.cross.wired.mind.

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.

Every 5 or 10 years you walk out of a theater and realize that you have just seen a truly important film. The critics may hate it, the money may or may not roll in, but something about the film stands out and changes things.

Star Wars - Blade Runner - Saving Private Ryan - The Matrix - The Lord of the Rings

All of these films changed the genre from which it came. All films that came after looked back at them for inspiration. They became iconic. They shifted the cinematic landscape. After you have seen them you look back at other films like them and they somehow pale in comparison. Scifi before Star Wars just looked cheap. Blade Runner showed that scifi could have substance. Saving Private Ryan made all previous movies about World War II look like Boy Scout outings. The Matrix gave us a whole new way to visualize the world both cinematically and philosophically. The Lord of the Rings showed us that fantasy films did not have to be just mindless sword and sorcery romps with campy dialogue and rubber monsters.

300

Films based on the tales and myths of ancient history have a new gold standard. Narrated in the style of a Greek tragedy, the story telling in 300 feels larger than life. The characters are iconic without being two-dimensional. The story is refined to essentials. There was never a moment that seemed out of place or without purpose. The visuals were simply astounding. Tales of great heroism and ancient drama requires a sense gravity and grandeur without a hard and fast grip on reality. Gladiator tried to recreate history. 300 does not pretend to be an accurate simulation of the fine details of history. Who cares that the helmets were not quite right. Who cares that Spartans were sometimes heavily armored and sometimes fought with just cape, sandals, helmet, shield, and spear. Details are not as important as grand story telling and a real sense of the hero and the myth.

300 certainly has its detractors (more on that another time). It is not a flawless film, but it is the first film about the ancient world that cuts through the historical clutter and tells the heart of the story. It does not attempt to layer on 21st century sensibilities. It is told - unapologetically - from the Spartan perspective. Gross exaggeration - the hallmark of mythical story telling - is embraced rather than shunned. It is not the single most accurate portrayal of the Battle of Thermopylae but it does not stray far from the truth. And that is the power of a good tale - take the truth add some drama and a little exaggeration and you get one hell of an entertaining story.

Now add some of the most breathtaking visuals I have ever seen and that makes the kind of film that shakes it all up and changes the way films are made. Time will tell if I am right but one thing is for sure - 300 is the most beautiful film I have ever seen.

If you have not seen it yet then run out and get a ticket. This is an event that MUST be seen on the big screen (and in DLP if possible).

It does not matter who does it. It does not matter how much (or how little) skill they have as a designer. It does not matter if it was planned or not, tested or not, researched or not. Anyone can do it.

design happens

That is the problem with design - if you think it up and make it then you are a designer.

I have seen so many projects fail because unskilled designers tried to create. I am talking about web apps and other digital information systems created by the companies I have worked for over the past 10 years. I am talking about projects conceived by executives and then designed by them without any consultation with the folks inside their organization who have the skills to make their ideas reality.

Here is how a project typically runs - “the business” has an idea that will generate money, solve a problem, or meet a need (all just ways to make money really). The folks in “the business” look at what their competitors are doing, they think about what they would want, they talk to other “business people” and then they decide what they want to build.

They start a project to build their vision into reality. They want people to just do it. They do not want anyone to conduct the kind of research that would lead to a real understanding of how this product will be used. They do not want anyone to question their vision, even if that means refining it and honing it into an effective solution, product, design, etc. They do not want users to test the design to see if it can be used. They just want it done.

That is when projects fail.

So how do they succeed? Look at how the Palm Pilot came to be. Its creator, Jeff Hawkins used a block of wood that he carried with him for months to see how he would use mini computer. He actually tested his high tech vision with wood and some paper. He did the kind of research that takes a good idea and makes it a great idea.

Look at the iPod … Here is a device that is not the first digital music player on the market and yet it is now the dominant player out there. If the iPod designers had simply done what their competitors were doing would the final solution been as elegant and useable as the iPod we have today? No. Instead they tested, investigated, researched, and then designed the product for use.

For a product to truly succeed it must be intentionally designed to be used by real people. That type of design requires research, testing, and willingness to acknowledge that a good product is not always the one with the largest feature set. Why most product managers do not understand this simple truth is beyond my comprehension.

The iPod proved that rushing to market is not a justifiable motivator to cut corners on design. The success of the Palm Pilot shows that when you think about how people will actually use your product then people will actually use your product.

Design is more than ideas made real. Solid design happens when the designer stands to the side, turns down the ego, watches people do things, and then uses that as inspiration to create solutions that will work.

That is how design should happen. Not by the edict from an executive but from the needs of real people - observed, understood, and then used to make great things.

This March the toys will arrive here in the USA. I am so psyched! To celebrate I will be co-hosting a launch party down at Rarebreed in March. I will post details as they become available.

I took a walk from my office near City Hall in Philadelphia to the mall called the Gallery some half dozen blocks away. It was lunchtime and the crowded streets were filled with a mix of city dwellers, suburbanites, and tourists. There was a lawyer discussing the details of a case with a cop. Further down the street two women shouted at each other about stealing perfume as a trio of Philly’s finest stood by, not quite knowing what to do. A group of people wearing badges proclaiming them to be on jury duty lined up by cart to order lunch. An elderly woman wrestled with her bags as she left Kmart and stepped out onto Market ST looking to hail a cab.

Sounds normal, right? Added to this usual mix of holiday pedestrian traffic was a woman I have seen many times on my walks around center city. She is in her early 50s. Her clothes alternate between two outfits, both clearly worn form frequent use. Her graying hair looks clean but never well organized in spite of the three or four hairpins she uses. She always has a mobile phone in her hand though I have never seen her use it. In her other hand is a ragged scrap of cloth that she uses to wipe away her tears.

She cries constant streams of tears and sobs almost inaudibly.

She marches down the street with purpose. The first time I saw her I thought she might be looking for a lost child, but she is never that frantic - just determined, or is it more fatalistic than that? She never begs, nor does she ask for help. She just walks, cries, sobs, dabs at here eyes, and clutches her phone with white knuckles.

Every time I see her I say a short prayer for her safety.

…

Go anywhere in center city and you will find people wandering in a daze, clearly suffering from mental illness, and clearly not getting the kind of treatment they need.

How is it possible that we could let anyone suffer like this? How is it that we can spend so much of our time, energy, and resources fighting over abortion, creationism vs evolution, gay marriage, and all of the other issues raised by the right and the left.

It is like two parents fighting in front of their children. Is our society so self absorbed that we cannot see the people crying, literally crying, in the street? Has our collective will been bent too long on fighting each other that we have allowed ourselves to slip so far to the edge of catastrophic societal failure?

The right blames everything from video games, to Harry Potter, to not going to Church on Sunday. The left blames cold corporate entities in collusion with a corrupt government. Frankly, I don’t give a damn who is to blame. We can fix it.

Why do we keep electing politicians that want to lower our taxes, cut services, and fatten the coffers of the richest amongst us? Why do we think that non-profits and religious organization can make up for the ever-shrinking tax base? Why is it that “promote the general welfare” has been reduced to hoping for wealth to trickle down? Rich people are very good at building wealth, not at redistributing that wealth to the people that need it.

O CHILDREN OF DUST! Tell the rich of the midnight sighing of the poor, lest heedlessness lead them into the path of destruction, and deprive them of the Tree of Wealth. To give and to be generous are attributes of Mine; well is it with him that adorneth himself with My virtues. - The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh

…

Matthew 25:44-46 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

“He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

…

And let not those of you who possess grace and abundance swear against giving to the near of kin and the poor … - the Holy Quran

… the quotes could go on and on. If we are truly a Godly and spiritual society (not a Christin country - that is different) - If we adhere to the ideals enshrined in the very core documents this country is founded upon, then why have we ceased to promote the general welfare? Why do we allow fellow members of the human family to wander the streets in pain.

Have we grown so cold hearted that we cannot see the reality of our world? And upon seeing that reality can we not do something? Drop money in the pot next to the ringing bells of the Salvation Army; give to charities that can truly help. Become aware of what this world is truly like. Leave the comfort of your homes and visit the people who are helping. Go to a soup kitchen and serve. Go to a homeless shelter and serve. Leave the philosophical and ideological bubble that you have been trapped in and walk amongst the poor and see what their lives are like.

I am sorry if I sound like a preacher but I can’t help myself. Besides - how many preachers out there are leading the way to help the poor? How many are sheep and how many are goats?

We can be sheep without them. Just do something.

Now, where is that bell ringer? I have to make a deposit in honor of the crying woman cruising the sidewalks of center city.

… wait, that would be insulting the Neanderthals.

So I was cruising the tubes of the Interweb when I stumbled into a blog called GamePolitics that deals with the intersection of … well … games and politics. There is a gem of an post dealing with the darling of right wing jibber jabber, Bill O’Rilley, and his views on why PS3s and iPods are killing our culture.

Now I try very hard to remain non-partisan. In fact it is an article of faith to remain independent of the machinations of partisan politics. Fortunately this is not a partisan issue. Bill O’Reilly is a dumbass.

Why?

Just take a look at what he had to say about electronic gaming …

American society is changing for the worse because of the machines… In the past to flee the real world people usually chose drugs or alcohol… now you don’t have to do that, Now all you have to do is have enough money to buy a machine…

So you would prefer us to increase our drug use? He continues …

Basically what you have is a large portion of the population, mostly younger people under the age of 45, who don’t deal with reality - ever. So they don’t know what day it is; they don’t know temperature it is; they don’t know what their neighbor looks like. They don’t know anything… because they are constantly diverted by a machine. Now what this does is it takes a person away from reality because they’ve created their own reality…

Or maybe you and your ilk have done such a good job of scaring the shit out of us. According to you our neighbors are sex offending sodomites that have gone off their meds and are planning a home invasion in cooperation the “the jihadists” who seek to terrorize us into changing our way of life. Dude, you are doing their job for them. Here is an idea - knock it off, shut up, go buy a compound in the mountains and leave us all alone. BTW - it is through online gaming that I now have friends in Scotland, New Zealand, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Germany, and all over the US. Yeah, I avoid reality. Sheesh … He goes on from there …

The newest thing is the PlayStation 3. Now this is a machine that allows you to play games in hi-def and all this other stuff… It’s the newest state of the art system from Sony…. It has a video game console, plays DVDs, connects you to the Internet, tells you how handsome you are. It’s six-hundred bucks. Now people lined up for hours to get this thing. Hours!

Welcome to the world of free market capitalism. Or, would you prefer a central planning committee to engineer our lives so we don’t have to be exposed to the evils of Mario Carts, Final Fantasy, and Halo …

The problem with this stuff is that some people can deal with it constructively… but other people get addicted to it, just like opium, just like drugs and alcohol… So this is a big, big problem. It’s going to change every single thing in this country.

WTF? Dude, ever heard the word hyperbole because you seem to love it …

The have-nots are growing. Why are they growing? Because the skill set that is necessary to earn a decent living is being deemphasized in a fantasy world of football games and shooting zombies and all that…. Now you have the “knows” and the “know-nots”, because if you spend all your youth being prisoners of machines….. you’re not going to know anything…. You’re gonna fail.

So its not the failed education system, endemic systemic racism, a complete lack of low skilled employment that actually provides a family with enough to live on, or the lack of social services provided by the government to help those in need. No. Apparently the problem is Madden 07.

Now if that were not enough O’Reilly turns on the stupid …

I don’t own an iPod. I would never wear an iPod… If this is your primary focus in life - the machines… it’s going to have a staggeringly negative effect, all of this, for America… did you ever talk to these computer geeks? I mean, can you carry on a conversation with them? …

Yeah! The geeks I know tend to be smart, witty, politically conscious, humble, and quite good at intelligent conversation. But Billy boy thinks iPods are sucking our brains out through their ear buds. Oh, and ironically - he has a podcast.

But here is the icing on the bullshit cake …

I really fear for the United States because, believe me, the jihadists? They’re not playing the video games. They’re killing real people over there.

Yes folks, buy your kid a Glock or an Uzi and set him loose because we won’t be a great nation until we raise a generation of killers. How did we ever let “the jihadists” get ahead of us in the senseless violence department. Damn those kids with their 360s and iPods, damn those parents buying kids Nintendos and Nintendogs. Get those kids organized into little Christian Crusader Squads and show them “jihadists” how real Americans roll … on full auto.

Why do people like Bill O’Reilly have a platform from which they can spread ignorance to the masses? Why does civilized society allow extremists to have a nationally televised soapbox?

I love free speech, but does not mean that we should give the biggest microphones to idiots like this.