connecting*the*dots

R.I.P.

Designers are held to such a double-standard, especially designers of the interactive media.

The stereotype of a designer is that he or she is, more likely than not, self-referential with their work. Business cringes when faced with the prospect of bringing in a new designer to a product team, as visions of a self-glorified, controlling, pompous designer wandering the halls, makes business and technology folks toss and turn in bed at night. I mean, come on, all designers are "shiny-shiny" types, looking for that Golden Pencil or Webby Award, right?

Business folks talk about wanting designers who have a rationale before, say, changing the paradigm of interface behavioral patterns or suggesting a different approach to the usefulness of the experience in the first place. Business wants a designer who has a process which substantiates their output; a smart, talented, non self-referential designer, able to take their domain (the business) into account when designing interfaces.

Okay. Fair enough.

So designers expose their craft, expose their thought processes, expose their methodologies to businesses and product teams in order to show that they get it. Seasoned designers are able to have a conversation about a business model; they can talk shop with engineers; they can subjugate their own system design preferences in order to understand the needs of the end user and the possibilities that lie beyond the present implementation model. The aforementioned approaches aren’t options to the craft; these are the multi-disciplinary skill sets required for the role.

Well, in steps technology with skin in the game to spare. “Innovation comes from rapid iterations of features” they say. “Okay” the designer adds, “Let’s just make sure we’re focusing on the right features, useful to people.” Instantly, product management begins to cringe, project managers start to steel up, cats sleep with dogs, etc.

Remember that the intent of crafting an interface is to create a representational model that reflects, as close as possible, the end user’s mental model regarding the goal and tasks at hand, not as an implementation model of the existing technology. So why is this method of getting to the interface so scary? Why is it so terrible to actually talk to “outside” people about product concepts? Designers create user archetype(s) and scenarios to represent the potential user base and their needs and desires in a product. If the synthesized findings confirm internal product vision, they can then be translated by the design team to craft interface behavior. This is how refined, holistic user interfaces are created across a single product, an entire domain and even into external product and brand communication. This is a cross-team, collaborative process which may or may not fine-tune the product offering, but definitely will improve the behavior of the user interface.

So is the hesitation from the fear of leaks to competition? There are ways to perform research without letting on who you are and even the concept of the actual product. And it can be done rather quickly. Or does the hesitation stem from a more human place; personal competition and the perceived loss of skin in the game?

If my non-designer colleagues in this field believe that user experience design begins and ends at the interface level, where it gets pretty, then I guess I understand the hesitation to leverage our methods. Maybe us design types should “just get drunk and throw paint on the canvas.”

Personally, I’m going to stick to my seltzer and keep asking questions.

I can’t tell you how much I love playing Spades.

52 cards, split up between four players in teams of two. Your partner is your pahtnah; you know his tendencies, he knows yours. If you’re really tuned in during the bidding process and through the first two books, counting count cards and deductive reasoning takes over without much effort. After some practice, especially with the same partner, you can look forward to setting your opponents with amazing regularity.

Spades is about sharing that moment of victory with your pahtnah; it’s a game for bravado and talking smack. It’s Love & Hate on Radio Rahim’s knuckles. It has a pulse of its own.

Poker is so different.

1. No matter what game of poker you’re playing, you’re on your own.
2. Only cards dealt face up and player movement will give you a hint in counting cards.
3. You have to play your hand, the cards on the table, more than one deck at a time and the tendencies of your opponents. Patterns have to be established from the way your opposition reacts to various situations, but unless you play with the same people for an extended period of time even that strategy doesn’t help too much, as tendencies based on a stereotype aren’t too reliable.

Poker forces you to execute at a precise moment in time based on a plethora of variables; a majority of which are unknown.

A player folding twice in a row, with face cards in the second hand just to throw the table is a perfectly, rational strategy. Being conservative with three aces to raise the stakes, after raising on a bluff to gain a stake of the pot is SOP. Playing a straight game 85% of the time–in the midst of the madness — creates even more of a competitive advantage.

Poker is cold and calculating; poker is schizophrenic.

A poker player doesn’t strive for that moment of Quan; he plays to take all the chips for himself.

So which of these two games would you guess to be more popular with families, tight friends and hope craved institutions, such as a federal prison? Which would you guess is more popular with Wall Street types on a Wednesday night after raking in $10k of commissions on speculative stock trades?

Let the gamble of our non-sustainable future continue.

Stereotype vs. Archetype

So how does one remove the externally perceived reality of an imposed stereotype, in order to move towards the desired end-state of an archetypal experience?

In the fluff and soft world of Design.

If you’re trying to design an archetypal experience, you must be able to cast a broad enough net to observe participatory stereotypes in motion. From the synthesis of these observations come patterns of behavior based on goals, and understanding goal based behavior creates context and probability of action. If these findings match the archetypal DNA of numerous constituencies and drivers to be supported in a value equation, then only the application remains.

• Apply this to interface, and you’ll have an archetypal UCD, HCI, etc.
• Apply this to a business organization and you’ll have an archetypal organization, methodology, management team, talent pool, etc.
• Apply this to government and…

Design is the new black, the new MBA… but we all knew that already, right?

In an industry such as online brokerage, one would assume that the client would always be the center of focus. While most of the time that is the case, the focus on the bottom line in a publicly traded company demands more executive attention and decision-making, overtaking any best practice corporate mantra or initiative due to the pressures and expectations of The Street.

Therein lies the problem: Only a sustained and coordinated focus on client needs will provide properly targeted and designed product experiences for customers or clients.

Client service : Pricing

If a company provides services and products that support the goals of an individual, at a price that can be rationalized to fit the value proposition of the product, the company will find clientèle… but business isn’t that simple, as the cost of business drives most internal decisions.

Executives with P/L responsibilities tend to gravitate towards lessening the impact on spending first and foremost, rather than reinvesting within the organization. Whether the decision lands in the form of multi-tasking employee roles or approaching methodological advances with risk management adverseness, working within conservatively defined parameters lessens accountability to risk and most likely can’t be framed in a negative light.

So how can a business operate in a manner that supports clients goals, at a desirable price point, without putting the business “out of business” in the process?

Streamlined systems and processes play a major part.

Smart management plays another.

But the glue that binds these and numerous other business roles together is the simple concept of collaboration.

For the sake of simplicity, picture a company divided into four primary units: Marketing, Technology, Design and Business. In this simple, yet extremely complex fauxe business example, nothing could be accomplished with quality or speed without close collaboration.

• Marketing and Design need to share quantitative and qualitative research (respectively) to assist the Business in developing an explicit understanding of client needs. These qualified findings can then be prioritized by Business and Technology in terms of viability and feasibility (respectively)
• Business, Design and Technology must collaborate during all phases of product design in order for goal-directed and innovative experiences to become a reality at any point on the speed to market to best to market throughput timeline
• While this occurs, Marketing must be looped into all user experience design points to ensure that brand standards are met and a product marketing plan can be produced to reintroduce the client experience to the market in proper fashion

Yes, this is oversimplified.

Compliance has a large role in this process, as does Legal, Sales, etc. And while the above description sounds logical and pragmatic, imagine how many different organizational structures, methodologies, communication systems, talent, etc. could be put in place to support the concept of a Business - Marketing - Design - Technology paradigm.

Ameritrade had already become quite aware of the need for this degree of collaboration over the past few years and the current buzz of the company has jumped from touting our top operating margin in the industry to making a commitment to designing an organization around the needs of our clients, while keeping an industry leading operating margin.

Reaching that balance and keeping a competitive edge in this industry and on The Street is very tricky. Gutsy, sophisticated and experienced leadership must drive this level of corporate re-focus.

Next month: User research: The stereotype and the archetype.