This weekend I am buried in a seminar on how to be a more engaging public speaker. Most of us fear public speaking. We fear being embarrassed in front of crowds or not being seen as credible in what we are talking about. I too have those fears, which is why I am in the seminar.

Our homework tonight was to write our defining moment, a story about why we are talking about what we’re talking about, so here’s mine:

Having started my career as a visual designer, I was quite happy just dealing with colors, objects, and fonts. As long as clients were happy, I was happy. Though throughout that time I found I really struggled with clients who didn’t appreciate my viewpoint on design. Like most designers I felt I was the expert in all things related to the “beautification” of a product.

Then the dot com crash hit and my life changed forever. After a year of underemployment and struggling to make ends meet I landed in the mortgage industry. I was working in a call center taking calls from people who needed their mortgage loan yesterday. I came to the quick realization that people didn’t understand finance nor did I to be frank. Calls such as “now I can afford a home with this interest only loan” & “I need to pay my contractor who started a month ago; why hasn’t this loan closed?” left me more then a little concerned. This would be an ongoing theme in my life as I began the journey towards financial literacy.

Then I landed in the insurance industry working on a change program to shift resources around the company, save money, and streamline the overall business. Here I suddenly had a new voice. I was hired to work on the internal web site redesign and any other admin related tasks. Having come out of the dot com bust with experience in web design I was a perfect fit for this small group. I knocked out the redesign, creating what I would (years later) come to understand were called wireframes and user flows not specs and process flows. They began to move me around to other similar projects and before I knew it I was a business analyst bringing design thinking to business objectives and suddenly it hit me. There was something to the designers way of thinking that was a different more encompassing approach to problem solving then the traditional MBA thinking. I began to explore what this meant and eventually found my way to Interaction Design but it was that project starting as an Administrative Assistant that led me where I am today.

That said, both Mashable & Techcrunch (amongst others at time of this writing) have recently announced that Steve Jobs has resigned. This has sent shock waves through the social web as people one by one found out that the “Oracle” has left Apple.

So you may wonder why I am speculating on the stock when I am focused on user experience for a living.

I am actually basing my thoughts on human behavior which directly relates to what I do and what I have learned from working with Fearless Wealth, who has spent the time, effort, & energy to do 100 years worth of research on stock market trends and come to discover human behavior does not change. What do I mean by that? People are often quicker to flee the scene of danger then they are to stick around and ride the bumps and fluctuations that come with investments. That said, despite the fact that Apple is now richer than the US government, most people think that Steve Jobs is the direct result of Apple’s success and it’s ability to take the company from a low stock price (roughly $20-40) to the now astounding price of $376. In fact, one of my favorite books of all time, Built to Last, would probably say something similar but this is where human behavior comes into play. Most people are not well versed in growing their money and will instead resort to their fears. This will prompt a sell off, potentially in record numbers, as people flee from the perceived danger of Apple going south.

However, things to keep in mind about why I think Apple could be around for much longer.

Again, I am not a financial planner but based on my understanding of human behavior, this is what I suspect will happen. Thank you, Steve Jobs, for all your hard work and your vision. You will be missed.

Updated: Apparently, Fast Company agrees with me with regards to Apple surviving without Jobs. Interestingly, too, this MacWorld article, points out that under Tim Cook’s leadership in 2009, the stock rose 67%.

I have to add this too, in homage:

Wired has gathered a bunch of quotes from Jobs over the years.

1) Research – The last time I was a part of a startup was in 1998 during the Dot Com boom. It was a great time to be a part of a startup. I had missed the energy of one and was curious to see what people are doing and if that energy was still around.

It was! The excitement and energy in the room was addicting. You wanted to be there, even if you didn’t sleep till Sunday evening. The projects themselves were very exciting as well from Flout (an anonymous mobile posting app) to Metayoo (mobile professional networking) to a bridal app that helped brides with planning and decision making to RexMobi (a prescription reminder and tracker). Tons of creativity went into the weekend.

2) Creative Project Hunting – I’ve long had a desire to design for mobile and to do something radically different than the day to day projects I work on. Not only was it mobile weekend but I also got to push the limits of my own skill sets which leads me to point 3.

3) Skill Building – I got to both test the waters with Business Model Generation and work on my visual design skills. I don’t consider myself a visual designer despite a background in it because I have worked with some of the very best in their field. I still have a lot to learn to be as good as a visual designer as I am an interaction designer. However,what I learned about myself is that in a pinch I will figure it out and get the job done.

Yet as a gamer and one that has been doing a lot of research on Facebook games of late, I find a lot of the games have little things that drive me up the wall. Some are slow to respond. Others have pop over layers that fly in my face constantly. In one case in particular, I could be in the middle of picking up goods, xp, or coins I need to keep my city alive and, “POOF”, yet, another annoying popover. Still, I keep going back because there’s an emotional element of accomplishment within the game that keeps me tied to it. “I must become mayor today!”, I think as I clear trees, build businesses and housing, working tirelessly to build my city into something I am proud of.

Thus if you take this emotional element and combine it with user experience you get nirvana! Which makes me curious, why then are UX professionals fighting over what we call ourselves when what we need to be focused on is, why even hire us? We are after all, information architects, content strategiests, visual designers, librarians, business strategiests, interaction designers and more. UX is a melting pot of an industry full of creative, intelligent, amazingly talented folks who offer solutions to common business problems. Therefore, shouldn’t we focus more on results and what we can deliver to our clients then trying to figure out what to call ourselves.

Just my 2 cents, anyway.

Fact Company recently posted about Craigslist going to Washington. The article points out:

Civil litigators have been considering class action lawsuits on behalf of minors who say their abuse was enabled through the site. Another of tomorrow’s witnesses, Tina Frundt, Founder of the nonprofit Courtney’s House, says that the majority of kids helped by her nonprofit “have been trafficked through Craigslist.” Their average age when they entered prostitution was 12, she adds.

However, the site is “protected by a federal law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which exempts sites like Craigslist from legal liability for content created by users.”

As a content creator and designer of the digital products we use, this got me thinking about the greater ramifications across the web for anything currently in distribution or created in the future. What happens if the government does suddenly step in and begins to censor the content we consume?

Don’t get me wrong as a proponent of ending modern day slavery (aka human trafficking), I am one of the first to tell you that Craigslist putting an end to their Adult section is a good thing. Though it does worry me about where that traffic will be driven to now. Redbook? Other sites? I am not certain either way about how this affects the push to end slavery. My concern would be that it drives it further underground. However this post is not about that so let me return to my point.

If the government censors Craigslist, then who’s next? With enough pressure from the public do we censor others who will attempt to claim the right of free speech? How does that affect those of us in the digital space? Is the freedom of the web dead? Guess we’ll find out around 1pm EDT tomorrow when an announcement regarding Craigslist comes out tomorrow. Then we’ll see how this changes (if it changes) our landscape.

Tom Wujec, an innovative practitioner of business visualization, presents some surprisingly deep research into the “marshmallow problem” — a simple team-building exercise that involves dry spaghetti, one yard of tape and a marshmallow. Who can build the tallest tower with these ingredients? And why does a surprising group always beat the average?

Some of the best performers for this problem are the recent graduates of kindergarten verses recent b-school graduates whom actually perform the worst. Is it becase “everything you ever learned, you learned in kindergarten moment”? No, actually most kindergartners will take the time to experiment and play. They will build prototypes to see what works and what doesn’t. Where as, business thinkers look for that one “right” solution.

In summary, the marshmallow challenge helps identify the hidden assumptions. It provides a shared experience, a common language, and common stance to build the right prototype. Design is a contact sport. It demands that we bring the best we have to the problem to move from an “uh oh” moment to a “ta da” moment.

What happens when we give people responsibility to create something? Just let them take the reigns and run for 24+ hours on whatever they want? Dan Pink attempts to create that reality for you through this video done for TED. I discovered it when it was posted in Fast Company. The science proves that giving people bonuses rather than purpose actually fails to drive better performance. Richard Branson, in his book, Business Stripped Bare: Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur, also mentions how he built his various Virgin brands through the use of “purpose building”.  He gave select groups within the various Virgin brands the opportunity to take and build up a new Virgin brand. In his video, Dan Pink challenges conventional wisdom and offers a new way to motivate your employees.

I’m rather far behind on the weekly UX Videos so I’ll “catch up” simply by starting my posts again. I ran across this video and am amazed by the facts. We have a fundamental shift on our hands of how we communicate with each other locally and internationally.

Similar to having a web site is required to even be seen as a legitimate business; it’s now vital to play a part in social media. Seventy eight percent of people will trust peer reviews verses the 14% that trust advertising. Some further facts of the video are as follows:

Social media is no longer a toy. It has grown into a leading tool that demands you partner with it in order to keep pace.

I always struggle with explaining what I do. Often getting blank stares and perplexed looks when I say, “I do user experience design.”

This always leads to conversations between ourselves that go something like this, “So how do you explain what we do?” “I do x.” “Oh yeah that sounds really good. I usually say y.” “Hm, I might need to implement some of that.” However, who we are not talking to is our customers.

Jeff Bezos of Amazon says we should obsess over our customers but how many of us actually do? We talk endlessly about user experience but do we take that internally to consider the experience of our own users (aka clients)? Do we go out and talk to them? Ask them candidly, “do you understand the value of what I sell?” How confident are you that your clients can explain in plan language just what you do and what value you bring to their organization?

Spend time learning the language of your intended audience. Figure out how to translate what you do into their language. Build rapport with them through the language you utilize to explain what you do.

Sheer determination and persistence gets us farther than anything else. Take Colonel Sanders for example.  He talked to hundreds before he finally got someone to take him seriously and thus Kentucky Fried Chicken was born.

Social media is about connections and sharing experiences. It will not suddenly give your business a boost without your business having a product/service your customers (ie users) fall in love with. If you as a business create a product that the users love they will run to Facebook or Twitter or any other service to let their network know about it. On the flip side, they will also say how much they hate it.

Business needs to understand this important distinction and consider their business strategy before implementing a social media tool to their toolbox. They need to ask why they think they need it and strategize that need along with exploring what users need. Combine the two with a social media strategy that fits your business and you might find you have utilized a tool to create a solution.

Time to start listening again.

An example:

I called HSBC recently for a wire transfer between my accounts. When I reached a human, I was told I needed to use the automated system. After pressing the several numbers (1, 1, 3, 1, 2) to get to my destination, I am then given a confirmation code (#000000 for example) and a couple of fax numbers to send it to and then the system hangs up. This left me wondering what I am supposed to do with that.

I call up the help desk and ask, “What am I supposed to do with these numbers?” The conversation follows as such:

Help Desk: Go ahead and write down on a piece of paper your details, the details of the receiver, any contact details needed, and please sign it and send it in.
Me: Any piece of paper?
Help Desk: Yes
Me: Ok so not so automated then?
Help Desk: (after a laugh) No.

Not only did this leave me frustrated but it also left me wondering about the security of the system. Can anyone get my details and send my money elsewhere?

Leaving your customer frustrated and nervous about a situation will entice them to look elsewhere for the same service. This then becomes a loss in revenue for your business which can be easily fixed with a proper system.

Personally, I think I will be returning to PayPal for all my “wire transfer” needs until HSBC either:
1) Truly automates the system
2) Allows me human contact
3) Creates an automated system online

Whitney Hess has posted the following:

Jess Bezos’s, the founder of Amazon.com, says, “Obsess over customers“. More importantly:

Obsess over customers: “When given the choice of obsessing over competitors or obsessing over customers, we always obsess over customers.”

Invent: “Any time we have a problem, we never accept either/or thinking. We try to figure out a solution that gets both things.”
Think long term: “It requires and allows a willingness to be misunderstood.”

It’s always Day 1: “There’s always more invention in the future. Always more customer innovation. New ways to obsess over customers.”

What I like about this video she has posted is it gets back to a point I have made about never losing touch with the customer. In all my experience with Six Sigma, Change Management, and User Experience, I think the only thing that really touches the customer is a culture of asking and consistently testing and iterating on your product line with your customers (or users). Hence why I have fallen into User Experience as a career.

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On top of this Business Week recently posted an article about the IDEA 09 Design Awards calling the article, “Designing a Better World” where they said, “Business leaders should care about design because it hits the bottom line… more than anything else, design builds a business.”

Is the future of digital a 4 day work week? Or will we work harder to become millionaires in 3 years? Tune in and find out.

I’ve been at a negotiation seminar all weekend when during the last day I went up on stage to share my 30 second escalator speech. I delivered it only to be told I was insulting my client! I said, after several edits, “Who I work with is IT Managers who has the problem of unorganized web architecture. I help them attain more clients and build loyalty.” It sounded good to me!

However, the leader of the seminar pointed out to me that it is very likely that my client is someone who created that system and consequently would be quite put out by that statement.

After some work I ended up with, “Who I work with are web based businesses who would like to work with the customers they didn’t know they had.”

Much better right? Right. The experience taught me something though. As professionals we often talk in the language of the people we work with. We need to remember when engaging our audience(s) that they may not always known or understand what it is we do. We need to always keep in mind our audience. Consider it user experience within language…

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Steve Portigal was up first to walk us through his sold out workshop called, “Well, we did all this research … now what?”

My Twitter Feeds on SP:

“Who cares about terminology. Examine, infer and apply to business or design.” I’d say apply to both. Why should they be different.

“Stay out of solution land. Try different methods”

When stuck come up with really bad ideas to encourage creativity.

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Second was Kumi Akiyoshi with “Feeling: What Makes an Engaging Product?“.  The slides from the presentation are below:

Third was Ian Swinson with “Postcard Patterns”.

Postcards = simple straight forward messaging

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Fourth was Nadya Direkova with “What’s in a game? A look at game design best practices as prime influencers of interaction design.”  The slides from the presentation are below:

Twitter:

Is google a single player or multiplayer game? How many of us get to design apps in 3d?

This is review so far. It’s all about the same from my game design class at Parsons.

Simply controls. Friend invites to play with friends. (AdverGames)

Create a reward in health. Physical Therapy… Doing # of exercises = whatever

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Kim Goodwin “each one teach one” – people are now saying I experienced good design. This is easier than that.

Twitter:

“Nothing special about the iPhone. Technology is simple. It’s design they are selling. And we’re paying a lot of money for good design.”

“Corporate Americas new found belief in design is fragile.”

A lot of good ideas end up collecting dust. “It’s someone else’s fault. We need to take responsibility.”

Sales people understand progressive commitment. Get people involved in the research and so on to understand reasoning. Pushes commitment.

Even those who are use to rational decisions can be susceptable to emotion. (Ie the Mini Cooper)

Bargaining a normal part of Change Management. “I’ll have the salad with the cake.”

Ixd = generation creation

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In summary -

Personal gripe: Another thing about less is more on presentation slides… Less information focuses the audience on you and what you are saying. Avoids info overload

At the bar afterwards: “We’re designing behaviour”

In process my computer crashed and on reload Firefox reloaded all my open tabs. Then as if from no where, there was music filling the air on a constant loop. I started going through each tab scrolling up and down frantically looking for the off switch. It was no where to be found. Instead I find myself reminded of Eddie Izzard’s skit about trying to get the printer to work:

No matter where I turn. I cannot find the off switch. Finally after 10 minutes of this frustration, I find the switch at the bottom of the home page!

Don’t get me wrong, there are definite distinct advantages to using sound in the right places at the right time. Jakob Nielsen points out that sound can “enhance the user experience substantially”. He adds that testing within a game environment using the same graphics but higher and lower quality sound led users to believe that the game had better graphics when better sound was utilized. However that was a game environment not a website.

When exploring the web most users are looking for information. In this case, I was looking for the amenities, price, and any reviews on the hotel. I didn’t care whether or not the hotel had a good atmosphere. After all in a hotel you mainly sleep. You aren’t looking for a home. Thus the music only frustrated me when I couldn’t locate the module to turn it off.

If you would like to use sound to create an experience than use it wisely and place it where the user can find it. The top right or even the right rail work beautifully for this purpose. The worst thing you can do to your user is frustrate them because you will lose them as a customer. Remember you never get a second chance to make a good first impression and on the web that is even more vital.