Touch Usability

Don Norman's "Technology First, Needs Last" and Don Ihde's "Designer Fallacy"

Well-known design/HCI guru Don Norman has a good, provocative article up at his site called "Technology First, Needs Last." He begins:

I've come to a disconcerting conclusion: design research is great when it comes to improving existing product categories but essentially useless when it comes to new, innovative breakthroughs. I reached this conclusion through examination of a range of product innovations, most especially looking at those major conceptual breakthroughs that have had huge impact upon society as well as the more common, mundane small, continual improvements. Call one conceptual breakthrough, the other incremental. Although we would prefer to believe that conceptual breakthroughs occur because of a detailed consideration of human needs, especially fundamental but unspoken hidden needs so beloved by the design research community, the fact is that it simply doesn't happen.

The following gives the gist of the article, I think: "grand conceptual inventions happen because technology has finally made them possible" rather than because of design research into people's needs. "Major innovation comes from technologists who have little understanding of all this research stuff: they invent because they are inventors."

Norman's article reminded me of an essay by philosopher of technology Don Ihde called "The Designer Fallacy and Technological Imagination." It's not online as far as I know. I'm quoting from Ironic Technics, a short book that includes this and three other essays.

Here is the abstract of Ihde's essay:

Most literary critics have abandoned the notion that the meaning of a text lies in the intention of the author and have called this the “intentional fallacy.” I hold that there is a parallel found in many interpretations of technology design and call it the “designer fallacy.” This chapter, through examining a wide series of historical technology designs, deconstructs the utility of a simple designer-plastic material-ultimate use model and suggests that one must take into account unintended uses and consequences, the constraints and potentials of materiality, and cultural contexts, which often are complex and multistable. I outline a complex, interactive account of design interpretation.

The argument may be a little clearer in these excerpts:

In simple form, the "designer fallacy," as I shall call it, is the notion that a designer can design into a technology its purposes and uses. ...

While it may be the case that some technologies have come into being and performed as "intended" by their designers (I admit, I can think of none which have served solely in this way), there would seem to be none which can not be subverted to other, to unintended, or unsuspected uses and results. ...

in spite of language concerning designer capacity in textbooks -- recognizably there in engineering, architecture and other design textbooks -- I am attempting to show that the design situation is considerably more complex and less transparent than it is usually taken to be. Both the designer-materiality relation, and the artifact-user relations are complex and multistable. While it is clear that a new technology, when put to use, produces changes in practices -- all of the examples show that -- these practices are not of any simple "deterministic" pattern. The results are indeterminate but definite, but also multiple and diverse. Moreover, both intended results and unintended results are unpredictable in any simple way, and yet results are produced.

Ihde is making a different point from Norman, but it seems to me that they have a similar theme -- basically to show the contingency of design on other factors, to an extent not often acknowledged. To be clear, both are writing about the design of wholly new inventions or new categories rather than incremental designs. They're not talking about something more routine like a web site design.

To make this more concrete, take the example of the telephone (cited in both essays). Norman's point is that the telephone wasn't invented in response to research into people's needs; it was invented because the technology was ready. Ihde's point is that when the telephone was invented, the inventor had a different use in mind than what later happened:

Here the designer intent was for an amplifying device capable of transmitting a voice over distance, and intended as a prosthetic technology for the hard-of-hearing (Bell's mother)... the party line on which all the neighbors 'chatted' was not foreseen, let alone the subsequent telephone wiring of early 20th century America.

I don't think either writer is arguing against the conventional practice of design or design research, but rather suggesting that people keep in mind the many other factors that affect technology design and use. Ihde:

the design process must be seen to be fallibilistic and contingent. Some worry that this recognition may be demotivating -- but it could also be a call for a more cooperative, mutually co-critical approach as well.

The Hand by Frank Wilson

David Birnbaum of Immersion has posted a good review of Frank Wilson's 1999 book The Hand: How its use shapes the brain, language, and human culture, a book that's going on my to-read list... Excerpt:

The Hand by Frank Wilson is a rare treat. It runs the gamut from anthropology (both the cultural and evolutionary varieties), to psychology, to biography. Wilson interviews an auto mechanic, a pupeteer, a surgeon, a physical therapist, a rock climber, a magician, and others—all with the goal of understanding the extent to which the human hand defines humanness.
Wilson is a neurologist who works with musicians who have been afflicted with debilitating chronic hand pain. As he writes about his many interviews, a few themes emerge that are especially relevant to my interests.

Link: The Hand (tactilicio.us)

Pirating Don Norman?

Ah, so this is the kind of thing that caused all the hullabaloo about Scribd.

I found the link via a "usability twibe"... a twibe I twon't be joining, methinks. The book is like 12 bucks... you can afford it, kids.

The Scribd commenters are brilliant: "awesome! been searching for this since a long long time" (try a bookstore, dude, they pretty much all have it).

Yes, I'm an old and grumpy luddite.

Fred Brooks on Design Teams

The essay by Peter Merholz I linked to in the previous post reminded me of some things that Fred Brooks (who was my PhD adviser) said about teams and designers in his 1999 Turing award lecture titled "The Design of Design." That's also the title of his forthcoming book.

There are links here (CPSC 330 / Fred Brooks on Design) to video of an updated version of that talk and a 2003 summary PDF from which the following is excerpted:

Team Design—Collaboration and Telecollaboration. Since at least the start of the 20th century, large design projects have been the work of teams, rather than solo designers. This change creates a new and crucial challenge, how to maintain conceptual integrity in such designs. I have elsewhere argued that this is a most important property of a design, and that separating the design of the user interface from the design of the means of implementing it enables one mind to master the user interface. I elaborate this into a discrete functional specialty, system architecture, whose importance I am prepared to defend fiercely.

Team design is occasioned both by the increasing sophistication of design specialties, so that one mind cannot master them all, and by the need to partition work to meet ever- more demanding schedules. I think it very important to differentiate clearly among aspects of design where collaboration positively helps, aspects where the work is partitionable so that collaboration may help schedule but not result quality, and aspects where collaboration positively impacts the conceptual integrity of the design.

A late-20th-century development that we barely begin to understand is telecollaboration, joint effort by noncollocated teams.

Great Designs Come from Great Designers, not from Great Design Processes. What makes a design great, or elegant, or cool? This is fundamentally an esthetic judgment, and we need more theory of engineering esthetics. We need to know how to teach it.

But I will defend the propositions that design process improvement, and even the development of a science of design, will raise the floor of design practice, but not the ceiling. Now raising the floor is superb, and very important. But what our hearts desire and our minds acclaim are great designs, not merely competent, sound, trustworthy ones. I am convinced that great designs come only from great designers. Hence a part of our challenge is to figure out how to identify, train, and nurture those to whom the innate gifts for great design have been entrusted.

Jack Carroll on HCI history

Over at interaction-design.org there's a new essay by Jack Carroll outlining the history of HCI and related fields like UX, IxD, or whatever else the kids are calling it these days*.

Link: Human Computer Interaction. From the beginning:

Human-computer interaction (HCI) is an area of research and practice that emerged in the early 1980s, initially as a specialty area in computer science. HCI has expanded rapidly and steadily for three decades, attracting professionals from many other disciplines and incorporating diverse concepts and approaches. To a considerable extent, HCI now aggregates a collection of semi-distinct fields of research and practice in human-centered informatics. However, the continuing synthesis of disparate conceptions and approaches to science and practice in HCI has produced a dramatic example of how different epistemologies and paradigms can be reconciled and integrated.

Carroll has also written or edited several books. The only one I've read (parts of) is HCI Models, Theories, and Frameworks and found it very good, though be warned -- as the title says it's very theoretical.

(via Putting People First)

*I recommend you join the IxDA mailing list if you feel a hankering for daily bickering discussion about the meaning of all these different labels. :)

New Book: Selling Usability

John S. Rhodes introduces his new book Selling Usability: User Experience Infiltration Tactics:

I spent months and months taking the “frontal assault” approach where I crafted profit scenarios, generated literal ROI numbers, and fought hard to prove that usability was worth the investment. It was a struggle. It worked in the end, but it was a challenge.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that that I needed to find new ways to inject usability into an organization. So I developed strategies and specific tactics to get people to love usability. I turned my back on the frontal assault in my efforts to sell usability to other people. I basically stopped justifying usability but I started to get other people love it.

In plain terms, I suppose you could say that justifying usability is top down thinking. It’s playing their game, not mine. What I do now is work from the bottom up, person by person. I pick just the right opportunities. I fight the smart fights and my long term goals are clear in my mind.

By the way, I don’t really believe that I’m fighting a war. I do not believe that it’s us versus them. That would be disingenious. It’s also not productive or realistic. However, people outside of usability don’t understand it very well. Yes, there absolutely are some managers, developers, and executives who get it. (You know who you are. So thank you, ladies and gentlemen.)

So, let’s bring this full circle. I took all my tactics and poured them into Selling Usability. It’s not perfect, but I do think that pretty much any usability professional will want this book. I guarantee that you will learn something new about getting usability into your organization. 

Link: WebWord: Selling Usability.

Stop Blaming Humans

Is it "human error" or bad design when all of Google search is disabled by a single misplaced slash? Human error is what Google has called it.

Link: "This site may harm your computer" on every search result?!?! (Official Google Blog). The comment at the end of the post that they will put in more file checks does indirectly acknowledge that the problem is not just with the user (edit to clarify: I don't mean Google's end-user; I mean the person that edited that blacklist file, who is the user of the internal Google/StopBadware system).

More context: Google Glitch Briefly Disrupts World's Search (NY Times Lede blog).

Some earlier rambling I did about human error: Blaming "Human Error".

Recommended reading from a more sociological (and negative) perspective: User Error by Ellen Rose (publisher's page with more info).

New Book: Designing For the Digital Age

Kim Goodwin has posted the table of contents from her forthcoming book over at the Cooper Journal blog: Sneak Peak: Designing For the Digital Age.

It looks like it takes off from Alan Cooper's approach with About Face and broadens the scope to include all kinds of software and devices rather than just web pages. It also looks massive and detailed... should be a really good reference for interaction designers.

Here is the book description via Amazon:

Whether you’re designing consumer electronics, medical devices, enterprise Web apps, or new ways to check out at the supermarket, today’s digitally-enabled products and services provide both great opportunities to deliver compelling user experiences and great risks of driving your customers crazy with complicated, confusing technology.

Designing successful products and services in the digital age requires a multi-disciplinary team with expertise in interaction design, visual design, industrial design, and other disciplines. It also takes the ability to come up with the big ideas that make a desirable product or service, as well as the skill and perseverance to execute on the thousand small ideas that get your design into the hands of users. It requires expertise in project management, user research, and consensus-building. This comprehensive, full-color volume addresses all of these and more with detailed how-to information, real-life examples, and exercises. Topics include assembling a design team, planning and conducting user research, analyzing your data and turning it into personas, using scenarios to drive requirements definition and design, collaborating in design meetings, evaluating and iterating your design, and documenting finished design in a way that works for engineers and stakeholders alike.

Link: Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered Products and Services

NY Times Profiles Ted Nelson

Ted Nelson is a computer/HCI pioneer, who you've probably seen cited for his seminal ideas on hypertext. He has self-published a new book that gives his contrarian history of computers and the web (all the way from ancient times to the present). It's called Geeks Bearing Gifts: How the Computer World Got This Way (link goes to Nelson's site for the book, which includes chapter summaries).

John Markoff has a profile of him in the New York Times. Excerpt:

BEFORE the personal computer, and before the Web, there was Theodor Holm Nelson, who almost half a century ago understood how computers would transform the printed page.

Mr. Nelson anticipated and inspired the World Wide Web, and he coined the term “hypertext,” which embodies the idea of linking a web of objects including text, audio and video.

In his self-published new book, “Geeks Bearing Gifts: How the Computer World Got This Way” (available on lulu.com), Mr. Nelson, 71, takes stock of the computing world. The look back by this forward-thinking man is not without its bitterness. The Web, after all, can be seen as a bastardization of his original notion that hyperlinks should point both forward and backward.

Link: In Venting, a Computer Visionary Educates.

Designing Gestural Interfaces

Dan Saffer's new book Designing Gestural Interfaces is now out and is well worth your attention if you do any sort of interaction design involving touchscreens or free-form gestures. I had the privilege of reading it in manuscript form. Dan does a great job of covering all the basics: device characteristics, design guidelines and patterns, techniques for prototyping and documenting, and relevant history and theory.

See also Dan's blog for the book, Designing Gestural Interfaces.

Update: and don't miss Jonathan Brill's book club for discussion of the book.