Cognitive Friction

I’ve been ruminating on the Agenda I set for this reboot of Cognitive Friction, and my attention has settled on to the process issue I identified in that post. I’ve spent a great deal of time this past year creating and refining detailed design specifications for various clients and then struggling to get these products built in the way I intend by either a team of in-house software engineers or a third-party web development house. On reflection, it is the frustrations I’ve experienced in this process that has most induced me to blog again. So, I want to focus on two specific aspects of the development process:

1. The role of prototyping and design specifications and the wisdom of spending time on these design artifacts as opposed to just diving into the build process.
2. The role of design and designers in the development process and the relationship between designers and engineers

So what’s bugging me about these two specific issues? Well, I have been struggling to reconcile the approach to user experience deign advocated by two parties I greatly admire: The good folks over at 37 Signals and the equally bright people at Cooper Interaction Design.

Alan Cooper vs. 37 Signals

There are two opposed positions on the issues listed above that I can’t satisfactorily reconcile, and wish to explore further in subsequent posts. I’ll attempt a summary here by way of a preface to what will follow:

• The guys over at 37 Signals contend that anything more than a few design sketches is a waste of time. They prefer to start to build as soon as possible, because the sooner you can interact with something concrete, the better they say the end design will be.
• The people at Cooper Interaction Design hold that you need to design the whole thing in great detail up front before the build can begin. This entails lots of user research, requirements analysis and the creation of an exhaustive form and behaviour specification.

So which is it? The Agile Auteurs model from 37 Signals or the Product Engineers model from Cooper? It is this dichotomy that I most want to address in this blog and in my professional practice. I have a number of half-formed posts in draft on these issues, and I will try to get them out as soon as I can to start raking over this ground and see where it is I stand.

Technorati Tags: 37 Signals, Alan Cooper

So I’m back, first post in about a year. To be honest, I haven’t felt inspired to say anything about my profession in all of that time. Everyone gets burned out from time to time, I suppose. In any case, I had nothing to say that I didn’t see someone else say better and say first. Recently, though, my interest has become piqued by something and I need to work it out here. As Forster said, How do I know what I think until I see what I say? So let’s see where this goes, if anywhere, and I won’t make any promises this time.

What’s on my mind

Over the last year or so, I’ve been responsible at work for recruiting usability professionals. Some of them have been very experienced, some very raw recruits with only a vague notion of what their chosen profession involves.

As well as working out how best to recruit these folks, I have also been charged with developing a training programme. This is supposed to extend not just to the new people, but also to our existing staff. The idea is to collect all of the varied things my scarily-smart colleagues know and codify them, so we can all learn from each other. Our process is under examination too – what is the best and most efficient route to a good result for our clients? So that’s what’s on my mind. Is that a tall order, or what?

So what does all of this entail? Well, let’s see:

• Defining the desired personal characteristics of a good job candidate.
• Defining the desired skill set of both job candidates and seasoned professionals.
• Identifying and communicating the tools and techniques we should all have in our toolbox.
• Reconsidering the steps in the user centred design process and the deliverables at each stage.

Now I know this stuff is debated ad infinitum on lists like the IxDA every day of the week. No matter. I need to arrive at my own answer in my own way for my own circumstances. Everything I’ve read or heard on these matters must be pushed into the grinder so I can see what comes out the end. If any of my readers are still out there, then your comments will be most welcome along the way.

I don’t intend approaching this systematically, I’ll just follow my wandering attention and see where it leads me. I hope it’ll be somewhere interesting. So that’s the plan, although as I said, no promises.

This week I’ve noticed a couple of really nice products from web-based startups and I’ve spent way too much time watching video blogs, wishing I could afford to upgrade my iPod. I recommend you check out the following:

Pando makes sharing large files easy, and useful

I came across a story about Pando on TechCrunch and had to check this service out right away. This is essentially a P2P file sharing service designed to make it easy to share large files with others. Here’s how it works:

• You download a free software client, which is available for Mac or Windows.
• You drag large files or folders (up to 1 GB) that you want to share on to the Pando client.
• You send a small file attachment to the people you want to share the file with. This can be sent via email, some IM clients (Outlook and Yahoo IM), or through a link on a web page.
• When the recipients click the Pando attachment, the file starts downloading using Bittorent from your computer or the computers of others who have shared the same file.

The best thing is, download speeds are reported as high and it’s all completely free. I can see great applications for this in sharing large documents, prototypes and other work-related stuff with clients.

Blue Dot makes social bookmarking a compelling prospect

Up to now, I have found social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us or Technorati to be interesting but not compelling. That changed the moment I saw Scoble’s interview with the founders of Blue Dot. So what’s the big deal with Blue Dot?

For me, the big difference is that you can choose to share your bookmarks (dots, in Blue Dot parlance) only with selected groups of friends, family or colleagues. You can make certain dots public, of course, but the permission controls introduce realms of possibility beyond the public-only bookmarking other sites offer. For example, we have a Basecamp project at work called Knowledge Sharing, which we largely use to share bookmarks and related comments. I can see Blue Dot replacing much of this functionality. Check out Scoble’s video blog on this company, you will be sold. I am already planning to add some of their functionality to this blog.

Video blogs are eating up my precious spare time

It doesn’t seem too long since listening to podcasts became the predominant use for my iPod. I now listen to music only when I have no new podcasts available or when I’m working and need to zone out the office hubbub. Now video podcasts are taking up a lot of my time and I wish I had the money to upgrade my iPod to a video-capable model. There are three shows that I watch regularly now, all through iTunes, and if you haven’t seen them I can highly recommend them:

• The Scoble Show: Robert Scoble, former voice of Microsoft’s Channel 9, has joined Podtech and puts out a great show interviewing big names in the tech world. His latest show on Blue Dot is worth catching, and I hear he is interviewing Woz soon, which I am really looking forward to. You can subscribe to the Scobleshow through iTunes or from the Podtech web site.
• Rocketboom: If you haven’t come across Rocketboom’s quirky take on the world then you should definitely check it out. It’s just a three minute slot, so it’s not much of an investment of time and it’s often well worth the effort. Of course, it can cover topics I don’t care for, and produce the occasional lame-duck episode, but Joanne never fails to brighten my day. Rocketboom can be found on iTunes and on the Rocketboom web site.
• The Show, with Ze Frank: I just caught on to this show this week and like it a lot. Like Rocketboom, it’s a three minute slot with one man’s quirky take on the news and life in general. Ze Frank has a more acerbic approach and is likely to comment on more contentious issues than Rocketboom, which is all fine with me. Again you can catch Ze Frank on iTunes or on the Ze Frank web site.

This week I’m reading…

Why?, by Charles Tilly. This is a fascinating examination of the types of reasons people give for their actions in different social situations. Apart from being an interesting read in itself, it may prove useful in my work as it provides a taxonomy of reason giving that seems useful for that large part of my working life I spend trying to understand what people are doing, and why. I’m just a third of the way through the book at present, but I’d already recommend it.

Matt at 37 Signals posted to the Signal vs. Noise blog on the subject of Crosswalk countdowns and icons today. We’ve had countdowns on some crossings here in Dublin for a couple of years. I was impressed at first by the way they reduced the number of pedestrians dodging through traffic because they were impatient for the crossing signal to change in their favour. However, the behaviour of many of these countdown crossings in Dublin has now changed in such a way as to render them useless.

These crossings used to start a countdown when a pedestrian pushed the button at the crossing. Now, there is a delay between light changes that favours the traffic. So when you push the button, the crossing doesn’t respond right away, it waits for the delay to rundown, then starts a 30 second countdown to the signal that it is safe to cross. This is a broken interaction, because it decouples the user’s action (pushing the button to cross) from the system’s response (starting the countdown). Since the behaviour of these crossings changed, people have started dodging through the traffic to cross again.

This would be no surprise to an interaction designer, who could tell you that responsiveness is more important than speed. I’d be willing to bet that people would be prepared to wait longer than 30 seconds to cross so long as the countdown started as soon as they pushed the button. Finding out how long they’d wait would be an interesting experiment.

Ever since I read Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink I have wanted a Herman Miller Aeron chair. I am a sucker for this sort of thing. After I read about the design of the OXO Good Grips range of kitchen utensils in Creating Breakthrough Products I had to have a Good Grips potato peeler. Sad, I know, but as soon as someone points out how thoughtful and clever a piece of design work is, the object becomes compelling in a way it wasn’t previously.

It’s viral too. The Aeron chair meme has spread to my colleague Brian, who actually phoned a local supplier to see if they had these pricey chairs in stock. We both read with interest a review of the Aeron chair that was blogged by a web developer in the UK. Seeing that he got his chair on eBay, we then checked out what sort of money they were going for online. This is bordering on fetishism.

So imagine my disappointment when my wife sent me a link to a review that says The Aeron Chair sucks. Worse, the guy provides video evidence to back up his case. It’s one thing to obsess about a toy or gadget, buy it, and then discover that it sucks. But to have your joy stripped away so cruelly, before I have even sat in one of these chairs, is just too much to bear. If anyone knows of any more positive reviews of the Aeron chair that will reinforce my initial prejudice, I’d be happy to hear about them.