In a highly entertaining post on his blog, Bruce Sterling has at a passage from my conversation with GK Van Patter. It’s a remarkably bit of linguistic and conceptual insight; Bruce is like a cat with a toy, bouncing it between his paws, picking it apart, not out of malice, but because that’s what he does.

I should demur on the phrase “That Measure Map thing of his is amazing,” as it was largely the work of others at Adaptive Path.

So, an article on The Street.com worrying about Apple’s relative lack of R&D investment, spurred commentary by 37 Signals and Victor that, hey, maybe that’s okay, which echoes something I wrote over two years ago, which is how interaction design innovation for the Mac (both from Apple and other software vendors) occurs not from R&D-fed entities, but mostly through small teams.

A few takeaways from the 2006 South by Southwest Interactive conference (other than my head cold):

It’s not about the content

The last time I attended SxSW was in 2002, and I stopped going for a while because I was so upset at how poor the content had gotten. This year, I didn’t let it get to me. So while the content was mostly unengaging, I didn’t care, because the socializing was tops. And any excuse to visit Austin is welcome.

That said, there was some decent content

Adam Greenfield’s Everyware talk (book in stores now!), Prof. Gilbert’s “Make the Right Decision” talk, Jeff’s panel on designing for next generation web applications, and bruces‘ rant-like coda were worth sitting through.

Let’s Put On A Web App!

The prevailing themes for the conference seemed to be a) the ease of creating web products and b) starting businesses to sustain them. It’s interesting to see the independent spirit that, in 1999, was largely around more artistic expression and creativity online has shifted focus towards sustainable pursuits.

Apart from Jeff’s Talk, Design was Served Poorly

I went to two other panels on “design,” and was dismayed. The first, on “Traditional Design and New Technology” was a surreal bitchfest where traditional designers moaned that the web didn’t have the emotional resonance of a Penguin paperback cover. Particularly distressing were Mark Boulton’s reactionary diatribes suggesting that the Web doesn’t have the emotional resonance of a car. (And look at that link to his personal site! He can’t get 6 words in without the phrase “award-winning”! What is it with designers and these meaningless meaningless awards?)

Also, the “Dogma-Free Design” panel should have been renamed “Content-Free Panel.” After an initial poke at design dogma (Flash 99% bad, web apps need ethnography, other stuff I forget), the panel went on a meandering journey that lead nowhere. It was clear they had no criterion for the success of their panel, and so it just became on unfocused discussion around what whomever was speaking thought of design.

DJ Mel ROCKS THE HOUSE

I lead a muthafuckin’ conga line while DJ Mel spun on Sunday night. He definitely got the nerds onto the dance floor, and we had a great time.

Styn on The People’s Video

Halcyon interviews me, and a bunch of other folks at the conference (including luminaries such as danah and Craig) on the subject of video in the hands of the masses. If you wonder what I sound like with a hoarse voice and a head cold, download it. (18 MB)

My favorite photo of me

Seems appropriately confrontational. Thanks Brian!

It was also great…

To get quality time with Tom Coates, Eric Rodenbeck, Heather Hesketh, and many others I don’t see enough of. And there’s little as amusing as Micki with laryngitis. It’s not quite oxymoronic or ironic… just… funny.

And in Austin…

Blackmail, Toy Joy, Spider House: Still got it.
Jo’s — getting a bit too popular for its own good.
Home Slice Pizza: Dear god was that good.
Las Manitas: has the quality gone down? I wasn’t blown away.
Amy’s Mexican Vanilla: there’s no way you can go wrong.

Technorati Tags: sxsw

I sat next to Bruce during a session at SxSW. He was typing like a demon, but when he wanted to move what he’d written between apps, he selected “Copy” from the drop-down menu, and then “Paste” from the drop-down menu in the other program.

In an IM chat to a colleague, I almost typed it as “sanctum santorum.”

Which strikes me as deeply oxymoronic.

So, here’s what’s been rattling around my head for a while.

If I identify with any one specific field, it is information architecture. The IA Summit continues to be my favorite conference, the IA mailing lists continue to be my favorite discussion places, and conversations with other IAs continue to be my favorite mental gymnastics.

My passion for information architecture has lead to my seat on the board of the IA Institute, my organizing of events like the workshop with MAYA last December, a forthcoming Big Event in October (details to come), mentoring up-and-coming IAs, and the closing plenary at the IA Summit this year.

One of my current points of “voice advocacy” (as GK put it) is the application of information architecture practices and principles to domains other than the Web. Complex information environments are all around us, and all can benefit from thoughtful information architecture.

Another point of current passion is service design. The more deep research I do, the more it becomes clearer that to best serve users, you have to look beyond specific artifacts or domains, and to all the interactions (“touchpoints”) people have in an experience. I’m sitting on BART train as I write this, and believe me, BART could stand to have some explicit service design — the signage, the vending machines, the turnstiles, the web site, etc. etc.

Something that strikes me as missing from the bulk of service design dialogue is an appreciation of information architecture. Service design seems to borrow a lot of tools from interaction design (heuristics, personas and scenarios, prototypes), but little from information architecture.

This is why the MAYA case study was so exciting to me — being set in a library, it was painfully evident that information architecture needed to be applied to that physical space and those experiences. I would argue, though, that, say, BART could also benefit — from things as basic as controlled vocabularies of terms to items as complex as better serving tourists encountering the system for the first time.

The other thing that frustrates me about the current discussion in service design is that it favors a strong, top-down, architectural approach. “We are going to study a whole service, and then we are going to design explicit solutions to satisfy that whole experience.” Anyone who’s ever designed anything complex knows that there are inevitable breakpoints — that you can’t design failure out of a complex system.

But what you can do is leverage principles from another emerging field — Web 2.0. (Now, I know it might seem counterintuitive to talk about Web 2.0 in a non-Web context, and this is why I’ve always hated that term. But we’re stuck with it for now.) Look at the defining attributes that Brandon identified: user contributed value; long tail; network effect; decentralization; co-creation; remixability; emergent systems.

I think there are real opportunities for service design to embrace these bottom-up approaches. I encourage designers to fight their desire to *control* the experience and instead find opportunities for the actions of the users of the service to contribute value — to figure out what the “architecture of participation” means in the service world. This could definitely include the use of the web to augment an experience service. But I’m sure creative folks can identify solely “real world” activities (one that comes to mind, with the approach of the IA Summit, are Birds of a Feather sessions planned on-site.)

Retail strikes me as a huge opportunity here. At bookstores, for example, Instead of store-planned book discussions, author readings, and the like, to give tools to the people that pass through the space to create their own events. Sure, it will feel a bit chaotic, but man, would you have remarkable customer loyalty.

And then, an open question for me: how do you apply bottom-up approaches to mass transit systems like BART?

Robert Scoble got some blogosphere buzz over his post on “the role of anti-marketing design.” He makes some excellent points about the ‘authenticity’ of ugliness. It resonates with commentary that my business partner Jesse James Garrett makes in his discussion of MySpace:

If the default presentation and the common areas of MySpace had cleaner, more professional designs, users might hesitate to customize their spaces, feeling intimidated by having their amateur design work side-by-side with the professional-looking defaults. Instead, the unpolished style invites users to try things out, telling them they don’t have to be professional designers to participate.

I think Scoble makes a mistake, though, calling out that we’re “sick of committee-driven marketing.” I don’t think we’re sick of it; we just know when it’s appropriate and when it’s not.

When we seek ideas for music to listen to, we don’t worry about too much about site appearance — the person’s voice and authenticity suffices.

But if I’m looking for medical advice, I’m wary of site’s that look like they were designed by a 10 year old. And I know this because there’s been a study. BJ Fogg, Sliced Bread Design, and Consumer Reports assessed the credibility of financial and health care web sites for expert and non-experts. What they found is, in retrospect, not all that surprising. Visual design cues are an important indicator of credibility for non-experts. Whereas for experts, it’s simply about the content.

This makes sense. A non-expert cannot judge the credibility of the content, so he relies on other elements that help him estimate a source’s credibility. It’s no different than the professional wearing the $2,000 suit.

Now, you don’t want folks in $2,000 suits serving your coffee at your favorite coffeehouse, or suggesting movies at the video store. You want the person who “looks like you.” The same thing goes with websites.

Websites that rely on content created by others (such as MySpace and eBay) have realized the benefits on “ugly” design — it’s more approachable for dealing with people on a one-on-one basis.

But if I’m buying enterprise software, if I’m about to throw down $500,000, you better believe that I’m looking for “committee-driven marketing,” and I’ll be happy when I see it.

Umair asks, “Why is the Valley Afraid of MySpace?”

And the answer is simple: because “the Valley” doesn’t understand people. They barely understand products. They understand engineering and technology.

It’s actually very much related to another post of Umair’s, where he writes,

the very definition of the term innovation is shifting to a class of players who are clearly much hungrier – like Ideo, Cheskin, Doblin, etc – and are busy redefining innovation on their own terms, as a design-driven discipline?

I would argue that those firms aren’t as “design-driven” as they are “research-driven”, and that the reason that such firms are embodying current concepts of innovation is because they endeavor to…. understand people.

In this service design world, it’s not about the products, the artifacts, the things that are made. Understanding engineering and technology does not put you ahead of the game.

In this world, it’s about grappling with the remarkable complexity and messiness of interactions, relationships, and flow between people, as mediated by these tools.

This is *exactly* what Lane is trying to get at in his new line of business at Adaptive Path. An attempt to help “the Valley” appreciate that the most important thing a business has is not its technology, but is customers, and understanding those customers is paramount.

And if they don’t, then, also in the words of Umair, they’ll get Ninged or Flocked.

Technorati Tags: bubblegeneration, umairhaque, research, saturdaynightlive, siliconvalley

NextD, the journal for “ReRethinking Design,” just posted a conversation between me and one of its principals, GK Van Patter.

Starting off fairly tame, it becomes a no-holds-barred discourse on design, designers, design thinking, anthropology, voice advocacy, and, of course, turkey dinners.

I don’t mean to discourage you, but it’s long. The conversation came out to 30 pages of documents in Word. Around 15,000 words.

I also savored every minute of the discussion. I admire GK for his willingness to confront — being an active participant (as opposed to a softball-lobbing interviewer) leads to a much more engaging, if at times uncomfortable, discussion.

And it really helped me think deeply and thoroughly about how I approach issues of design, and designers.

It definitely won’t win me any new friends. But I hope it serves GK’s desired purpose to contribute to the activities of sense-making that design practitioners must engage in during this liminal moment.

Following are some key passages from me to give a flavor of what’s being discussed:

I have no interest in learning something “properly.” Doing so suggests aligning your epistemology, your worldview, with a particular frame of thought. I feared that doing so would close me off to other perspectives. I work best when drawing from a variety of intellectual sources.

+++++++++++++++

Now, to actually answer your last question, let me recant what I wrote earlier and say, yes, I do think we’re in the design business. In many fundamental ways we don’t behave like any other company in the design business, but at the end of the day, we seek to design solutions to address our clients’ challenges, or to teach others methods for solving those challenges themselves.

+++++++++++++++

It’s worth noting that not one of the founders of Adaptive Path had formal training in design. Our backgrounds range from history to journalism to anthropology to film. But before starting the company we had all engaged in design practices at a variety of companies. We had all realized that design was a tool for solving the problems we were facing, and we taught ourselves what we needed to know to succeed.

+++++++++++++++

…And this dovetails into what is probably the most important factor, which is the oh-my-god overwhelming complexity that our products and services must grapple with, whether the complexity is in the product itself, or in how it integrates with other aspects of a person’s life. And current design practice and education is simply not equipped to deal with this. Frankly, I’m not aware of any formal training that can handle this. We continue to navigate uncharted waters, and, really, that’s what I’ve been getting at all along. That’s what makes all this “possible,” as you said. What we’re (all) attempting to do is still so new, so nascent, that no one can claim any ownership of it.

+++++++++++++++

The democratization of anthropology can only be a good thing. I decided not to pursue anthropology seriously because anthropological practice, as I observed it in school, meant producing material for other anthropologists. There was little interest in engaging the public, or in engaging other disciplines. (Quick! Name a famous cultural anthropologist other than Margaret Mead.) I think the democratization of anthropology will have numerous benefits. It will breathe fresh air into what can be a staid and conservative discipline. It can provide those practicing anthropology a more practical outlet. It can introduce new methods into anthropological practice. It will engage more non-anthropologists with anthropological thought.

+++++++++++++++

There is a difference between engaging in a few methods from a field, and being a full-fledged member of that field. I conduct field research and a kind of rapid ethnography, but I am not an anthropologist. I try to appreciate the financial ramifications of the work I do, but I am not a business analyst. I conduct surveys, but I’m not a market researcher.

I do all of these things to support what I consider my work, which is design. And I am willing to call, market, and perform services as a designer.

+++++++++++++++

…Design is much more a body of practice than it is knowledge, and as such, it lacks the depth of a field like anthropology. I mean, compare the number of Ph.D. programs in design and anthropology. Unlike anthropology, design is not a research discipline. I also don’t think design is nuanced the way anthropology is. By nuanced, I mean that in anthropology there are many different shades and perspectives that revolve around a central core. The distinct sub-fields of cultural anthropology -medical anthropology, applied anthropology, visual anthropology, folklore – all draw from a core appreciation of “anthropology.” Whereas, I think our discussion has demonstrated there’s nothing nearly as coherent in the field of design. Interaction design, industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, environmental design, architecture, etc., etc. are not tied together by a recognized core. Instead, each is learned and practiced pretty much distinct from the others, and often are set in competition to one another.

+++++++++++++++

I, and my colleagues at Adaptive Path, are relentlessly focused on providing the best user experiences. We try not to be beholden to any particular approach, dogma, or school of thought. We pick and choose from a variety of approaches to solve problems. Often it means borrowing from our design toolkit, but other times it means utilizing “business thinking” – measurement and analysis obviously have their place. Or it might mean borrowing from “engineering thinking” – obsession with the material nature of the problem.

Each of these forms of thinking have characteristics which, depending on contexts, can be helpful or hindering. What I was trying to do in that post is show that the design approach is not an absolute good, and it shouldn’t be adopted unquestioningly.

+++++++++++++++

Designers have spent a long time focusing on the wrong thing, or, perhaps more fairly, on the inconsequential thing. My post on the Dark Side of Design Thinking, and my other criticisms of designers are to shine a light on the behaviors and expressions of designers that have lead to their marginalization.

You would be right in saying my empathy is not with designers. I think that’s a very limited expression of empathy. My empathy, my voice advocacy, is with all those who want to Do Right and are struggling against external forces. Whether it’s Do Right By Themselves or Do Right By Their Organization or Do Right By Their Customers/Clients/Users/Constituents.

I work as a designer and I engage with the design community because I see design as a powerful tool for Doing Right.

+++++++++++++++

Ever since I’ve worked closely with designers, I’ve witnessed their self-proclaimed victimization. In my experience, designers are victims not of the actions of others, but of themselves. They have let others come and define their roles for them, dutifully accepting requirements, iterating on whims, and then bitching about it over beers after work.

I argue that designers need to stand up and define their own work. Make their voices heard throughout the product development processes. Demonstrate that their contributions go deeper than form, to the core of the product (and business) itself. To be willing to be held accountable for their work – to accept the risk and reward given their non-designer colleagues, to be lauded for their successes and chastised for their failures. When that happens, we’ll see designers sitting in their rightful place alongside other leaders of business, society, academia, politics, appropriately influencing matters across a range of concerns.

Would you follow this man’s lead?

Being a Warrior fan is a remarkably trying experience. One thing that I don’t understand is why the fans and the media aren’t calling for Coach Montgomery to be fired. I just watched an ESPN bit on Byron Scott and the great work he’s done with a young Hornets team, a team that not only is raw, but physically displaced, a team likely to go to the playoffs this year.

And here we have the Warriors, also a young team, but with, frankly, an amazing roster of young talent, and they should at least be playoff contenders with that talent, but they often can’t pull it together for a win. And with a young team like that, they need a strong, guiding, driving, inspiration coach. And instead they have Milquetoast Montgomery who at every game appears nonplussed. And who, for reasons I don’t understand, is avoiding the media and fan glare (who are much quicker to, say, blame Baron Davis for his hotdogging, or Mike Dunleavy for his effort).

Fire that man. Get a real coach. Win some games.

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