User experience and interaction designers need to understand how users think as well as be aware of business goals and needs described by managers and colleagues from other departments. Chocolate… delicious chocolate… can help you get the information you need to do a great job.

Candy in real life

My grandfather used to be famous in our neighborhood. Why? Was he rich or handsome, or a music star? No, he carried candy in his pockets and he gave candy to every kid he could find; soon he became the girls and boys local super hero.

Actually, in some countries, it’s common that old men give candy to children. The uncommon behavior was that my grandfather would also give candy to adults. Hence, he became the local super hero of children and adults as he surprised neighbors and got many smiles in return. I’m sure many adults thought that it was ridiculous to get candy from an old man and be treated like a child, but they did, in any case, smile.

Why chocolate?

Chocolate, the food produced from cacao (as described on Wikipedia,) is one of the top gifts, worldwide. It’s also one of the most popular ways of saying thank you, I love you, I appreciate you, and make someone smile. Most of us love chocolate.

Chocolate for users

I always take two small chocolates with me when I go to user tests. I give the first one to the user at the beginning of the meeting and I leave the second chocolate on the table next to me. I say that the first one is a small present for joining the test; users usually smile and know that there is more to come.

The goal is to create a funny situation, a reason to smile and relax. It is also a way to thank the user, just one more detail (aside from the monetary incentive). I am convinced that tests run better when we use chocolate because it makes users happier and more open to talk and share information.

Chocolate in meetings

Use chocolate in brainstorming sessions as a reward every time a colleague adds something interesting to the discussed topic. Rewards provide initiative, and could result in a courageous colleague who shares something crazy that paves the path to a cutting edge solution.

Again, the goal is to create a playful environment, to brake the ice, make people smile and, above everything, to reward participation.

I use small pieces of chocolates that are easy to throw in the air and that people can eat immediately. My favorite brand is Ritter Sport: Small colorful pieces of delicious chocolate.

Communicate the benefits

We don’t want people to think that they are being rewarded the same way dolphins at SeaWorld are. So, make sure that everybody gets the idea that it is a game and make it clear that this technique is used to make the test or brainstorming session a success. With chocolate it will probably be!

Chocolate pictures from Ritter Sport

Last May I participated at Christian Crumlish’s workshop about the design of social interfaces. The workshop was great, exposing several design principals, and I felt I had to somehow apply that at work in an interactive way. Based on some tips from Christian and on past experience I organized the following session.

The Principles

Christian’s book Designing Social Interfaces is a collection of design principles and patterns.

• Prepare the meeting choosing 1 or 2 of the concepts proposed in the book.

For example, you could use the Pave the Cowpaths and Use Game Mechanics principles. Read carefully about them.

• Prepare a few slides to explain the principles to your colleagues.

Participants

Depending on the principles you want to discuss about, you might like to invite colleagues from your own design team, product managers, programmers or marketing people. Do not underestimate your colleagues, different ideas encourage discussion.

• Invite people from different groups.

The Meeting

• Explain the principles, give examples.
• Make sure you leave on the screen a slide with the principles (so the participants can read them during the exercise.)

You have to ask participants to imagine how to apply those principles on the current website. For example, you could ask to look for those “cowpaths” from current user behavior that could be “paved” to improve the user experience.

• Ask participants to write short ideas on post-its.
• After a few minutes, ask them to tell out loud what they wrote down, to explain a little bit and to paste the post-its on the whiteboard.

You will find that some ideas are similar.

• Group ideas and ask participants to help you name those groups.

Round Up

This kind of meeting might not give you a definite answer to your design problems, but for sure it could help you start playing with new ideas, based on stablished principles.

Even more, these meetings are a lot of fun and trigger discussion and conversation through different departments.

Give it a try!

Pictures from vancouverfilmschool and VFS

Facebook has been recently under fire for changing privacy settings. What started as complaints in a few blogs is starting to reach the big media and several parliament buildings around the globe. Facebook needs user data to make advertisement deals, if those users start mistrusting Facebook the business will be over.

On one side, sharing information has many clear advantages and a lot of money can be done with that. On the other side, there are already good examples on how protecting information or giving users clear control about what they share could be beneficial for users and businesses. As interaction designers we could and should improve those experiences.

A Venetian mask, symbol of privacy.

Anonymity and privacy also means freedom. On the contrary, being forced to be 100% public might, in many cases, prevent people to create new things and to share what they really think. There are many things one should not say in public; consequences could be hard if those messages have to be attached by default to the speakers real name. The magic of message boards and chats on the internet beginnings was their anonymity, without that many topics would have never been discussed in a truly sincere way.

It is clear that one benefits from others´ information. Is it possible to share information, keep the user secure and make money with it? Yes, it is; I have two good examples.

Genius, the Apple iTunes recommendation service, is getting tons of information from users, like favorite artists, most listened songs, playlists, movies and TV shows. In order to convince people to share all that, Genius proposes sharing in an anonymous way: no, with Genius you can not see what music your friends are listening. But that´s all right, the best recommendations are done through the analysis of the data coming from thousands of users, not just your friends. Is Apple making money with Genius? I bet they do!

Delicious is another good example of user protection. The public bookmarking service stores users´favorite websites; people allow that because in principle their data is kept private. Delicious reinforces that feeling of privacy through its interface design:

“If you do not want personal information to be displayed for other users to see, do not check any of these boxes”, a setting on Delicious profile creation page. This is a key feature of the Delicious service, without that many people would not share many of their bookmarks, like the ones related to politics or to adult content. Delicious is clearly profiting from sharing and being protecting at the same time.

The future

I predict people will share even more in the future but websites like Facebook will get more pressure to offer better privacy and the design of interfaces and services that offer more intelligent ways of sharing information without compromising privacy will become a big business.

Venetian mask picture by Misteraitch

Now a days, more than before, customers are getting in contact with products and services providing a real good user experience. Customers of these know now that good experiences are possible and their exigencies are becoming higher and higher. There is no way back, offering bad interactions to your product will make users angry.

I would like to give you some examples of successful products and services that are changing the way customers think:

Flickr

Flickr Homepage

When Flickr started it showed users that storing and sharing pictures online in a clean an easy way was possible. Flickr takes detailed care of their interface and provides an overall good experience.

Amazon

Product description page on Amazon

Is there any doubt that Amazon provides the best shopping experience of the web? A functional and fast website makes customers’ life easier. The ones used to this interface will require the same from competitors.

Mac, iPhone and iPad

Apple iPad with touch screen

This is a recurrent but important example, specially if you are producing software. Apple taught consumers that they should be taking care of their personal stuff and not of their computers. People are paying a premium price for their Macs, iPhones, iPads and iPods because they know they are reliable and they can do stuff faster, thanks to a superior interface.

Facebook

Why is it Facebook the undeniable number one social network that is being used even by 70 years old ladies? Facebook has a team of more than 30 interaction/user experience designers taking care of the interface. It’s clear that Facebook is very user centered and its interface is easy to use for everybody. The masses know that good interfaces are a reality.

What’s better, multifunctionality or single-purpose? If we refer to digital gadgets and interfaces design there are several good and bad examples for both approaches.

Is there a limit for multifunctionality? The following imaginary design illustrates the problem of multi-function devices and applications: the solution reaches a point where a big amount of features offered block the access to them and makes the whole product unusable or difficult to understand.

An overwhelmed Swiss knife

Multifunctionality could be also a problem in graphical interfaces. In the following picture there is a screenshot of the FStream applicaton for Apple iPhone, an application to listen online radios and other sound streams. This app used to have only 3 visible options at the bottom:  Play, Favorites and More. Now it is already showing the option “Record”, which, I assume it is only useful for limited amount of radio listeners. Ohh… it’s so easy to add just one more feature!

FStream App for iPhone

Google Android phones (and iPhones) are a good example of multi-purpose devices. Thanks to their good interface design users are able to manage a huge range of different tasks: music, pictures, work, maps and more. Still, they are victims of their own success; multitasking people could feel the need for more than one phone: users can do several things with them, but not at the same time.

Picture from Google Mobile Blog

Logitech Harmony Remote is a device that remotely controls 225000 different devices, including televisions, DVD players, radios and video games. A real do-it-all device. Unfortunately the interface description on the Logitech website is very vague but if the interface is well done it could eventually be a good product for geeks. But they are not going to sell it to my mother…

The Harmony Remote controls 225000 devices

“Reading is an important activity and deserves a purpose-built device”, said Jeff Bezos to the New York Times. He might be partially right, probably many users don’t want to see more features on the Amazon Kindle. Many think the audio book feature is already redundant (why would you need it if you have a great pocket size iPod?). On the other side, Bezos’ statement might just lack of sincerity; maybe he is not putting more features just because the device is limited by a low resolution, black and white, slow, not touchy screen.

The single purpose Amazon Kindle

Few devices can be more purpose-specific than the WikiReader. Many laughed at it when it was announced, now it’s a top seller. Simple interface design makes it a king in the only thing it does: accessing Wikipedia information without complications. Maybe someone using an iPhone won’t need it but what about children?

The single purpose WikiReader

Now a days, life seems to be impossible without electronic devices. We need them and want them but if we not change the way we produce and consume them the impact on the environment will be too much for our little planet. As designers we need to make products sustainable in an attractive way to be able to reach the masses.

The TDK Designer Solar Panel. Picture by Engadget.

A good example is the TDK solar panel design that has different draws and patterns on it. It could be argued that this device may not be as efficient as a normal solar panel but making the solar panels attractive could do a lot to make the adoption of the technology faster; and that’s important. The real potential in this technology is for use in big surfaces (like buildings) and maybe not just as personal devices.

Docomo Touch Wood phone

Many could think that the Docomo Touch Wood phone, made of wood, looks good. As this is avoiding the use of traditional plastic this design could be going in the right direction. In comparison to bio plastics, wood could last longer and, eventually, the case box could be reuse. Can we imagine updating the inner part of a wood phone instead of throwing away the whole thing?

Novothink solar charger for iPod

I am a little bit more skeptic about the greenery of this specific-use gadget. This is yet another gadget and the amount of resources needed to build it is probably big (water, energy, plastic, etc.). This is a big question we should ask ourselves as designers if we design a product to be marketed as “green” or sustainable: with this thing, do we save resources or do we consume more out of the planet?

The Samsung phone made of corn

Bio plastics are a very interesting material, still their advantages are questionable. They could be made of different sources, like potatoes and corn, fact that makes them not only less polluting but also morally incorrect (many people would argue). Of course that might depend on the efficiency of the producing of these materials: how many potatoes do we need to produce a kilo of bio-plastic?

Design vs Art is following very close the developments on the electronic paper (epaper) industry. We think it is a great technology that is about to explode. Specially ebook readers could be the next big thing. Epaper is making the revolution that will change everything unstoppable. For that reason, the publishing industry needs a redesign.

After hearing about the Amazon-George Orwell incident (article on the New York Times), I decided to try to buy Orwell’s Animal Farm ebook in its original language and to write down on my Moleskine details about that experience. From the beginning the task was set to be difficult; I had an Amazon Kindle and I live in Germany, meaning that I can not buy ebooks at the Amazon/Kindle store.




The above described exercise took me to the following impressions:

Amazon would not sell me the ebook with a European credit card, so I went to Mobipocket.com and bought the digital version of Animal Farm. The Mobipocket software does not work on Apple Macs so I directly downloaded the book and send it to the Kindle using Calibre, an ebook management software. I tried to open the ebook and I got a disgusting message saying that the file was protected and could not be displayed in an unregistered device. Of course, I didn’t know that I could not register a Kindle on Mobipocket.

In case I was not clear enough, I would like to say again that I paid for the book I was trying to open. The whole user experience was totally frustrating.

You are not allowed to read this ebook on this unregistered device.

For copyright reasons you can not buy this ebook from your country.

Even worse, somebody could eventually decide which version of a book a whole nation should read. This is something that might be already happening somewhere in the world, but readers have the chance to travel, buy books somewhere else and smuggle them if necessary; something that is not going to be possible in a digital publishing industry controlled but old copyright laws.

You have to use our German store, buy the German version of this ebook.

Yes, the user experience of buying an ebook at Amazon and have it delivered to a Kindle is great. Everybody loves that. But I have also read comments on forums from panicking customers promising not to activate their Kindle wireless feature anymore, worrying that the ebooks they bought in the past could disappear. The user experience is broken, the system is not trusty anymore.

Delete that ebook from all the devices in this country.

I looked for the electronic version of Animal Farm on a torrent search engine. The book was there. I could have downloaded it for free in a few seconds. It could have been so easy…

I have to say this again: I tried to get a legal copy of the book. I actually paid for the book, but I was not allowed to read it on my device.

To download an ebook illegally is already easier than buying it.

Article by Alexis Brion.

Discovering that a product is not working as expected when it is already at the streets is not a pleasant feeling. Fixing a product design it is neither easy nor always possible. In this article I show you two typical examples of design fix that you should try to avoid.

First Case

Traveling to the Bavarian alps on a beautiful, high-tech train, I was doing something that the designers of it didn’t do: observing how people use doors and in particular how they would interact with their design. I was lucky enough to be sitting in front of the toilet’s door, enjoying the possibility to look at the passengers trying to deal with the door.

The design: the door had a door handle, a yellow button and a huge sticker indicating that people are not supposed to use the door handle to open the door; instead they should press the button.

What happened here? After many passenger breaking the "automatic" doors, designers decided to add an sticker to their design to try to fix it. Did it work? Obviously not:

Second Case

In Mar del Plata, one of the biggest cities in Argentina, people have been paying bus tickets with cash using machines installed on the buses. This system has recently been changed by another one that uses magnetic cards. These cards have to be loaded with electronic money at city kiosks; once on the bus passengers use the cards to paid for their trip.

The problem with the new design: people that were used to pay using cash were trying to introduce coins and bills inside the magnetic card reader. Probably, hundreds of readers got wroken and had to be replaced.

The solution: designers (or maybe the people in charge of the system) tried to fix the poorly designed system with a sticker saying "DO NOT INTRODUCE COINS". Did it work? Probably not well. 

Why this is happening and what could have been done?

These two products, the high tech door and the card reader, were probably designed without taking into account many parts of the system. Observing a few people interacting with the train door would have been enough to notice that people would try to open the door using the door handle if there is one (and not a button). The same applies to the card reader, designers probably never got on a bus and observed people using the old ticket machines.

Specially hardware design flaws are difficult and very expensive to solve. In most cases a sticker would probably not solve the problem and would make the whole user experience even more confusing. 

A user centered design process should have prevented these design failures: doing field research, talking with people and observing what they need and how they behave in their environment.

This is the second part of my review of the DMY international design festival 2009 in Berlin. The first part took care of the expositions.

All conferences were planned on a symposium day and the whole event lasted about eight hours. The quality and background of the speakers was as motley as it gets. It started with two so called "institutional presentations" by the Taiwan design Center and the "Metropolitan Design Center of Buenos Aires". Promotional videos of both places, a lot of charts and never ending text on the projector. No real talk about design there, even though they repeated the word until it lost its meaning. I suppose they paid to be there…

Yuri Suzuki and Hiromi Ozaki at the Symposium

Within the "Alternative strategies" block Yuri Suzuki and Hiromi Ozaki talked about their "Cybernetic love: future sex project". These people analyze the Japanese society habits from all angles to get to the conclusion that sex practice is integrating elements such as virtual lives and places, electronic pleasure gadgets, robots, etc. till an extent, that a human partner is no longer the preferred alternative. This project is financed by Tenga, a company that develops high quality adult toys. I must say they have a point, check out their promotional video;  if this is not user experience design, I don’t what is!

Ronen Kadushin presented "Open Design" and his way for design to evolve if we really want good design to surround us. We all have seen how open source software gives the best results, now here is a way to do basically the same but with product design.

Ronen Kadushin at the Symposium

Interesting lectures of the block "Sustainability": Ralf Ketelhut from Stoffstromdesign let us know what really happens when products are waste and made us aware how harmful coatings and pigments are in our product. We also saw an example of a very nice nearly 100% environmentally friendly wallpaper. Key to success they said, is to go to the manufacturer, talk to him and find a different way of doing things.

from left to right: the wallpaper designer from eccellence goods, the roll of wallpaper, Ralf Ketelhut

Probably the best example of good innovative design was given by 2012 Architecten. They presented some realized projects in which they rather than recycling they reused material that was considered waste. They identify a source of large quantities of waste material in good conditions and they find a way to use it.

Jan Jongert from 2012 Architecten ans a shot of their Villa Welpeloo

One of their requirements when reusing materials is to take them as they are and add no processing to them when possible, this way it is economically and environmentally worthwhile reusing. Some of these projects are an espresso bar made with used PVC windows and the duchi shoe shop, where car windows make the shelves.

Jurgen Bey gave a nice lecture about how we approach design problems and what could be the role of design in the future. A pity that I didn’t record it… there is a good summary of it in design.nl

In the last years there have been a lot of buzz around the electronic paper technology (or epaper, for short), specially after the introduction of the Amazon Kindle. At Design vs Art our motivation for our last project was the fact that, aside from ebook readers, not many devices have been presented using the epaper technology.

In order to discover opportunities we went through a whole design process: defining the problem to solve or motivation, looking for a strategy, ideation, prototyping and explaining the idea.

For us one of the most important features about the epaper technology is the possibility of creating a whole system around the device. Data on the display could come from different sources and the epaper device could communicate to a variety of other devices and to gather information from its environment creating a whole information ecosystem.

Once we decided to develop an advertising system, it was clear for us that we would need more than a device if we wanted a good user experience; so we designed epaper billboards and a whole information system including the necessary interfaces to manage it.

We also imagined the way the user would intereact with the billboard and how the service could add value to customers.

Of course traditional paper billboards already work in a system; but the digital nature of the electronic paper could revolutionize the business.

At Design vs Art we do product ideation and concept design, starting with a motivation and following a whole creative and design process.

If you are thinking of a new product or service focused on users or if you are interested in any of our concepts you might want to contact us. Here is our contact information.