From the Perspective of Cooper U Student & Intern, Nikki Knox

Last month, company executives, engineers, product managers, and UX designers stepped away from their demanding schedules to experience the design process and philosophy of Cooper U in the April Interaction Design class. As a designer with a background in healthcare architecture and medical products, Cooper U's qualitative-based curriculum felt familiar in a way that resonated with the core intentions that motivated me to become a designer in the first place. What wasn't familiar, however, were the tools that Cooper U provided to guide the creative process, and the innovative ways they invited class participation.

One of the more lighthearted design tools Cooper U introduced is the "Pretend it's Magic" exercise, designed to spark creativity in unexpected ways. Through this exercise, our group explored "disappearing" TV entertainment modules that only leave a 3D projection to engage with. We also came up with a screening system that gets jealous when other viewing devices are present (so no more watching TV and using your laptop at the same time - it might make your program angry!). These ideas may seem silly, yet they challenge both designers and company executives alike to overcome self-imposed limitations and reconsider the range of possibility.

In addition, more in-depth design tools, such as Personas, provide a way to keep the end-user involved in the product from start to finish. They embody the user's actual behaviors, goals and environments. For example, our team's persona, DeAndra, is a 35-year-old photographer from Portland, Oregon. Her quote, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I have many eyes," summarizes her perspective and beliefs about the photos she takes. She played a vital role in guiding our mobile Photo Book app that we designed as part of the class. Features such as editing and tagging were designed with her in mind, helping us avoid designs based on our own preferences and experiences.

These are merely two examples from the many design tools that Cooper U provided during the course. The curriculum was designed to foster curiosity, create a sense of community, and invite storytelling based on design experience. Therefore, we could freely reflect on our own design processes and inquire about those of others, which enabled us to learn from Cooper as well as each other.

Of all the conversations we had, it was the questions about the designer's role that intrigued me the most. In comparison to architecture, Interaction Design is a new and rapidly expanding field; designers and companies both struggle with determining the relationship between design and business. How do engineers and designers work together? What can company executives contribute to the process? How are product managers and marketing departments influencing design? Cooper U provided communication as well as design tools that explored these questions.

Ultimately, the practicum wasn't about providing standardized answers but about providing a safe platform upon which these questions could be boldly explored. The class reinforces my belief that design extends far beyond implementing creative ideas. The designer's role is that of facilitator - navigating people, resources and ideas through a complicated web of possibilities and responsibilities. Thank you to Cooper U for providing a process that understands and supports this vital role!

Upcoming IxD (Interaction Design) Courses:
June 19-22, 2012
July 17-20, 2012

Life at Cooper

Cooper recently brought back the Friday Afternoon Social Hour! Everyone enjoyed Suzy's seriously strong sangria and tasty tapas, and the great conversations in this all around good time. If this sounds like how you'd like to wrap up the work week, join us! We are currently looking for a Business Development Manager.

See more of our life at Cooper on our Tumbler. 

Sketch 2.0 Released

*Download the sample .Sketch file from my Dribbble account.

Sketch 2.0 is a new Mac application designed to be what Adobe Fireworks has struggled to become: the defacto standard for interface design. With a toolset targeting the professional user interface and icon designer, Sketch seems to be headed down the right path.

Sketch is not without its issues and may not be mature enough to replace Photoshop or Fireworks as of the version 1 release; however it's an excellent start and well worth your time to checkout.

Several of us at Cooper are very excited by Sketch, so expect a more detailed review soon. In the meantime, checkout Sketch for yourself.

The Monoprice Graphics Tablet

*Video Monoprice Graphics Tablet line quality by Ray Frenden.

In the world of drawing tablets, there is Wacom and...umm...well...nobody else. That's what I thought before I read Ray Frenden's review of the inexpensive Monoprice graphic tablet "The Little Monoprice Graphics Tablet That Could."

With a starting price of under $50 for a 10X6.25 inch graphic drawing tablet, the Monoprice tablet seems too good to be true. After reading Ray's review and a quick twitter search of other Monoprice tablet users, I've become a believer and am seriously considering replacing my Wacom Bamboo tablet.

Checkout the Monoprice tablets for yourself; it just might save you a couple hundred bucks.

Stay up-to-date with your favorite web service feeds

If you're a Basecamp, Github, Dropmark, or Dribbble user, you might find Feeds interesting. Feeds lives in your menu bar monitoring your favorite web services, notifying you when new content is posted.

Dialoggs enters private beta

Dialoggs is a new web service that just entered it's private beta phase. Dialoggs describes it's self as a combination of Twitter, Facebook's privacy controls, and Tumbler's multimedia features.

Dialoggs allows you to follow people and send public and private messages just like in Twitter. What separates Dialoggs from Twitter, and what I'm most excited about, is Dialoggs ability to have long form conversations. Not having to worry about how many characters I have left? Priceless!

 

If your interested in learning more about Dialoggs, checkout "Introducing Dialoggs."

Follow the creators on Twitter to win invite codes to Dialoggs: @drewwilson, @ammmir

Dialog.gs Website

 

Interacting with media across multiple devices

 

With the rise of mobile devices, more and more I need to be able to move files from my desktop to my mobile devices. Apple, Google, and Microsoft, along with several other third parties, have developed solutions but nothing that delivers a truly seamless user experience. Interaction designer Ishac Betran, in his article "Watch This Ingenious UI Idea For Dragging Files From Your Phone To Computer" details an elegant seamless drag-n-drop solution.

iPad Keyboard Prototype

 

Another interesting concept is the "iPad Keyboard Prototype" created by Daniel Chase Hooper. The video demonstrates a simple, intuitive way for simplifying text editing on the iPad. Instead of tap-and-hold to edit text, the user can swipe the cursor around the text block to quickly edit the text.

App pick of the week: Track 8

Track 8 brings the Metro experience to your iPad in a slick music player, allowing you to browse your music in an immersive visual experience.  

Checkout Track 8 for yourself.

 

Where do you start when you're approaching a complex software design problem? If you work on a large development team, you know that software engineers and UX designers will often approach the same design problem from radically different perspectives. The term "software design" itself can mean very different things to software architects, system programmers, and user experience designers. Software engineers typically focus on the architectural patterns and programmatic algorithms required to get the system working, while UX designers often start from the goals and needs of the users.

In the spring of 2009, I participated in a research study that looked at the ways in which professional software designers approach complex design problems. The research study, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, was led by researchers from the Department of Infomatics at the University of California, Irvine. The researchers traveled to multiple software companies, trying to better understand how professional software designers collaborate on complex problems. At each company, they asked to observe two software designers in a design session. At my company, AmberPoint, where I worked at the time as an interaction designer, I was paired with my colleague Ania Dilmaghani, the programming lead of the UI development team. In a conference room with a whiteboard, the researchers set up a video camera, and handed us a design prompt describing the requirements for a traffic control simulation system for undergraduate civil engineering students. We were allotted two hours to design both the user interaction and the code structure for the system.

Jim Dibble and Ania Dilmaghani at the whiteboard in their research design session

In our modern digital environment, all businesses have a great competitive need for creative thinking that far exceeds our industrial forebears. In the quest for an institutional source of creativity, the brainstorming session, where several people meet to have fresh ideas, has emerged as the front runner. Brainstorming can be fun, and some prominent consulting firms have prospered proselytizing this technique, but it has a remarkably thin track record of success.

While people think and behave differently when they are in large groups versus when they are alone, I also believe that people behave still differently when they are in the presence of only one other person. This is often overlooked, yet I believe that creative people can be at their most effective when they work in pairs.

I believe that all people share these three modes of behavior: solo, paired, and group. Generally, these differences are noted only as interesting social quirks, and have not been investigated by academia or exploited by business, but their differences have important implications for the creative manager.

Brainstorming's adherents believe that a group of people can together imagine more and better solutions than any one person can alone. I won't dispute that assertion, but just because one is better than the other doesn't imply that either is anywhere close to being optimal.

A recent article in the New York Times put forth the radical idea that brainstorming might not be such a good idea, and cites recent research indicating that working solo is more productive than working in groups. The author, Susan Cain, points out that many of our greatest innovations came not from large groups of ideating peers, but from solo geniuses working in isolation. Her case in point is Steve Wozniak, the enigmatic inventor of the Apple computer.

As a former inventor who worked almost exclusively by myself, I agree with Cain. The problem is that, at the time, I would only work for myself, and like me, few independent creative people can be motivated to solve the problems of someone else's business. Unless you get remarkably lucky, you need to find a way to reliably innovate with people content to have a steady job.

When I began to consult for others, I too faced the challenge of generating consistent, reliable, and predictable imaginative problem solving. After some struggle, the correct solution finally emerged: pair designing.

This year marks Cooper's twentieth anniversary engaged in intensively creative work performed for hire, on schedule, on budget, for a wildly diverse clientele. Our work is nothing if not creative, and we consistently astonish our clients with the depth of our innovative thinking. What's more, we almost never do group brainstorming, and solo problem solving is, while not forbidden here, institutionally frowned upon as being too slow and expensive. Our ability to innovate reliably and effectively is largely due to our insistence that our creative consultants work in pairs.

Last week, I joined entrepeneur Enrique Allen and designer Leslie Ziegler at Kaiser, where we spoke to doctors from their internal innovation program. We hoped to inspire them as well as to illustrate how design could be used inside Kaiser to improve processes and overall care.

I referred to two case studies—Cooper's work on the Practice Fusion iPad-based EMR, and a visioning project around the patient clinic experience. In these, I illustrated how we identify problems, generate ideas, and drive decision-making during detailed design.

Both case studies highlighted ways in which multidisciplinary teams can make progress by using cheap prototypes that are quickly iterated. In the case of the Practice Fusion app, we used paper prototypes to test and evolve everything from content organization to animation. We did not need to get permission of a hospital IT staff or work with an engineer; we simply needed a new piece of paper and a Sharpie. Prototyping a service starts in a similar manner. Using storyboards and cartoons, we were able to generate and evaluate myriad patient journeys without making costly process and staffing changes.

Many of the questions during the Q&A were symptomatic of a large organization that is beholden to fluctuating regulation. One attendee asked how to get front-line staff on board when they're already suffering from change fatigue. This will require both communication and empowerment. At Cooper U we teach the value of a radiator wall (a wall showing the progress and decisions of a project) in rallying a team and communicating with an organization; this kind of tool could help establish a sense of consistency and direction amid large-scale changes.

All of Kaiser's departments were represented at our talk, from general practitioners to specialists. All are charged with improve patient care and overall quality. I appreciated the opportunity to bring some lessons from my experience in healthcare and design, and I'm looking forward to seeing what they tackle next.

Practice Fusion, the leading provider of health records software for medical professionals, has published a nice recap of their user conference, Connect11, where Alan Cooper spoke about the role of interaction design in health care. Among the questions answered - "what do you get when you cross a computer with a doctor's office?"

At the 13 minute mark, Stefan Klocek presents a prototype of Practice Fusion's new iPad app.

The World Series is barely over, which means most of my thoughts this time of year get colored by baseball. Events in game five got me thinking about design exploration, of all things. I'll try not stretch the metaphor too much.

I work throughout the year with product managers, technologists, and executives at companies ranging from small startups to Fortune 100 megaliths. Many of these companies have a vision for creating a game-changing product within their industry, “the iPhone of the xyz market.” They mean it, too. But as conversations progress and a project plan begins to take shape, many of the project owners start piling on technology constraints before any design work has even begun.

“We need to use these off-the-shelf components.”

“Don't explore any solutions that won't let us use our current technology platform.”

“Actually, what we really need is just a facelift of the presentation layer.”

Not exactly the words I imagine Steve Jobs used to drive the creation of the iPod and iPhone.

Sometimes this slow degradation of vision is a result of poor or conflicting communication...which brings me back to last night's baseball game. St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa, already a two-time World Series winner and owner of the most wins by an active manager, had a vision for which pitchers he wanted to be warmed up in the late innings of a tight ballgame. He called the bullpen coach (using a land-line telephone in the dugout), and, amazingly, not once but twice, the bullpen coach misheard LaRussa's instructions and warmed up the wrong pitcher.

I don't know if that's happened before in a World Series game, but in the corporate world, we see the wrong product get sent into the game all the time. Executives have a vision for the future, but don't clearly articulate it to the product owners (other than specifying a deadline which is often arbitrary and not tied to actual work milestones), so what gets built isn't visionary at all but driven by the calendar...which means introducing lots of constraints from the beginning. The result may be an incrementally better product, but not a game changer.

We like the saying “reality bats last,” one of Alan Cooper's original design principles. For us that means for any design we create to actually be a solution, it needs to be buildable by our client. It has to live within their unique technology, price, deadline, and resource constraints. However, we have been pushing more and more for the opportunity with our clients to do at least some unfettered, unconstrained design exploration on every project, even ones that have a narrow scope. We don't completely ignore constraints (especially things like regulations which are out of our client's control), and we won't explore designs that rely on telekinesis or nuclear fission, of course. That said, we will definitely push the envelope on what's possible—for a few days or even up to a week—so we can begin with the mindset of the absolute best experience for the user. Over the course of the project we'll push to achieve as much of this game-changing vision as we can.

Allow some your design team to let their imaginations run wild before they get saddled with constraints. (photo by Peter Duyan)

Typically, the output of this design exploration is a collection of hand-drawn sketches that target key plot points in the most important scenarios, and signature interactions (parts of the system fundamental to the experience). The sketches often explore a range of ideas, some that can be implemented within all known constraints, but also others which may bend (or break) constraints. After that, it's really a business decision our clients need to make about how to proceed. Sometimes it makes sense to restructure deadlines, add resource, buy a technology, or abandon a legacy infrastructure to get that “killer app.” Other times it doesn't make sense...but as designers it's our job to imagine the future and enable business decision makers to make the most informed decision they can.

Which brings me back to baseball. You are the manager of your company: what's your strategy? Reality is a heavy hitter, but it shouldn't bat in every slot in your lineup. Can you really afford to play it safe every game? Even if your competition is miles behind, spending time to imagine a better future for your product will position your company to more nimbly take your offering to the next level when constraints go away.

And while you are at it, I would recommend upgrading those bullpen phones.

Alan, Chris, Kendra, and Tamara joined Innova, Russia's premier game development studio, for design education sessions and industry events focusing on the future of gaming and technology in Russia and around the world.

Kendra led interaction design and design communication and collaboration sessions for Innova's designers and technologists. The team immediately began using their new skills, creating a road map to establish goal directed design throughout their organization.

We co-hosted sessions with members of the Russian design community focusing on the current state of design in Russia and the world and the future of interaction design and technology.

Now that we're back in San Francisco, we realize, after all the opinions, ideas and laughter were shared, we are as inspired as our newfound design friends in Moscow to continue developing world-class methods for user-centered design.

Platfora, a new startup in the Hadoop business intelligence space, is working with Cooper to design an elegant, intuitive interface to bring clarity to the chaos of big data.

After Platfora received 5.7 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz; Cooper worked on a rapid, collaborative two-week timeline with a team of five designers to create their website, www.platfora.com. Platfora CEO Ben Werther said, "we wanted to convey the clarity and simplicity that we are striving for in our product experience — without showing actual screenshots. Cooper's design work on our website conveyed this message perfectly."

Credits: Jim Dibble, Golden Krishna, Martina Maleike, Doug LeMoine, Nick Myers

A clean sans-serif designed by Minneapolis type foundry Process combined with rich, vibrant visualizations designed by the Cooper team combine for a unique and beautiful site we're proud to have been linked to in the Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch and New York Times.

Immediately after launch, the site received rave reviews on Twitter:

See the site at www.platfora.com.

Related Reading

• Cooper helps TaskRabbit design new iPhone app for help with chores
• The litl: a design miracle!
• Mental Models for product and service strategy
• Take the visual interface design class

I remember studying the concept of the “reluctant hero” in college lit classes. This is the protagonist who is thrust into the role of being a savior or hero, often unequipped and unwilling to be The One. Think Bilbo Baggins, who just wanted to stay home in his hobbit hole rather than steal treasure from dragons, or Arthur Dent from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, or even Han Solo. The reluctant hero typically needs some kind of supernatural intervention or magical object to get them to act.

As an interaction designer, I've found sometimes I need to design for the “reluctant user." This is someone who, given a choice, would rather not use the product I am designing-at all-no matter how cool the features, or how well-designed the experience. I've worked on products for disease management (“I can't wait to sit down and focus on my health condition!”), health insurance (“Sorry I can't go to the party, I'm too excited to check on my claim status!”), and—the mother of them all—filing taxes (“My dentist couldn’t fit me in for a root canal so I'm doing this instead“). In none of these cases do the users want to use the product and the related service. Yet there are consequences if they don't, so it’s incumbent on the designers to make the experience as painless as possible.

Case in point

We are helping a client assess one of their tax-related products. Measuring the effectiveness of these kinds of products is difficult. Where normally you are looking for high customer satisfaction rates, in this case, it’s really about minimizing pain, not making it a great experience they want to repeat anytime soon. Nobody wants to spend time preparing their taxes, they just want to it to be over so they can avoid penalties (and hopefully pay the least amount of tax possible). So if a user had a neutral experience, that’s actually a very positive result since we’re really starting from a baseline of ”I don’t want to do this.”

As with any project, key to success is identifying the users’ most important goals, but it's critical to keep those in the context of how much time they are willing to spend. After working with our tax software client and talking with teams who’ve worked on projects with reluctant users, we’ve gathered some things to keep in mind when designing for the reluctant user:

• If a user’s goal is to get it done as quickly as possible, make it so. Don't get cute with whizbang interactions that prolong the experience.
• Automate when possible (or at least provide options for automating). Users will likely be willing to trade some control for simplification.
• Use language that engages the user, and be careful to avoid jargon; users won’t be motivated to look up terms (for example, a user dealing with a health insurance claim dispute will want to see procedure names, not just billing and procedure codes).
• Set expectations about how long the process will take, and show (and celebrate) progress with feedback about completed tasks.
• Fill up “dead time” (such as waiting for steps in an installation process) with either useful information (such as tips or demonstrations…NOT advertisements), or provide a time estimate so the user can go do something else.
• Focus on and highlight any positive benefits that come out of having to endure the experience (such as that tax refund).

Quicken does a nice job with this last point, communicating how using TurboTax can help people get a bigger refund (free money is always a good angle to play). Another example is from home healthcare products that take every opportunity to reward the input of information and celebrate improvements in the numbers used to track health.

We’ve recently been hoping for a shot to redesign the DMV service experience, but are still in line waiting for our number to be called. While we are waiting, have any of you worked on products that target the reluctant user? What did you do?