.cross.wired.mind.

Yesterday it was PW, today there is an awesome story by Brian Howard in the CITYPAPER!

This Saturday I will be publicly launching my new toy company - Philly style. From 6-10pm at Rarebreed (15th and South) we will be celebrating the work of Carl Jones and the toys he designed for Dreamland Toyworks.

Come on down and join us or catch the show before it closes in May.

There will be original art by Carl. Canvases by local street artists Bob Will Reign, El Toro, and Nose G. There are also canvases tagged by local graff artists. There will also be a paper box (legally obtained mind you) stickered up by some of Philly’s best sticker artists.

Oh, and we got some coverage in Philadelphia Weekly.

Today a coworker of mine asked me to put aside my years of experience in UX design, and everything I have learned from years of conferences, reading and research and look at a design problem logically.  Sounds odd doesn’t it.  Set aside everything I know so I can become one with some Vulcanesque ideal of pure engineering logic.

That is when it hit me.  If design were about pure logic then mathematicians would make the perfect designers.  Engineers could do it all.  Why have these pesky user experience designers when the answer is so clear and logical.  That got me to thinking of the internal debate we have had in the IA community - is IA a science, art, or craft.

The one thing I have learned from 11 years of experience web craft is that the folks that use the systems we design often act in ways we did not expect or predict.  That is what makes user experience design such a challenge - we deal with people and all of their idiosyncratic behaviors.  In other words - the first victim of the user experience design process is logic.

However, user experience design is not purely an art.  Intuition, emotion, and perception are all key components to user experience design but they do not operate unbridled.  User experience design also requires a bit of cognitive science, a dash of ethnographic methodology, and a solid dose of objective experimentation.

I believe our main tool of trade is intuitive design coupled with validation testing.  User experience design requires us to use both lobes, or to work with people that can compliment our own left or right lobe bias.  Over time we begin to build a strong sense of what will and will not work.  But we must always test our work.  Our intuition must be a measured intuition because, ultimately, the designs we create will be used by the least logical of operators - the human being.

Women who knit sweaters for men often find a less than enthusiastic recipient once they complete their work. (note - men knit too but this usually happens when women knit for men) For the knitter the work was a time consuming challenge. It took skill. It took time. It took many hours of hard work. Why is it that the men who get these sweaters simply do not appreciate what was done for them?

Because knitting is so time consuming the creation of the knitted object must hold the knitters interest. The yarn must feel good on the fingers. The stitches cannot be too repetitive or too simple. The color must not be a bland monotone lest the knitter become bored like a long distance driver watching the white lines of the road wiz by in endless procession.

The trouble is that most men want plain sweaters. One need look no farther than a local men’s shop to see the kinds of fashions that men like to wear. When men see sweater that is a many colored, intricately cabled, mash up of styles they see a sweater that they do not want to wear. Yes it was fun for the knitter to make but it is not what the guy want to wear in public.

The knitter is trapped in a cruel paradox - in order to make a sweater that a man will wear, she will need to use monotone yarn that might be thicker than she wants to use. She may have to use a simple pattern with row after row of uniform stitches. Producing it will be dull and will lack real challenge. Her choice is to enjoy knitting or make a sweater that a man will wear.

So what does this have to do with digital design? User experience designers want interesting projects. They get bored building plain old digital information systems. Information architects constantly look for new ways to build intricate structures, complex organizational systems, and sites with perfect browsing systems. Interaction designers want to build sites with sophisticated interfaces that solve challenging problems. Information designers want everything to be visually interesting and designed with a deeply artistic aesthetic.

We do this because the alternative is often dull and it isn’t always challenging. We want the work we do to be personally gratifying. We want to feel as if we have accomplished something great. Above all else we do not want to get bored. Creativity needs to be expressed. We must stay challenged. We must push the edges of the envelope. We strive for exquisite sophistication that takes complexity and makes it useable for the masses. We all want to build a better, cooler mousetrap.

That is not what the user wants. The user wants a tool that makes sense to them. The do not want to think about how it works - they just want it to work.

User centered design is not just about making products that people can use. People can use products that don’t work very well. User centered design is about making products for the people that will use them and not to make products that can be used but were primarily designed so that we could have a fun time designing them.