“Gripping any mobile phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas. This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.”
- Apple, statement in response to problems with antenna when user grips phone in left hand. Source

What a cop-out.

I’m a methods nerd. Does this surprise you? I’m a methods nerd but not so much of one that I have carefully documented and archived every method I’ve used or come across. Happily, some folks from various disciplines have been developing methods libraries to share with their constituents. Some of these databases are really useful for those of us in design!

<a href=”http://www.iaf-methods.org/”><strong>The International Association of Facilitators Methods Database</strong></a>
The IAF is the regulating body for professional facilitators. This database gathers a number of methods together and can be updated by members. Since it’s for facilitation, you can expect to see more methods that would be useful in design discovery, visioning, and strategy. Many of them are also useful when trying to untangle clients and teams.

<a href=”http://www.peopleandparticipation.net/display/Methods/Browse+Methods”><strong>People and Participation Methods Library</strong></a>
When these folks say participation, they mean participation in community, government and urban planning projects. That said, it does include a number of relevant tools for us, like customer journeys and action planning. While there aren’t a lot of methods, each one seems pretty well documented, including pros and cons, and cost.

<a href=”http://www.servicedesigntools.org”><strong>Service Design Tools</strong></a>
This library is the most relevant to folks here. They’ve done a nice job of documenting methods and organizing them by design activities, audience, content, and physical artifacts.

What libraries have you come across?

Lately, I’ve been using “customer experience” in proposals, conversations, and talks to describe the field in which I do my work. User Experience, as a label, always bothered me. It doesn’t really resonate with non-UXers or non-technical folks. It sounds more mechanical than human. Sometimes I imagine a robot voice saying, “HELLO…I…AM…YOUR…USER…EXPERIENCE… ENGINEER.”

Ok, cute, but I’m making more that just a semantic distinction here. Much of the work User Experience professionals do requires not only brilliant ideas but organizational muscle, dedication, and follow-through needed to realize and sustain those valuable experiences. We need the whole organization to be engaged.

Customer experience is something everyone should be concerned with. In an organization, employees typically (hopefully) see “customer service” as something they are responsible for, unlike “user experience” those people over in IT or the geeks in the next building do. If we use words that match the mental models of our colleagues, perhaps it will be easier to engage them in the work and broaden the impact of our practice.

Did some more poking around on the term “Silent Design.” Turns out the phrase comes from research conducted in the late 1980s by British researchers Peter Gorb and Angela Dumas. (The original paper is available through Science Direct). The objectives of this research was to identify the understanding of design, resource and support of design, and the operational nature of design management in UK organizations. They were less interested in identifying best practices in design management—they wanted to uncover the practice as generally applied. During the course of the first year of research, they identified what they call “Silent Design.” I have not yet located further updates to this research.

They describe Silent Design like this:

It can be argued that a great deal of design activity goes on in organizations which is not called design. It is carried out by individuals who are not called designers and who would not consider themselves to be designers. We have called this ’silent design’. p.152

I haven’t thought through this deeply yet, but one thing that strikes me is that, despite the introduction of the Internet which has probably more deeply ingrained and distributed Silent Designers throughout organizations, we face many of the same challenges faced in the pre-Internet 1980s.

The UK Guardian today has a 10 page supplement on Service Design. It’s exciting to see a description of the discipline paired with concrete examples of its power laid out in plain language.

So far, a couple of concepts have jumped out at me. They aren’t particularly revolutionary, but well articulated.

• Nick Marsh’s discussion of Silent Designers. These are people with good ideas, who know an organization well, but lack the skills to express their ideas and make them happen. These are candidates for learning the process of design (aka design thinking). These are the people I get the most joy from working with.
• Dan Pink’s comment that design without empathy is mediocre design (can’t find it online, only in the print version). Sounds obvious, but happens so rarely. So many people think that they are empathetic, think they know their customers well, but don’t take the time (aka spend the $$) to look closer and test their assumptions.

I don’t know about you, but some days my little monkey brain has about had enough. Enough change, enough global anxiety, enough information, enough speed of business, enough of being under the fire hose. Then I meet someone who doesn’t even have a cell phone, e-mail, or internet access.

Sounds like whining, huh? Or a grass is always greener talk. Not at all. When I meet people operating in such a different information space, I see it as evidence of the great global transition we are experiencing.

Recently, I’ve been watching this new show on BBC called “Victorian Farm.” In the show, two archaeologists and an expert in the history of domestic arts spend a year living on a farm 1880’s style. They live as authentically as they can, even down to the breeds of animals they tend to. I know what you’re thinking - but it’s not one of those “20th century family meets old way of life and complains about it” shows. These people are excited about viscerally experiencing the life of victorian farmers from a scholarly perspective. They nerd out on everything from original nails to using milk to shift ink stains to playing victorian parlor games.
According to the show, the 1880s were a period of great transition. Society was changing from an agricultural one to an industrial society. During this period, people were discovering new ways of mechanizing labor while still using ancient techniques. These two ways of living were co-existing. Consequently, it was a time of liberation, social change, uncertainty, and great upheaval.

Sound familiar? It seems we are in our own version of the 1880s, with huge changes afoot in all aspects of our lives: social, intellectual, spiritual, and economic. It means we are both being liberated and thrust into a sometime overpowering sense of instability. Uncertainty and anxiety rule the day. We need turn on the news, talk to our friends, or even listen to our own heartbeat to know that’s true.

Sometimes, when I am watching Victorian Farm, I wonder if the people felt a similar sense of fear and anxiety or were they relieved to have these labor saving devices emerge? Were they worried about where the world was going, what it all *meant,* the way we seem to? Probably. But my sense is that they were still so tethered to the grind (literally) of daily life — four days to do laundry from start to finish *including* help from a machine — that most farmers didn’t have time to stop the show for an existential crisis.

As a society (in global terms), we are in a huge transition. Sometimes its hard to see where we are going or imagine what our future will look like. We have a little time for an existential crisis — thanks forty hour work week! — but what I believe is needed is creative leadership. Tolerance for ambiguity, willingness to take risks, willingness to ask challenge assumptions plus a set of problem solving techniques and methods are the design leader’s toolbox.

For creative people, it is our time to be leaders, to wear the headlamp into the dark cave, our clients tethered to our waists, and take one step at a time towards an unimagined future.

I was playing “one thing leads to another” this morning (aka following links) and came across this fantastic article by Allison Druin of the University of Maryland’s  Institute for Advanced Computer Studies. In Druin’s article, “The Role of Children in the Design of New Technology,” she builds a case for the involvement of children directly in the technology being designed specifically for them. She goes on to describe four primary levels of involvement (user, tester, informant, and design partner) and discuss the methods, historical context, strengths, and weaknesses of each level. If you are interested in participatory, cooperative or collaborative forms of design, this article is an excellent starting point. It is packed from beginning to end with Druin’s experience, wisdom, ideas and resources.

It opens with this great reminder for designers (and can be applied to any user group):

Children have their own likes, dislikes, curiosities, and needs that are not the same as their parents or teachers. As obvious as this may seem, we as designers of new technologies for children, sometimes forget that young people are not “just short adults” but an entirely different user population with their own culture, norms, and complexities (Berman, 1977). Yet, it is common for developers of new technologies to ask parents and teachers what they think their children or students may need, rather than ask children directly (Druin et al., 1999; Druin, 1996). This may in part be due to the traditional power structure of the “all-knowing” adult and the “all-learning” child, where young people are dependent on their parents and teachers for everything from food and shelter, to educational experiences. At times, these relationships may make it difficult for children to voice their opinions when it comes to deciding what technologies should be in schools or at home. In addition, we as designers of technologies have our own biases and assumptions about children.

I’m a strong believer in the power of user involvement in design. Unfortunately, user involvement is more time consuming and therefore, can be expensive. I was inspired by Druin’s article, though, to re-visit user involvement in my design work (whether children or adults) and start to look for creative ways to include it.

If I have learned nothing else in my design life, I know that a great project manager can make the difference between a successful, even joyful project and a painful slog to the leaden finish line. It’s rare that project managers of design projects (in the broadest sense of the word “design”) get the support and training they need. The project managers at Adaptive Path decided they would change this and have designed “Managing Design Projects,” a day long conference on February 5th, here in San Francisco.

Here’s what they say about it:

“Whether you call it product management, program management, or project management, it all boils down to managing creative teams. If you are a product manager, program manager, or project manager for creative teams, this is a prime opportunity to join peers for a day of inspiration, education and networking, removed from the hustle and distraction of your working life.”

And some of the topics they’ll cover:

• Facilitation
• Tools
• Client Relations
• Conflict Resolution
• Managing for New Methods & Technologies (including Agile Development, Design Sprints, Rich Internet Applications and Mobile)
• Extreme Scope Change
• Elevating the Practice

Scott Berkun is the keynoter. Julia Houck-Whitaker and I will be presenting some information on facilitation basics and work session planning. Lynn Waldera, a long-time organizational consultant to Adaptive Path, will be discussing conflict resolution. Finally, Brian Cronin will discuss the need to elevate the practice of project management. I am really looking forward to it and am very proud of the organizers!

Here’s more information on “Managing Design Projects.”

I just finished another UX Week, this time here in San Francisco (a four-day event for user experience professionals put on by Adaptive Path. I co-chaired it with Peter Merholz.). It was exhilarating. It was also exhausting. I’ve got a bit of those post-event blues.

But, pouring the experience of others into my brain through a 4-day long firehose leaves me inspired. I’ve made some connections I wasn’t expecting and feel ready to explore some new territory.

Creativity lesson? I cultivated a beginner’s mind all week - and was rewarded for it with ideas, new technologies to nerd out on, and just a love for the people I am privileged to work with and near.

I also did not use my laptop, except during one session, which meant I was right there the whole time.

Sometimes in life, experiences are really a matter of perception. One day, you might see nothing but pink clouds and blue skies in a situation. The next, you might see storm clouds and leaking roofs. As managers (or, in my case, as an advocate), sometimes we are called upon to help our co-workers see through their own fog and glimpse the sunshine.

But how? I don’t know about you, but I’m no therapist. I’m a designer and a strategist so I use the tools I have.

A few weeks ago, one of my advocat-ees (we have an advocate system rather than a management system) was struggling with a project. It was actually a really cool project but it had been going for a long time. There was no end in sight. She was having trouble keeping perspective, feeling buried under it.

She needed, and asked for, an attitude adjustment.

Here’s what I did. I took three large stickies and on each one I wrote one of these questions:
a) What excited you about this project when you first started it?
b) When this project is finished, it will…
c) When this project is finished, I will…

I gave her a stack of small stickies and a sharpie. I handed one question to her at a time. I asked her to take three sheets from her sticky pad and on each, write one answer to the question. As she completed each set, I handed her a new question and posted the previous question and her answers on the wall.

Once she finished all of them—about five minutes later—we stood back and reviewed her answers. I had her talk through each set. We discussed her answers and I asked loads of questions. I pointed out things that seemed to be really important to her and asked her about things that seemed to be contradictory. Mostly, though, I just let her talk. She was able to remember the things that excited her about the project in the first place and remind herself how both she, the client, and our company would be affected by its outcome.

It didn’t change the nature of the project or its timeline but it changed the way she felt about it. When we were done, she was visibly refreshed, and ready to move forward.