Eliminating noise and confusion

With lots to do -- often much too much to do and not always what would be most beneficial for them to do (as referenced in prior blog entries, including "Realities, dilemmas, framings, ..."), user experience personnel aren't always able to do their best work, which can make them and those with or for whom they are doing the work less than fully satisfied. Past blog entries have referred to some of the ways of dealing with this; recent blog entry suggestions include saying "no," improving soft skills, and offloading certain types or parts of the work to others.

But there are additional possibilities.

One of them -- which can come in all sorts of variations -- was described by Craig Peters during the User Experience Managers and Executives Speak course I offered this past spring. Craig founded and oversees the work at Awasu Design and was co-founder of Bolt | Peters.

Craig has discovered that even some of the best user experience organizations and personnel, and the organizations and personnel with or for whom they work, are continually experiencing a considerable amount of noise and confusion, which gets in the way of doing the best or most appropriate work.

User experience personnel have long expressed frustration with others' lack of understanding of and appreciation for them and their work, (potential) users, and/or the impact user experience can have on business success. This has prompted many to develop materials to be used as part of ongoing "evangelizing" efforts.

However, such efforts, while important, are usually not all that is needed. Noise and confusion often persist, in part because there are additional sources of noise and confusion, many of which are experienced by user experience personnel themselves.

Among these additional sources of noise and confusion:

• an inadequate understanding of the organizations for or with which you do your work;
• an inadequate understanding of the organization you are in;
• an inadequate understanding of the processes used by the organizations for or with which you do your work;
• lack of certainty regarding who is responsible for what;
• and lack of certainty regarding how to negotiate with and explain the work you'll be doing to those for or with whom you'll be working.

As explained by Craig, such noise and confusion leads to all sorts of problems, including:

• others' inconsistent experiences of user experience personnel and their work from project to project;
• work activity selections that are not the best for the situation;
• things falling through the cracks;
• scheduling and timing difficulties;
• unwanted creeping project scope;
• management needing to step in much too frequently to solve problems;
• designs that are not as good as they could be;
• and missed opportunities to do work that is particularly needed or particularly strategic.

All of these kinds of problems hinder critical working relationships and leave personnel feeling overwhelmed and unhappy.

Craig described the process followed to discover the nature and characteristics of such problems and to design their solutions in work done for Wells Fargo. And he described the nature of part of the solution developed for and with Wells Fargo personnel. At Wells Fargo, the core of the solution was a Customer Experience Lead program, complete with a guide and a collection of materials and tools to be used by whomever plays the role of Customer Experience Lead on a project. (Those materials and tools included organizational explanations, forms for a customer experience brief, numerous checklists, and numerous one-page explanations of customer experience work activities.) Additionally, a new stage was added to their user-centered design process, training was developed for Customer Experience Leads, and various personnel were designated owners of different components of the program, providing a mechanism for making improvements to the program going forward.

The program developed for Wells Fargo is receiving rave reviews. Wells Fargo's Secil Watson, SVP of Channel Strategy -- the organization which includes the Customer Experience group -- even recommended Craig and this type of work during her presentation at MX (Managing Experience) 2008.

What I think makes this kind of effort especially valuable is that it puts organizations in a much stronger position to address many other critical issues (see past blog entries for discussions of many examples of these) that the noise and confusion can cloud. And if done correctly, the process for identifying the nature and characteristics of such noise and confusion will begin to reveal the nature and characteristics of other critical issues, providing guidance for subsequent improvement efforts.

It is important to emphasize that the program developed for Wells Fargo will not be the solution for noise and confusion experienced elsewhere, whether involving an "internal" organization (akin to the organization in Wells Fargo) or an "external" agency. Certain components might be similar, but the program developed for Wells Fargo is working because it fits the way things work at Wells Fargo and addresses their specific needs. Things work very differently in different companies.

It is also important to emphasize the high quality of the customer experience (and related) personnel at Wells Fargo. For example, I've referenced and quoted Secil Watson repeatedly in this blog (see, for example, "Breaking silos"), and I invited her to write an article for my first issue of interactions magazine as Co-Editor-in-Chief (which she did -- see "The Business of Customer Experience: Lessons Learned at Wells Fargo"), because I think so highly of her approach. I've also referenced the excellent work done by other Wells Fargo management personnel in this blog (see, for example, "Developing user-centered tools for strategic business planning"). Highly capable and successful personnel are not immune from such noise and confusion or from the benefits of outside assistance regarding it or other important issues. And they recognize that.

Craig and I are now teaming up to offer such assistance. Give us a holler to learn more.

Bridging communities via interactions

The title of this blog entry is intended to have a double meaning. First, it references how interactions are essential to bridging communities -- something essential for "user experience" to play the role it should be playing in business. Second, it references how interactions magazine will increasingly reflect and attempt to facilitate this process.

Jon Kolko and I -- Co-Editors-in-Chief of interactions magazine -- have talked about the latter in the magazine, particularly in the introduction to our second issue. We elaborated on this and described other aspects of our goals and vision during a session we put together about the magazine for CHI 2008 in Florence. Here are the slides we used during that session:

| View | Upload your own

interactions magazine has been around for awhile -- since January 1994 to be exact. During the CHI conference session, Timelines editor Jonathan Grudin and Advisory Board member Shelley Evanson described what it took to get ACM to begin publication.

We also "performed" the magazine to give attendees a rich sense of what the magazine is now about and of who its regular contributors are. (Thanks to Allison Druin, Fred Sampson, Eli Blevis, Jonathan Grudin, and Elizabeth Churchill who, along with Jon and myself, contributed readings during this part of the session.)

Additionally, Jon facilitated an important discussion between Elizabeth and special guest Mark Vanderbeeken about the concept of open access to intellectual content and its relevance to interactions magazine. (Sorry that Mark's head is largely obscured by Elizabeth's in the nearby photo.) One might argue that open -- i.e., free -- online access to interactions magazine content would in and of itself help to bridge the communities for which interactions magazine is of relevance. However... (Portions of and extensions to the CHI 2008 discussion will appear in Elizabeth's column and in "interactions cafe" in the September+October issue; both of those articles will be made available via the interactions website to all, facilitating everyone's opportunity to respond and share his or her perspective.)

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Note that you can hear me talk a bit about interactions magazine via a podcast created during the Mx 2008 conference for Boxes and Arrows. See "Leading Designers to New Frontiers: Podcasts from MX San Francisco."

Black and white photo above by Eli Blevis.

Soft skills

Early last month, I spent a long weekend in a facilitation skills class. I've taken facilitation classes before, I do and have done a lot of facilitation in my work, and I'm considered to be very good at it. However, I was delighted to have the opportunity to reexamine some of the basics, work on some of the things that can be rather challenging, and receive (and give) feedback from (and to) others doing the same.

Facilitation skills are among those so-called "soft skills" that many argue are critical to the success of experience management and non-management personnel who more often than not find themselves working in "hostile territory."

As Lisa Anderson, Director of User Experience at Autodesk, argued during her appearance as a guest speaker in my recent User Experience Managers and Executives Speak course: "We're the glue that binds -- that brings different people and thinking together." Hence, "the soft skills, too often neglected by user experience managers, are critical. Develop these in yourself and your team."

Jim Nieters, Director of User Experience at Yahoo! and another of my guest speakers, has stressed that user experience practitioners need strong teamwork, communication, and advocacy skills just to get product teams to want to work with them. And another guest speaker, Klaus Kaasgaard, Yahoo!'s VP of Customer Insights, addressed this from the perspective of the researchers whose work he oversees:

"It is all about getting people on your side. Researchers won't get an SVP of business to act just by presenting their insights. One needs to build momentum to get people behind you in order to convince them, which is a long process. You have to wear 2 hats -- your scientist hat and your strategy and business hat, which is like becoming a different person. This is difficult for all of us to learn."

During presentations at HCIEd08 and Mx 2008, I included the need for experience management and non-management personnel to develop soft skills among several of the key challenges that need to be better addressed (see "Realities, dilemmas, framings, ..."). And since then, it has been great to see soft skills given center stage at an IxDA-SF presentation entitled, "Herding Cats and Taming Lions: Using Facilitation Skills to Create Better Design," and at a Slideshare event entitled, "An Evening of Presentation Zen."

Look for and take advantage of opportunities to further develop your "soft skills." (And don't overlook your local improv classes.)

Roles and Relationships

In two of my most recent three blog entries, I argued that too much of the work done by user experience professionals ends up not being beneficial.

A good example of this was described last evening by TiVo's Margret Schmidt (VP of User Experience Design and Research, and pictured nearby) and Elissa Lee (Sr. Director of Research) during a presentation entitled, "Bringing the Spirit of the DVR to the Web: TiVo Launches a New tivo.com."

The abstract of that presentation:

"TiVo is often noted for its friendly TV experience. We recently launched a new version of tivo.com designed to bring that same simplicity and ease-of-use to our web presence. It took a close partnership between User Experience and Marketing, the right balance of internal and external design leadership, and a strong internal research team dedicated to continuous feedback in order to make the design a success. We'll discuss how we structured the project, the research techniques we used, and what we learned along the way."

The third sentence of that abstract -- italics added by me -- stands in sharp contrast to what happened during a redesign of tivo.com a year earlier -- a redesign that, even though built, was never launched. The slide to the left outlines some of the key reasons for that failure. In short, roles and relationships were all messed up, and TiVo executives, helped by results of post-design usability testing conducted by the internal research team, recognized that a launch of the redesigned site would be highly inadvisable.

Frustrated by this and related experiences, Margret went to Marketing and asked what she could do so that this kind of thing would not happen again. To her delight (and probable surprise), she was asked to lead the next attempt. More of what was new about the next attempt is outlined in the slide to the right. The timelines were still unrealistic, resulting in long hours locked away in a "war room" to get things done -- see those same two recent blog entries of mine about how user experience professionals are too often overwhelmed with work. And the nature of the involvement of and relationship with the external agency was still not ideal -- a problem so many companies experience. But this time, everyone bought into the vision and the approach, and the redesign was not a waste of time and effort.

One can argue that the failure of last year was necessary to enable the success of this year. Indeed, failures of such magnitude often create golden opportunities to make needed adjustments to roles and responsibilities (and process and ...). However, though often hard if not impossible (see, for example, "'There is only so much air in the room'"), do whatever you can to get the roles and relationships right from the start.

Offloading work to others

In a recent blog entry, I claimed that many experience management and non-management personnel are overwhelmed with work, too much of which is often not that beneficial to a company, because of, among other reasons, the inadequate involvement of user experience personnel in determining what that work should be.

Another reason was described by Jeremy Ashley, VP Applications User Experience at Oracle, when he appeared as a guest speaker during my "User Experience Managers and Executives Speak" course earlier this year:

"Designers are expected to do too much -- to be project managers, liaise with PMs, liaise with marketing, liaise with development, liaise with executives, write technical specifications, and more, and while doing all these other things, they are expected to design the product. This is an impossible task. Designers are almost set up to fail at the start, because expectations are unrealistic."

According to Jeremy, at one time, Oracle designers were able to design only 20% of the time. So, among other things, he offloaded a lot of those non-design tasks onto other personnel. For example, he hired and now has a staff of user experience program managers who have taken over responsibility for lots of the liaising with others in the company.

Responsibilities of this role, outlined by Oracle's E. Killian Evers in the November 2007 AIS SIGHCI Newsletter, have included integrating, and continually improving the integration of, human-centered design into Oracle's system development lifecycle, and figuring out the most advisable projects to which Oracle's user experience resources should be assigned. Furthermore...

"Program managers are tasked to think beyond the usability organization to include partners in other parts of the larger organization. Effective partners can be found in program management, product management, strategy, development, quality assurance, technology writers, as well as in the sales and support divisions within the company. Program managers' responsibilities include leveraging resources from any of these organizations as needed to assist on projects."

Other companies have created related roles. For example, while at Microsoft, Kumi Akiyoshi served as a UX liaison responsible for building relationships with marketing, advertising, and branding.

Years ago, E-Lab assigned responsibilties for doing the work necessary to effectively communicate experience research findings to specially trained visual communicators, rather than being left (solely) to the researchers. Similarly, interaction designers at Cooper partner with design communicators who "lead teams in communicating research, requirements, and design solutions the right way to the right audience at the right time."

Some companies have created roles to facilitate the development of user experience methodology and/or a corporate culture that embraces design and design thinking. For example, Microsoft has a Design and Usability Training Manager (Surya Vanka), P&G a VP of Design Innovation & Strategy (Claudia Kotchka, whom I've referenced in three past blog entries), and SAP a Sr. Director of User Experience, Methods (Carola Thompson, former student of mine and another guest speaker at my "User Experience Managers and Executives Speak" course earlier this year -- see photo nearby).

Should you consider offloading some of the work of your user experience personnel to others, some of whom would occupy new user experience roles?

"There is only so much air in the room"

Listening to the great Bill Moyers tell Charlie Rose that "too many powerful interests have a stake in the dysfunction of government that they don't want to fix what is the fundamental structural problem" reminded me of some of the things John Armitage, Director of User Experience at Business Objects, emphasized when he appeared as a guest speaker during my "User Experience Managers and Executives Speak" course earlier this year.

"There is only so much air in the room -- only so much budget, head-count, attention, and future potential in an organization. And people within the organization are struggling to acquire it -- struggling for power, influence, promotion, etc. whether because of ego or as a competitive move against threats of rivals. People will turn a blind eye to good ideas if they don't support their career and personal objectives. Hence, if user experience is perceived as a threat, and if they think they can stop it, they will, even if it hurts the company."

Stating that it is management's responsibility to prevent this from happening, John cautioned that it is hard to build incentives and checks and balances to get organizations to "let user experience in," particularly where user experience is the new kid on the block (as it is in most companies). To get organizations to let user experience in, "you have to take power away from people who have it now."

John argued that you ultimately need to pose the following question to those who have the power now: "Is it better to have a small part of a bigger thing or a big part of a small thing?” Hence, in an engineering-dominated company, it is engineering that needs to be convinced that by giving up some headcount and influence to user experience personnel, the company will grow bigger than it otherwise would, and all will benefit.

John referred to a common obstacle to this: given that the importance of user experience isn’t a secret anymore, everyone -- engineering, marketing, even the president of the company -- might claim to be a user experience expert.

Does this describe how things are where you work? Are those in power unwilling to give up as much of their power as would be most beneficial to your company? What do you need to do in order to convince them to do so?

Realities, dilemmas, framings, ...

"Thanks for your presentation. You're the only presenter to have spoken about the dilemmas we face. Most of the other speakers have been providing their 3- or 4-part prescriptions for success almost as if we will confront no challenges to following them!"

Describing aspects of the everyday reality that managers of user experience often live in was what I had been asked to do as part of my presentation at Mx 2008 last week in San Francisco, which is where I received the above feedback. And I described the same in a very different context early in the month as part of a presentation at HCIEd08 in Rome.

My focus in both cases was (a subset of) the difficulties, the challenges, the dilemmas, ... which such personnel need to address to be able to play a strategic role in the companies in which they work.

What claims did I make about that everyday reality? A slide summarizing the claims appears nearby. (You can click on it to enlarge it.)

As an example, here is something akin to what I said about claim #1:

"'Experience management and non-management personnel are often overwhelmed with work.' In a sense, this is good, as it reveals that the demand for services is now high, which has not always been the case. But this is actually not so good, because it often hurts the quality of the work they do, and it often means that people are working on things that are not that important, that are not that impactful. Hence, the solution isn't necessarily one of adding more personnel or hiring contractors; that often isn't even an option. But there are solutions, solutions which will actually enable one to secure the budget to add more personnel more quickly. But because the experience personnel are so overwhelmed, they often don't have the time or mental space to step back, assess the situation, and figure out what those solutions are. So they are often stuck, and they are often stuck doing work that is not important and often a waste of their time and effort and a waste of their company's time and resources."

In Rome, I followed my description of the challenges with an assortment of ideas about how the challenges might be met via new or modified or extended "educational experiences" for management personnel, and I encouraged attendees -- note that HCIEd08 was a conference for educators -- to generate additional ideas.

In San Francisco, I followed the description with examples of the ways successful experience managers and executives have framed such challenges in order to address them. For example, I described how Jeremy Ashley, VP Applications Experience at Oracle, argues the importance of seeing design not as a service, but as a driver and differentiator of the process. I told of how Lisa Anderson, Director User Experience at Autodesk, similarly argues the importance of prioritizing and focusing -- of not taking on all requests so to not be treated like a service organization -- of how it is better to change one feature by 70% than to change several by 10%. I told of how Klaus Kaasgaard, VP Customer Insights at Yahoo!, argues that too much research being done is tactically focused because researchers have not been good at saying "no" -- that it had been the case at Yahoo! that success was measured by the number of projects done and how few they said "no" to: "We would then get a bonus for executing on all requests, though doing so had limited our impact on the business." And I reminded attendees that in a presentation earlier that day at the Mx conference, Cordell Ratzlaff, Director User-Centered Design at Cisco, had also argued the importance of saying "no."

Then I asked: "Do you say 'no' where you work? Dare you? Would you remain in your job if you did? Or would you find that people would be happy if you were to start saying 'no'? What might need to be true before you consider using that strategy?" (Note that not all successful experience managers and executives have taken such an approach.)

In a workshop, I would have asked attendees to answer such questions and to discuss the pros and cons of that particular framing and approach as well as of many others to help them figure out which framing and approach or what combination of framings and approaches or what variation of a framing and approach is something they should consider attempting in their workplace.

I'll be sharing more framings and approaches in upcoming blog entries.

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Jeremy, Lisa, and Klaus were among the wonderful user experience managers and executives who appeared as guest speakers during my recently concluded, "User Experience Managers and Executives Speak" course.

Audio and slides for "Moving UX into a position of corporate influence: Whose advice really works?"

Here are the slides from and the audio of my CHI 2007 conference session entitled, "Moving UX into a position of corporate influence: Whose advice really works?" Start the audio, then flip through the slides. (This is not ideal, but the SlideShare's synchronization tool defeated my attempt at synchronizing the audio with the slides).

For a sense of how the members of the panel repositioned themselves on stage during the session (which you'll be able to hear but not see), read "So, whose advice really works?"

View more presentations from Richard Anderson.

Participants (other than me):

• Jeremy Ashley, Vice President of Applications User Experience, Oracle
• Secil Tabli Watson, Senior Vice President Internet Channel Strategy, Wells Fargo
• Manfred Tscheligi, Director of the Center for Usability Research & Engineering, Wein Austria (representing Tobias Herrmann, Head of Team User Experience, mobilkom austria)
• Shauna Sampson Eves, Director of User Experience, Blue Shield of California
• Jim Nieters, Senior Manager User Experience Design, Cisco
• Justin Miller, Senior Director of Product for Europe, eBay
• a large audience in a large, spacious auditorium

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Photo by Pabini Gabriel-Petit.

On the importance of alignment, trust, loyalty, ...

Does it matter where user experience personnel are positioned in the organizational structure of your company, and how their work is funded?

"Yes," according to Jim Nieters, a Director of User Experience & Design at Yahoo! and former Senior Manager of User Experience Design at Cisco. As guest speaker at the first meeting of my "User Experience Managers and Executives Speak" offering, Jim compared characteristics of a variety of organizational and funding models -- centrally-funded, client-funded, distributed, consultancy, and hybrid -- and shared stories of his experiences with each.

Though many claim that there is one best model for user experience, Jim argues that there is a right model in every company, but that that right model is not the same in every company.

Jim reviewed several of the factors to consider when evaluating different models, but the criterion on which he placed the greatest emphasis is the extent to which the model supports alignment between the goals of user experience personnel and the goals of the business.

Building trust with senior executives is critical, Jim argues. If they like you and believe you are loyal to them, they will fight for you. If they think you might have another agenda, beware.

"You want to work for an executive who buys-in to what you do. If that executive is in marketing, then that is where you should be positioned. If that executive is in engineering, then that is where you should be positioned. Specifically where you sit matters less than finding the executive who supports you the most. If the executive you work for has reservations about what you do and wants proof of its value, that is a sign that you might be working for the wrong person."

Look for signs that your organizational and funding model are impeding your impact and alignment. If those signs are strong, suggest a change to the model. Jim calls this being strategically flexible, and claims that suggesting such a change will reveal that you really care about the business. Hence, focus on building strong relationships with lots of executives. Circumstances can arise in which you may need to find a good, new home for your personnel quickly.

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Related discussions in this blog include:

• Moving UX into a position of corporate influence: Whose advice really works?
• Does it matter where User Experience is positioned in your corporate structure?
• The internal consultancy model for strategic UXD relevance

"User Experience Managers and Executives Speak" update

I've been lining up some of the best San Francisco Bay Area managers and executives -- approximately 14 in total -- to appear during the unique course I'll soon be offering entitled, "User Experience Managers and Executives Speak." The course is being offered in Silicon Valley and will meet 7 consecutive Wednesday evenings from 13 February -- two weeks from today -- through 26 March, 2008.

Want to compare your challenges and approaches with those of managers and executives from a diverse collection of companies including well-known companies such as Google, Wells Fargo, Yahoo!, SAP, Autodesk, Kaiser Permanente, eBay, and Oracle, and several smaller and/or younger and/or less-known companies?

Come hear from and ask your questions of people such as:

• Secil Watson, SVP Internet Channel Strategy at Wells Fargo and author of a fabulous article in the January+February 2008 issue of interactions magazine entitled, "The Business of Customer Experience: Lessons Learned at Wells Fargo" (see also several of my blog entries, including "Breaking silos")

• Irene Au, Director User Experience at Google and former VP User Experience and Design at Yahoo!

• Christi Zuber, Director Innovation Consultancy at Kaiser Permanente's Sidney R. Garfield Healthcare Innovation Center

• Jeff Herman, Senior Director User Experience Design at eBay, author of "A Process for Creating the Business Case for User Experience Projects" and "Creating a System to Share User Experience Best Practices," and former designer at Apple

...and many others.

And share your own challenges and approaches as well.

Can you bypass such an opportunity?

The enrollment fee goes up tomorrow: $495 through January 30, but only $550 after that date.

More information, including a link to the registration site, is available on my website.

User Experience Managers and Executives Speak

I'll soon be offering a unique and exciting course via UCSC Extension in Silicon Valley entitled, "User Experience Managers and Executives Speak." The course is scheduled to meet 7 consecutive Wednesday evenings from 13 February through 26 March, 2008.

From the course description:

"How do user-experience managers and executives achieve success? What are their strategies? How do they approach the multitude of organizational challenges they face? What approaches do they recommend or avoid?

Receive answers to these questions from a wide range of user experience managers and executives from fields such as financial services, consumer electronics, health services, internet services, enterprise software, telecommunications, design services, and insurance, and who are or have been in such roles in companies of a wide range of sizes and at different stages of "user experience maturity." Ask your own questions of the weekly special guests (usually two guests each evening), share your answers, and begin to formulate or make adjustments to your own strategies and approaches.

Among the many guests slated to appear:

• Irene Au, Director User Experience at Google;
• Secil Watson, SVP Internet Channel Strategy at Wells Fargo;
• Klaus Kaasguard, VP Customer Insights at Yahoo!;
• Jeremy Ashley, VP Applications User Experience at Oracle;
• Jim Leftwich, Chief Experience Officer at SeeqPod;
• Mark Plakias, VP Strategy & Design at France Telecom Orange Labs.

This course is intended for those who presently are, or may in the future become, a user experience manager or executive. The course is also intended for other types of managers and executives who (will) work with user experience managers and executives and/or can impact how user experience is addressed and positioned in their companies.

After completing this course, participants will be able to more effectively:

• position user experience in their own companies;
• address their own organizational challenges;
• increase the influence user experience has in their companies;
• lead their own user experience groups or organizations, or work with such groups or organizations led by others."

Please pass on this information to any of your friends, colleagues, bosses, ... in the San Francisco Bay Area who you think might want to take advantage of this special offering.

The enrollment fee is only $495 through January 30; $550 after that date. You can register via the UCSC Extension website.

I'll be providing updates on the course in this blog as the course nears.

interactions magazine comes alive

I am delighted to announce that the January+February 2008 issue of interactions magazine -- the first issue for which Jon Kolko and I are responsible as Editors-in-Chief -- has finally emerged from the printer and should be appearing in subscribers' mailboxes soon.

As subscribers will see, the magazine now has a very different look and feel, and content that reflects a new vision.

And interactions finally has a website, one via which people can access interactions articles (from the current issue as well as past issues), access content not available in the print magazine, and interact about the magazine's contents.

Advance press has been very positive. For example, Mark Vanderbeekun has written:

"Interactions Magazine seems to be heading into an exciting direction under its new editors-in-chief Richard Anderson and Jon Kolko. The new byline ('experience - people - technology') is already a mission statement in itself, especially since the magazine is published by ACM, which stands for 'Association for Computing Machinery'."

And in "Interactions Magazine Relaunched," he wrote:

"The content looks very exciting indeed and the editors-in-chief have done a great job at getting some of the best people in the field to contribute."

However, as Mark references, work remains to get ACM to make full articles accessible to more people online. (Note that the contents of this issue are in the process of being added to ACM's digital library and will become accessible via the interactions website in the next few days.)

Should you be interested in subscribing to the magazine, writing for it, advertising in it, learning about our vision for it, learning about the regular contributors to it, etc., you'll find information of relevance on the new website.

Preconceived notions

During his CONNECTING 07 World Design Congress plenary presentation, Richard Seymour (pictured at right) argued that the primary obstacle design and designers face is NOT ignorance regarding what design is and what designers do, but is instead "preconceived notions" regarding the same. As Richard put it, ignorance is easier to deal with; dealing with preconceived notions is very hard.

It was interesting to see how often some variation of this message was echoed throughout the conference.

Some examples...

Futurist Paul Saffo spoke of the great extent to which the future will be about "personal media," but he argued that even those in attendance at the conference couldn't really understand what he meant by that, because we all think we already know what it means.

Janine Benyus spoke of how carbon dioxide is viewed by most these days as a major problem in need of a solution, though in nature, carbon dioxide is often "a solution" (e.g., it is a building material for plants and for mollusks). As described by Janine, the world's focus is largely stuck on exploring and developing solution options that view carbon dioxide only as a problem, whereas biomimicry -- "the conscious emulation of nature's elegant, energy-sipping, non-toxic designs" -- offers very different, often superior options.

On the lighter side, Sir Ken Robinson polled the audience regarding the number of senses humans have. Most responded that humans have five senses, or five plus a spooky sixth sense. How many senses do humans actually have? According to Ken, scientists presently believe we have seventeen.

And Roger Martin, whom I referenced extensively in "'Designing in hostile territory'," explained how the common notion that risk needs to be minimized for a business to be successful is a hindrance to innovation and development of competitive advantage.

In my workshops and presentations, I often talk about how preconceived notions of the meaning of a lot of the terminology used by user experience personnel -- sometimes including the terms "user" and "user experience" -- can get in the way of the success of user experience personnel and the amount of influence they have in business. I've written a bit about this in past blog entries, including "Is 'user' the best word?" and "Words (and definitions) matter; however..."

I've often run into preconceived notions of multidisciplinary collaboration among user experience personnel. Reactions of "we already collaborate extensively" and "we've been doing that for years" have signalled that achieving change will be challenging.

I also often ask workshop or course participants what is "holding user experience back" where they work. The source of many of the answers? Constraining, preconceived notions of what "user experience" is and what user experience personnel do.

In our first issue of interactions magazine, Secil Watson, Senior VP Internet Channel Strategy at Wells Fargo, writes:

"Five years ago, when I told people I managed customer experience, they thought I ran a call center, as 'experience' was synonymous with servicing. ... When I told people I designed the website, they thought I was a graphic artist."

Secil and others have been doing a great job of changing those preconceived notions at Wells Fargo during the past five years, but many still encounter similar or related notions.

One of the tools used by Secil and her staff to change such notions was repeated presentations within the company about what her customer experience team does and why. Stephen Anderson has posted a delightful presentation of this nature, and such presentations are important.

But they only go so far.

John Seely Brown has explained part of why this is the case, in a presentation about "learning to unlearn."

"...a lot of us who are struggling in large corporations know first hand that the hardest task is to get the corporate mind to start to unlearn... It turns out that this learning to unlearn may be a lot trickier than a lot of us at first think."

John attributes this to the fact that so much of what we know is tacit knowledge, which is not as readily changed via such presentations.

In short, more is needed. And Secil and others have done much more at Wells Fargo, as she describes in her article.

What more is needed? Words attributed to Confucious and quoted by Bill Buxton in his 2007 book, "Sketching User Experiences: getting the design right and the right design," provide both a partial summary of this posting and a hint at the answer to that question:

"Tell me, and I will forget. Show me, and I may remember. Involve me, and I will understand."

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Look for an article from Richard Seymour in our third issue of interactions magazine -- the May+June 2008 issue.

"Designing in hostile territory"

In this blog, I've repeatedly referenced the frustrations user experience personnel often experience in their workplaces (see, for example, "Borrowing from the field of child development").

The title of a BusinessWeek article by Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, nicely describes what this can feel like: "Designing in Hostile Territory."

In that article and in other articles, Roger does a great job of explaining why business is so hostile to design, and why that needs to change.

Roger spoke about aspects of this at the recent CONNECTING 07 World Design Congress in San Francisco. Jon Kolko and I refer to some of what he said at that conference in "interactions cafe," an article to appear next month that presents some of our thoughts about the relationship between that conference (which we both attended) and contents of our first issue of interactions magazine. Here I extend that reflection, with a focus on Roger and his articles, on just one of the authors of content to appear in the January+February 2008 issue of interactions, and on a reference to some important related work.

As reflected in the nearby blurry image of a slide from Roger's plenary presentation, there is little overlap between the kind of thinking that comprises design -- involving "consideration of a wide array of relevant variables, most of which are qualitative, to produce meaningful, valid solutions" -- and the kind of thinking that is dominant in business -- involving "reducing the number of variables considered to mostly quantitative measures in order to achieve consistency and predictability." To analytical thinkers, the activities and language of design thinking "connote danger, uncertainty, and guesswork." Little surprise that user experience personnel experience frustration in their workplaces.

"Both (design thinking and analytical thinking) have their place, but as organizations grow, analytical thinking -- which focuses on exploitation and refinement of the current state of knowledge -- often crowds out design thinking -- which pushes knowledge forward and creates new possibilities. As a consequence, as businesses grow and tilt towards analytical thinking, they leave themselves exposed to competitors -- often smaller ones -- that use design thinking to outflank them."

Compare those words from Roger with what Secil Watson, Senior VP Internet Channel Strategy at Wells Fargo, says about customer experience in our first issue of interactions magazine:

"It is really hard for established companies and industry leaders to change their practices and business models to focus steadfastly on better customer experiences. They have so much invested in their current infrastructure that dramatic changes are very complex and time consuming in nature. But unless they change, this will create opportunities for new entrants that will develop their business models and infrastructure from scratch around a strategy that focuses on customer experience as an essential way to attain long-term customer value, as opposed to strategies that focus on marketing prowess, sales effectiveness, market share, distribution network, high switching costs, or cost efficiency."

As Roger Martin argues, it is essential to create a business environment in which design thinking can flourish. However, as he states in "At the Crossroads of Design and Business":

"...if Design Thinking is critical, maybe restricting it to designers and protecting them from business people is not actually the most productive avenue to pursue. Perhaps eliminating the need for protection by turning business people into Design Thinkers would be more effective.

To create a Design Thinking organization, a company must create a corporate environment in which it is the job of all managers to understand customer needs at a deep and sophisticated level and to understand what the firm's product means to the customer at not only a functional level, but also an emotional and psychological level. It must also create a culture in which line managers are not satisfied with merely serving customers, but insist on delighting them and making them feel the company is their partner, friend, and confidante."

And user experience personnel can play a critical role in creating this environment. Consider more words from Secil's interactions article on what it has taken to affect such change at Wells Fargo:

"We championed customer experience broadly. We knew that product managers, engineers, and servicing staff were equally important partners in the success of each of our customer-experience efforts. Instead of owning and controlling the goal of creating positive customer experience, we shared our vision and our methods across the group. This was a grassroots effort that took a long time. We didn’t do formal training across the group, nor did we mandate a new process. Instead, we created converts in every project we touched using our UCD methods. Having a flexible set of well-designed, easy-to-use UCD tools such as those mentioned (in this article) made the experience teams more credible and put us in the position of guiding the process of concept definition and design for our business partners."

Claudia Kotchka, VP of Design Innovation & Strategy, has been responsible for achieving change of this nature at P&G. During a presentation at Stanford University this past spring, she described the P&G journey to achieve such change as progressing through three phases. Phase 1, "Discipline of Design," was a phase during which design was focused largely on aesthetics as other disciplines tried to figure out what to do with designers that were added to the organization. Phase 2, "Practice of Design," was a phase during which designers realized they couldn't achieve success effectively alone and needed to collaborate with people in other disciplines; among steps taken to help achieve this collaboration: a "mentoring up program" to enable managers to "see what designers see," and an effort to teach designers the language of business. Phase 3, "Design Strategy," moved on to infusing design innovation into business strategy via, in part, teaching design thinking to business leaders.

Neither Claudia nor Secil would claim that their work is done. But both have made great strides in changing the cultures of their workplaces.

Which phase is your company in? What kind of thinking dominates where you work? What roles are your user experience personnel playing? Are they still just "designing in hostile territory"?

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Take the time to read some of Roger Martin's many terrific articles. Others I recommend include, "Reliability vs. Validity," "Scientific Management is Past it's Peak," and "Why Decisions Need Design."

In several past blog entries of mine, you can read more from Secil Watson and about the work she has been spearheading at Wells Fargo. See, for example, "Breaking silos," "Moving UX into a position of corporate influence: Whose advice really works?", and "Developing user-centered tools for strategic business planning."

"interactions cafe" will appear at the end of each issue of interactions magazine beginning with the January+February 2008 issue.

"Management is where the real problem is"

Earlier this month, Jeff Johnson appeared on the BayCHI program to speak about the updated version of his GUI Bloopers book.

As Jeff put it, he ran through examples of all but the last of his categories of bloopers very quickly, because the last category -- management bloopers -- "is where the real problem is, since so many bloopers continue to be made."

Here is Jeff's list of management bloopers:


As described by Jeff, development typically occurs with no UI design, no UI standards or guidelines, and no oversight.

Why is this still true?

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Note that a list of all of the bloopers and blooper categories is presented on the book's website.

Note also that Jeff said that when writing the first edition of the book (published March 2000), it was hard to find any bloopers in Apple products. However, "that is no longer the case."

Another short-notice workshop, this time in Chicago November 5

I'll be running another short notice workshop -- added late to the DUX 2007 pre-conference tutorial lineup -- this coming Monday, November 5 at the Intercontinental Hotel on North Michigan Avenue in Chicago.

Workshop title: "Changing the Role User Experience Plays in Your Business." This will be a modified version of the well-received September workshop entitled, "Moving User Experience into a Position of Greater Corporate Influence" offered in New York City.

If you or someone you know might like to attend this workshop but cannot attend DUX 2007, let me know; I'll see what I can do to get you or the "someone you know" in. If you plan to attend DUX 2007 and have not yet signed up for a tutorial, consider modifying your registration in order to join us.

Evaluations of past offerings of a related nature suggest you'll learn alot and will have a good time:

"I really enjoyed last weekend's workshop. You're a gifted teacher and I think I learned as much from your way of relating to us and the material as I did from the material itself. Your manner and approach really inspired me." -- Participant in September's "Moving User Experience into a Position of Greater Corporate Influence" workshop

"Richard is an excellent instructor and employs an effective Socratic teaching style." -- Jaime Guerrero, student of "Managing User Experience Groups" (additional evaluations of that course)

"There is no more skilled panel moderator than Richard Anderson, so I was eager to attend this interactive session. I was not disappointed." -- Pabini Gabriel-Petit, UXmatters on the "Moving UX into a Position of Corporate Influence: Whose Advice Really Works?" session at CHI 2007

"the best managed workshop I've seen...; brilliant process in the workshop (Richard) organized" -- Jonathan Grudin, Microsoft Research

"Richard Anderson teaches a remarkable user-centered design course which alighted me on the path I am today." -- Peter Merholz, Adaptive Path

"The sign of an excellent teacher, I feel, is the ability to make even the most stubborn among us (me) question our assumptions. Richard is just such a teacher, and I feel privileged to have taken his class." -- Student of "User-Centered Design / Usability Engineering" (additional evaluations of that course)

Convincing executives and other management personnel of the value of ethnography

Need some help understanding the value of ethnographic research methods or convincing others of that value?

If you do, you are not alone. According to Bain & Company's Management Tools & Trends 2007 survey of 1221 international executives, "consumer ethnography" is one of the least-valued of 25 of the most popular management tools and techniques. Ratings of use and satisfaction were both among the lowest. (Not that ethnography is or should be viewed as only a "management" tool, but if it is to have the greatest possible impact in a business...)

In a discussion about this in the anthrodesign yahoogroup, Martha Cotton stated:

"while ethnography has moved from a niche approach to slightly more mainstream..., (executives) still don't really know what they're buying or why they should value ethnography as an approach."

And what to do about this apparently received considerable attention at last week's Ethnography Praxis in Industry conference (EPIC 2007), as revealed in a blog posting by Jeffrey Bardzell:

"A... major issue is one of legitimation. How can ethnographers convince managers and marketing leaders to take them seriously? How do they justify their work both intellectually (methods, data, etc.) and also from a business perspective (actually leads to better business processes or products)?"

Having good stories to share about ethnographic research findings with significant business implications, or about the important role ethnographic research has played in other businesses can help. I've referenced several such stories in past blog entries (see "Conducting 'ethnographic' research" for a partial list). And Jon Kolko and I will be including a couple of excellent stories, one by Stefana Broadbent and Valerie Bauwens of Swisscom Innovations, in the January+February 2008 issue of interactions magazine.

David Gilmore offered additional advice in his excellent May+June 2002 article, "Understanding and Overcoming Resistance to Ethnographic Research." As David argues, the most persuasive technique might be to give those who resist conducting ethnographic research the experience of an ethnographic approach.

Both techniques have been part of the strategy I have followed for many years, and I encourage you to consider including both in your strategy. But there is more that can be done, and I'll try to address those things (further) in future blog entries.

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Note that ethnographic research receives the attention of several contributions to our January+February 2008 issue of interactions magazine. One of them -- from Don Norman -- urges caution:

"Many of our clever ethnographic and field methods are designed to find unmet needs. You know what? Most are far better off if they stay unmet."

(A tip of the hat to Mark Vanderbeeken for pointing me to the blog entry about EPIC 2007 via his terrific blog, "Putting People First.")

Work space

I love to visit artist's work spaces, and the San Francisco Bay Area provides several opportunities throughout the year to do just that -- when multiple artists open their studios to the public for a weekend.

I particularly look forward to San Francisco's Mission Open Studios, which largely features artists in old industrial buildings that have been converted into multiple floors of spacious artist studios, most with lots of wall space and configurable as needed for different activities, both solo and involving several people.

Two years ago, I wrote about the value of ample wall space and of open, reconfigurable work spaces in a blog posting about the impact of "walls" on working "in the world of user experience." Some of that value is captured very nicely in a 1998 quote I included in that blog posting -- words from Judy Olson and collegues:

"Collocation of cognitive artifacts and team members offers the broadest bandwidth for cooperative work. Team members developed shared documents together, making the work tangible. Artifacts helped coordination and motivation as well. The key feature was that they were persistent, allowing easy access (by a glance, not a file retrieval) and large enough to allow cross connections to be perceived. The presence of one's co-workers helped with coordination, implicit learning, easy transitions from one phase of work to another, and social facilitation."

Bill Buxton says much the same in his terrific 2007 book, "Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design," and cautions:

"simply plunking a bunch of corkboards or foamboards around your work space does not magically turn it into a design studio. These are artifacts with certain affordances, but their effective use requires as much attention to the cultivation of the culture of the studio as to the detailing of the architectural space."

Such cultures and work spaces are far from the norm in companies where user experience needs to play a much larger role, but they are appearing here and there as special areas designated for special "innovation" activities. Kaiser Permanente's impressive Sidney R. Garfield Health Care Innovation Center, occupying a huge warehouse, is one example; P&G's Clay Street Project, occupying "a brick-walled loft in a gritty Cincinatti neighborhood," is another.

Recently, I visited Adobe in San Jose California for a tour of a work space of a similar nature, except that it is used ongoing (i.e., not just for special projects) by user experience personnel (and those that join them to collaborate) and wasn't constructed apart in some funky location. Until this past spring, the work area looked like that in the photo at left of a hallway lined by small offices with doors, still the norm in the building. But now, a large part of one floor is as depicted in the composite photo -- an open, multi-use work space, with whiteboards and "foamboards" on long spacious walls, on walls on wheels, and even on horizontal work surfaces.

At Stanford University this past spring, Claudia Kotchka, VP of Design Innovation & Strategy at P&G (where they have the Clay Street Project) , spoke of attempts at convincing her company to replace existing seas of cubicles with such work spaces, but has found that the mindset regarding appropriate, corporate office space is not easy to change.

Years ago, Karen Holtzblatt argued, "If you want your team to be creative, give them a room." But a conventional conference room, even when used as thoroughly as the one shown in the image from Karen, is often not enough.

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My thanks to Julie Baher, Experience Design Manager, for the tour of the Adobe work space. Thanks also to Claudia Brenner, Implementation Manager, for a tour of the Garfield Innovation Center.

Who should you hire?

Recently, I've been reading resumés and interviewing potential candidates to help a client make some hiring decisions.

I've always enjoyed the process of interviewing and considering candidates, and of ultimately hiring people as I've done in past management roles. And in most of my experiences, the process has gone very smoothly. However, there have been a couple of interesting exceptions.

One of those exceptions was when most of the members of a particular user experience functional group were not necessarily convinced a particular candidate was right for the group. Additionally, the director of the group, to whom I reported as a consulting manager, was thoroughly convinced this candidate was not a good fit. Well, guess what? I thought this candidate was essential for the group.

The director and group members were concerned that the candidate did not have enough experience with and, hence, would be less competent at doing the kind of work that the group members were doing most of the time. I was confident the candidate could do that kind of work adequately, but I was most excited that the candidate was better prepared to do the kind of work that others in the group needed to be doing more so that the group would become more effective -- more impactful in the business.

It took some time, and, because of that, the candidate had made arrangements to enter another job in the company for which he already worked, but I convinced the director and the group of the benefits of hiring this candidate, and hire him I did.

Adding this person to the group was an important part of a process of changing the nature of some of the work the group did. And by example and other means, this person's subsequent work in the group did exactly that, and, indeed, enabled the group to become more impactful in the business.

What all to look for in potential hires has been the subject of many discussions and debates. One which occurred late last month on the IxDA discussion list focused mostly on the importance (or lack thereof) of a candidate's field of study in school and of the candidate's portfolio. Around the edges of this debate was advocation of the importance of a candidate's personality, particularly of whether it is the right personality to work with the team the candidate would be joining.

IDEO has long advocated the importance of working in teams in which people can "check their disciplines at the door" when beneficial, and to facilitate that, they have advocated hiring "T-shaped people":

"Regardless of whether your goal is to innovate around a product, service, or business opportunity, you get good insights by having an observant and empathetic view of the world. You can't just stand in your own shoes; you've got to be able to stand in the shoes of others. Empathy allows you to have original insights about the world. It also enables you to build better teams.

We look for people who are so inquisitive about the world that they're willing to try to do what you do. We call them 'T-shaped people.' They have a principal skill that describes the vertical leg of the T -- they're mechanical engineers or industrial designers. But they are so empathetic that they can branch out into other skills, such as anthropology, and do them as well. They are able to explore insights from many different perspectives and recognize patterns of behavior that point to a universal human need. That's what you're after at this point -- patterns that yield ideas."

However, last month, Peter Merholz challenged that recommendation to some extent:

"…you don’t necessarily want a team of all T-shaped people. The reality of the world is that you have T- and I- and bar-shaped people, and I suspect that the strongest teams are comprised of all three that work in concert. Me, I’m a bar-shaped person. I’m all about the connections between disciplines, and being able to articulate the power of that integration. Obviously, T-shaped people are important, too, people who can bridge that synthesis and go deep. But perhaps most important is that we no longer marginalize I-shaped people. It’s easy to dismiss I-shaped folks, people who simply want to focus on, geek out to, their particular passion. But these people can be amazing on teams, because once you give them a bit of a direction, they can do amazing work."

Other people have suggested that you should look for yet other "shapes" of people, including "pi," "sun," and "kidney" (see comment #9). However, others have argued the advisability of looking beyond any of these types of classifications of people.

Here is a random collection of recommendations from some of the many user experience managers, directors, and executives with whom I've discussed the topic of who to hire:

“be opportunistic; make adjustments to what you are looking for based on the skills, background, interests, etc. of those who apply”

“hire for motivational and thinking skills, rather than for whether they have done the same thing before”

“hire ‘commercial’ designers, not artists”

“a good ‘aesthetic’ is not enough; creative thinking needs to be married with analytical thinking”

“needed are collaborative people -- people who are participatory, flexible, facilitative, consultative (i.e., can ask the right questions, create a dialogue, reflect back, etc.)”

“consider where you want to take your group, and hire people who will be able to do what you want them to do at that later point”

I remember smiling to myself when hearing that final piece of advice, in part because that was pretty much the argument I was making in support of hiring the candidate I referenced in the story I told at the beginning of this blog posting. What made me smile most, however, was the fact that this piece of advice came from the director I referenced in that story -- the one who almost nixed the hire I believed was essential to moving the group forward and making it more impactful. (The advice was being given a couple years later.)

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My thanks to Mary Quandt for bringing the concept of "pi-shaped people" to my attention.