The paper was published in the first issue of the new International Journal of Sustainable Engineering, published by Taylor and Francis.

Abstract
Traditional eco-design has a strong focus on the supply side. Even when focusing on the use phase of products, still impacts directly under the control of the manufacturer dominate. However, the way users interact with a product may strongly influence the environmental impact of a product. Designers can try to influence this behaviour through the products they design. Several strategies have been proposed in the literature, such as eco-feedback and scripting. Existing literature in this field has its limitations. Publications either focus on a single strategy, or do not take a design perspective, or lack empirical data. This paper will present a typology of the different strategies available to designers. This typology will be illustrated with examples and experiments related to two sustainability problems, namely littering behaviour and energy using products. Furthermore a methodology will be presented for applying these strategies. This will be demonstrated in a case study on an energy meter.

- More background by Jasper van Kuijk
- Download paper (preprint version)

Most designers place simplicity above all else. We value simple things because they do all the things we need easily and none of the things we don’t. Simplicity is harmonious. Even Leonardo Da Vinci said “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” This is one of my favorite quotes, and it plays on the idea that being simple isn’t banal, it’s elegant.

Don Norman recently ignited a discussion about simplicity in his piece Simplicity is Highly Overrated. He observes that although designers treat simplicity as the ultimate goal, many consumers, when faced with a purchase decision, choose complexity instead. He uses examples from shopping in South Korea: people there choose complex, feature-laden electronics and SUVs over simpler ones. Norman says that people choose complexity because they assume a complex product is more capable.

Porter rethinks the discussion as not one about simplicity but as one about the psychology of trade-offs:

Users face a trade-off when they must make a choice between a simple product or a complex product with more features. If they choose the product with fewer features and eventually need some functionality that is missing, they’ve made a bad choice. However, when users choose the complex product with more features, they don’t have to make this trade-off. The complex product is more likely to have the feature users may need in the future.

People are reluctant to make trade-offs because they can’t predict what functionality they will need in the future. Choosing a product with fewer features is a trade-off that could hurt them down the line. When users don’t understand the advantages of each feature, such as when a user is buying her first digital camera, they are much more likely to avoid making a trade-off by choosing the feature-laden product.

When users choose a feature-laden product, they may not be exhibiting a desire for complexity. Instead, users are anxious about predicting their future needs. The black/white distinction of “choosing complexity over simplicity” seems too blunt an instrument to describe the behavior we see from users. Schwartz’ theory suggests that people in this type of situation don’t know enough about the features of a product or their own needs. The result is that users avoid making a trade-off by choosing the one that looks like it has more features.

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(Papers are linked to their pdf downloads, if available.)

Usability evaluation considered harmful (some of the time) [abstract]
Authors: Saul Greenberg (University of Calgary) and Bill Buxton (Microsoft Research)
Abstract: Current practice in Human Computer Interaction as encouraged by educational institutes, academic review processes, and institutions with usability groups advocate usability evaluation as a critical part of every design process. This is for good reason: usability evaluation has a significant role to play when conditions warrant it. Yet evaluation can be ineffective and even harmful if naively done ‘by rule’ rather than ‘by thought’. If done during early stage design, it can mute creative ideas that do not conform to current interface norms. If done to test radical innovations, the many interface issues that would likely arise from an immature technology can quash what could have been an inspired vision. If done to validate an academic prototype, it may incorrectly suggest a design’s scientific worthiness rather than offer a meaningful critique of how it would be adopted and used in everyday practice. If done without regard to how cultures adopt technology over time, then today’s reluctant reactions by users will forestall tomorrow’s eager acceptance. The choice of evaluation methodology - if any - must arise from and be appropriate for the actual problem or research question under consideration.

Defending design decisions with usability evidence: a case study
Authors: Erin Friess (Carnegie Mellon University)
Abstract: This case study takes a close look at what novice designers discursively use as evidence to support design decisions. User-centered design has suggested that all design decisions should be made with the concern for the user at the forefront, and, ideally, this concern should be represented by findings discovered within user-centered research. However, the data from a 12-month longitudinal study suggests that although these novice designers are well versed with user-centered design theory, in practice they routinely do not use user-centered research findings to defend their design decisions. Instead these novice designers use less definitive and more designer-centered forms of evidence. This move away from the user, though perhaps unintentional, may suggest that design pedagogy may need to be re-evaluated to ensure that novice designers continue to adhere to the implications of user-centered research throughout the design process.

Using participants’ real data in usability testing: lessons learned [abstract]
Authors: Todd Zazelenchuk, Kari Sortland, Alex Genov, Sara Sazegari and Mark Keavney (Intuit, Inc.)
Abstract: In usability testing, we place great importance on authentic tasks, real users, and the appropriate fidelity of prototypes, considering them carefully in our efforts to simulate people’s real-life interactions with our products. We often place less importance on the data with which we ask participants to interact. Commonly, test data are fabricated, created for participants to imagine as their own. But relating to artificial data can be difficult for participants, and this difficulty can affect their behavior and ultimately call our research results into question. Incorporating users’ real data into your usability test requires additional time and effort, along with certain considerations, but it can lead to richer and more valid usability results.

Revisiting usability’s three key principles [abstract]
Authors: Gilbert Cockton (School of Computing and Technology)
Abstract: The foundations of much HCI research and practice were elaborated over 20 years ago as three key principles by Gould and Lewis: early focus on users and tasks; empirical measurement; and iterative design. Close reading of this seminal paper and subsequent versions indicates that these principles evolved, and that success in establishing them within software development involved a heady mix of power and destiny. As HCI’s fourth decade approaches, we re-examine the origins and status of Gould and Lewis’ principles, and argue that is time to move on, not least because the role of the principles in reported case studies is unconvincing. Few, if any, examples of successful application of the first or second principles are offered, and examples of the third tell us little about the nature of successful iteration. More credible, better grounded and more appropriate principles are needed. We need not so much to start again, but to start for the first time, and argue from first principles for apt principles for designing.

“The Internet, which is shorthand for “interconnected network” and is one of the most significant achievements in the history of communication, is often broken because applications don’t interact. We spend all our time hopping from one island of information to another, repeating the same tasks, costing ourselves and our businesses time and money. The good news is that, even as I complain, there are efforts under way to make things better.”

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Stewart is the Chair of the sub-committee of the International Standards Organisation (ISO) which is responsible for the revision of ISO 13407, and argues his case in an article on the website of System Concepts, where he is the managing director.

“The study of the relationship between people and technology has been called a variety of names over the years from computer ergonomics, human computer interaction and usability to, more recently, human-centred design and user experience.

The term user experience is now widely used, especially by major players in the industry including Apple, IBM and Microsoft. However, in many cases, the term is contrasted to usability which is often depicted as a much narrower concept focusing on systems being easy to use.

Other exponents explain that user experience goes beyond usability by including such issues as usefulness, desirability, credibility and accessibility.

Personally, I do not really care what this area is called but I have had to face up to it in my capacity as Chair of the sub-committee of the International Standards Organisation (ISO) which is responsible for the revision of ISO 13407 - the International Standard for Human Centred Design.

The ISO concept of usability is much closer to this definition of user experience than it is to the concept of ‘easy to use’ so we have decided to use the term user experience in the new version of ISO 13407 (which will be called ISO 9241-210 to bring it into line with other usability standards).”

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(via UsabilityNews.com)

Chittaro, who is a professor at the University of Udine, also writes for Novà, the innovation supplement of Il Sole 24 Ore, Italy’s business newspaper, and keeps a blog on the Novà site.

I will also be at the conference, and look forward to post some updates as well.

Focus groups were conducted in order to obtain insights into the usability practice of each country. The results provide good indication of the usability knowledge shared and used in each of the studied national markets. Two levels of distinction regarding results can be made for processes and methods: One is results across countries – that is differences in processes and methods between China, Germany and the UK. The other one is results across domains within countries – that is differences between usability engineering (UE) and cross-cultural usability engineering (XUE) processes and methods for each country.

The major findings can be summarized that differences in methods and processes applied differed more between China, Germany and England than for the different domains of UE and XUE. UE-processes in England and Germany seemed more mature, flexible and integrated than in China. Specific processes for cross-cultural product development seem to be not existent. Neither is specific cross-cultural usability-methods applied by any team.

This white paper describes the objectives, methodology and results of the study. It is hoped that the findings presented in this paper will inform the development of usability practices better adjusted to the local realities of each of the participant countries.

Part I | Part II | Part III

Certain macrotrends in the healthcare and medical device industries have created an environment in which it is critical that products do a better job of supporting patients’ needs. In general, the population is aging. People are living longer and therefore require more care. But hospitals and physicians struggle to balance profitability with care excellence. The average length of stay for a patient decreased consistently throughout the 1990s. The shift in care has moved from the hospital to the home and from clinicians to family caregivers and the patients themselves.

Advances in technology have been able to support this trend. With the miniaturization and ruggedization of key hardware components such as pumps, processors, and displays, devices have become far more portable, and small enough to be hand carried, worn on the body, or transported on a wheelchair.

Patients themselves have also changed in recent years. Because patients (and their family caregivers) are able to access information via the Internet, they are becoming more knowledgeable about the care options—including devices, therapies, and interventions—they may receive to address their condition. Patients are also participating in virtual and real-world communities, and so are more empowered, invested, and active in the decisions related to their care.

Because of these macrotrends in healthcare, medical devices (both critical and noncritical) are used more often in the home and are used in different ways from in the hospital. It is useful to explore these thematic differences before discussing how medical products need to be designed specifically for home use.

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The lead article, the new point of view, discusses the renewed importance of human factors in product design, with a veritable who’s who of IDSA experts in the subject, including Don Norman, Rob Tannen and Bryce Rutter.

The article is a useful introduction targeted at an engineering audience, and covering the wide range of human factors aspects, from physical fit to creating an emotional connection with the end-user:

“More than ever, successful companies incorporate human factors engineering, psychology, and cognitive theory in designs. Their goal is nothing less than to create a user experience that makes us love the product.”

The issue also contains several other articles, including a focus on use - an article on the importance of collaboration between designers, researchers and engineers in creating usable products; Human Factors: To Compete or Cooperate? - on human factors in the process industry; The Driver’s Only Human … - on traffic safety; and a video of a human factors discussion panel moderated by Don Norman. Accessing the video requires filling out a brief registration form.

(via Designing for Humans)

“Aza Raskin wants your computer to disappear, but the 24-year-old is no latter-day Luddite. His goal is to make communication with the PC so intuitive you’ll forget you’re using a device. And Humanized—a software company and think tank he and a trio of fellow idealists founded in 2005—is the means to that end.”

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Designing ethical experiences: social media and the conflicted future
By Joe Lamantia
Questions of ethics and conflict can seem far removed from the daily work of user experience (UX) designers who are trying to develop insights into people’s needs, understand their outlooks, and design with empathy for their concerns [2]. In fact, the converse is true: When conflicts between businesses and customers—or any groups of stakeholders—remain unresolved, UX practitioners frequently find themselves facing ethical dilemmas, searching for design compromises that satisfy competing camps. This dynamic is the essential pattern by which conflicts in goals and perspectives become ethical concerns for UX designers. Unchecked, it can lead to the creation of unethical experiences that are hostile to users—the very people most designers work hard to benefit—and damaging to the reputations and brand identities of the businesses responsible.

Turn usable content into winning content
By Colleen Jones
Findable. Scannable. Readable. Concise. Layered. We know much these days about how to make Web content usable—thanks to experts such as Robert Horn, Jakob Nielsen, Ginny Redish, and Gerry McGovern. What we don’t understand as well, however, is how to make content win users over to take the actions we want them to take or have the perceptions we want them to have. We don’t understand how to make Web content both usable and persuasive. I, by no means, intend to imply that we should sacrifice the usability of content to make it more persuasive. Truly winning content must be both.
Gerry McGovern’s work perhaps delves deepest into the realm of persuasive content, emphasizing a customer-centric approach and the removal of filler content. However, I think we can do even more to win users over through content. I also remain unconvinced that the extreme minimalism McGovern supports is always appropriate. For instance, the “brutal” concision McGovern espouses in his recent article, “Killer Web Content Examples,” while usually appropriate for headlines, titles, or labels, risks creating the wrong tone in other types of content. As a starting point in the journey toward turning usable content into winning content, this article offers key resources that illuminate the creation of usable content and some tips for creating persuasive content I’ve garnered from my own experience.

Although somewhat shallow in substance and with too much of a marketing approach, it is worth some exploration, especially the mobility page, and the articles listed at the bottom of this page.

Here is the site’s mission statement (there is no “about” section):

Our Mission
To create products that people love to experience

One of our greatest challenges is imbuing our products with “spirit” and “magic.” This is easier said than done. Designers at Microsoft work side by side with the world’s best software developers and usability experts to attain that elusive yet worthwhile goal. We take what can be a very complex problem and provide product design solutions based on a thorough understanding of the user’s abilities, hopes, and expectations. Through our design, we strive to creative products of simplicity that you will also find intuitive to use. We aspire to creative beautiful experiences that not only look amazing, but also make our customers feel amazing about themselves.

Like love, great design requires no explanation.

They then go on doing exactly that.

The research, commissioned by mobile interaction management expert SNAPin Software, shows that as many as 60 percent of UK mobile users exclusively call and text from their mobile phones.

Amongst a third of respondents who do take advantage of their mobile phone features, the mobile camera was a top choice: 30 percent of respondents use the camera or take and send pictures to friends and family. However just 12 percent of mobile users e-mail from their mobile phone or access the Internet.

According to SNAPin Software, UK consumers are experiencing a number of issues that may be perceived as barriers to the wider adoption of mobile features and services. Based on the research results, these can be identified as services apathy, billing confusion and manual fatigue.

• More than half of respondents (60%) are not interested in using the mobile services available on their phone.
• Almost a third of respondents (29%) are confused about mobile operators’ billing rates and how they are being charged for additional offerings.
• Many respondents (18%) cannot not be bothered to go through a user manual in order to learn how to use certain applications.

“Today’s mobile phones are packed with functionality, yet many mobile users only discover a mere fraction of the features and applications available,” said Robert Lewis, president and CEO, SNAPin Software. “We believe this situation is symptomatic of how mobile handset manufacturers and operators approach user education. Users need simpler and less time intensive ways of discovering their mobile phones’ potential. These need to be delivered at the right time – when users require them most”.

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“Many cellphone makers have lost their way as they crammed more and more functions into the phone, making them harder and harder to use. […]

“The trend is towards allowing people to do more and more things with the phone,” Sandin said. “Many of the new functions are more visually oriented and require bigger screens and bigger phones to do it well.”

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According to the Adaptive Path blog, the interview deals with: “adaptive cruise control, ubiquitous computing, human plus machine, “user experience,” “affordances,” asking the right questions, coupling design with operations, busting down silos, TiVo has never made any money, Palm, many reasons for the Newton’s failure, boss as an absolute dictator, Henry Dreyfuss and John Deere, design evolving from craft to profession, systems thinking, “T-shaped people,” observing the world, and water bottle caps.”

I personally liked their conversation about the importance of clear conceptual definitions, the new and exciting course about management, design and operations that Don is teaching at Northwestern University, and the deep historic roots of user experience research within cognitive science and the design world.

Listen to interview (50 mb, 54 min.)

Led by Luca De Biase (personal feed - blog), it just celebrated its 100th edition, and a few contents are available in English:

An interview with Boris de Ruyter of Philips Research
Since 1994, Boris works on user-system interaction research at Philips Research headquarters in Eindhoven, where he is principal scientist and co-chairs the research domain Interactive Healthcare. He plays a key role in user planning and managing testing activities taking place inside facilities like Philips’ Home Lab. In this interview, Nova discusses with him about the exciting developments that are taking place in his lab.

Bruce Sterling: Generation X 2.0 (video part 1 - video part 2)
It’s hard to summarise Sterling lectures but he did talk about scenario forecasting, the speed of future change, the importance of fundamental science, and social areas that generate new language.The quality of the video is particularly poor. Italian summaries of and commentaries on his lecture can be found here, and here, and here. An interview with Bruce Sterling (with short Italian introduction) is available on video.

Fabio Turel runs a blog on the Nova site that is nearly entirely in English.

“It was a no-brainer to move to a layout that would be cleaner, more open and more easily readable. There was also a desire to get away from the tired and monotonous blue base colour of the original page.

From a conceptual point of view, the widgetization adopted by Facebook, iGoogle and netvibes weighed strongly on our initial thinking. We wanted to build the foundation and DNA of the new site in line with the ongoing trend and evolution of the Internet towards dynamically generated and syndicable content through technologies like RSS, atom and xml. This trend essentially abstracts the content from its presentation and distribution, atomizing content into a feed-based universe. Browsers, devices, etc therefore become lenses through which this content can be collected, tailored and consumed by the audience.

This concept formed one of the most important underlying design and strategic elements of the new homepage. The approach has the added benefit of making content more accessible, usable, and more efficient to modify for consumption across a wider array of networks and devices.

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“From virtual family organizers to tabletop touch-screens, their vision of the future sees technology move from the traditional desktop computer to become seamlessly integrated in all aspects of our lives.

One key area that’s set to change, says Microsoft, is user interface. MD of Microsoft Research, Cambridge, Andrew Herbert told CNN, “Sitting at a keyboard with a screen in front of us is an old-fashioned view of computing. Technology is going to be around us, it’s going to be much easier to use.”

Developments in touch-screen technology have resulted in large screens that can be used by multiple people, creating table-top tools for collaboration at work. And along with touch-screens, voice recognition will make our interaction with computers much more natural.

Herbert told CNN, “Interactive surfaces are making it easier for people to use computers with gesture and touch. It will make it easy for people to collaborate together. Speech will be an important part of that, too.”

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In his new book, The Design of Future Things (Basic Books), Don Norman isn’t afraid to call himself out on statements he made in his earlier, wildly popular publications such as The Design of Everyday Things. The co-founder of corporate design consultancy Nielsen Norman Group and the former vice-president of Apple now says that he has changed his mind on several design strategies he has advocated over the years.

The focus of his new book, however, is not on how he wishes to update his philosophies of design and innovation. Instead, it centers on so-called “smart,” or automated, gadgets and products. Increasingly being produced and marketed, these range from talking refrigerators that scold you for not keeping to a diet to cars that are comfortable and easy to drive to the point of distracting drivers from the dangers of the road.

The Northwestern University design professor spoke with BusinessWeek Innovation Dept. Editor Reena Jana about the perils of automation and subtle but effective strategies for improving product design, such as offering sounds or visual signals that are more pleasant and instructive than electronic blips and bleeps. Below are edited excerpts from their conversation.

- Read interview
- Listen to audio interview