Thinking about Theory (Warning: Interaction Design Nerdery Ahead)

In conversations and on mailing lists addressing the design of interactive media, I’ve found myself growing uneasy with just how little understanding most people practicing in the field have of how they are influenced by the various theories that undergird are standard practice. I think it can be problematic that so people are working in the context of these theories don’t understand how the theories’ assumptions are coloring their approaches.

What do I mean by theory? Theory is a robust conceptual framework that undergirds a practice. Standard thoughtful practice of design for interactive media is predicated on a cobbled-together set of theories, most of them coming out of the HCI community, which has been heavily influenced by cognitive psychology (think Don Norman’s Design of Everyday Things). So you have things like distributed cognition, perception, attention, etc. Cog psych tends to focus on the individual.

Another major influencer is Activity Theory, which I believe gained traction as researchers studied the workplace, and wanted to understand how technology influences groups of people, not just individuals. Since the dawn of the Web, there’s also been significant inroads by the Library and Information Science community (Information retrieval, metadata, etc.).

As experience design leads to people trying to understand more complex situations, we’re seeing folks embrace anthropological and sociological methods… which also have their various theoretical underpinnings, far too numerous to go into here.

I believe that my exposure to and understanding of various theories (not to say I’m an expert in them) has heightened my experience and practice in design for interactive media. But I also know I’m a knowledge wonk who gets off on such things. Still, I think people will perform better when understanding the theoretical constructs in which they operate, so they can appreciate self-imposed arbitrary limits that may not have realized. Pragmatists might take issue, saying that all that matters is practice and results. That might be true if we were designing simpler systems. I think theory gives us tools for making smart heuristic judgments that help manage the complexity inherent in our work.

Here we go again… already?

Last night’s The Daily Show featured an interview with eternal optimist Thomas Friedman. In it, Friedman argues that the way forward is through investment and innovation in the energy industry. He even promotes an “energy bubble,” saying that the infrastructure such a bubble would lay would make the pain of the bubble worth it. While it’s clear that the energy industry is the likely Next Big Thing, whenever I hear folks talk it up, I think about this article from Harper’s last February, “The Next Bubble: Priming The Markets For Tomorrow’s Big Crash,” the thesis of which is that the American economy has become reliant on bubbles, the most recent being technology in the late 90s and housing in the middle of this decade, with energy being the next wave in the next decade.

George Soros, in his recent piece, “The Crisis & What to Do About It”, talks of a “super-bubble” our economy has been in since the move toward deregulation in the early 80s (thanks to both Reagan and Thatcher), which, juxtaposed with the Harper’s piece, suggests why we seem to be in this sequential-bubble-economy. The question seems to be, while energy innovation and investment is valuable, can we do it in such a way to mitigate the inevitable bust?

The first in my memory

Barack’s election is a big deal. Something I had meant to post before tonight, but hadn’t gotten around to, was a realization I had about the 4 candidates for the two highest offices. For the first time in memory, all four candidates were folks who came from no privilege, no family assumptions as to the status they’d achieve. Each are self-made, and I felt that that simple fact was pretty substantial.

Parenthood – the biggest difference so far

Some folks ask me what’s been the biggest difference in my life now that I have a child. For a while, it was hard to say what was because of the child, as I was on leave from work for 6 weeks, and bought a house. Now that I’ve been back to work a couple weeks, and we’re settling into the new house, what I’m seeing as the emerging distinction is a new domesticity. When I leave the office, I’m pretty much done with work — I’ve done far less “work from home” this past two weeks than before. Instead, I’m focused on whatever needs to happen at home, even if it’s just calming Jules.

We’ll see how this goes.

The Paperless Office: I CALLED IT!

In 2002, I wrote a lengthy response to Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker piece on The Social Life of Paper. Gladwell was addressing a recent book at the time, The Myth of the Paperless Office, and coming to the conclusion, with them, that all this gee-whiz computer technology is not leading to a paperless office, and paper is great, and computers aren’t so great, and hey, you kids, get off my lawn.

Actually, he didn’t say, “hey, you kids, get off my lawn,” but I’ve just now added that because, at the time, I suspected that a significant factor for why we hadn’t seen a paperless office was generational. In my post, I discussed how Adaptive Path (a year old at the time) was highly electronic, particularly in its inner workings. We used paper for deliverables to clients, and contractual documents, and not much else. I finished my post with:

I think what needs to be studied are the differences in computer and paper use across generations. Because I think that the primacy of paper in knowledge work is not simply because of the technology’s affordances; I suspect that it’s largely because “it’s always been done that way.” For me, who begin typing on a word processor at age 12, and who has no trouble reading long stretches of text on a screen, I don’t find that paper necessarily supports my knowledge work any better than digital documents. And I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m not alone.

(Yes, I know it’s obnoxious quoting myself. But it saves you the time for going back to read it.)

Anyway, the most recent issue of The Economist discusses the “return of the paperless office,” and contains such copy as:

“It’s a generational thing,” says Greg Gibson, in charge of North American office paper at International Paper (IP), the world’s largest paper-maker. Older people still prefer a hard copy of most things, but younger workers are increasingly comfortable reading on screens and storing and retrieving information on computers or online. As a result, IP has closed five uncoated-freesheet mills in America in the past decade, and the industry is consolidating. …

As new generations of office workers leave university—where their class notes and syllabuses are online these days—they take their habits with them…

And, we get FURTHER proof that Gladwell, though a good storyteller, is terrible at trendspotting and theory-making.

One thing I’ve noticed at Adaptive Path is that, as we’ve grown, we’ve consumed more and more paper relative to our growth. This is because we started hiring more and more folks trained in design and fine arts, and physical materials are crucial for their work. If AP is any indicator, the future for paper is not in documentation, but in creativity. We sketch, draw, scribble, and design with paper all the time. We’ll go through reams of paper as we stream ideas from our fingertips. But we still rarely print deliverables or other documentation. Paper companies need to figure out how to cater to the creative use of paper in the workplace. I’d love to be a researcher in that study…

Because I don’t have enough to do

I knew, going into 2008, it was going to be a liminal year for me. And, boy howdy, has it proven true! This year, I:

  • had a book I co-wrote published
  • got married (twice!)
  • hired a CEO to steer the company I started
  • oversaw the largest event Adaptive Path ever delivered
  • had a child

    and, as of yesterday

  • bought a house (in North Oakland)

    Still to come this year is, I hope, the sale of my current house, market willing. (Know anyone who’d like a pleasant, cozy, 2BR home in South Berkeley? Let me know!)

    I’m looking forward to a much mellower 2009. (Again, market willing.)

    • Samsung has crappy design — so why is it always an exemplar?

    I’m reading Do You Matter? How Great Design Will Make People Love Your Company. In theme and topic, it’s *very* similar to Subject to Change, which mostly makes me grateful that we published first. We also don’t reference Apple *nearly* as much as this book does, though I guess it may be excusable, because one of its authors, Rob Brunner, worked there (though, he worked there when Jobs wasn’t there, so take that as you will).

    Anyway, I’m compelled to blog because when talking about “design driven” corporations, the book cites, among others, Samsung. Now, I know that Samsung has been lauded in the design process (though not for a few years) because of how they used design to elevate their brand from an east-Asian also-ran into the next Sony. BUT, from what I can tell, Samsung’s “design-driven”-ness is all sizzle and no steak. I’ve owned two Samsung products in the time since they supposedly got design religion, and one sucked (a mobile phone) and one is mediocre (my DVD player). Am I missing something here? Are there Samsung products that are truly useful, usable, and desirable? If so, please point me to them… OR STOP USING THEM AS AN EXAMPLE.

    16 Challenging Steps to Becoming an Experience-Driven Organization

    I am speaking at UI13 in a couple of weeks, and have been mulling on what I should talk about. I’ve decided on a talk tentatively titled “16 Challenging Steps to Becoming a Customer-Experience-Driven Organization.” The point being, it’s a slog, and you ought to be prepared for it. The 16 steps come from our work and research at Adaptive Path. Here they are.

    Assess your organization’s experience maturity.
    Understand people as people.
    Execute a quick win.
    Evangelize success.
    Get an executive sponsor.
    Move up the product planning food chain.
    Develop an experience strategy.
    Communicate that strategy with a clear and compelling vision.
    Connect your work to financial outcomes.
    Accept accountability.
    Thaw the frozen middle.
    Choose projects objectively.
    Engage in design as an activity.
    Think systems, not artifacts.
    Deliver the Long Wow.
    Do not become a department.