Bill Moggridge has been an industrial designer for 40 years. In 1979, he designed what many call the first laptop computer: the GRiD Compass, which was used by businesspeople as well as by NASA and the U.S. military. The Compass established the language of laptop design: hinged closure, flat display, low-profile keyboard, and metal housing. In 1991, Moggridge cofounded Ideo, a design consultancy based in Palo Alto, CA. He is the founder of a movement known as “interaction design,” which aims to do for the virtual world what industrial design does for the physical. In the recently published book Designing Interactions, he interviews 42 influential designers.

Technology Review: You say that at the beginning of any design, two things matter most: people and prototypes. Why?

Bill Moggridge: What we’re looking for is the latent user needs in a ­situation where, at least at the beginning, you don’t know what you’re going to be making. So you have to have insights about people driven from their psychology, their desires, their interests, and then apply that to the context where you might be inventing or coming up with a solution for a new product or service or space, or whatever the context may be. Once you’ve got to a first prototype, build it quick and try it out. As soon as possible–even a small attribute of it–try it out, because you’re likely to be wrong.

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(via Usability in the News)

The campaign reflects the airline’s refreshed focus to completely change the customer travel experience, both on the ground and in the air through unique, stylish and entertaining enhancements. [...]

“Delta is doing what no other airline has had the guts to do,” said Lenny Stern, founding partner of Delta’s advertising agency SS+K. “It’s acknowledging the 800-pound gorilla in the room for travelers – that the travel experience can sometimes be frustrating and annoying. Through creative messaging, it’s clearly stating that change is the only acceptable option to respond to customer needs. By being honest about what is at stake, customers can believe Delta is also being honest about how they are changing with a keen focus on making make every moment of the travel experience better.”

Delta’s new web site will ultimately enable travelers to participate in a dialogue about their travels, share ideas, travel tips and provide feedback, in order to help with Delta’s ongoing commitment to change.

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Swisscom’s new premium service is firmly based on guest insights gained from two major surveys that have been conducted over the last 12 months to better understand business traveler needs. Interviews with 1,100 hotel guests in five countries indicated that in terms of service customization, traditional Internet service falls short of guest expectations. In fact, hotels have to deal with four different emotions in each business traveler: their need to keep in touch with home and office, their desire to explore the city they have just arrived in, their need to relax and enjoy their stay and finally their wish to efficiently prepare their onward journey.

Putting these insights into practice, Room 2.0 proposes a range of customized services on top of unlimited data downloads and priority bandwidth.

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- Download press release (pdf, 40 kb, 2 pages)

The Pew Internet & American Life Project conducted a survey designed to classify Americans into different groups of technology users.

At one end of the spectrum, the survey identifies the heaviest consumers, most active users, and happiest denizens of the information society. It also locates those who find great satisfaction in the use of ICT even though they have fewer network resources. In the middle range, the typology highlights some users who have invested a lot in services and hardware, but feel uncomfortable with the extra connectivity. And at the other end of the spectrum, it identifies those who get along – many of them just fine – with a relative scarcity of information goods and services.

The ten groups that emerge in the typology fit broadly into a “high end,” “medium users,” and “low-level adopters” framework. However, the groups within each broad category have their own particular characteristics, attitudes and usage patterns.

• The elite users of ICTs consist of four groups that have the most information technology, are heavy and frequent users of the internet and cell phones and, to varying degrees, are engaged with user-generated content. Members of these groups have generally high levels of satisfaction about the role of ICTs in their lives, but the groups differ on whether the extra availability is a good thing or not.
• The middle-of-the-road users consist of two groups whose outlook toward information technology is task-oriented. They use ICTs for communication more than they use it for self-expression. One group finds this pattern of information technology use satisfying and beneficial, while the other finds it burdensome.
• For those with few technology assets (four groups), modern gadgetry is at or near the periphery of their daily lives. Some find it useful, others don’t, and others simply stick to the plain old telephone and television.

- Download report (pdf, 284 kb, 55 pages)
- Download questionnaire (pdf, 124 kb, 28 pages)
- “Survey defines split in technology use” [USA Today]
- “Wired but not Web 2.0? That’s normal, study says” [CNET News]
- America: The Growing Digital Divide [TechCrunch]

Instead, a range of alternative approaches were proposed for projects in developing countries such as “community centred design” and “deployment centred design”.

The context was a workshop on User Centred Design and International Development, looking at the contribution that HCI can make in developing countries. A critical observation was that in these settings, the idea of a single user owning and interacting with a single device, around some individually oriented task, is often inappropriate. Instead, systems are more often shared and used by communities, and their objectives are also geared to development and growth of the community. The challenge is to find applications that can strengthen a community’s ability to create jobs and income, to improve educational opportunities.

Examples of applications discussed included:

• A small scale finance systems for use by organisations making microloans to women’s self help groups in India, including applications using camera-phones to capture transaction data;
• PDA-based tools used by game wardens in South Africa that are designed to be used without requiring literacy
• Storytelling software using cameraphones to support a community radio network sharing knowledge between villages in Southern India
• A computer aided design tool to assist hand weavers in understanding purchasers’ preferences, and discussing design ideas with fair-trade organisations
• Delivering English as a second language courses and games onto mobile phones.

Much of the discussion centred on methods used for designing in developing world contexts. Design methods in HCI embed cultural assumptions, and they may need to be adapted or replaced when working in other cultural settings. Many of the design methods developed in western culture are dependent on the words that are said, with too little attention paid to non-verbal communication. Techniques like paper prototyping assume some initial familiarity with computer technologies. Participants also reported that the social distance between the intended end users and western developers or evaluators was so huge that participants in design and evaluation rarely reported their true experiences. Instead, better results might be obtained by training local staff to do the work. We need to develop expertise, courses and organisations in developing countries to promote HCI skills.

The workshop, initiated by the Bridging the Global Digital Divide project included participants from India, Malaysia, China, South Africa, Namibia, Benin, and Kenya, as well as from Europe and North America. Support for the workshop was provided by the US National Science Foundation, The UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and ACM SIGCHI.

• Panel discussion on technological overload with Stefana Broadbent of Swisscom Innovations (14:25);
• Daniela Cerqui, anthropologist at University of Lausanne, about “Towards a society of cyborgs?”;
• Jan Chipchase, principal scientist at Nokia Research Center, about “Literacy, Communication & Design” or how illiterate people are lead users for people who want simplicity;
• Régine Debatty (we-make-money-not-art.com) and France Cadet (french artist) about “do biologists dream of robotic art?”;
• Nathan Eagle, research scientist at MIT, about “Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control”;
• Fabien Girardin, researcher at the Pompeu Fabra University, about “Embracing the real world’s messiness”;
• Adam Greenfield, principal at Studies and Observations NYC, about “Everyware: Further down the rabbit hole”;
• Sampo Karjalainen, chief creative officer at Sulake Corporation, about “Open-ended play in Habbo”; and
• Jan-Christoph Zoels, director of user experience design at Experientia, about “Jumping jack flash – new forms of interactions”.

“The concept is called social lending and the idea is to introduce people who need money to people who want to lend some – cutting out the middlemen like banks and mortgage companies.”

The article first describes the ‘mainstream’ Zopa service, but then goes on to present the social lending site Kiva which allows lenders to give to a specific entrepreneur in a poor or developing world country, and FXA World, the world’s first peer-to-peer currency exchange where you can trade your foreign currency at a rate that you have set or at the rate the banks trade among themselves.

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See also these earlier stories on Putting People First about the same topic.

This seminal book – based on a broad base of academic research – explores how users have been driving the innovation process for centuries. It also discusses opportunities that organizations can avail themselves of by exploiting user-driven innovation.

The interview contains an interesting section about user-centred innovation policy:

“In 2005, Denmark became the first country in the world to adopt support of “user-centered innovation” as national policy. Academic colleagues from Denmark and elsewhere are working to help understand the implications of this. Some of my colleagues and I also set up a Danish User-Centered Innovation Lab in Denmark to help. Starting in 2007, the Danish government is spending 160 million Kroner [equivalent to 21m Euro or 29m USD] a year on this – and the budget is slated to grow a lot larger over time.

The logic behind the new Danish policy is that, essentially, all the government spending on innovation around the world is now technology push – R&D subsidies to manufacturers and so on. The Danes and other small countries can never win at that game; they will always be outspent by larger countries. Their new idea is to help their manufacturing firms be early at converting to the new, user-centered innovation paradigm we have been discussing in order to create a comparative advantage for Denmark.”

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The Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) has announced World Usability Day 2007 will take place on November 8, 2007. This year’s focus will be on healthcare.

World Usability Day was founded in 2005 with a mission to increase the public’s awareness of the need to make the services and products important to human life easier to access and simpler to use.Global issues such as healthcare, education and government are addressed through expert forums, exhibits, events and initiatives in numerous locations throughout the world.

A kick-off for 2007 will take place at the UPA International Conference in Austin Texas on June 13th with a program entitled “Healthcare Usability in the Trenches.” The program will feature Jason Rossback, Zoll Data Systems, Theo Mandel, Ph.D, Interface Design and Development, LLC and Janine Purcell from the Veterans Health Administration.

“The importance of user-centered design in healthcare is truly about life and death” noted Elizabeth Rosenzweig, Founder and Director of World Usability Day. “Whether it’s new medical devices or technologies; drug research, approval or delivery; patient forms or medical record sharing; emergency disaster planning or increasing the functionality of hospitals and everyday healthcare delivery, everyone is effected in some way by the intersection of usability and healthcare. There are many commonalities, yet each region of the world faces its own set of unique challenges. We believe that focusing World Usability Day 2007 on healthcare will create a stronger awareness of these issues and lead to initiatives that have long term impact on the quality of everyone’s life.”

World Usability Day 2006 was a tremendous success. UPA, along with its allied organizations coordinated 225 events in 175 cities in 35 countries that attracted over 40,000 attendees and volunteers at worldwide site locations, as well as through webcasts online at the World Usability Day website, www.worldusabilityday.org.

The goals for 2007 include growing the number, size and types of the events worldwide. This includes: adding more events that not only provide education about usability, but work to effect change by taking the message to the average citizen, offering additional webcasting features that enable World Usability Day to be even more accessible and increasing the volunteers, supporters and sponsors for the event. In order to accomplish this, we need more event leaders and volunteers as part of the World Usability Day team.

Sponsors to date for World Usability 2007 include: Apogee, Axure Software Solutions, Constant Contact, Dell, Different, FatDUX, Google, Intuit, Microsoft User Research, Mitsui-Links, Ovo Studios, SirValuse, VKI Studios and Usability.ch.

Any organization or individual with a general interest in user-centered design, healthcare or related areas, is invited to participate in this event. Details for volunteering, submitting a local event, sponsorship or general information is available at www.worldusabilityday.org or by contacting Caryn Saitz, Executive Director at caryn at worldusabilityday dot org or 617.905.5691.

Sign up and gain access to a range of services including valuation, recovery after theft and insurance. Retailers are also signing up to MyThings so each new purchase is automatically added to your MyThings portfolio.

MyThings has a community feel, even though possessions constitute the main trigger point of social interaction. Members are able to swap stories, compare shared interests and offer tips – “did you know your 1966 Chateau Lafite should be drunk before autumn?”, and the inclusion of an email-style message system encourages direct person-to-person conversation.

Items can be tagged in the conventional web manner, creating a tag cloud for browsing. Before long, however, the expectation is that items will be tagged before they’re bought. The increasing use of barcodes and RFID will become a primary means of entering new purchases into a portfolio. These ‘physical hyperlinks’ enable objects to become aware of one another, with, for example, scanners able to authenticate valuable items through their tag. Physical tagging would allow a member to read the specification of an item (perhaps even download details to a mobile phone), even if they couldn’t touch the item itself. If it later appeared on eBay, it would be easy to authenticate.

“Each portfolio is a powerful expression of a person’s status and personality,” says Benny Arbel, CEO of MyThings. “Our usability challenge is simplifying the product ownership lifecycle for our members by connecting them with each other, and with services that they value. We see it as social networking with a purpose.”

As a social network, MyThings provides an online community for materialists. Add physical tags and you have an early example of a connection between the intangibility of online communities and the increasingly tangible ‘internet of things’. By itself, MyThings is straightforward. But viewed as a pivotal point between online communities, emerging technologies and tag-based access to information, it might well prove to be something more.

Let’s hope everyone is smart enough to do this anonymously, in order not to provide shopping lists to your local burglars.

“Our work focused on a number of areas, including ethnographic research, following members home to understand how they managed their healthcare, how they made plan selections, how they budget and claim for health finance expenses,” says Chris Nicholson, Humana‘s director, integrated customer experience. The goal, he adds, was “to provide members with the relevant information that they need to make those decisions.”

During 2004, the carrier focused on determining which communication vehicles would best serve that goal, guided by four principles, according to Nicholson. The first principle, consolidation, focused on inventorying existing communications, such as periodic mass mailings, in order to concentrate them into one vehicle, he explains. The second, personalisation, sought to increase the communications’ relevance and impact by making it specific to the member. The third, distillation, aimed to synthesise the relevant information into language intelligible to the lay-reader. And the fourth, and perhaps most important, according to Nicholson, was actionability — giving members clear direction as to what they needed to do with the information.

As Humana put prototypes before focus groups toward the end of 2004 through early 2005, it set about seeking the means to deliver the final product. “We realised we didn’t have tools to provide the kind of personalised communications that our members were asking for,” Nicholson recalls. The carrier evaluated about a dozen vendor solutions, as well as two tools already in-house, he relates. “We were trying to get a good assessment in terms of cost, flexibility, scalability and integration with our print systems and [data] outputs,” Nicholson says. “We were looking for a broad solution that not only fit in the print space but also the Web.”

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It was provoked by the AIGA/Cheskin Ethnography Primer (pdf, 4 mb, 31 pages) that I wrote about earlier and raises some very valid questions:

Ethnography developed as a research methodology in such realms as anthropology and sociology. Its history has been linked to problematic aspects of colonialism, as the ethnographer’s Western gaze was often turned on “others.” Despite this shady past, the field went through a phase of critical self-reflection, which among other things identified the ethnographer as an active rather than invisible agent in the field, lending him or her a kind of participant-observer status. It could not sustain the illusion of neutrality or its own biases. It is this kind of critical reflexivity that is missing in this truncation of what ethnography can do for design, designers, and culture at large; or that what is really being sold here as valuable — or perhaps, billable — is specifically consumer ethnography.

Thus, the questions being asked are also often framed within a specific economic paradigm of the client-with-problem mold. However, questions could also emanate from civic or cultural perspectives, not only business concerns. The field of study is dynamic, not static. Each new design changes the field in tiny or sometimes large ways. More often, forces beyond those of design change the nature of the field.

Ethnography promises to understand local culture. But how do you design to conform to existing local cultural norms even while those same norms are undergoing change wrought from other forces of globalization? Ethnography promises to discover meaning in people’s lives so that what is of value can be emulated. But does the act of making meaning transfer from the user to the designer so readily? Is it hubris to think that it can? Is evoking a meaningful experience the same as having a meaningful experience? We’re told that legitimate ethnographic research is undertaken by professionals who work with designers in a “team,” because “the experienced ethnographer goes beyond the obvious” observation. If ethnography is so central to design, as the historical moment suggests, then why restrict its use? It was after all a method employed by a variety of differently trained people.

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(Make sure to read the reactions, especially the one by Elizabeth “Dori” Tunstall)