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Take a look at what surprises and delights the experts about both the usual suspects and some unexpected choices. Dan Saffer, Founder/Principal, Kicker Studio: TiVo is a perennial favorite of mine. It used to just be the box with the service; now it’s a whole website that you can work with, and I know they’re planning a more mobile presence. They care so much about the user experience. Something like TiVo, which seems so simple, actually has just a ton of complexity hidden under the hood that they’ve really simplified for you. Peter Merholz, President, Adaptive Path: TiVo still delivers the best DVR television experience. When I moved houses, I got a new Direct TV DVR--and I hate it because it’s not TiVo. Bill Scott, VP, Product Engineering, Meebo I’ve become a real fan of Twitter. it forces people to curate in a very short manner, 140 characters. I actually don’t even use Google Reader now. I just have the right people I follow. Luke Wroblewski, author, Site Seeing, Designing Web Forms I no longer go through hundreds of news articles or feeds or thousands of blog posts. I follow a couple of people that are doing that in different batches. Stuff is just coming to me as these people deem it relevant. Cordell Ratzlaff, Director of User-Centered Design, Cisco I think the Nintendo Wii is a big product. It’s a great experience. Nintendo…made a decision to focus on casual gamers rather than hard core gamers. So they went away from higher performing consoles, higher resolution graphics, and focused on fun. You don’t necessarily need all that processing power. You don’t need the high quality graphics. And you can still have fun. But I think [the Wii’s real breakthrough] is turning people’s entire bodies into an input device. You don’t necessarily realize you’ve got a controller. Doing something with your body, you’re affecting something on your video screen…with no wires in between…which is part of that magic. Dan Saffer The Wii for us is still an amazing experience. When 85-year-old grannies, 15-year-olds, my daughter who’s 9, can all play the same game--and they’re doing gestures in space, which ten years ago was something you would only see in an academic lab somewhere--that’s just thrilling. It’s really opened the door to people saying, “Wow, we can use this elsewhere.” Don Norman, Nielsen Norman Group I own a Porsche and I just always delight to have an excuse to drive it. I just came back from a conference that was up in the redwoods, just north of San Francisco…it was kind of in the foothills and so there were narrow, winding roads. We deliberately came back home not on the main highway, but on a small, winding road…It’s an old car--10 years old--but it’s just so much fun. Carl Liu, Founder, Newtive Creations: A simply awesome product. It is a breakthrough innovation, not only the sleek product itself, but also the creative thinking of business model. It elevates user experience to a higher level from hardware device and software service to its online back-end resources. It engages the user deeply to its resource data, and broadly applies to other Apple products. The UX on the iPhone is amazing in that it runs the applications and keeps the internet working fluidly. Also, the operational speed and interaction response of the software far exceeds competing products. Peter Merholz: I am a die-hard iPhone user. I can’t say it’s changed my life, but it’s one of those where I don’t know if I could live without it now that it’s embedded in my life. Oddly enough, not for the phone capabilities. Mostly for the podcasting capabilities. Peter Merholz: The Southwest experience is just head and shoulders above the experience that you get on those other airlines. I end up flying a lot, and it's the only major airline that doesn’t piss me off. Bill Scott: A really neat site. It’s a great example of physicality and emotional connection. There’s a bookshelf...looks like the Apple’s iPad bookshelf. It’s got these beautiful children’s books. They’re perfectly rendered. You click one of them. It pops up, and you actually read the story to your kids or grand-kids. The pages turn beautifully. And you get to [record yourself reading it via] your webcam. You’ve got your picture in the corner, and you sit there and…record it and you give a link to it. I read one of the books to my granddaughter Cassandra up in Alaska. just the emotional connection of this. And it’s [a video of] me in the corner…and I’m reading, with all my expressions. And it’s like, “Cassandra, this is really cool. Look at the mouse there. Isn’t that mouse funny?” So it’s like you’ve read to them, and now it’s been recorded, and it’s this wonderful experience. Now she asks for it, because she wants to hear me read. Because she gets on the computer, and it’s this beautiful book. She can turn the pages. She can jump ahead, and I’m reading on that page. She can go back, and I’m reading on that page. She’s building a relationship with me, even though I’m not there. Cordell Ratzlaff: About 20 years ago, my wife and I were down in Carmel, California, one of my favorite places. And we bought this ice cream scoop. It has a nice, clean Danish design. But one of the features of the scoop is it’s got antifreeze in the handle. So your body warmth actually warms up the scoop, which makes it easier to scoop frozen ice cream out. It’s a very simple device. There’s this connection between the device and your body. There’s no moving parts in this ice cream scoop. It works on the physical level. It feels good in your hand. You can feel the scoop warming up in your hand as you hold it. It works great for scooping out ice cream. But there’s also this emotional connection to it, too. Because every time I pull that out of the drawer, I think, “That was a great trip we took down to Carmel. And pretty soon, I’m going to eat ice cream, too.” Carl Liu: A new breakthrough collaboration and communication tool. It provides real-time editing and document viewing, including text, photos, videos and maps. The issues of remote collaboration have existed for many years. We all have seen and experienced their issues, but there were no good solutions. I feel it can hugely enhance the efficiency of communication, and improve the quality of work. Peter Merholz: Google Maps started with driving directions. Then they did transit directions. Then they did walking directions. Just today, they launched bicycling directions. They just keep innovating in ways that are awesome and amazing and unparalleled on the web. Google Maps is one of those things where they anticipate what you’re going to need from it, and they deliver it before you’ve articulated that need. It’s just amazing how rapidly they release interesting new stuff. And they’ve been able to do it in a way that it doesn’t feel like feature creep or bloat. They do it in a way that really feels coherent and germane within that mapping experience. Luke Wroblewski: The things that I like have connections to my real life; they apply to things like the birth of my son. My wife and I were in the hospital with our first child, the night before she [went into] labor. We’re sitting in the hospital. There’s a period of time where not a lot is happening. So I pulled my laptop. I called up Netflix and I started streaming The Office. Here it is, two in the morning, during what could be an intense, emotional thing…and we’re watching these funny shows, instantly coming to us. That creates a personal connection to that service, because that thing was there for you in that kind of moment…this service there that helped us through that." ["post_title"]=> string(38) "Delight Box: Products the UX Pros Love" ["post_excerpt"]=> string(218) "Want Magazine 001 collected some of the leading lights in product, interface, and usability design. To each one of them, we posed this question: what products and services do YOU love to use? Here's what they told us. 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Take a look at what surprises and delights the experts about both the usual suspects and some unexpected choices. Dan Saffer, Founder/Principal, Kicker Studio: TiVo is a perennial favorite of mine. It used to just be the box with the service; now it’s a whole website that you can work with, and I know they’re planning a more mobile presence. They care so much about the user experience. Something like TiVo, which seems so simple, actually has just a ton of complexity hidden under the hood that they’ve really simplified for you. Peter Merholz, President, Adaptive Path: TiVo still delivers the best DVR television experience. When I moved houses, I got a new Direct TV DVR--and I hate it because it’s not TiVo. Bill Scott, VP, Product Engineering, Meebo I’ve become a real fan of Twitter. it forces people to curate in a very short manner, 140 characters. I actually don’t even use Google Reader now. I just have the right people I follow. Luke Wroblewski, author, Site Seeing, Designing Web Forms I no longer go through hundreds of news articles or feeds or thousands of blog posts. I follow a couple of people that are doing that in different batches. Stuff is just coming to me as these people deem it relevant. Cordell Ratzlaff, Director of User-Centered Design, Cisco I think the Nintendo Wii is a big product. It’s a great experience. Nintendo…made a decision to focus on casual gamers rather than hard core gamers. So they went away from higher performing consoles, higher resolution graphics, and focused on fun. You don’t necessarily need all that processing power. You don’t need the high quality graphics. And you can still have fun. But I think [the Wii’s real breakthrough] is turning people’s entire bodies into an input device. You don’t necessarily realize you’ve got a controller. Doing something with your body, you’re affecting something on your video screen…with no wires in between…which is part of that magic. Dan Saffer The Wii for us is still an amazing experience. When 85-year-old grannies, 15-year-olds, my daughter who’s 9, can all play the same game--and they’re doing gestures in space, which ten years ago was something you would only see in an academic lab somewhere--that’s just thrilling. It’s really opened the door to people saying, “Wow, we can use this elsewhere.” Don Norman, Nielsen Norman Group I own a Porsche and I just always delight to have an excuse to drive it. I just came back from a conference that was up in the redwoods, just north of San Francisco…it was kind of in the foothills and so there were narrow, winding roads. We deliberately came back home not on the main highway, but on a small, winding road…It’s an old car--10 years old--but it’s just so much fun. Carl Liu, Founder, Newtive Creations: A simply awesome product. It is a breakthrough innovation, not only the sleek product itself, but also the creative thinking of business model. It elevates user experience to a higher level from hardware device and software service to its online back-end resources. It engages the user deeply to its resource data, and broadly applies to other Apple products. The UX on the iPhone is amazing in that it runs the applications and keeps the internet working fluidly. Also, the operational speed and interaction response of the software far exceeds competing products. Peter Merholz: I am a die-hard iPhone user. I can’t say it’s changed my life, but it’s one of those where I don’t know if I could live without it now that it’s embedded in my life. Oddly enough, not for the phone capabilities. Mostly for the podcasting capabilities. Peter Merholz: The Southwest experience is just head and shoulders above the experience that you get on those other airlines. I end up flying a lot, and it's the only major airline that doesn’t piss me off. Bill Scott: A really neat site. It’s a great example of physicality and emotional connection. There’s a bookshelf...looks like the Apple’s iPad bookshelf. It’s got these beautiful children’s books. They’re perfectly rendered. You click one of them. It pops up, and you actually read the story to your kids or grand-kids. The pages turn beautifully. And you get to [record yourself reading it via] your webcam. You’ve got your picture in the corner, and you sit there and…record it and you give a link to it. I read one of the books to my granddaughter Cassandra up in Alaska. just the emotional connection of this. And it’s [a video of] me in the corner…and I’m reading, with all my expressions. And it’s like, “Cassandra, this is really cool. Look at the mouse there. Isn’t that mouse funny?” So it’s like you’ve read to them, and now it’s been recorded, and it’s this wonderful experience. Now she asks for it, because she wants to hear me read. Because she gets on the computer, and it’s this beautiful book. She can turn the pages. She can jump ahead, and I’m reading on that page. She can go back, and I’m reading on that page. She’s building a relationship with me, even though I’m not there. Cordell Ratzlaff: About 20 years ago, my wife and I were down in Carmel, California, one of my favorite places. And we bought this ice cream scoop. It has a nice, clean Danish design. But one of the features of the scoop is it’s got antifreeze in the handle. So your body warmth actually warms up the scoop, which makes it easier to scoop frozen ice cream out. It’s a very simple device. There’s this connection between the device and your body. There’s no moving parts in this ice cream scoop. It works on the physical level. It feels good in your hand. You can feel the scoop warming up in your hand as you hold it. It works great for scooping out ice cream. But there’s also this emotional connection to it, too. Because every time I pull that out of the drawer, I think, “That was a great trip we took down to Carmel. And pretty soon, I’m going to eat ice cream, too.” Carl Liu: A new breakthrough collaboration and communication tool. It provides real-time editing and document viewing, including text, photos, videos and maps. The issues of remote collaboration have existed for many years. We all have seen and experienced their issues, but there were no good solutions. I feel it can hugely enhance the efficiency of communication, and improve the quality of work. Peter Merholz: Google Maps started with driving directions. Then they did transit directions. Then they did walking directions. Just today, they launched bicycling directions. They just keep innovating in ways that are awesome and amazing and unparalleled on the web. Google Maps is one of those things where they anticipate what you’re going to need from it, and they deliver it before you’ve articulated that need. It’s just amazing how rapidly they release interesting new stuff. And they’ve been able to do it in a way that it doesn’t feel like feature creep or bloat. They do it in a way that really feels coherent and germane within that mapping experience. Luke Wroblewski: The things that I like have connections to my real life; they apply to things like the birth of my son. My wife and I were in the hospital with our first child, the night before she [went into] labor. We’re sitting in the hospital. There’s a period of time where not a lot is happening. So I pulled my laptop. I called up Netflix and I started streaming The Office. Here it is, two in the morning, during what could be an intense, emotional thing…and we’re watching these funny shows, instantly coming to us. That creates a personal connection to that service, because that thing was there for you in that kind of moment…this service there that helped us through that." ["post_title"]=> string(38) "Delight Box: Products the UX Pros Love" ["post_excerpt"]=> string(218) "Want Magazine 001 collected some of the leading lights in product, interface, and usability design. To each one of them, we posed this question: what products and services do YOU love to use? Here's what they told us. " ["post_status"]=> string(7) "publish" ["comment_status"]=> string(4) "open" ["ping_status"]=> string(4) "open" ["post_password"]=> string(0) "" ["post_name"]=> string(11) "delight-box" ["to_ping"]=> string(0) "" ["pinged"]=> string(0) "" ["post_modified"]=> string(19) "2010-05-14 01:58:08" ["post_modified_gmt"]=> string(19) "2010-05-14 08:58:08" ["post_content_filtered"]=> string(0) "" ["post_parent"]=> int(0) ["guid"]=> string(39) "http://wantmag.com/2010/05/delight-box/" ["menu_order"]=> int(11) ["post_type"]=> string(4) "post" ["post_mime_type"]=> string(0) "" ["comment_count"]=> string(1) "4" ["filter"]=> string(3) "raw" } [1]=> object(stdClass)#322 (24) { ["ID"]=> int(290) ["post_author"]=> string(1) "1" ["post_date"]=> string(19) "2010-07-20 00:01:30" ["post_date_gmt"]=> string(19) "2010-07-20 07:01:30" ["post_content"]=> string(12810) "Anarchy in the UX: Engineering Desire the Malcolm McLaren Way Malcolm McLaren departed this world in April 2010, leaving behind more than just The Sex Pistols, Bow Wow Wow, and the proto-hip-hop single “Buffalo Gals.” He left a legacy that we as designers, marketers, and other UX acolytes would do well to examine. No, seriously. I can hear the flame war already. What can the life of the man who allegedly invented punk rock and brought hip-hop to Britain and suburban America teach we who design smart phone apps and touch-screen PCs? More than you’d think. McLaren took a startup venture—consisting of four pimply youths who frequented his London fetish shop--and guided it to international recognition and a social impact that popular culture continues to reel from. He did it by applying a fascinating mix of strategies--some, like denying customers access to his product, would lose today’s UX experts their jobs. Others, like conducting user testing and enforcing a focused product strategy, UX’s leading lights follow every day. From the beginning of his career, McLaren had a talent for picking up existing cultures and philosophies and re-framing them to create something new. The latter skill came from his late-60s art-school education, where he discovered the political movement, Situationism. Founded by Marxist philosopher Guy DeBord, the Situationists advocated provocative, even absurd actions both as political statement and performance art. McLaren would eventually apply Situationist ideals to sales, management, and eventually, product strategy. He began his career in retail. In 1972, McLaren and then-girlfriend Vivienne Westwood opened up a clothing store in London’s trendy Kings Road district called Let It Rock, selling Teddy-Boy-style-apparel like leather jackets and skin-tight trousers. Then, during a trip to New York, he discovered the DIY culture of punk rock and the hardware-heavy fashion of S/M fetish culture. This influenced McLaren and Westwood to change the name of their store to Sex and sell leather and vinyl bondage gear. McLaren would later tell Vice Magazine, “I wanted to sell things that were normally sold in brown paper bags under the table. People were afraid to come in. It was fantastic.” The store served as his Situationist comment on retail: “A shop in which nothing in it was for sale. I liked the contradictions of that. It turned our shop into a place that people found impossible to leave.” [Swindle Magazine] Selling such disreputable items in a Kings Road boutique created the political volatility on which McLaren thrived. “We were raided twice by the police and went to court, but I didn’t give a damn…all the kids thought, 'This is the coolest place on earth.'” [Vice Magazine] The store failed to cultivate a customer base--but it built a hungry audience. McLaren would leverage this audience for his other products--not the least of which was a band, consisting of four of his most loyal non-customers. As he moved into the music industry with the Sex Pistols, McLaren continued to leverage his Situationist tendencies. He made sure every piece of media the band actually released had some element of inaccessibility--the beginnings of an anti-marketing strategy he would dub “Cash from Chaos.” This strategy, unheard of today, had dual positive outcomes. One outcome was the creation of publicity. The record, “Anarchy in the UK,” needed to create an eruption. After all, it was just a record and somehow that didn't seem to be enough. I refused to put a pretty picture of a band on a cover. Instead, I instructed the marketing department to produce a plain black cover with no hole in the middle, no name, no title, no record label. Nothing. [The Guardian] The other outcome was a targeted, passionate audience, much like the one he cultivated among the kids at his store. EMI were not happy. How, they asked, will anyone find the record? They didn't understand that I didn't want just anybody to find it. I wanted only those who cared. [The Guardian] But the chaos—and the cash—had only begun to accrue. McLaren made it a point to keep the band away from its fans and the press—partly to maintain that sense of mystery and exclusivity; partly because the Sex Pistols were actually terrible musicians. Creating an inflammatory image helped. The Pistols lobbed f-bombs on national television—unheard of at the time. Most infamously, during the twenty-fifth anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's accession to the throne, McLaren rented a boat and had the band float up and down the Thames performing “God Save the Queen” and “Anarchy in the UK.” This offense on the media actually allowed him to keep his product under wraps, making the idea of the band more popular than their music ever could have been. Instead of having the band play, I had them judge beauty contests. Town councilors were conducting press interviews. Whole towns and cities across the nation formed vigilante squads, not only to ban the group from playing but to prevent them from entering the city. Congregations were praying they just might self-destruct. The national debate was on. [The Guardian] Creating this firestorm around the band, as he did with Sex, did the trick. “The fact that (people) couldn’t be at the event made the event an enigma that could never be resolved.” He told the musician Momus in 2002. “And that’s what kept the Sex Pistols on the top of the media pile for eighteen months.” Keeping one’s product away from prospective buyers rarely leads to platinum sales, as it did with Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols. But looking at the techniques and opinions of some of the leading minds in UX--specifically, those interviewed in Want Magazine’s Release 001--McLaren might not have been all that off-base after all. 1. Have a tightly-focused product strategy. Take Luke Wroblewski’s interview, wherein he praises the efficacy of the single-focus product strategy: Many times that (drive) comes from an entrepreneur who has that very, very strong desire. That personal drive to bring something to the world…is an incredibly strong focus point. I think this is why a lot of early-stage companies can deliver something new to the world. 2. Don’t Listen to your users. Watch them. McLaren relied on user testing--or at least his version of it. He founded punk style by observing the clientele of Sex, his Kings Road boutique. He noted the ones who most frequented the store bought very little, but rather, hung out for the scene, for the style. Malcolm described them in an interview as “The dispossessed fans of David Bowie, Roxy Music, et cetra, who were looking for something of their own.” 3. Find your user’s unmet needs or wants—and meet them. In our interview with Cordell Ratzlaff, Cisco’s Director of User-Centered Design, he mentions that “A lot of the emotional connection that people have with products goes back to satisfying a need that they didn’t even know that they had.” As McLaren developed an understanding of what his audience wanted—even before they themselves did--he created ways to capitalize on them without compromising his product’s authenticity. Volatile publicity stunts like the Queens’ Jubilee boat trip resulted in “God Save the Queen” reaching #1 on the British pop charts--building the band’s anti-authoritarian image and moving units at the same time. 4. Cover flaws with an overall enjoyable User Experience. The cleverest UX strategy applied by McLaren is one referenced by none other than Don Norman. In Norman’s Want interview, Norman applies it to the most un-counterculture experience around: amusement park lines. Norman points out that amusement parks can do little about the lines for their rides, and so try to make every other aspect of the park experience pleasurable. By making the total experience a great one, people are willing to overlook the minor problems of boredom and standing in line…When something is really good and pleasurable, we do overlook the minor faults. Which, of course is exactly what McLaren did—i.e., use a publicity smokescreen to hide the fact that the experience of watching the Sex Pistols play was actually unpleasant. While this is a strategy Norman acknowledges, it’s not one he’d have recommended. I would hate to have that used, though, as a way of deliberately allowing ourselves to have faults and making up for it by some other thing, say by the packaging or styling. As such, it’s unlikely that Don Norman would approve of the Sex Pistols. McLaren melded disparate elements of culture and politics as a UX designer or strategist does with metaphors and design patterns. He knew how to create ideas at the big-picture level, and shape and lead a team that could execute on them. Was his ability to combine fringe cultures of late-70s New York City with fashion retail to create a million-selling rock band terribly unlike today’s product innovators? Is it so different from Steve Jobs, who looked at a hotel concierge desk and thought “Genius Bar,” or Jonathan Abrams, who took a Match.com profile as his inspiration for Friendster? Can’t innovation come from anywhere, into any industry, provided it’s sufficiently fueled by passion and imagination? If Malcolm McLaren’s career is any indication, of course it can. Part P.T. Barnum, part Fagin-esque entrepreneur, he spent his life trusting his gut and failing as often as he succeeded. Yet his successes influenced design and technology in ways most of today’s innovators can only dream of--all with a minimum of cash and resources; mostly wit, drive, and an eye for talent. Perhaps it’s that path to DIY success where McLaren truly resonates with us in the UX field. His work permeated our culture in a way that today's tech start-ups aspire. “If you play your cards right,” He ranted in the film The Great Rock N Roll Swindle, “You can capture the imagination of the entire world.” by Ken Grobe Managing Editor, wantmag.com Ken Grobe is a UI writer, editor, and award-winning copywriter. When he's not helping Want Magazine to increase the general profile of User Experience, he writes comedy for San Francisco's Killing My Lobster." ["post_title"]=> string(10) "Reload 001" ["post_excerpt"]=> string(392) "Can today's UX experts and start-ups learn something from the man who brought us the Sex Pistols? Want Magazine's Managing Editor Ken Grobe thinks they already have. In this bridge between Want_001 and Want_002, Ken explores the career of the late, alleged "inventor of punk" Malcom McLaren—and shows how today's UX luminaries agree with McLaren's techniques (whether they know it or not)." ["post_status"]=> string(7) "publish" ["comment_status"]=> string(4) "open" ["ping_status"]=> string(4) "open" ["post_password"]=> string(0) "" ["post_name"]=> string(10) "reload-001" ["to_ping"]=> string(0) "" ["pinged"]=> string(0) "" ["post_modified"]=> string(19) "2010-07-20 01:56:22" ["post_modified_gmt"]=> string(19) "2010-07-20 08:56:22" ["post_content_filtered"]=> string(0) "" ["post_parent"]=> int(0) ["guid"]=> string(38) "http://wantmag.com/2010/07/reload-001/" ["menu_order"]=> int(14) ["post_type"]=> string(4) "post" ["post_mime_type"]=> string(0) "" ["comment_count"]=> string(2) "21" ["filter"]=> string(3) "raw" } } }

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