If you read this blog you probably know I work with digital UX design, a field (and market) that has been growing steadily in size and strength, even during this long economy downturn. The strange thing is that it has been a silent growth.

Everyone uses digital products and services (like everyone used to enjoy watching creative ads), our clients certainly see a huge value in our work, but somehow UX design hasn’t become famous as a professional choice.

There is a lot of demand for talented interaction and visual interface designers, it pays well, and it’s damn interesting and creative work. So why is it under the radar?
I think we need to do a better job of communicating all this goodness to the mainstream. I’m just building upon a larger debate about defining what we do and finding talent, which has been going on in Europe.

How would you explain and sell a career in UX design to those bright young things (before they waste their talent somewhere else)?

I’m not going into the prejudices which come to my mind when I think of regular tabloid readers. But the article made me think about what makes some formats so successful.

Entertainment hungry, low attention span, uninterested in deep reflection.  I’m not describing tabloid readers, I’m talking about most of us Internet users. The way people read paper tabloids have a lot in common with the way we consume information on the web. In fact, tabloids need to change very little from print to online versions. Compare the paper version of The Sun with their website or even their iPhone app, for instance.

User-experience professionals have known this for a long time. Fat headlines, bite size text, picture rich, attention grabbing editorial style has been the norm and let’s admit, a reference of best practice (we scan – we don’t read, etc.)

All in the name of usability – or we are all closet tabloid fans!

I do a lot of travel research on the web and on iwannagothere.com I find it particularly helpful that you can cross-reference the recommendations and the profile of the people writing them – you can see other places they have been to and liked.  This way you can check if they are genuine and find the best match for your interests and tastes.

They also have a growing team of local contributors willing to share their gems and help you to stay away from tourist traps.

I’ll be posting on Sao Paulo soon.

Technology moves through fashions too. Companies want to be modern and hate the idea of being left behind. Social media is seen as the new black in the corporate world. But actually, social media should really be seen as the new canary yellow -  great colour, but it doesn’t go with everything.

We have frequent discussions with clients from every sector who feel they must adopt social tools but fear losing control over the message. I think we shouldn’t be discussing social software in the first place, we should be talking about who they are, their corporate culture, their market and who they want to be in the future – realistically.

Forget about labels and focus on business objectives. How can social software and user participation contribute to those objectives? Which tools and features are justified? What are the risks? Are they manageable? How are we going to measure success?

This presentation from Bond Art + Science is focused on media, but it’s tactical insights can be applied to other types of organisations willing to adopt and adapt social conversation to their business goals. One size does not fit all.

• Matt Jones (founder of Dopplr.com)
• Scott Berkun (author of The Myths of Innovation).
• Todd Lefelt (Director of User Experience  at Huge)
• Microsoft (sponsor) with the Interactive Surface tabletop.
• The Cocktail (sponsor) introducing Iwannagothere.com, the travellers social network born in Spain.
• Complete list of speakers, sessions and registration at businesstobuttons.com

When and where: 11-12 of June in Malmö, Sweden

Short bios:
Garr Reynolds, Associate Professor of Management at Kansai Gaidai University in Japan, is the creator of the most popular website on presentation design and delivery on the net: presentationzen.com. He shares lessons and perspectives on making remarkable presentations that are simpler, visual, engaging, and effective. He is the former Manager of Worldwide User Group Relations at Apple Computer, and spent most of the ’90s at Sumitomo Electric Industries in Osaka.

Scott Berkun is the author of bestselling books “Making things happen” and “The Myths of Innovation”.  At Microsoft from 1994-2003 he oversaw projects such as Internet Explorer (v1-5 of), Windows and MSN. He has taught at the University of Washington, regularly contributes to Harvard Business Digital, and has featured as an innovation and management expert on MSNBC and on CNBC. He writes frequently on his popular blog:  scottberkun.com

Matt Jones is a founder and lead designer of Dopplr.com, a service for frequent travellers. His previous positions include Director of User-Experience Design at Nokia Design, and creative director for Sapient in London. In the late 90s, he was creative director for the launch of BBC News Online. He has spoken at events such as Reboot, Ars Electronica, O’Reilly’s Etech and FooCamp. He now blogs at www.magicalnihilism.com.

Todd Lefelt is the Director of User Experience  of Huge, where he oversees research and interaction design for projects including Audible.com, Nickelodeon and The Warner Music Group. Todd has over 10 years of experience leading the definition of scalable interactive media strategies and user friendly experiences.  www.hugeinc.com

Iwannagothere.com is a social network dedicated to travel, an off-shoot of The Cocktail. During the conference the people behind Iwannagothere will be showing how they have used the Effect Map methodology in the development of the service and will be launching their mobile  service, co-designed by The Cocktail and InUse.

About the conference

From Business to Buttons is the most important European conference on Design for Business. It’s third edition runs between 11-12 of June in Malmö, Sweden.
For whom: designers, business strategists and user experience professionals.
Organisers: InUse, Ergonomidesing, Malmö University – Sponsors: The Cocktail (Spain) and Microsoft.

- Yes, the Mac user interface is incredibly elegant and clever.

- Yes, it makes MS look stupid and life easier. Simple example: plugging a Mac to a projector and watching it adjust the resolution perfectly and automatically – versus embarrassing long minutes trying to set a PC up for a client presentation.

- It’s gorgeous, it’s clever, but it is not intuitive. Sorry, the Mac UI is NOT as intuitive as fans claim.  In my humble opinion the learning curve is steep, or steeper than I imagined.  To find my way around I  need to get used to a number of tricks, shortcuts and combinations of the two things.  I confess that I haven’t taken enough time to “study” these tricks – but should I need to just to do the basics?

- Whilst the Windows UI is clunky, you can find your (long) way around it without much help – my mum and mother-in-law can handle it although it amazes me HOW absurdly they handle it. But things  go well only until things go wrong. And boy, things do go wrong on a PC. Don’t even get me started.

- Software made for Mac is nearly perfect. But I’m not impressed with the “versions for Mac” of generic software. Who on earth thought that floating panels were a good idea?

Provisional verdict:
Despite a slightly bumpy start I have to say that the Macbook is such a nice piece of kit. The user interface is beautiful but not intuitive – requiring a considerable effort to get used to. But I can see myself already working more efficiently and perhaps in a month or two,  joining the hordes of annoying Mac fans.

P.S. (22/10/09) – Reporting back 5 months later: Happily using my Mac on basic mode. Surviving without ever learning non-essential tricks and shortcuts.

Check out the evolution of operating system user interface design from 1981 to 2009 by the Web Designer Depot.

Mac user interface as I remember it from 1991

Behavioural sciences have shown that customers have a short memory span and we should bear this in mind as we design and manage services. It’s not as evil and deceiving as it sounds – it is more about leaving the best to end. Some of the findings that are relevant to user-experience include:

• We prefer progressive improvements. We can tolerate weak starts and decent middles if what follows is a good end (the concept of Beta services). But we are cruel and judgemental when services start well and disappoint in the end.
• We prefer to resolve  unpleasant things early, getting them out of the way and taking our time with lighter/ fun things. Kind of obvious but it gives us the clear hint that if we need to ask the user to make an effort (e.g. registration) or to inform them of a limitation (e.g. availability, delivery policies)  it should be done sooner than later.
• A positive end is the part of the experience that we remember the most.

This is a great endorsement to UX designers and clients who understand that they need to dedicate as much attention to homepages as to lower level/exit pages – knowing that any page can be an entry point and that they have little control over the user’s exit points.

Using some basic Behavioural Sciences concepts to improve business is no evil plot to control the customer’s mind. It’s about sustaining the quality along the whole user-experience and surprising the user positively at the end – whenever that is.

Read more:
Want to Perfect your Company’s Service? Use Behavioral Science
Richard Chase for Harvard Business Review

User experience (or customer experience) has gained so much weight in the corporate world, perhaps because it got to mean company experience. Even if an organisation does not sell anything directly on the web, it’s online presence alone has the power to add stars to its brand perception (to customers, partners, investors…) or to erode it.

No modern company can afford to consider it’s web presence lightly or just accessory as components of interactive marketing and customer experience become one thing:

What goes through your customers mind if you offer them a satisfactory  user experience:

Perception:  This company knows their business – They are smart, competent, trustworthy and aware of customer’s needs.
Result: Yes, I’ll buy your product, come back for more, tell my peers about it – thanks a lot!

What goes through your customers mind if you offer them a disappointing  user experience:

Perception: The people behind this company are incompetent and not to be taken seriously – They are clueless, clumsy, negligent and don’t value their customers enough.

Unless the company is a monopoly (which happens!), the result would be loss in sales, traffic, brand equity, whatever is important to the organisation’s bottom line.

Interactive marketing means much more than banners and search engine tactics. It is 100% intertwined with your customer’s experience and should be thought of as part of a long term business strategy.

They have just launched a brand new website, beautiful, simple and easy to navigate – which is not such an obvious thing when it comes to design/art themed sites.

The main new addition is the Artstore where you can buy unique pieces  from the likes of Boris Hoppek , Bruno 9Li (below), Sosaku Miyazak, Michel Ducourneau and Heiko Mueller online. Prices range from around 650 to 5000 euros.

I’m seriously tempted by a couple of pieces. I wouldn’t do it just as an investment, but if you are into that there must be advantages over keeping you savings in the bank.

I prefer the definition which says a product is something we own whilst a service is something we can use temporarily. The difference between buying and hiring a dinner jacket.
This definition seems useful, so I’ll try to apply it to a few real life projects (the output of which I would have called generically Product in the past):

An e-learning platform – Definitely providing an education service
An online newspaper – An information service
A software-as-a-service online shop – Can provide a similar service to a sales assistant offering expert advice and guiding the customer towards  a suitable service package.
A mobile mapping application – A tricky one. I have downloaded the software (so I own it), but for it to be useful at all I need data provided by the mapping company (a service) facilitated by my network operator (also a service).
A multinational corporate website – Essentially a marketing and communication tool between company, customers, investors, press, etc. At the same time you can consider it as a provider of self-customer-services.

Why is this differentiation relevant to interactive projects?

It is pretty clear that many online projects will generate hybrid product-service offerings, just as in the physical world. But I think we (practitioners) are developing more services than we imagined, yet treating them mostly as products.

Services usually involve longer or repeated engagements with the user and perhaps we can contemplate that more efficiently.  It would be really interesting to start using rich design tools such as service blueprinting in addition to content maps and prototypes.

Let’s see how it works in practice.

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Some interesting reading: Better than owning