Two nice questions

I decided to document these two really nice questions. I was asked one of them and read the other.

Kind person : How's your world?
Me : My world is fantastic!
KP: What makes it fantastic?
Me: The wonderful food I just had :D

Read somewhere: If you were to describe this to a friend in a few words, how would you do it?


Their friendly nature belies their smartness in actually uncovering someone's emotions. The actual answer didn't matter when answering them as much as the state of mind was revealed just by the choice of words (for the answer).

Next time I'm out user testing, these will be used for sure.

"The Design Problem" Problem

Just wrapped some early user validation and paper prototyping session at ASUG in Orlando. Was a fruitful exercise even though the none of the concepts we had seemed to fly with the users.

Through weeks of intense user research and now this three day user testing we seem to have uncovered...err... let's say an enterprise design problem, for lack of a better term. My previous post questioned how we could better study enterprise culture. This I think is actually part 2 of a question. Part 1 is to actually question even what qualifies as a design problem when it comes to the enterprise. There seem to be levels to the enterprise problem which run way deeper than the usual social, cultural, economic, material and technical factors that we take into account.

I am sure I am not the first one to raise this point, but we really need to define the place of the designer in an enterprise. The problems are abstract and fuzzy alright, but when it comes to actually defining the boundaries for the design there are challenges that exist far beyond the users and their context.

So again ,when should the designer step in to solve an enterprise design problem? We have responsibilities that go far beyond creating interfaces but when we encounter certain very fundamental problems that lie beyond the realm of our influence, the designer's problem gets reduced to just that (creating interfaces).

Kind Acts

I have experienced three kind acts in past two days! First, a total stranger offers me a ride to a train station when I was stuck bad. Today, I forgot my phone in a cab and the driver was kind enough to return when I called.

These simple acts of kindness are very touching. Most people, I think, will not hesitate to help out another person when needed. We need to recognize and appreciate this natural human tendency, a bit more often.

Enterprise culture and the UI

I think in today's times its a given that we as designers take cultural factors into account while designing. The term 'culture' is actually quite bothersome to me, because it seems really difficult to pin point the exact characteristics that make up this 'culture'.

Of course answers can be found about the culture of a people with anthropological studies, looking up some history etc. Poets, writers, film makers and other media all contribute toward shaping and 'preserving' a culture. Blogs like the this one (I am co-authoring and hence promoting :D) are the also examples of artifacts that help you understand culture.

So the term 'culture' is ambiguous I think because there's no one direct way of understanding or defining it. Now think about the term 'work culture' or 'enterprise culture'. How hard is that to grasp? Will understanding it actually help in designing better UI's for enterprise software? What sources could I tap into if I need to understand this? Who are the gate keepers of the 'enterprise culture'?

Surprise,Surprise!

Ok I admit that I have been harping on this surprise in a service theme in the last few posts, but I had to write this one since I just realized a great example. Woot! No, literally, I mean Woot!

Surprise plays such a big factor in the success of woot.com that it literally drives the user community. Of course, there's some awesome economics involved also, but just the surprise factor makes it a sticky website. Linking back to my previous post just what kind of surprise theme does it follow? "Anticipation", if you ask me. With a strange mix of suspense ;).

Parc Forum

Just fresh out of the talk by Andrew McAffe at the PARC forum who talked about the whole concept of enterprise 2.0, what it means and what difficulties it face. I liked the fact that his was a candid analysis of where we stand. His point about strengthing weak ties because they are a big source of the most novel and most non-redundant information was excellent.
He identified enterprise 2.0 as "an emergence of structure" as opposed to "imposition of structure" which is in tune with how the web has evolved from procedures and workflows (form-filling, approvals etc.) to community based and lossely structured software. Finally, the acknowledgement of challenges was heartening where he talked about prospect theory and the 9x rule. Bottomline : The new offering must literally be 10 times better than the existing solution, else it is not widely accepted.

http://www.parc.com/events/forum/ Check for the slides of this talk to be put up soon!

This is not Surprising

Of course, some already thought about thinking of a service in terms of a script & how film can be used as tool for experience designer.

Jeff Howard, whose blog I follow fairly regularly has a few entries of his own which you can read up here and here.

Surprise in a Service 2

Inspired by my previous post, I am actively thinking of "scripting" services. In a way, service design is exactly that, but I wonder how it'd be to think of it like an out and out writer. What would be the "acts" of a service? The plot points, the catalysts,the protagonist? (I know the antagonist would be the customer care...hehehe...).

I am going to start by making up my own service genres. This won't be based on subjective feelings but more on universal experiences. For instance, something like "good service" doesn't qualify as a service genre, but something like "surprsing service" does. To add to the genres, I'll go with "regular service", "slick service", "thrilling service"...get the drift?

Clearly I am coming up with them based on films and/or video games. To elaborate on my point, I think "Ocean's Eleven", "The Italian Job", "Mission Impossible" , "National Treasure" can all be termed "slick flicks". Whether you like them or not, is another matter. The intent is to make it slick.

Put simply then, what genre of service would you intend to design?

Surprise in a Service

Recently I was surprised with a government service; pleasantly. When I had visited the same office in person, I received some pretty rough treatment and was somewhat assured of being left in the dark for atleast a month. But, things took a completely different turn when they mailed my documents way before time...surprise!

Twists in films is fairly common (Seven, The Sixth Sense, The Usual Suspects, Shawashank Redemption). Would you use twists in your service? What kind of twists?

How do you script a service design twist ? A pleasant one hopefully! I wonder....

Mr. Azim Premji@SAP Labs, Palo Alto

I was quite excited about this address by the Wipro owner and one of the top thirty entrepreneurs of all time (Business Week).

Fact : The speech started a good 20-25 minutes later than the scheduled time (I had gotten my colleague from Israel to attend it, but he had to leave since it got quite late). I don't want to be sarcastic about this whole typical "IST" thing, so I am just stating what happened. It was unfortunate and really wish it had started on time.

Anyways, the speech content was a summarized bullet point list of Mr Premji's lessons in life. It was plain to say the least. "Lesson number one is..." ....& it went on till "Lesson number seven..". There were some very valuable points in there and the man's achievements and contributions are truly phenomenal. Quite simply, he deserves every little praise he gets.And he speaks well too, just not 'attractive well', I guess. His style of speaking seemed honest and crisp. The enormity of his experiencing are humbling.

I was most interested in his take on design. He kept mentioning "listening to your customers is the key", but no mention of design efforts (read user research). Another theme of the speech was the social impact corporations make (again no mention of design).

Mr Premji seems a firm believer in "technology as a liberator". His stance on viewing all things from the IT perspective is slightly unsettling (for me as a designer). And doubly so because he is one of the leaders of India in the software industry. He talks about all the right things, but a 360 degree view is lacking. His emphasis on science and engineering degrees is also a bit conservative to the point of being obsolete.

What he has done is inspirational, but its never always about technological determinism.

An experienced stalwart, but a somewhat incomplete 'visionary'.

Downtime

Its been a while since I posted here, but I've been transitioning and organizing. And it hasn't been easy so far, but now that I am finally empowered with mobility (after a good 38 months of living in the US), I have been promised a new change of experience. I am sure this is true, but the past few days have knocked me out with just so many tedious and unethical services. My future experiences might change but it won't mean I'll forget these past experiences. They were potent enough to make my thinking muddled for what has been a fairly long time now.

On a brighter note, now that things are clearing up, I'll get to catch up on my reading, maintain a healthier routine and update this space regularly! Here's to liberated thinking!