understanding of good UX. A few weeks ago I had to go to the Panamanian immigration office to take care of some paperwork. When I got there, I found chaos…I’ve come to understand that the opposite of UX design is not shitty design, thoughtless design, or piecemeal design. It is anarchy. Only strong leadership with a clear user-centric vision can transform the organization’s culture and improve the experience of its constituents.
    • [from steve_portigal] Please vote for our SXSW 2011 Panel – Mommy, Where Do Good Products Come From? (with Gretchen Anderson) – [Thanks for your vote!] Business case studies are the ultimate in reductionism: A complex business activity rooted in a specific context of people, company culture, time, and place is boiled down to a few key ideas. People confuse the terms innovation and invention; looking for breakthrough ideas sends companies into a frenzied search for "new" things not great or disruptive things. In this session, we will explore some different pathways to creating great product ideas. As designers and researchers, we're experienced enough to know that design research isn't the only approach or even always the best approach (a point of view that Don Norman vehemently argued in recent writings). For instance, design research wouldn't be sufficient to create a disruptive innovation like Gowalla. We'll outline a framework that looks at different approaches to idea generation, including corporate competencies and culture, customer needs and cultural context, and technological innovation.
    • [from steve_portigal] Please vote for my SXSW 2011 Panel – Diving Deep: Best Practices For Interviewing Users – [Thanks for your vote!] The skill of getting the right information from users is surprisingly complex and nuanced. This session will focus on getting past the obvious shallow information into the deeper, more subtle, yet crucial, insights. If you are going to the effort to meet with users in order to improve your designs, it's essential that you know how to get the best information and not leave insights behind. Being great in "field work" involves understanding and accepting your interviewee's world view, and being open to what they need to tell you (in addition to what you already know you want to learn). We'll focus on the importance of rapport-building and listening and look at techniques for both. We will review different types of questions, and why you need to have a range of question types. We'll also suggest practice exercises for improving your own interviewing skills and how to engage others in your organization successfully in the interviewing experience.
    • [from steve_portigal] The Minds Behind the Mind-Set List [The Chronicle of Higher Education] – [Freshmen in 2010 have never known a world in which a website can't get a book deal. Yes, the Mind-Set List book is coming] Mr. McBride, a professor of English and the humanities, says the list started on a lark back in 1997—some old college hands unwinding on a Friday afternoon, musing on how much freshmen don't know about recent history and culture. But such blind spots are to be expected, they had agreed, given the relative youth of the incoming class. They had concluded that professors should be mindful of how very different their students' life experiences are from their own. With colleagues, they had brainstormed about the cultural touchstones for that year's entering freshman class, whose members would have been born in 1979. That was the year of the Iran hostage crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and Three Mile Island. The resulting list was passed around and eventually found its way into the hands of a Wall Street Journal reporter, who subsequently wrote about it.
    • [from steve_portigal] Beloit College Mindset List 2010 – [The annual list, in time for this year's freshmen, telling us older folks how our view of the world differs in key and/or bemusing ways]. For most of their lives, major U.S. airlines have been bankrupt. A coffee has always taken longer to make than a milkshake.

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from julienorvaisas] America: Land of Loners? [The Wilson Quarterly] – [Thoughtful commentary on the notion of "friends," a watered-down word these days, thanks to Facebook.] Friendship, like baseball, always seems to send intellectuals off the deep end. Yet there is more biological justification for our predecessors’ paeans to friendship than for our modern-day tepidity. Friendship exists in all the world’s cultures, likely as a result of natural selection. People have always needed allies to help out in times of trouble, raise their status, and join with them against their enemies. It doesn’t seem much of a stretch to conclude that a talent for making friends would bestow an evolutionary advantage by corralling others into the project of promoting and protecting one’s kids—and thereby ensuring the survival of one’s genes.
    • [from julienorvaisas] Ewwwwwwwww! [The Boston Globe] – [Scientists are working on unpacking the psychology of physical disgust and it's role in moral decisions, which are obviously also based in powerful socio-cultural factors. Food for thought on just how layered the decision-making process is.] Just as our teeth and tongue first evolved to process food, then were enlisted for complex communication, disgust first arose as an emotional response to ensure that our ancestors steered clear of rancid meat and contagion. But over time, that response was co-opted by the social brain to help police the boundaries of acceptable behavior. Today, some psychologists argue, we recoil at the wrong just as we do at the rancid, and when someone says that a politician’s chronic dishonesty makes her sick, she is feeling the same revulsion she might get from a brimming plate of cockroaches.
    • [from steve_portigal] iPad/Kindle combo proving deadly to rest of e-reader market [ars technica] – The show floor of January's Consumer Electronics Show was swamped with E-Ink-based e-readers of all shapes and sizes, to the point that it seemed that a tsunami of Kindle knock-offs was going to hit the US market in the first quarter of 2010. But in hindsight, it turns out that the wave actually crested at CES, and has now almost entirely subsided. The problem for these products is that the e-reader market appears to consist almost exclusively of people who want to use the devices to read, which means that they don't really care about being able to bend or flex the e-reader a little bit, nor are they willing to pay the huge premium that a touchscreen commands. Neither of these features enhances the basic reading experience that's at the core of why people pick an E-Ink device over a reader with an LCD screen. For those who just want to read, the Kindle is now very cheap. And if you're going to pay for a touchscreen, you might as well spend a bit extra get an iPad.
    • [from steve_portigal] Persona [a set on Flickr] – [An ongoing series of photographs of people, and the stuff they are carrying with them. This sort of raw documentationism is without explicit analysis or articulated insight but of course the act of creation and the act of editing/selecting introduces a curatorial voice and implicit point of view on the world. It's just up to us to figure out what that is]

    ChittahChattah Quickies

    • [from steve_portigal] Ont. parents suspect Wi-Fi making kids sick [CBC.ca] – ["Proving" something is causing health problems is tough; but our willingness to believe with full certainty is powerful. We see this perception as a barrier to adoption in many categories of products and services.] A group of central Ontario parents is demanding their children's schools turn off wireless internet before they head back to school next month, fearing the technology is making the kids sick. Some parents in the Barrie, Ont., area say their children are showing a host of symptoms, ranging from headaches to dizziness and nausea and even racing heart rates. They believe the Wi-Fi setup in their kids' elementary schools may be the problem. The symptoms, which also include memory loss, trouble concentrating, skin rashes, hyperactivity, night sweats and insomnia, have been reported in 14 Ontario schools in Barrie, Bradford, Collingwood, Orillia and Wasaga Beach since the board decided to go wireless, Palmer said. "These kids are getting sick at school but not at home," he said.
    • [from steve_portigal] Budgets Tight, School Supply Lists Go Beyond Glue Sticks [NYTimes.com] – [A cultural reframe moment; retail is there] Schools across the country are beginning the new school year with shrinking budgets and outsize demands for basic supplies. On the list for pre-kindergartners at McClendon Elementary in Nevada, TX.: a package of cotton balls, two containers of facial tissue, rolls of paper towels, sheaves of manila and construction paper, and a package of paper sandwich bags.Retailers are rushing to cash in by expanding the back-to-school category like never before.Now some back-to-school aisles are almost becoming janitorial-supply destinations as multipacks of paper towels, cleaning spray and hand sanitizer are crammed alongside pens, notepads and backpacks. OfficeMax is featuring items like Clorox wipes in its school displays and is running two-for-one specials on cleaners like gum remover and disinfectant spray. Office Depot has added paper towels and hand sanitizer to its back-to-school aisles. Staples’ school fliers show reams of copy paper on sale.

    Series

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