2k50: An Experimental Project

I've been working on a personal side project called "2k50: The 50 Best Songs of the Decade," which just went up a few days ago. I spent weeks compiling my 50 favorite songs of 2000-2009, and am now posting 5 more every day until December 30 (50-26 are up as of this writing). This project also served as an opportunity to further explore Wordpress as a site management solution. It worked wonderfully, and has given me a lot of insight into how to build sites that clients can update themselves even if they don't know how to code. Furthermore, I even learned a new thing or two about CSS layouts. This may not mean much to those who don't know coding, but I was able to design the site using solely text and CSS-scripted boxes of color -- this is a great technique in general as it not only makes pages load faster, but improves searchability.

Check it out: 2k50: The 50 Best Songs of the Decade

New work up: Duracell.com

A few months ago I was on the team redesigning Duracell's website, with my focus on the user experience side of things. The wireframes I worked on (which were partially based on designs another interaction designer had created - I certainly can't take 100% credit!) were used by the creative and tech teams to implement the site. I'm pretty happy with the end result!

Visit Duracell.com

Removing ego from design

One of the most difficult aspects of any web design project is reconciling the goals of the designer with the goals of the audience. (And by "designer," I am including everyone involved in the design process, including the client, the design agency, etc.) This is so difficult because the goals of the designer include so many facets -- the client wants to get more money coming in, the agency wants to please the client to get more work in the future, the creative director wants to wow other creative types with his/her vision and maybe win an award, etc. And amidst all of that as well are political power plays, internal arguments, and some "selective hearing" when it comes to research and statistics that don't support their individual goals. (I speak of no particular agency or experience here -- these are accumulated observations.)

The whole rigmarole can be a bit exhausting and it is very easy to get caught up in the "designer" side of things. It all seems quite serious - to step back and think about the fact that people can get into shouting matches over a single word on a website (I've seen it happen) - I don't know, it seems like the perspective is off. People take these battles very personally, and fight for things because they want them, or because it means something to them, and it's easy to forget that all that really matters is whether or not somebody going to your website is going to have a good experience.

This is why I've found it so valuable, in my own work, to start viewing the work I do as completely separate from who I am. Much of what I design is based on research - knowing what works and what doesn't - but there is not enough research in the world to make every decision foolproof. If something was a subjective call, or I designed based on a hunch, and someone takes issue, I'll explain my viewpoint but recognize that if I don't have an empirical study to back it up, it's really just an opinion.

In addition, when working in a group environment, letting go of ego can make the brainstorming and overall creative process a lot more open. An idea prefaced with "this may be stupid, but..." could end up being the best idea of the day, while one that someone thinks is surefire could be quickly tossed out as the details are thought out further. When ego is involved, the initial "stupid" idea might never be brought up for fear of a negative reaction, while the "surefire" idea might be fought for tooth-and-nail to the detriment of better options. Letting go of ego - where you perceive comments about your idea as a comments about you - switches the emphasis to the ideas, not the people.

This ends up being quite liberating in the long run, because not only does it make it easier to edit and adapt your design as more learnings come in, it also makes you focus more on what will best serve the end user. And in the end, that's really the truest measure of a successful design.

The best restaurant site I've seen in a long time

I live not too far from a little pizza place called Emilio's. The other day I was looking through the handful of delivery menus I have and realized I didn't have one for Emilio's, so I figured I'd check online to see what they had.

It took a few clicks to find their site (Google didn't surface it to the top like I'd hope), but once I did, I practically jumped up and down for joy. This one page is their whole website:


(Click to enlarge it, or just visit it here: www.emiliospizzaboston.com)

Okay, so, obviously this is not the prettiest website, but from a usability standpoint I was so happy to see an eatery get it right for once. There are pretty much three main reasons why you'd want to visit a delivery restaurant's website:

-What's on their menu? (And how much does it cost?)
-Where are they located?
-What's the phone number to place an order? (Or for fancier restaurants, to make a reservation)

What does the site for Emilio's offer? A direct link to the menu, their address, and their phone number in large text. No marketing gobbledygook statement from the owner. No pages about atmosphere. No unintuitive naming conventions (everyone knows the word "Menu," so calling it "Food" or "Cuisine" or something cutesy like "Tasty Nibbles" just ends up being confusing).

And furthermore, finding the menu didn't require me to click a location, then click a time of day (brunch, dinner, etc.), then click further into another sub-set of pages for "appetizers," "entrees," etc. I just got the whole menu right away, which is exactly what I wanted.

There are definitely more things the site could offer that would be helpful - hours, a link to a map next to the address, maybe a picture or two of the place (and if it was a fancier restaurant, probably information about reservations and maybe some press reviews), but the essentials were right there. It could also certainly be more visually appealing, but the fact is I found exactly what I was looking for within a split second of landing on the site, which is worth so much more than looking pretty.

Progressive disclosure: making decisions easier and more satisfying

I'm not sure if I've directly used the term on this blog before, but the concept of "progressive disclosure" is (in my opinion) a very important part of good design for any website or application. A good design will help the user find what they're looking for easily. Some people interpret this as meaning you should present up-front every possible piece of information they may need or want. In reality this just confuses the user. Imagine if, when you landed on Amazon's website, you were given a full list of every single product with full product description all on the home page. It would be completely unwieldy and almost impossible to find what you really want. Does "everything up-front" still sound like a good plan?

Progressive disclosure tells you that the best way to get people the information they want is to provide just enough at any given point to help their get to their desired result. To continue with the Amazon example, let's say you wanted to buy a Samsung HDTV. In our "up-front" example, you'd have to scan through an unwieldy page with millions of products to find what you want. Instead, progressive disclosure lets us get the shopper to Samsung TVs by clicking through a hierarchy. "Electronics," then "Televisions & Video," then "Samsung" is highlighted as a brand.

Furthermore, when you land on the Samsung page, you don't just see a text list of products or a full spec sheet for each product. You see each product with its name, an image, its price, and its consumer star rating. You're not given the full list of specs and item description for each item, but you're given extremely quick glances at three major pieces of information - aesthetics, price, and quality - which can then help you narrow down to the selection you want.

There are a lot of other ways of using progressive disclosure that aren't just hierarchical. It is helpful also in stepped processes, such as a shopping cart checkout (often you'll see steps shown, such as "Choose Payment Method" and "Enter Shipping Address," with your current step indicated). This lets the user know what's coming next and how long the process is.

You can also use the concept for things like optional features, such as when you are uploading a photo to a site. You may just want to put the photo up and leave it at that. Or maybe you want to add a caption, or tag people in the photo, or edit the photo, or assign it to an album. Having all these options shown up-front can be overwhelming, particularly to the user who just wants to put a photo up right away, a better method would be to make the most commonly used options visible and then hide some of the less-often used features behind a tab or link called "Customize" or "Edit" or something similar.

If you are already in the user experience field, this is probably nothing new. But it seems a lot of clients are frequently unaware of or even fearful of the concept. "I have this great [product/event/etc.] with all these amazing features and aspects to it, I want people to get excited and know all about how awesome it is! Why wouldn't I tell them all about it as soon as I can?"

The answer is that it doesn't help you if you overwhelm or turn off your potential audience. The above quote comes from a perspective of what the company/organization wants, not what the customer does. What your customers probably want to do is figure out what they are interested in, and then learn more about it. (How would you feel if the moment you walked into a car dealership, the dealer gave you a stack of spec sheets and owner's manuals for every car on the lot before you'd even looked at one? Wouldn't you rather find some cars that interest you and then get ask for more information?)

On any given page of a website, ask what the purpose of the page is and why the visitor may be there. Is it a list of products? They are probably there because they are trying to decide or find a product they want. Provide just enough information to get them to a good match, and then on that product's page give them the full run-down.

There are a lot of adjacent concepts that are relevant as well. "Information scent" is the practice of making sure links are providing just enough information to make the user feel like they are on the right track. And the "paradox of choice" is a concept that it is typically much easier, and much more satisfying, to make a choice from among a handful of options than hundreds of options. You could show 512 choices on one page, or you could add a measly 2 clicks to the process by placing a couple hierarchical categoies of 8 options each, giving your customer a much happier path to their goal.

Don't be afraid that you are going to lose a customer by making them click a few times to find what they're looking for. In reality, you are creating an easier and more satisfying route to guide them.

Offer an answer before the question gets asked

I'm going to give Bank of America a thumbs up and a thumbs down for two recent changes that raised my curiosity.

First, the positive. Bank of America (and a few other accounting/banking sites I've seen) seem to be switching to sign-in process that involves entering your username on one screen, and then your password on the next screen, rather than doing both at once. I don't know the research behind this, but my assumption is that this must be a more secure way of managing the login.

However, the first time I noticed that I wasn't being asked for a password, I got concerned. Did that mean that now someone only needed my username to access my account? It raised an alarm. However, right below the username field I noticed a link that said "Where do I enter my passcode?" Even without clicking the link, my concerns were relieved, because it was clear just by providing the link that I would, indeed, enter my passcode at some point to sign in. This is an example of smartly predicting a user's question and providing an answer without them having to ask. It saves the company time and money by reducing customer service requests, and it reinforces the user's confidence by being transparent and anticipating their questions.

Now the negative. I recently deposited a somewhat large check in my account. The pending deposit showed up immediately on my online banking. A few days later, however, a negative "deposit hold" for a slightly different amount appeared. Had it been the identical amount to my deposit I would have been less worried, but the fact that it was a different number, and that it was showing as a separate debit to my account rather than just a note on my original deposit, had me concerned that someone had somehow erroneously withdrawn that money from my account. There was no additional information, and even a search through customer support gave no explanation of a "deposit hold." I suspected things were probably fine and it was just an odd line-item while waiting for my deposit to clear, but to be sure I sent a message to customer service. They eventually confirmed that it was just a note until my deposit fully cleared and not to be worried.

However, they missed two key opportunities to provide information in advance, left a customer worried for a few hours, and ended up expending the time/cost involved in responding to an individual customer request. Had they included a clearer note with the "deposit hold," or even at least had an easily searchable answer in their customer support, they would have saved money and prevented any cause for concern.

I've seen similar examples of anticipating questions/concerns online, such as ING Direct adding a simple disclaimer to accompany a slight site redesign: "We gave our site a minor facelift. So if you notice anything different after you sign in, don't freak out. You're in the right place." Another smart move.

Anytime you are designing for the web, it's smart to brainstorm what questions your users might have, and to make sure the answers are provided or easily findable in advance. It's a win-win addition.

Typical can be good

Anyone working in a creative field will feel, from time to time, a little bored. It may feel like you've done the same thing before, and it feels like you're going through the motions. "This just feels so typical." So you try to shake things up by doing things differently, by starting from scratch, deliberately avoiding the way you've done things before.

That's good, right?

Well... not necessarily, particularly in web design.

While creative people may get bored, most people -- your consumers -- tend to resist change. Change is uncomfortable and unexpected. We operate on muscle memory a lot -- most web visitors know to click a logo for the home page. Most people know how tabs work. Most people understand a dropdown menu.

When you start changing those fundamentals, you're forcing people to learn something new, you're breaking well-entrenched habits, and you are putting your visitor in a position of unfamiliarity.

You can try to push past the typical in many aspects of design, just don't forget that the visitor is probably coming to your site to get something done, and they will accomplish that better if, at least at the interaction level, the design follows standards they are familiar with and have used before. Typical is often actually the best way to go.

The road sign metaphor

I've mentioned before how I think road and highway signs are a really interesting example of usability in action -- they have to be extremely clear, concise, and informative, and it is literally a matter of life or death in some cases (consider a world without "stop" signs).

I've begun using them as a metaphor for web design in the hopes of making it easier for clients to get in the mindset of their site visitors. We'd all like to believe that people coming to our website are deeply interested in our materials and want to read everything we have to say about them. Unfortunately, it's much more accurate to think of your site visitors as ruthless hunters with non-existent attention spans who are scanning for relevant content rapidly, and are willing to toss you aside if they don't see what they want in 2-3 seconds (note, that 2-3 seconds is actually borne out in testing -- that's about how much time you have before someone hits the back button and leaves your site altogether if they don't see what they want).

So that's all well and good to get that in your head -- your visitors want everything fast and easy, and want to do as little reading as possible -- but I think you need to add a little more to the equation in order to figure out how to deliver that content.

That's where road signs come into play.

When you are driving down a highway at 65 MPH, it's generally not that hard to read road signs. They typically do simple things like list the name of a place with an arrow, or they indicate with symbols and short words whether there is food, gas, lodging, or other amenities available at this exit. A road sign wouldn't say "Turn right at the next exit if you're heading toward the greater metropolitan Toledo area, where we have a number of fine hotels and dining options for the whole family." It might simply say "Toledo" with an arrow, as well as "FOOD" and "LODGING" icons. Those thirty words have been boiled down to three words and an arrow. Was any valuable information really lost? And furthermore, if you were flying down the highway, would you have even gotten past the first few words before the sign was gone behind you?

This is a good way to think as you construct your site, particularly when it comes to navigation and basic site structure. You want to pick "content-heavy" words -- typically short words that clearly indicate the content they will lead to. And just as a signpost with 25 signs is going to be harder to parse than one with 5 signs, you want to keep the number of options to a minimum.

This is not to say that you should avoid writing sentences at all -- it's important to keep prose available, but make sure it's where it counts. You don't need to describe in detail how great your parking garage is, but you do need to provide directions that tell you how to get there. Conversely, if someone is trying to pick your next book to buy online, a simple title, author, star rating, and genre is not going to be enough -- a brief prose description of the plot, potentially with quotes from reviewers, is probably going to do a lot more to sell the book than just providing the bare bones. That said, providing a quick look at the genre and rating information on a previous page may be all you need in terms of navigation to get that visitor to the full product page.

If you're not sure how to set up the text and navigation for your site, it may be helpful to stop and thinking of your visitor cruising down the freeway, looking for a particular destination. What would they be able to quickly read on a road sign that would make them turn in your direction?

One great logo

This is apparently a few months old, but I just spotted it for the first time this past week. Boston has long struggled to make the Downtown Crossing area into a nicer shopping area/pedestrian mall, and their efforts have largely been met with a "meh."

If this logo is any indication, they are moving in the right direction. I generally think overly clever logos with overlapping words just end up looking confusing and overwrought, but in this instance the words overlap brilliantly and the T-as-cross really fits perfectly with the "Crossing" aspect.

I haven't been this impressed by a logo in a long time!

Pointless "innovation" (the new iPod Shuffle)

Before I began this blog, I attempted a different style of blogging elsewhere that was intended to focus more on good/bad examples of design. My first example of good design was the iPod Shuffle. The multi-colored clip-on items were only a little bigger than a postage stamp and I loved them. They were perfect for the gym, or if I wanted to ride the subway in town for a night out without having to stuff my pockets with an iPod.

Today Apple announced the new version of the Shuffle. It is not all that drastic a change, and there are some new features I like, such as the ability to hear the song/artist name spoken to you while listening and the addition of controls to the headphones.

But most of the other changes seem either pointless or actually negative.

• The Shuffle is now even physically smaller than before -- but was anyone even asking for this? The previous Shuffle was tiny as it was -- it weighed less than an ounce already. I can see the benefit in reducing weight with slightly larger objects, even something as small as a cell phone can benefit from being a few ounces lighter. But when you are changing something to be tenths of an ounce lighter, will anyone care?
• There are now no buttons on the Shuffle itself. The idea of adding inline buttons to the earphones is great -- but making that the ONLY way to interact with the device is a mistake. You are now requiring your audience to use only specially designed earphones with the device.
  
• The size of the storage has increased to 4GB. There really isn't any harm in adding more storage, but for many people the 1GB (or 2GB) was probably sufficient. And the new 4GB is over 60% more expensive than the old 1GB. Is that price increase worth a memory jump that many may not need? For now, the old 1GB version is still available, but it will undoubtedly be phased out.
  
• This is purely cosmetic, but -- why only silver/dark gray options for colors? Apple has an affection for clean lines, which I love, but when your object is about half the size of your pinky finger with no buttons or interface on most of the surface, you risk going from "sleek" to "lifeless." A little color would at least allow some personality.

I have to wonder, why did Apple bother? The voice reading of tracks was a very nice touch, but otherwise there is little innovative here. In terms of convenience, the size of the Shuffle was no longer an issue. The area probably most asking for innovation is the headphones now -- wires still get tangled, they are aesthetically unpleasing sometimes, and can get caught on things. Why not focus their innovative efforts on something like making wireless earphones standard? And if that is a difficult goal, why even bother at all with tweaking something that was already extremely effective as is?

Trust and faith in design

It's a cliche to make fun of older generations and their discomfort with technology, but that stereotypical technophobia is really just an extreme version of something all of us probably feel at some point or another: a lack of trust and faith in the system we are using.

What does this button do?
I remember having someone ask me, "What do I do to submit the form? Do I press the submit button?" The answer, to most of us, is "yes, duh." But what if the question is less clear? Navigational terms don't match what you thought you'd find. Something you thought was a free trial asks for your credit card and doesn't explain why. A link that seemed obvious takes you to a completely unexpected page or site. In each case, the design is playing fast and loose with the user's trust and faith, and as a result, is probably failing the user's needs.

Anticipate the next step
Good design anticipates what the user will want. On your homepage, offer links to the things your visitors most likely will want. Look at the search terms people use to find things on your site, and make sure your navigational terms match them. Whenever you ask a user for information, explain why you want it and how it will be used.

Explain yourself
One place that I frequently see abused is the "contact us" page -- many sites will ask for name, address, phone number, email, sometimes even fax number and company, and in worst-case scenarios, they'll even tack on some "survey" type questions -- even if all you wanted to do was maybe email them to ask about the release date of an upcoming product. In that scenario, literally the only piece of information the company actually needs is your email address. So why ask for the moon? Is it because your designer just used a "contact us" template and didn't really think about what that means for the user? Is it because you are adding me to a database you are going to sell to third parties? And even if all you do ask for is my email address, will you start sending me unwanted email newsletters without asking? Tell the user up front, and let them make the informed decision. (Even better, in this scenario, you could save the user and yourself time by having just clearly listed the product release date on your site in the first place.)

Expect questions, and provide answers
One thing I try to do when starting any project is just write down a list of questions I think a user/visitor may have, based on the type of site/product and the customer base. I try not to get overly specific but the questions should not just be the broad ones either -- for example, on a shoe site, I wouldn't write out questions about a particular pair of shoes, but I might write out questions about broader types of shoes, or questions that might apply to any individual pair of shoes.

Prioritize and group logically
From there, I try to group the questions logically, and see if they align to particular terms. If possible, prioritize the questions as well, and make it easier to find the answers to those more essential questions. This is also where some statistical data can come in handy -- search terms used, frequency of visits to particular areas of a site, volume of support emails/calls about particular topics. Maybe half the visitors to your site are just trying to find your address, and already know all about your product/service. You could have a beautiful, highly usable presentation of your product line, but if that address is hard to find, you are failing half your audience from the start.

I've found that structuring a website around this is a good way to meet user's needs, and a lot of this work can inform other decisions down the line, and make it easier to work in changes/new ideas -- just follow a mini-version of these steps (asking questions, grouping them, working out logical answers) and see if your architecture already accommodates these changes or if you need to restructure.

By anticipating everything the user will want, and providing easy answers to key questions and presenting them at logical points, you build that trust and faith. You're more likely to have a happy customer, and you reduce anxiety.

Usability Case Study: Comcast

I've heard a lot of horror stories about Comcast -- terrible customer service, too expensive, half-assed installations that sometimes end up destroying walls -- but when I moved this past weekend into a new apartment in Boston, I had to say goodbye to RCN and sign up with Comcast.

I try to keep an open mind, so I was willing to let the bad stories I'd heard recede, and look at my Comcast experience with out prejudging. Some of the experience was bad, some was good. Overall, for Comcast, this can serve as a case study in how they could improve their sign up process.

1. Signing up online
The first thing I did was visit the Comcast website and try to put together the package I wanted. We needed cable and internet, but no phone, and they did have a bundle for those two things. But they only had ONE bundle -- oddly enough, with the most basic cable offering they have, which excluded a few too many channels for my liking. When I tried to build my own bundle with the next level of cable, any bundle savings were erased, and there was no option to upgrade the basic bundle. Here I was, a customer wanting to spend MORE than the basic bundle offered, but the online system offered no way to do this. I gave up.
Verdict: FAIL
How to fix it: System should genuinely show all options, and make it easier to customize your package.

2. Signing up by phone automated prompts
Defeated by their website, I decided to just call to set it up. The very first thing that comes up in their automated prompt is "Enter the phone number where you would like service." This is a problem on many levels. First, Comcast offers phone service, so you could conceivably NOT have a phone number yet for the place you want to have it installed. Second, and here's what applies in my case, I am a cell-only person and do not have or want a landline. So the place where I want service has no phone number. Hoping to get to a prompt that makes more sense, I hit #. It asks me for my number again, and I hit # again hoping I'll get an operator or something. Instead it reads me back the phone number of the line I am calling on, assuming it is where I want service. Since I am calling from a landline at work, this is definitely not the number I want, so I hit a series of other buttons hoping to get out of installing cable at my workplace. Eventually, I somehow get a live person.
Verdict: FAIL
How to fix it: I suspect this may be the case, but a simple change in language could go the distance -- "Enter the phone number you would like to use for your contact information. If you are ordering phone service as part of your package, press *." This addresses both problem scenarios -- you don't have a landline, or you are adding a new landline.

3. Signing up by phone with a representative
Once I finally got a representative, which didn't take very long (no 30 minute wait for me), the process actually went quite smoothly. The man was helpful, understood exactly what I was asking for, explained the pricing and the promotional period, set up installation, it was a breeze. The only thing I realized after the call was that he had never taken my email address, which would've been nice so I could've gotten some email confirmation. But, not a big deal.
Verdict: SUCCESS

4. Installation
The installation was supposed to happen between 11am-1pm, and just as scheduled they showed up just after 11am, even though there was a huge snowstorm. They installed everything quickly, and were very nice -- they even took my roommate's old cable box with them to save him the return hassle.
Verdict: SUCCESS

5. Setting up internet
The one thing I had to set up on my own was the internet. They brought the modem but I had to activate it. Which would've been a breeze, except the first thing the system asks for is your account number. Since I had never been asked for my email address, I had no email record with that information. I looked through the documents the installers brought, and nothing had any personalized information -- no account number there either. I had never been given my account number! And the prompts offered no "don't have your account number?" prompt like many online services offer for people in my shoes. I had to call to get it, and this time I did have to wait about 10+ minutes on the phone to get a representative. Fortunately they gave me my number quickly, and then I was able to complete the setup.
Verdict: MIXED
How to fix it: Installation should come with some sort of confirmation sheet or other personalized document including your account number. But ideally, the internet activation should offer a "don't have your account number?" link that lets you enter in other information (SSN, phone number, address, etc.).

6. Ordering TiVo service on the website
Once I got everything set up, I tried to hook up my old TiVo box and realized that my new fancy HD setup did not work with my old school TiVo -- and the TiVo couldn't even communicate with the cable box to change channels, making it useless completely. I had seen billboards around town advertising that Comcast had partnered with TiVo to offer that service. Since I hate typical cable DVRs, I thought this would be a great alternative. I go online to the Comcast TiVo site, and it asks me for my zip code to check availability. Success! It is available locally (which makes sense, given the billboards). Now it's redirecting me to the order page, and... "This package or service is no longer available." What? In fact I can't find anything on the site to actually order the service. Which I know they are offering.
Verdict: FAIL
How to fix it: See #1. Don't tell me you have a service and then don't let me sign up for it. Get your system up to date, Comcast! Furthermore, include pricing information up front -- the page for TiVo did not include this.

7. Ordering TiVo via live chat
Just to try one more avenue of communication, I decide to use the live chat function rather than waiting on hold for a phone representative. No one is immediately available on the chat, but it does tell me what number I am in the queue, which is nice. It takes about 5-10 minutes for someone to show up, but since I am online I am able to do other things so I don't mind the wait. The representative is very helpful, answers my questions quickly, and I am surprised to learn that to get TiVo HD I do not need to buy a box or even pay an expensive initial setup fee, and the monthly fee is actually less than I was paying on my old TiVo. A pleasant surprise. The installation is set up quickly, and I'm done.
Verdict: SUCCESS

Overall, I was impressed by the actual human interactions -- people were friendly, and although not every phone call/live chat was answered immediately, the waits weren't too terrible. As for the website, it proved almost completely useless. It did not show all the options available, and in the case of TiVo, didn't even show the service at all. Even worse was the automated phone system, which started of on such a wrong footing that I got worried I was going to accidentally set up something at the complete wrong location.

Now I am not someone who hates using websites and automated phone systems to complete transactions -- in fact I prefer it greatly. If I can set something up without having to talk to someone, I am happy, as it saves me time and I can do it whenever I want. And, as far as I know, it greatly reduces the cost to the company. One client I worked with once mentioned that it cost them $14 per call due to the costs of maintaining that system and paying for call representatives. It would be to Comcast's extreme benefit to improve their system. And considering they are a company offering internet service, it speaks quite poorly of them that they cannot even offer a successful online interface.

Now let's just see how billing goes...

The economy and usability fail each other... again.

In this story from CNN about the economic stimulus bill, there is a quote from a Republican which has a lot of validity to it:

Some representatives expressed frustration over how little time they had to read the 1,000-plus page bill.

"You can't be serious. This would be humorous if it wasn't so sad," said Rep. Tom Price, R-Georgia. "What's in it? Have you read it?"

I blogged before about how usability could improve the mortgage process, and I think it could stand to do a lot to improve how bills are handled as well. No doubt the fine print of bills are necessary, but, at some point you have to be realistic. No one has time to read 1,000 page bills. It would take, probably quite literally, a few days straight of reading to get through it, let alone fully digest and understand it.

And furthermore, it reduces transparency -- we do operate in a representative government where we don't expect average citizens to have the time (or inclination) to know everything about every bill, law, and regulation -- but sometimes it would be nice to know exactly what our reps are doing.

So why not have a straight up bulleted list up front of all the items contained within? It could look as simple as this, or even break down each section a little further:

• $12 billion for street repairs (p. 193-195)
• $27 billion for environmentally friendly fuels (p. 344-350)
• $19 billion for school construction (p. 507-524)
• And so on...

Of course, that may oversimplify things, but if you're fairly certain you're on board with street repairs, but not so sure about environmentally friendly fuels, you can focus on reading the fuels section.

This isn't about being too lazy to read, it's about realistically improving the decision-making process. Big long documents shouldn't be impressive -- clearly written and easy-to-understand documents should. If you have to have the former, the least you can do is provide the option of the latter.

(Note: I'm not making any commentary on whether or not I agree with the Republicans' stance on the stimulus bill, but I am more than willing to highlight a valid point!)

Beware the permanent brainstorm

There is a particular type of person out there who is very creative, who loves to come up with new ideas, who gets excited about a new concept they think could be really successful or beneficial. These people are vital -- without them, many (if not all) of the big ideas that have changed our lives would never have happened.

But there is one flaw that often comes hand-in-hand with this level of creativity and brainstorming. For every Steve Jobs (Apple), Bill Gates (Microsoft), and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), there is that friend you have who is convinced that adding zipper pockets to suspenders is the next big thing. Or maybe that was last week, and now they're pitching tiny umbrellas for cellphones. In any case, their mind seems to always be working, but never carrying through the thoughts to something that is not only a great idea, but one that they can (and do) actually implement. I call this the danger of the "permanent brainstorm."

Those examples are extreme, but I believe there can be a real danger to focusing so much on the brainstorming and "ideating" portion of a project that you never get off the ground and develop something real.

For a more grounded example, consider a project where a company wants to come up with a new marketing website. All they know at first is that they want to target a new audience that they don't currently speak to. The brainstorming phase begins, and the team narrows it down to one particular concept.

This could go two ways -- the team could further focus in, delineate their ideas, and develop them into a site and get it live.

Or they could just keep brainstorming. What if we broaden it to include this other audience as well? What if we focus more on the interactive games? What if we switch from an edgy/rough look to a clean/modern look? And then after trying all those alternatives, they keep spinning around to other ideas. A hot new competitor site shows up halfway through the project, and they want to take some of the competitor's ideas and re-think the original goal.

You get the picture. The ideas keep coming, the project keeps changing, people second-guess their original ideas and the whole thing continues to mutate and shift even as it's supposed to be nearing its completion. The budget has swelled, the timeline has been shot, and corners are being cut that could make the difference between something great and simple and something overly ambitious and complicated.

Of course, this is not to say that brainstorming is bad - as I mentioned before, it's the brainstormers who come up with all the big new ideas. The key is knowing when to shift away from generating more ideas and shift toward refining and implementing your original idea. It can be scary sometimes to do this, but it's all about putting a stake in the ground and saying "this phase is done, we need to move on to the next phase, or else we're going to get stuck."

That can be a hard thing to do. Nobody likes the idea of setting something in stone when they are anything less than 100% sure of it -- and rarely is any new idea a 100% bet. But this is where handy metaphors and sayings run short -- unless you are engraving tombstones, you're not literally setting things in stone. You can make changes later on if need be -- it's just important to respect that those changes should be based on fully reasoned thinking, not whims, or a dream you had last night, or what your 5 year old said when he saw a mock-up of the project.

Be excited. Think wildly. But recognize that as part of any project, brainstorming is just step one. It takes a lot of work to turn a good idea into a good product, and you'll never get to a successful end if you never leave step one.

michaelhisten.com 3.0

It wasn't that long ago that I did a redesign of my portfolio website, www.michaelhisten.com. It was not a very dramatic change, it mostly focused on enhancing the content and involved adding my beloved color switcher. But as I started writing more in this blog, I realized I wasn't listening to a lot of my own advice when it came to my own site.

I was concerned about a few things -- one, the level of simplicity of the old site was so extreme that I was worried people would assume that's all I could do. To make up for that, I've ditched the "no graphics" concept and used some imagery and gradients, including using the font FD Helwoodica, an all-lowercase distressed take on my favorite font, Helvetica.

But perhaps my biggest issue with my site was that I was falling victim to that perennial trap -- thinking my content was more interesting than it was. Some site statistics bore this out, but basically, people didn't bother reading much of any of the content pages and just went straight for the portfolio section. To top it off, my portfolio examples did not have thumbnail imagery to give you a preview until you clicked on the name of a project. This, combined with some research into how other designers out there are presenting their profiles, led me to embrace the idea of a one-page website.

Yup, just one page, there's nothing more than what you see when you land there. Of course, clicking thumbnails gives you larger views (much larger than before -- more than twice as large, in fact) of each project, but now all those projects are front and center. I think the end result is that people will get a quick glimpse of what I can do, and they can then read a little bit in the area at the bottom of the page, and then I encourage them to contact me for more. If they want to read more about me and my design philosophy, the blog is right here. All in all, I'm very happy with the update.

Oh, and that color switcher is still there -- I still love the idea of giving visitors a little interactivity!

"In a perfect world..."

Most design agencies are structured into silos, with people specialized in different aspects of the design and management. I wrote about some of the problems this can create in an earlier post, but there's another aspect to specialization: we expect people in later stages of the process to be able to fully realize the ideas we have as designers earlier on in the process.

I have seen too many times an idea get implemented either without the interaction/design fully realized, or just plain implemented wrong. The results are almost always disappointing, and sometimes that seemingly small difference between well-polished and rough-around-the-edges is the difference between easy and frustrating. A poorly-implemented great idea is often worse than a well-implemented mediocre idea.

This is a tough situation to deal with, because often you won't know if the idea fails in implementation until it has actually been implemented, and at that point it may be too late to try an alternate approach. And even if you know it is risky, sometimes it is worth the risk. My best suggestions?

Make a sample version/functional prototype
Try to create a mini version of your big idea. Problems may rear their head that you didn't expect, while things you expected to be difficult may work out smoothly after all. In either case, it should tell you if it is worth exploring further or abandoning.

Do it yourself
You can't always do this in a large agency (in fact, you probably rarely can), but one of the benefits of working small or being an all-in-one freelancer is that you know fully the skills and knowledge of every one at every step -- because it might be you in every role. You may not know every single aspect of how to create something in advance, but it's important that you at least know how to learn everything needed, and that you can do it within the scope of your project.

Have a well-thought-out Plan B
Sometimes your Plan B may just be an earlier brainstorm that wasn't fully realized, but just as you should design for user failure, you should design for designer failure too. Unexpected obstacles are common, and the more ready you are with an alternate approach, the more likely your end result will be successful. Trying to patch up a sinking ship that has been battered and bruised may be a mistake -- sometimes you just need to scratch that ship and build another one. If you've got the blueprints for the second ship available already, you'll have a head start.

I've half-joked before that I want to become a "reality consultant" -- someone who can look at all the big ideas and plans and offer some cold hard reality about what is or isn't achievable, what will be simple or difficult, and ultimately where energy should be spent to really ensure something good in the end. But until that is a real job, we can all be our own reality consultants and be ready to adapt if our "perfect world" vision doesn't come to fruition.

Predicting the future

Recently I've been reading or watching a few different older sci-fi works, and I'm particularly intrigued by how they believed the future would be, and how wrong they frequently were.

Paper
In Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" (1968), there are numerous references to carbon papers and onionskins -- in fact I don't think there is any reference to anything resembling a modern computer with an interface. And yet in this same book, which is the inspiration for "Blade Runner," there are androids that are so nearly identical to humans as to require bone marrow samples to determine if they are human or real. He was able to envision a future with complicated thinking robots, but not a future in which something more permanent and flexible than paper existed. (Obviously paper is still used, but could you imagine if the entire record of a criminal only existed on a photocopy somewhere, and not digitally stored?)

Televisions
Watching "Aliens" (1986) and the later, rarely remembered TV series "Earth 2" (1994-95), I am struck by how they both failed to foresee the death of the old cathode-ray monitor. Thin LCD and plasma screens have already well outpaced old-school TVs, and new OLED screens are so thin as to be pliable. It's also interesting to see how whenever "static" or a weak signal is depicted, it is shown through the screen turning fuzzy or lines running across the screen, as one might experience with a weak antenna. Well, as anyone with digital cable or even online video watchers may know, when you get a crappy video, you see pixellation and possibly missed frames.

Gadgetry
Whether it's the phone in "Aliens" (dialing via sticking a plastic card into a slot) or the VR "gear" in "Earth 2" (a bulky headset with awkwardly swinging eyepieces), a lot of sci-fi failed to predict things like Bluetooth (which is little more than an earbud) or even simple speed-dialing. And interestingly, nearly every piece of sci-fi seems to have thought that video-phones would be the way of the future. Well, the technology has been around for quite some time, and it just never took off. Why? Because we multitask, and if we're talking on the phone, there really is no need to also see the person. We might be doing the dishes or driving or doing some other task. We just don't really need or want that most of the time.

So what are we getting wrong now?
There are undoubtedly a number of things that will begin to look foolishly short-sighted in our current predictions of the future. I think of the standard keyboard and wonder if that will die -- will we continue typing this way at all? Will "typing" even exist as communication? I'm willing to bet that we'll soon be seeing more and more examples of mind-controlled interfaces. I'm not talking anything magic here, but just complicated systems of interpreting electrical impulses in the brain. This may not be any time soon, but when you set something far in the future, it's worth considering.

There's also something I've been reading about lately -- devices that are essentially real "transformers" -- objects that can become other objects. Essentially a collection of "nano-machines" that can rebuild themselves based on the user's need. I don't know the limitations of this, but it wouldn't surprise me to start seeing self-reconstructing devices within the next 20 years.

But, hey, in the 1960s they all thought we'd be taking rockets to the moon for vacation by now. And boy were they wrong.