My first impression recalled the same images that others recalled who I’ve talked with about it: Minority Report. And it was only a matter of time: the more you use a mouse or track pad or track ball to select and drag a window, or other “object,” the more you want to reach out and grab it. No? Just me? Okay. But admit that after using Apple’s Time Machine UI, it is hard to help imagining it applied it to a variety of other user / service interface design problems, no?

The question is not only how engaging Aurora and its ilk will be to use, but how it can be used to solve problems that are harder to solve in 2-D only. And I don’t mean uploading video. I mean practical user interface design problems. Such as a config. screen, where two dimensions, or axis (tables and grids, usually), can force a design that, for example, requires learning and memory: retention of items from one axis, when not visible, while manipulating those of the other two that are. Now that I think of it, that could remain a problem with 3-D interfaces.

Invest In Memory… Yours and Theirs

So what problems do 3-D user interfaces pose that “traditional” 2-D ones don’t, and how can we avoid them? The classic drag and drop pattern problem of specifying the drop target on select still must be handled with care. Truly. How much more so for drag and drop in 3-D? This is the challenge, and don’t let the marketing department (hype and hyperbole) tell you otherwise: 3-D interface design that supports new paradigms not easily supported by 2-D, to ease the task at hand.

Sure, initially there will be a degree of general delight in the novelty and “eye candy” of this sort of 3-D user interface itself. But if it will be useful, it must be usable. And let us not forget the system memory that such graphics processing taxes. Not to mention production overhead (time, skill, effort, and money). And then of course there is the screen constraint itself; flatness, which we can expect will remain. Yes, there is much to do and discover now. And what a great new set of problems to have!

When I attended the UX Intensive SF event last February, Garrett was instead attending the local gaming industry event. So it appears that the wheels we now see rolling in the video were in motion already, then. We spoke briefly of depth of immersion as a metric that game designers and producers can use, that other interface designers have do not, yet. Always ahead of the curve, Jessie James Garrett is deservedly proud of his efforts now evidenced by the Aurora project. And his pride is unmistakable: his name leads the video. Einstein, too, had pride. And he also knew that “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Aurora, I’d say, is yet more evidence of that.

Often, when something inspiring like this comes a long, it is generally good. As ajax had helped inspire a great wave of application UI patterns in the past five or so years, Aurora-like user interfaces will almost certainly fuel another great burst of effort. Inspired people are motivated people, and motivated people are productive. Yet lest we forget the technology boom days, and the suffering that followed its “dot-com” implosions, we should still hold fresh in our minds that there really can be too much of a good thing.

Socialize Adaptive Path’s Aurora

]]> http://uxdesign.com/ux-theory/article/adaptive-paths-aurora/42/feed http://uxdesign.com/about-user-experience-design/article/google-v-yahoo-by-googles-ux-principals/41 http://uxdesign.com/about-user-experience-design/article/google-v-yahoo-by-googles-ux-principals/41#comments Tue, 05 Aug 2008 04:05:43 +0000 Michael Cummings http://uxdesign.com/about-user-experience-design/article/google-v-yahoo-by-googles-ux-principals/41 Googleyness & Yahoo! we compare a second tier service of Google and Yahoo!, search engine marketing (SEM), to assess for ourselves which, according to Google's own definition of Googleyness, is "Googleyer."]]> In this second installment of Googleyness and Yahoo! we compare the services that, you might say, keep the lights on; search engine marketing (SEM), to assess for ourselves which is “Googleyer”, according to Google’s own definition of Googleyness.

First, The Contender

Yahoo! Search Engine Marketing (SEM) UI

Trying to get to yahoo’s SEM service is not for the undetermined. Which site is correct?

http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/
http://advertising.yahoo.com/
http://advertising.yahoo.com/central/search_marketing.html
https://signup13.marketingsolutions.yahoo.com/signupui/signup/startSignup.do
https://marketingsolutions.login.yahoo.com
http://sem.smallbusiness.yahoo.com/searchenginemarketing/index.php

Is one just a different marketing angle to the same service? Are the services different? Which is the one I want? (Not to be confused with which one do I want?)

Not only are the programs, design and messaging confusing, it is clear that different technologies are applied to each, too. Direct effects of this latter element on user experience is subtle, to be sure. Yet it should not be discounted altogether. Various suffix endings, with the different domains, sub-domains and URIs (full document addresses) combine to support the impression of extreme service fragmentation, which surely does affect brand experience.

Once arriving at the service registration screen, a wizard-like process is presented. Another gauntlet to run. Want help? There’s a tutorial to watch, a toll free phone number to call, “Page Help” (contextual help), Assisted Setup, and a Glossary. Just a guess, but I’d say some have expressed difficulty registering (tongue in cheek, if not obvious). This might be a negative example of why, sometimes, “less is more.” I wonder if people sometimes need help using the help… what then, “Help Help”?

I don’t want to critique their work beyond the measure of “googlyness” purposed. However, the fragmented nature of their offering/s does seem to contribute to a sense of possible causality for at least a bit of googles leadership in SEM.

This is not to say that Yahoo!’s apparent weakness has no flip side. I assume that it is the long shadow of an advantage: many pathways do, sometimes, capture some seeking more than a single service, who will buy the bundle (sooner or later), instead. Not to mention service diversity as an intentional Yahoo! strategy. One which Google has not shyed from (many staff have worked at both), either.

There is one non-design detractor of Yahoo!’s SEM UI that merits mentioning, because of it’s affect on user experience: performance. A minority, but noticeable number, of transmissions took more than about five seconds to load, and one never did (ref. annotation on screen cap.).

Yahoo! SEM Googleyness

Again, if we give the ten principals each a 1-10 score we have a simple, subjective, UX score card.

UX Score Card

1. (8) Focused on people—their lives, their work, their dreams?
2. (3) Does every millisecond count?
3. (4) Powerfully simple? (Getting to it, 0. The UI when there, 8.)
4. (4) Engaging beginners / attracting experts?
5. (4) Daringly innovative?
6. (2) Designed for the world?
7. (3) Planned for today’s and tomorrow’s business?
8. (2) Enlighting the eye without distracting the mind?
9. (5) Worthy of people’s trust? (If it were not Yahoo!, would you still use it?)
10. (2) Adding a human touch?

Total UX score: 37. Ouch.

Let’s call it going thirty five in the seventy mile per hour zone. It is easy, however accurate, to infer from the cacophony of visual voices speaking to those seeking an SEM solution from Yahoo! that disparate groups are responsible for various parts of the service experience. Hey Yahoo!, your organizational structure is showing! And, it seems, you’re not talking with each other (across time, or buildings) enough. The result of organic (read, weed-like) growth, I’d venture.

With, one group for marketing, another for the Small Business bundle, and an altogether different approach to the application itself (thankfully, too: it nearly redeems all), many people (a.k.a. “users”) will experience fatique by the time they get to the Advertising Campaigns management screen, or feel lost… maybe never arriving at Oz.

Googley Googlers Googling

Now let’s see how Googley is Google’s SEM offering, Adwords:

1. (7) Focused on people—their lives, their work, their dreams?
2. (8) Does every millisecond count?
3. (7) Powerfully simple?
4. (6) Engaging beginners / attracting experts?
5. (7) Daringly innovative?
6. (7) Designed for the world?
7. (6) Planned for today’s and tomorrow’s business?
8. (4) Enlighting the eye without distracting the mind?
9. (8) Worthy of people’s trust?
10. (4) Adding a human touch?

Total UX score: 57.

Sorry to say that I do not see much of a “human touch” in the AdWords visual motif. Nor does it enlighten the eye without distracting my mind. It is easy to see the effort in organization, for a good deal of “powerful simplicity.” But in review, we can see that the real substance of Adwords’ Googleyness and UX value comes more from non-design elements, of brand trust and technology performance, which are, of course, no less important as UX / UE considerations. And, of course, no lessor achievements.

Well, little wonder then that Google does seem to be Googlyer than Yahoo! when it comes to the UI design of their respective SEM offerings. But then, as one wise man recently said, “Whoever creates the language controls the debate.”

Our little evaluation of both UX and service interface design for Google’s and Yahoo!’s top services proves, at least, that you don’t have to be Google to be Googlely. And that Googleyness can take any of a number of forms. Interestingly, Google’s UX principals do not mention the value of consistent brand experience, in terms of service interface design across many, many services. Perhaps this doesn’t ring the marketing bells. But it is certainly one of Google’s strengths, and a significant source of what many would consider “Googley” design.

In summary, it’s not easy being Googley. Though it is clear that there are the trade-offs to Googleyness. As one tries to “enlighten the eye,” there may be risk to being “powerfully simple.” As we focus on (specific) people’s lives, work, and dreams, we may lose some the rest of the world we design for. Etcetera. Though it certainly is possible to do all of these things, the best balance may best be struck by greater effort in each of the complementary directions. Wouldn’t you say?

Socialize Googleyness and Yahoo! II

]]> http://uxdesign.com/about-user-experience-design/article/google-v-yahoo-by-googles-ux-principals/41/feed http://uxdesign.com/ux-management/article/successful-application-recipes/38 http://uxdesign.com/ux-management/article/successful-application-recipes/38#comments Sun, 27 Jul 2008 20:24:31 +0000 Michael Cummings http://uxdesign.com/ux-management/article/successful-application-recipes/38 Web Application Success Recipes

When we first launch in to a great new venture, interest or passion, a common impulse is to put all of our best ideas in to it. Well, the ones we think are best, at least, often in our naiveté. What’s true for my eldest sisters lemon squares is also true for many software projects: a good recipe needs no improvement. At least not until it can be executed with consistency. Assuming, of course, you have a recipe.

Same applies to music. I got my first toy drum set at age 7, and first real (Ludwig) set at 12. After a couple years of lessons (and insanely patient mothering!), I realized that doing the simplest things well is as hard, and often much harder, than doing many less simple things. And that the former, rather than latter, better measures one’s skill. Many artist’s careers arc accordingly, sometimes to extreme. Mondrian is the best example, when we compare early works to latter ones (he’s evolving the same ideas throughout!). Ricter and Calder are good examples, too. Programmers also know that less is more. So why don’t more managers?

Execution consistency requires experience, thus practice, thus time. In business, as often so in the kitchen, patience pays. This is antithetical to common “time is money” ethos, I know. Lest you think me rebellious without cause, my point is that being cheap—stingy with our time—often ends up costing more than patience, and careful method. And by patient, I do not mean lackadaisical. I mean maintaining balance between two complementary opposites: patience and urgency. This consciousness of complementary opposites, I believe, is one essential ingredient for any success recipe.

In the nineteen nineties, using construction metaphor to describe web design processes suited many corporate web design departments, because of the cultural environment, which was—and still is—mostly based on good ol’ fashioned manufacturing models of management (not such Fast Companies, after all). I used it a lot. Now, cooking metaphor rules. Why?, because cooking is more subtle, and elemental, in terms of ingredients and processes. And because in web application design and production, process matters at least as much as ingredients; content, functionality, and—most importantly—people’s interactions with them.

Top Web Chef

During the last season of Top Chef, I, and I’m sure others, wondered how Top Web Designer would rate with Neilson and Co. Did you? After all, not only training and talent, but temperment, communication style, and ability to collaborate has as direct an affect on the table as it does on the web. Cooking, like design, is a matter of context discovery: asking the necessary questions (the foundation of all knowledge). Then translating context to design constraints (saying No, so to sharpen Yes). The answers of which inform what to do (strategy), as well as how to do it (tactics). Questions like: How do I zig where other restaurants zag? What ingredients are available? Which price point fits my genre, decor, and customer’s expectation? And so on.

While design is not art, anything worth doing can be done artfully. Meaning, artfully applying a method or two, or three, or four: Processes which require focus—both narrowed for the immediate task and widened for how it relates to others—determination, urgency, and patience. As with good recipes, there is rarely just one process, but a sequence of them. Mix two ingredients in one bowl, two in another. Boil the first, cool the second. Fold (deftly) fifth ingredient in to second mixture. Pour second with fifth over first two. Bake, cool, garnish and serve. If any short order cook can do it, shouldn’t such we web application strategists, managers, designers and technologists be as methodical?

Does it seem to you, as I, that in 2008, after a good fifteen years or so of wide business and cultural integration with the world wild web, we’re still less methodical in our design management kitchens than are the restaurants we lunch and dine with partners at? Is this what we want, professionally? Sure, one is not a direct reflection of the other. Web applications are more complex than even soufflés and French sauces. And maybe even more likely to fail. But should we not more fully and more widely realize, all the same, that method—yes, process—is as important for delicious and nutritious dinning as for user experience via the web?

Socialize Applying Successful Recipes

The IDEA Conference addresses issues of design for an always-on, always-connected world. Where “cyberspace” is a meaningless term because the online and offline worlds cannot be made distinct. Where physical spaces are so complex that detailed wayfinding is necessary to navigate them. Where work processes have become so involved, and so digitized, that we need new processes to manage those processes.

Throughout their days, people are engaging with complex information to manage their lives. Designers now realize that information isn’t simply this stuff you find—the appropriate presentation of information helps people make sense of the world around them.

Featuring speakers making an impact around the world, this two day conference is designed to inspire.

Bringing together people who are addressing these challenges head on, our conference speakers come from a variety of backgrounds to discuss designing complex information spaces in the physical and virtual worlds. IDEA features a line up of speakers [confirmed to date] including David Armano, Chris Crawford, Bill DeRouchey, Jason Fried, Aradhana Goel, Dave Gray, Andrew Hinton, Jason Kunesh and Elliott Malkin.

What: The IA Institute’s third annual IDEA Conference
When: October 7 and 8, 2008
Where: Chicago, IL, at the historic Harold Washington Library Center
Why: Expansive. Energetic. Inspirational.

• Preconference: October 6, 2008
• Registration: http://ideaconference.org/2008/register.html
• Speakers & Program: http://ideaconference.org/2008/program.html

Socialize IDEA Conf. Chicago 10.08

Those seeking user-interface/UI design solutions, or examples of perfect human-computer interaction, will be disappointed. Mr. Norman’s now famous book was copy-written in 1988. There are human-computer interface design references, but they are very quaint, by contemporary standards. But don’t let the age or state of computer science at the time of writing lead to an assumption of irrelevancy. Norman’s book is most relevant because human nature is essentially unchanged. All of the concepts are directly relevant our work as interaction, user interface, and user experience designers.

Don Norman may not have invented all, or even most, of the many elemental concepts he details, yet he certainly innovated their application, and most importantly, made them comprehensible to all readers. And by doing so, has helped make our world better and more useful. He takes pains to make difficult topics, and what could be very academic ones, easily comprehensible to all. His intelligent, and sometimes slightly folksy, prose style and examples of design gone awry, as well as all right, taken from the use everyday things, lend poignancy to the trials and tribulations that people regularly endure in the name of “progress.”

Norman draws on an experience, in Italy at a conference, to break down the doing of things in to its component parts. The presenter attempts to thread film through a movie projector. “What makes something—like threading the projector—difficult to do? To answer this question, the central one of this book, we need to know what happens when someone does something, We need to examine the structure of action.”

And so he does. “…there are four different things to consider: the goal, what is done to the world [the action], the world itself, and the check of the world.” He further exposes the pitfalls most every designer—and so user—has fallen in to when we don’t make clear connections between goals, intentions, actions, and state feedback, to form a continuous feedback loop.

Frequent themes of Norman’s wonderful book are the limitations of conscious thought, the limits of short term memory, and our ability to utilize subconscious thought. “Subconscious thought is one of the tools of the conscious mind, and the memory limitations can be overcome if only an appropriate organizational structure can be found. Take fifteen unrelated things and it is not possible to keep them in conscious memory at once. Organize them in to a structure and it is easy.” This, by the way, is how actors, like the traveling bards before Gutenberg invented his printing press, memorize long texts. Structure, organization, grouping (separating), and many other methods of design, make all arts, crafts, and software applications, possible.

Designing for Error Prevention, Correction, Recovery

In a section of Chapter Five, To Err Is Human, called Designing for Error, Norman distinguishes and classifies for us different types of errors, to help us help others prevent them. “Here is what designers should do:

1. Understand the causes of error and design to minimize those causes
2. Make it possible to reverse actions—to “undo” them—or make it hard to do what cannon to reversed.
3. Make it easier to discover the errors that do occur, and make them easier to correct.
4. Change the attitude toward errors. Those of an object’s user and attempting to do a task, getting there by imperfect approximations. Don’t think of the user as making errors; think of the actions as approximations of what is desired.”

I’ve found The Psychology of Everyday Things, frankly, one of the most unexpectedly useful books I’ve ever read. Norman was ahead of his time, and I believe his time is now… any time we design and use new products. If you’re involved in any sort of design—user interface design, industrial or consumer product design—you can not afford to ignore The Psychology of Everyday Things.

The Friendly User Acknowledgement

UXdesign.com owes special recognition to Mr. Norman, who claims—and no one disclaims it—to have invented the phrase user experience design, “because I thought human interface and usability were too narrow.” The term may be most useful when applied as intended, “to cover all aspects of the person’s experience with the system including industrial design, graphics, the interface, the physical interaction and the manual.” In other words, he was not just concerned with the product’s user interface, but with the entire brand experience conveyed by a spectrum of artifacts related to the primary product, and it’s design. Indeed, as should we all.

Socialize Psychology of Everyday Things

Information Dashboard Design, by Stephen Few, is, as he says himself, “above all else… a book about communication. It focuses exclusively on a particular medium of communication called a dashboard. In the fast-paced work of information technology (IT), terms are constantly changing. Just when you think you’ve wrapped your mind around the latest innovations, the technology landscape shifts beneath you and you must struggle to remain upright. This is certainly true of dashboards.”

For one, I agree that dashboard design is generally a poorly understood endeavor. Unless you’ve delved in to it, it’s complexities will not really reveal themselves. This is partly do to their dynamic nature. Perhaps this idea could have been expressed in fewer words than excerpted, above, however. But this essentially examples the tone and style of Few’s book: useful, perhaps even necessary, and occasionally a bit formal, wordy, or verbose.

The book contains many visual examples of dashboards; good, bad and ugly. Chapter One - Clarifying the Vision, dives right in to them, providing a number of screen shots exampling a few more bad and ugly than good ones. This trend extends throughout the book, which is a little heavier on the negative than positive examples. This I take as implicit evidence of Few’s motives, which are respectable in themselves. If I had my way, however, I’d like more, many more, positive and exemplary dashboard design examples.

That said I could not find one point Few makes that I could, or would want to, contend with. All points are valid and necessary to anyone entering—key word, entering—Information Dashboard Design. Though not designed and marketed for business management types specifically, it does seem especially well suited to them. And it is certainly useful for graphic designers newly navigating the quick currents, changeable weather, and reef-ridden dashboard design waters.

Of the many useful things about Few’s book, I particularly appreciate his emphasis on design basics, as this, apparently, is where many dashboards (to 2006) go awry. Chapter Four - Tapping Into the Power of Visual Perception, ensures that none who reads his book and heeds its direction will design or produce dashboards do not fail for poor design. This chapter is sub-divided in to topics of

• Understanding the limits of short term memory
• Visually encoding data for rapid perception
• Gestalt principals of visual perception

Though maybe not a very dramatic example, a valid one particular personal interest of Few’s examples of design essentials:

“Visually Encoding Data for Rapid Perception

Preattentive processing, the early stage of visual perception that rapidly occurs below the level of consciousness, is tuned to detect a specific set of visual attributes. Attentive [conscious] processing is sequential, and therefore much slower.”

Few presents a figure of four rows of apparently random numbers of equal grayscale value (a medium gray). He then asks that we determine the number of 5’s in the sequence. “How many could you find?” A few. The actual number would require a careful count.

“The list of numbers did not exhibit any preattentive attributes that you could use to distinguish the fives from the other numbers.” Another example of the same number sequence is presented, only now with a darker color value for the 5’s. As expected, they’re easy to see and count. This, says Few, is “due to their differing color intensity (one of the preattentive attributes we’ll discuss below).” A little simplistic for an experienced designer, yet an indispensable concept for the new or non-designer, even if the example is less dramatic than the language.

As you can see, Few’s example will not be news for an educated designer. But he elaborates:

“In Information Visualization: Perception for Design, Colin Ware suggests that the preattentive attributes of visual perception can be organized into four categories: color, form, spatial position, and motion. For our present interest related to dashboard design, I’ve reduced his larger list of 17 preattentive attributes to the following 11:

• Color
• Hue (e.g. color)
• Intensity
• Position (2-D Location)
• Form
• Orientation (line direction)
• Line length
• Line width (thickness)
• Size
• Shape
• Added marks (cross amidst vertical lines exampled)
• Enclosure (line in a box amidst lines)
• Motion (Flicker)”

In other words, forming a design pattern and then differentiating one, for a specific emphasis, to form a sub-pattern if necessary, for “preattentive attributes.” Again, an indispensable set of design principals are called out. I might only like them connected to the dashboard design examples.

The most useful distinctions Information Dashboard Design provides is in their “roles,” which I’d call purposes, of

• Strategic
• Analytical
• Operational

This is an essential distinction that seems obvious once you work with it in mind. Yet which, like similar ones following it in Few’s book, might not be so obvious beforehand.

Another principal that I hadn’t previously integrated in to my thinking about dashboard design, yet have since reading Information Dashboard Design, is cited from Edward Tufte. In Chapter Five - Elegance Through Simplicity, Few draws on Tufte’s “data-ink ratio” precept for digital application:

“Key Goals in the Visual Design Process

Edward R. Tufte indroduced a concept in his 1983 classic: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information that he calls the ‘data-ink ratio.’ When quantitative data is displayed in printed form some of the ink that appears on the page presents data, and some presents visual content that is not data (a.k.a. non-data)… He then applies it as a principal of design: ‘Maximize the data-ink ratio, within reason. Every bit of ink on a graphic requires a reason. And nearly always that reason should be that the ink presents new information.’”

Putting It All Together

The real protien of Few’s book is in the last three chapters, particularly in 6, Effective Dashboard Display Media, and 8, Putting it all Together, which deliver his juiciest positive examples. The last chapter, 8, provides the examples that, one might argue, should be nearer the beginning: those Few would design (and has) himself, following all of the principals he presents. Then again, I guess saving the best for last serves those right-handed book store browsers who thumb last pages first (as we often do magazines)… design is all about actual use, not just intended use, right?

Though not without its flaws (and what book is?), for someone like me who, having produced many simple info graphics before, wanted a little more depth of information and examples, it is very useful. For those with no info graphic or design experience, it is indispensable. For those seeking the depth of information required to deal with considerations related to fully dynamic info graphics in Information Dashboard Design, you may be left somewhat wanting, yet not disappointed.

In all I recommend Few’s book highly, provided you aren’t looking to expand much existing dashboard design experience. All the ideas, and examples of them, are presented fairly concisely, even if some terms (such as “encoded,” to simply mean displayed) are used unconventionally, and in my option, too frequently.

Socialize Information Dashboard Design

Socialize Microfinance West, 07.08

I’d love to go but not sure am able as I leave that very day for south america.

Socialize Start Conference, SF 08.08

The Web (yes, it is a place) has expanded network consciousness. As life itself is now widely considered to be a network of networks, inter-connected by information feedback loops allowing co-evolution, will human society’s impact on nature become more, well, natural?

The internet-based hypertext web, so far, has proven a great journey for much of humanity. It has changed our expectations for information access and pushed the boundary of our information rights, both for and against us. And it has greatly increased the frequency (if not always the quality) of our interactions with each other, as well as the mediating technologies.

Apple’s Don’t Fall Far From The Tree

The ‘net began as a defense science enabler, as science technique is almost inherently collaborative in nature (we’re always smarter in parallel than we are in series). Its design stems, primarily, from a need to provide time/distance-independent information transfer, and to de-centralize defence science information, thus survive nuclear attack. Thankfully, it never had to pass that test. But other tests have come, and more are certain to.

Many know that the first website was created at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, aka CERN, (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, originally). Too few know that the first website in the U.S. was at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC).

Both CERN and SLAC were created to “find out what the Universe is made of and how it works.” The physics knowledge base began, in the modern sense, with Newton. Newton’s ideas made the industrial revolution possible, which was really an economic revolution. The cycle around which our modern lives still revolve, for better and, in some ways, for worse (i.e. family and social fragmentation, environmental degradation/global warming, etc.). It is worth noting, while we’re at it, that if ROI was a factor in initial web development, it would never have been created.

Both CERN and SLAC are particle research facilities, and the main technique they use is collision. Yes, smashing things—very small things—together, so to watch what happens. Let’s call it the first reality show. And maybe not terribly unlike usability research, metaphorically: only by planned testing (aka user science), and colliding a person with a user interface, and tracing their path, can we align interaction models and user’s mental models.

The first particle accelerators were of linear design. And I think we can say, too, that while the research was based on Einstein’s theories, the mental models scientists and engineers had while researching them were still fairly linear, that is Newtonion, so of the early industrial era. And the engineers who built the experiments were mostly linear thinkers (this I offer from personal experience… read on).

While the linear collider is still a valuable tool, the next step in the evolution of accelerators was to form a loop; the cyclotron. And while there certainly are connections between the evolution of physics, philosophy of life, and experiments to prove them, here we jump off the particle physics trajectory, and back on the origins of the web, and look at webs and patterns of life in general, for what they can reveal to us that is relevant to our work, and the work to come for restoring us to our higher ideals, and a healthier environment for all.

In some ways our understanding of ourselves follows from our understanding of our environment; the world which we co-evolved with. It will, I expect, someday be more apparent exactly how patterns of personal psychology and those of physics correlate. We have, however, extended universal harmonies in nature to our architecture, fine arts, and design. And we know intuitively that our own nature relates to us some truths of the universe, connecting us—consciously or not—to all.

“It is said that the Buddha once gave a sermon without saying a word; he merely held up a flower to his listeners. This was the famous ‘Flower Sermon,’ a sermon in the language of patterns… If we look closely at a flower, and likewise at other natural and man-made creations, we find a unity and an order common to all of them. This order can be seen in certain proportions which appear again and again, and also in the similarly dynamic way all things grow or are made—by a union of complementary opposites. …Perhaps the message of the Flower Sermon had to do with how the living patterns of the flower mirror truths relevant to all forms of life.”

As patterns repeat throughout nature, and scale, the orbits and trajectories of atoms and molecules are much like those of planets and galaxies. So also the pattern of lightening resembles a tree branch, a mountain skyline, and a crack in concrete. So we see that patterns themselves, share shaped by their constraints and complementary opposites, qualities which are universal. As our understanding of nature evolves, our models, designed express it, should—and do—too.

Where Newtonian and Darwinistic models once influenced our understanding of nature and our relationship to it, and by extension, to a degree, to each other (e.g. social Darwinism), now those of systems thinking, and interconnected peer networks are slowly, but surely, making their way in to our collective consciousness, and by extension, our socioeconomic institutions.

And as interaction designers our theories and practices have shifted towards closer relationship to people (”users”), greater empathy for them, and more frequent feedback loops, so to co-evolve our design works with discoverable goals, needs, modes, and mental models. This more service-oriented model has obviously proven a boon to us and our industry. And we certainly need not think of services, economically, in competitive, Darwinistic, “eat or be eaten” terms. On the contrary, many of the best web services are simply those we want for ourselves, only shared with others (PDF). And this, I’m here to say, is a model better reflecting natural service exchange.

There’s No Place Like Home

The challenge to user experience (UX, UE), user interface (UI), and interaction designers, as shapers and influencers of popular patterns of interaction between people and organizations via digital media, is to advocate, practice, and advance more organic modes and models of organization, collaboration, and interaction design, by utilizing naturalistic proportions, patterns, and the power of limits to liberate our right to pursue happiness, with ease.

This 4th of July, while we reflect on past triumphs, consider too what is necessary to regain, even advance, personal and social freedom. Iindividual, social and even economic freedoms have clearly lost ground in recent years. And though long and frightful the road home may seem, unlike Dorothy and her hangers on, we don’t need Oz to provide us hearts, minds, and courage. And thankfully: we will need them.

The Founders of the United States lived and died with courage and conviction to bring the individual rights and freedoms they declared inalienable to us in to political reality. At that time political institutions were the most powerful ones. It is said that a society’s values are reflected by the purpose of its tallest buildings. Our values now lay mainly in economic prosperity. Private commercial interests exert previously unforeseen power over our lives and fates, public and private, social and individual. While we have reaped great material benefits from our economic advances, is the bill yet to come?

It took a some thousands of years for democracy to spread from its philosophical roots, through the (pre-capitalism) Age of Enlightenment, to the majority of the worlds political systems. Should we extend our property in rights to commercial institutions, too, and their organizational structures, so that they incorporate our participation in their powers, also valid only through expressed consent?

There is a long way to go yet, before humanity can say it is “home free;” confident we will continue to thrive—or even survive—industrial (economic) affects on the only living environment available to us. There is a lot we can do, as designers and as citizens, to form a more perfect union with the essential patterns and principals of life (interrelated systems), to continue and enrich it. After all, what is more patriotic (and it is the principals that make the country, not visa versa) than asserting our independence from any Form of Government [that] becomes destructive of these ends?

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Post Script: Incidentally, SLAC and I were born in the same year, and my father spent most of his working life there, as an engineer. I have bright and warm memories of my childhood visits there, of the kind, brilliant and hard working people, and of the procurement research travels I’d occasionally tag along on. I attended the 40th Anneversary of SLAC and it was great to hear the reflections and stories of those who’d pioneered the experiments, resulting in profound discoveries, which now affect each of our lives. It was, and I assume remains, an amazing and truly interdisciplinary collaboration.

Socialize Can The Web Save Us?

Having determined to collect and share with you the top ten definitions of User Experience Design from the most credible sources, and so you to form your own, say, meta impression, I found the network falling just short. So, here are the top seven, with an invitation to you to contribute those definitions of user experience design (full three terms) that you find or know of. Inclusion is conditional, however, on a credibility standard that can only be defined as “secret sauce.”

As Don Norman claims invention of the term while VP of the Advanced Technology Group at then named Apple Computer (now “Apple”), and few contend it, he’s first:
1) http://www.nngroup.com/about/userexperience.html

Having given the first PC its abbreviated moniker (IBM PC), let’s give one of the earliest, if Also Ran, personal computing competitors its say:
2) https://www-306.ibm.com/software/ucd/designconcepts/whatisUXD.html (Why a secure server, though?)

Pabini Gabriel-Petit’s site is all about UX… the parts that matter anyway:
3) http://www.uxmatters.com/glossary/

If Apple can’t have their UX definition, no one can:
4) http://developer.apple.com/referencelibrary/UserExperience/index.html

Peter Morville, of polar bear book fame (aka Information Architecture for the World Wide Web), with Luis Rosenfeld’s help, opened all of our eyes to a universe of design beyond graphical user interface. In 2004 he offered his valuable UX model:
5) http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000029.php

Kimmy Paluch’s declaratively titled write up is comprehensive:
6) http://www.montparnas.com/articles/what-is-user-experience-design/

And the oracle:
7) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_experience
Caution: links from this definition are highly biased, placed by self-interested authors (is there any other kind?), and may confuse children, the elderly, and infirm! (Joking of course… sort of.)

This short list is not intended to be comprehensive. Your contribution, via comments, below, is required for fuller exploration of our collective consciousness for the deeper, or lacking that, broader, meaning of User Experience Design:

Socialize Top Seven UX Design Definitions