The Design You Deserve.

This post has been on my mind for some time, and I think that the time has come to share my thoughts. Maybe you are a manager somewhere, maybe you are a CEO, maybe you are a team leader, a design or tech lead, or maybe you bring in freelancers or consultants to help you deliver something awesome. In all cases, you really do want to get a brilliant end-result that will please customers, excite the team, make you some money and feel like work well done. For this to happen, you are going to have to have to do a few things and refrain from doing a few others. Unfortunately, it isn't enough to just bring in a great team and wait for something breathtaking to pop out the other end. I'm going to focus especially on how to work with your experience designers, but a lot of these Do's and Don'ts apply to developers and every other kind of expert you might hire in to help. (I'm assuming in this post that you do want great work to happen. If for whatever reason, you want something mediocre, say so. It will save everyone a lot of time.)

How you work with the team will dictate the design that you get. The same people can deliver a dogs breakfast or an awe-inspiring result. You have a hand in this.  Be clear, support them to ensure everyone is heading in the same direction, and feed back often, without getting in the way. This is not always as easy as it sounds, so here are a few things you can do to ensure that the team has what they need from you and that you remain a great client/boss/team lead, etc...

Do:

• Take the time to brief everyone on the job at hand (don't skimp on this, it will cost you dearly)
• Go to the team with a vision (Steve Jobs briefed the Frog Design team with "Give me Bob Dylan songs" to get the first iMac)
• Get involved (make suggestions, be part of the discussions)
• Speak up, draw, role-play (use a variety of communication means to ensure you are understood)
• Listen (actively)
• Ask about specialisms (visual design is a specialism, not all experience designers have it, and not all of them code either)
• Trust your team (they know what they're doing, this is why you hired them)
• Change your mind if there is a good reason to (i.e. There's a better idea/way/focus..)
• Give it a chance if you don't like it  (really cool design can look and feel strage at first - Sydney Opera house?)
• Ask a lot of questions (take the opportunity to learn and understand)
• Voice your fears (tell the team what you are most worried about, so they can help you manage those concerns)
• Praise them often (celebrate all your wins, life is just too short not to)
• Be honest (if you think something is ghastly, say so. But know that anything awesome looks weird at first)
• Sit with the designer and actively pair with them (be respectful, listen, think, contribute)
• Relax and have fun (you're making something cool, right? Even if you have deadlines looming...trust in the team)
• Focus on your strategic goal (if you don't love the design right away but the team is sure,...trust them)
• Show examples of things you had in mind
• Be clear on costs and timelines
• Bring designers in early on in the process
• Know that experience design covers a range of activities to get to a deliverable (ask for the plan, even if it's subject to change)
• Attend user testing
• Make your analytics available
• Be open to change
• Say thank you

Don't:

• Assume everyone understands what you want immediately
• Assume experience design is limited to visual design or interface design (it's about paying attention to every customer touchpoint)
• Go to the team with a solution (tell them your vision, let them decide on how to get there)
• Micromanage the team
• Assume colour choice is easy, it's a science called colour theory
• Stand behind the designer, pointing at the screen (see here)
• Dictate the design (you will get a dogs breakfast, because you are not a designer. Bring your strengths to the table)
•  Shout (go for a walk instead)
• Place so many restrictions on the design that the team can't manoeuvre (if you want fresh work, you're going to have to take some risks)
• Assume that any kind of design emerges from a single person in a moment of genius
• Isolate yourself form the team (work with them)
• Refuse to go ahead with suggested activities (they're designed to get us closer to a great solution, not to waste your time)
• Make assumptions about the people who will be using the product (get to know them!)
• Hire an experience designer and expect them redesign your logo (you'll need a logo designer for that)
• Assume that the way you think is the same thinking used to design anything (be prepared to potentially have your mind blown)
• Assume it's easy (Tony Hawk makes skateboarding look easy...it's not)
• Assume anything!

Further Reading to get you started:

Seth's post too "How to live happily with a great designer"

Ward Andrews: "The difference between UX and UI: Subtleties explained in cereal"

Debunking User Experience Misconceptions "UX Myths"

UX Booth: "The Complete Beginners Guide to Interaction Design"

MIT: "XD course overview"

Russ Unger & Carolyn Chandler: A project guide to UX design (Book)

Robert Hoeckman: "Designing the moment" (Book)

 Here's IDEO's creative director Paul Benett "Finding design in the detail" for an interesting perspective:

Kinect hacked, sliced and diced

Released in November 2010, Microsoft's Kinect has created a bow wave amongst the more technically minded communities. Most computing departments in Universities own one and they're doing very cool stuff with it. You will have all seen the long stream of videos under the tag "Kinect hacks" and you will have all seen it do some things it wasn't intended to do. In this post, I want to talk about why it's actually such a complicated device, and where it's going next. If you read this blog, you more than likely not only know what it is, but you know the gory technical details too. I won't spend too long on that as a result, but just in case this post goes "mainstream", lets introduce ourselves to the box before we talk about thinking outside of it:

Microsoft have introduced it like this:

"Kinect brings games and entertainment to life in extraordinary new ways without using a controller. Imagine controlling movies and music with the wave of a hand or the sound of your voice*. With Kinect, technology evaporates, letting the natural magic in all of us shine...Controller-free gaming means full body play. Kinect responds to how you move. So if you have to kick, then kick. If you have to jump, then jump. You already know how to play. All you have to do now is to get off the couch...Once you wave your hand to activate the sensor, your Kinect will be able to recognise you and access your Avatar. Then you’ll be able to jump in and out of different games, and show off and share your moves."

The technology isn't all Microsoft. It uses range camera technology which interprets 3D information from a  continuously-projected infrared structured light. This was made by Israeli developer PrimeSense. The 3D scanner system uses a variant of image-based 3D reconstruction. Its motion and voice sensitive, make it a "Natural User Interface", because no controller is needed. The depth sensor has an infrared laser projector together with a monochrome CMOS sensor, which captures video data in 3D under any ambient light conditions. GamesRadar has a nice techy review of it that you might like too.

"Think Tom Cruise in Minority report" is another way I've heard it described. A big thank you to MIT for making that a reality, but it wasn't really made for this either. It was made to play Xbox games. Microsoft have however embraced the hacking of its newest offering and have made available an SDK (thank you for this MSFT).

There are other options to the SDK, and until very recently there wasn't one. Adafruit ran a competition for Kinect drivers and Hector Martin won, releasing the code available at OpenKinect. There's also a Google Group if you're interested and loads more support online. PrimeSense made available their motion tracking middleware NITE, which is worth noting. Kinect-Hacks is a great site if you want to get hands on.

Anyway...now we know what it is, back the point of this post.

It occurred to me how different the user experience has become. I don't have any insider information, but I reckon MSFT spent a small fortune in the user experience for the Kinect.  I can well imagine how much testing much have been so that when a child places itself in front of it, all of the expected things happen. This makes for a really easy gameplay and allows someone to really "be the controller". There have been some really useful usability reviews such as the one by Jacob Nielsen, one by Steve Cable and the comparison by Sheryl Yu Lin. They show that although it's a good product, the overall opinion is "could do better". The proof is in the pudding though, and I reckon that most people would be able to:

1. Grasp what they're supposed to do
2. Understand what's happening
3. Understand where it's happening

When we move to the land of Kinect hacks and away from the purpose built environment it was designed for, we lose 1, 2, and 3 for many people. Most of the hacks, be it the Shadow Puppets or the Optical Camouflage, are at proof of concept stage. They're fun and are a nice example of how you can "leave the box" and think outside of it. I haven't yet seen any hacks that are beyond proof of concept or that are genuinely useful. There are many reasons for this, but mainly, the technology is very new and so is the whole idea of hacking it. I reckon more interesting things will emerge later down the line.

What I'm finding interesting though is that once you remove the context (the Xbox), you are left with a lot of work to do for the non-geek to grasp what's going on. I ran a creative technology workshop recently with a group of business people. We looked at Kinect specifically, and after spending time understanding the technology, we looked at a series of hacks too. They were all amazed, and in awe like little kids at a candy store. I then asked them to get into small groups and come up with some ideas for hacks of their own. Bearing in mind that none of them were technical people, I was hoping to get some interesting insight into usage. Interestingly, what I found is that they struggled to come up with anything new. Having run quite a lot of these workshops before, with the same kinds of people, I was puzzled. Normally, they always come up with a few things I would never have thought of. More interestingly...they (all sort of) presented the same idea, and none of them noticed. Mostly thoughts revolved around using it to do something that is already possible without Kinect but with it. Seeing we are talking about a technology that allows you to speak to the computer and interact physically with a virtual environment, I was stunned. When the technology is then safely placed back into its Xbox environment, there is a lot less struggle with it as a technology or even as an idea.

MSFT are already investigating what comes after Kinect:

For a long time we investigated (or obsessed about) putting ourselves into a virtual world. We did this with avatars, through games, through virtual worlds and so on. Now, we've flipped it on its head and we're more interested in integrating the virtual into the real world. This changes the whole user experience and I don't think we've given it a lot of thought as yet. I'd be interested in hearing about any projects or testing happening in relation to this.

In the meantime, check out this very cool video, taking us further down those futuristic paths:

TGIF - The return

One SFS tradition that will be carried over to I-Thought.org is the weekly TGIF post. For those of you new to it, it's a nicely relaxing geeky post to welcome in the weekend. Without further ado...

Stuff I really liked this week:

5 geniuses who were massive assholes - who would have thought!

Switching to a standing desk (how to) - Sounds like a painful 3 days in the legs until bliss arises

10 most ridiculous Wolverine action figures - worth a chuckle

What keeps engineers up at night - too true!

The latest Hyperbole and a half story: Wolves - this made me laugh, and it's quite clever too!

Facts:

The computer in your mobile is a million times cheaper, a thousand times more powerful, and about a thousand times smaller than the only computer at MIT in 1965.

Tim Berners-Lee's first attempt at the "web" was with his program Enquire in 1980, built for personal use while at CERN. When he left the code was lost.

When he returned to CERN in 1984, he built a program called Tangle to help him keep track of all the computers, scientists and projects.

Proposed names for the web: Information Mesh, Mine of Information, and The Information Mine (It is said TBL thought that "TIM" was too egocentric)

The code for the web was built in C on a NeXT computer and it took 3 months (NeXT computers were founded by Steve Jobs).

Quotes:

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats. - H. Aiken

Optimism is an occupational hazard of programming: testing is the treatment. - K. Beck

Scientists build to learn; Engineers learn to build. - F. Brooks

When the problem [quantum chromodynamics] is finally solved, it will all be by imagination. Then there will be some big thing about the great way it was done. But it's simple -it will all be by imagination, and persistence. - R. Feynman (in Mlodinow's "Feynman's Rainbow")

Precise language is not the problem. Clear language is the problem. - R. Feynman

Tune of the week:

Just a classic today, so turn up the volume. There will be different types of music each week btw.

Video footage of the week:

A very old IBM commercial (1977) - what a way we have come, and I am glad screens got bigger!

10 Computational Linguistics blogs

photo credit: quinn.anya Here is a handy list of those essential CL blogs for those of you out there with an interest in the topic. They're not in any particular order, I read all of these.

LingPipe (very technical and practical, but very useful information and tips for building these things)

The Mendicant Bug (full of interesting ideas, a thoroughly god read)

Information Retrieval on the Live Web (nice essay style posts with graphs and details)

NLPers (a classic in the CL blog space!)

The Noisy Channel (another well loved classic)

Daniel Lemire (a steady stream of CL goodness)

The Lousy Linguist (not all about CL but worthwhile nonetheless)

Extras:

Thought Process (I loved this, but it hasn't been updated in a long while)

Language Log (it's UPenn's blog and it's pretty good)

CSAIL News (from the MIT labs)

Also, I follow the conversations on Quora around Computational Linguistics.