UX Book Club Philly: Thoughts on ‘Thoughts on Interaction Design’

Apologies in advance as I didn’t write in my notes who asked which questions and skip around a bit in this post—thanks again to everyone who came out and contributed questions, opinions, and attention.

Also, I thoroughly hoped to record the session for posterity and the benefit of those who could not attend, but forgot in the fray of meeting preparation. I hope this absurdly long post holds your attention and does it justice.

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On August 25th, a diverse group of UX Philly Book Clubbers gathered in the quirky, scarlet-walled conference room at Red Tettemer on the 24th floor of 1 South Broad Street. Among them were design consultants, corporate “innies,” agency folk, a network analyst, and an artist-turned-recruiter (Meg Metz from MissionStaff, our pizza purveyor for the evening).

Upon seeing the cozy circle of chairs, our guest speaker jokingly asked “What, are you passing a bowl around there?” The group chuckled awkwardly, high only on anticipation. As usual we had a mix of familiar and new faces—some had read the book recently or years ago, some hadn’t finished, some had yet to start.

The book was Thoughts on Interaction Design, the author Jon Kolko, who joined the group thanks to the magic of Skype and a ginormous TV. Jon was relaxed and conversant, leaning back and forth and into the camera as he spoke, warning us that his cat might traipse across his keyboard. In addition to the usual colorful tattoos, I quickly noticed the word “REAL” emblazoned across the four fingers of his right hand. That sent my mind spinning back to the book, which I’d actually finished reading about three hours earlier.

“Interaction shapes the perception of reality.”

It was one of those wonderfully obvious yet deep existential points that gives me chills. The statement had jumped out from page 121, around the conclusion of an essay by Uday Gajendar.

The essays that punctuate the volume provide validation; they even *look* authoritative, set in a serifed font to differentiate them from Kolko’s sans serif musings. For a book that might seem from the title like one man’s soapbox pontifications, you’ll find no ego here—only an honest exploration of the identity of our burgeoning field. The essays and constant references to academic and professional sources validate his points and honor the community—though with a notable bias toward the Carnegie Mellon Design program.

Jon kicked off the session with a “rant” on what drove him to write and eventually self-publish the book. At the time, he was teaching at Savannah College of Art and Design and found himself at a loss for books that could help convey interaction design to his students from the theoretical perspective that he had absorbed as a student at Carnegie Mellon. Much of what he found was “too textbooky,” distilling design into discrete formulas and reinforcing bullet points with numbered exercises. The rest were “how-to” manuals which largely focused on practical methods and containing very little theory. It seemed no one had taken a step back to reflect on not just what we do as interaction designers, but what it all means, why we (should or shouldn’t) do it and where the profession is headed. The philosophical underpinnings had barely been explored—the identity of the field only defined in superficial terms. Around that time (2007) not many people were interested in digging deep—including publishers. Though he was later picked up by Morgan Kaufmann, Jon advised us that in his experience self-publishing is not only more lucrative, but an extremely gratifying process that he strongly recommends.

Over the past few years as the community settled, designers started asking the big questions, and the book was there waiting for them. This shift was extremely apparent at the Interaction Design Association’s 2010 conference, which had no named theme but revolved largely around discovering the meaning in what it is we do as designers. (I highly recommend Jon’s keynote, which echoes themes from the book.)

One of the major takeaways from the book was the role of design as persuasive, and designers as shapers of culture and society.

On page 100, Jon references an essay by Richard Buchanan:

“Indeed, design is an art of communication on two levels: It attempts to persuade audiences not only that a given design is useful, but also that the designer’s premises or attitudes and values regarding practical life or the proper role of technology are important, as well.”

Picking up on some of the corporations represented in our group, Jon posed the question—should we always strive to make things more usable? Should we really be helping people watch TV? Or extend their credit limits? While usability is an important factor in design, we must remember that it’s not an innately humanistic pursuit. Depending on the context, usability may in fact do harm. I’ve read some blog posts with rousing comment discussions in the past few months on ethics (specifically in online gambling and politics). It’s a little easier to give pause to these more obvious moral issues, and many designers have specific lines drawn for whom they will not do work. But what about the less hot-button ways in which we push the agendas of our clients or employers? Every professional designer should take some time every so often to reflect on the broader ramifications of his or her work. Unfortunately we can’t always be doing 100% good for 100% of the people 100% of the time (we have bills to pay), but we should be mindful of how our decisions impact people—beyond metrics for usability, satisfaction, conversion, etc. by which we define the success of a project for business purposes.

Hoping to harness our community’s altruistic potential, Jon’s latest project is the Austin Center for Design—a program dedicated to solving social problems through Design. Right now he sees two major industry career paths—corporate or consultant. He hopes to forge a third path, one where “all of you [would do] whatever you do at work right now, but did it toward improving education … providing clean drinking water … and did it without having to lose your mortgages.”

A noble pursuit—one I hope to take part in someday.

Often in the book and our discussion I felt like as designers we sometimes come off as elitists, as though we’re alone in this battle to make people’s lives better. But just when I was afraid the book might end on a highfalutin note, Ellen Beldner swooped in with her essay on the organizational/political challenges faced by Interaction Designers.

“…I don’t want to insinuate that the world’s problems would be solved if only UI were in charge of everything. But you must seize decision space where you are the expert, and consequently you must take responsibility for the mistakes you will make.”

When I asked Jon about it, he said “The emotional qualities of Design put us in a better position—but that’s not to say they’re not trying.”

We talked a lot about the day-to-day battle that we face as UX/IxD professionals when lobbying for users against the Big Business and Engineering interests. Jon advised that we must draw on one of the core skills that puts us in that position to begin with: empathy. We have to take a step back from “These people are stupid and doing this to piss me off” to figure out where they’re coming from and how we can meet somewhere in the middle. Many business and marketing types go through a very different educational experience than designers. “Curricula … generally do not focus on the individual: Emphasis placed on humanity usually highlights the group (market behavior, demographics, etc.) instead” (p. 129). Engineers are taught to “locate the best answer—the optimum solution to a given problem … [practicing] a convergent set of thinking that focuses heavily on the need for a fast solution, a correct solution, and a logical solution” (p. 55).

It can be difficult for individuals to truly balance these different priorities; even the most empathetic developers will frequently still be bogged down in the design process by the subconcious consideration of what is and is not technologically feasible and expedient. And we have managers, marketers, and business strategists to keep an eye on the big picture and the bottom line; somebody’s gotta do it.

The best evangelists for Design are multilingual—able to speak as easily in the boardroom as the IRC backchannel. Jon said one of the questions he gets asked most by those new to the field is whether they need to know how to code. While it’s by no means necessary in many companies, he says it certainly doesn’t hurt to be able to get down and dirty with development, and you’ll gain more respect and buy-in from developers.

Additionally, being confident in your design decisions is critical—but not always easy, especially for less experienced designers. Jon said, “There’s something that happens with confidence and all of a sudden you look at yourself and say ‘I’m a confident designer’ “—and a great wave of introspection rolled across the room as we all asked ourselves the question (I’d be the first to admit I have a long way to go :). One of Jon’s concerns about this process was that people tend to temper their critique, so “no one ever really knows how they’re doing.” Providing constructive criticism is another essential capability that all designers should develop so we can help each other grow.

Likewise, along with confidence, we must balance a distinctive sense of dettachment. Here again we discussed the cultural difference between engineers and designers—while they tend to be directed toward a specific, optimized product, we have to grapple with the constant nagging “what if”s; while they frequently have formulas to back up their decisions, we tend to have just small samples of qualitative data, industry best practices, and personal experience upon which to make decisions.

On page 137, Ellen Beldner declares:

“You must learn to make decisions in the face of uncertainty … Given the methodological squishiness of most fieldwork and usability testing, your data will never be perfectly reliable. Some data, however, is better than none … you will have some objective, external thing to point to and say ‘this is why we’re going to do it this way. We may be wrong, but we’ll make a note of this as an assumption to keep an eye on over time.’ “

There was a lot more that we discussed, and a lot more that I took away from the book, so I’ll wrap up the ramblings for now and perhaps continue later. But on a final note, one of our wonderful attendees asked what book Jon had been most influenced by or what book he would “pour himself into.” His responses:

Thanks for tuning in and be on the lookout for the 2nd edition of Thoughts on Interaction Design out sometime in Winter 2011. And thanks SO much again to Jon for giving us his time and insight.

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PS, special thanks to @semanticwill, whose copy of the book I have thoroughly abused over the past few months. I should probably buy him a new one.

2 Notes/ Hide

  1. uxjam posted this