A conversation with Ed Niehaus, new CEO of Cooper

A few weeks ago, Cooper appointed Ed Niehaus as President & CEO. Ed is a Valley veteran, with a rich background is in public relations, branding and business-building. He met Alan when Visual Basic was merely a twinkle in Alan's eye, and since then, Ed has worked with a long list of the Valley's top companies, and has been on the board of half a dozen, both public and private. Yahoo!'s founders hired Ed when they wanted to grow their business beyond a server in a trailer on the Stanford campus. Steve Jobs hired Ed's PR firm - already the agency for Pixar and NeXT - when Jobs returned to revive Apple and launch the iMac.

In the brief time that he's been with Cooper, he's told us some great some stories that we've wanted to share, so we sat down with Ed to pick his brain about his background, the Steve experience, and where digital technology is going.

Tell us how you got involved with interactive products.

I got on The Well in the late 80s, and it was a real community, one in which over 1000 people shared every aspect of their lives. It was a microcosm of what the blogsphere is today: communities of shared interest, each one with what amounted to a bartender, serving up domain expertise, keeping the conversation going and stopping fights before they got out of hand.

The quality of the content was actually very high despite having no formalized process for reputation-building; the Well's secret was its profound lack of ease-of-use. We called it the ‘bozo filter’ because you had to be smart and determined to even begin to use the dreadful text-based software. The intellectual equivalent of fraternity hazing. Today I guess you could say that a lot of products have a bozo filter, only in reverse: you feel like a bozo if you bought one.

After a while I noticed that a 'company' was doing business through a community over which they had no control, right there on The Well: that company was the Grateful Dead! They got huge promotional value, a lively market for show tickets, T-shirts etc. Of course there also was an outlaw market for bootleg show tapes. Even so, think of the possibilities! Companies could turn their information outward to face their customers and, if they were willing to - gasp! - forgo controlling and spinning what the customer said, they could build trust, and build business through online communities. If only the bozo filter of dial-up online services would get out of the way!

Companies already were building user groups around their products. Programmers banded together because software was so hard to make, and found that being a community gave them the clout they needed to squeeze the information out of the hardware vendors. For instance, developer groups famously got Steve Wozniak to share the ‘secret’ schematics for the early Apple computers. But, the relationships between vendors and user groups were often dicey. One CEO I knew called his company’s users' group ‘The Bedwetters Club,’ because they had the gall to complain when things didn't work. It was that thinking, not 'content' like brochure websites, that interested me when I first saw the NCSA Mosaic web browser.

You got involved in The Well to help them with PR and branding; what does ‘brand’ mean in the interactive space?

You could think of a brand as a piece of real estate in someone's head, a little patch of ground that is the sum total of the experiences that they've had with a particular product or service. Things changed in the 90s: a million new brands put most of that real estate underwater. Wired magazine got to be an inch thick, and half the companies advertising in it had logos that looked like the rings of Saturn.

And, suddenly, consumers had clout! As a PR agency, we started evangelizing, ‘Branding is Dead!’ A bit ironic because Yahoo was just three people when we started, and grew on our watch to be - among people under 21 - the most widely recognized brand in the world.

Now, in some ways, branding really is dead. Today it's about the experience.

Today branding often is about love. So, on one hand you have Dell and Microsoft, ‘needed’ brands. On the other hand you have Apple, a ‘loved’ brand. Dell has a P/E of 12; Microsoft's is 13. Apple has a P/E of 120. Companies do the math, and come to Cooper saying , ‘We want to be the iPhone of (our product category)!’

Speaking of Apple, is there any part of your ‘Steve experience’ that seems particularly relevant to the work we do?

Working with Steve can be brutal, but you get a chance to see firsthand his tremendous eye for detail and the clarity of his vision. Nobody can judge work like Steve can -- design, advertising, engineering -- you name it, Steve knows, and look out because he'll tell you. He has got a hierarchy of judgment that's really pretty simple: at the top is ‘Insanely great,’ which is the best in category that you'll see in your lifetime. Then there's ‘really, really, really great,’ - and he says it packed with emotion - that's the best that you'll see this year or maybe this decade.. And, there's ‘shit,’ and that's the entire hierarchy.

I wish you could have seen Steve in action with Lee Clow of Chiat/Day, working on Apple's ‘Think Different’ campaign. Lee, the living legend whose creations ranged from the ‘1984’ Apple commercial to ‘Yo Quiero Taco Bell,’ showed an early version of ‘Here's to the crazy ones’ from the ‘Think Different’ campaign. A full minute of black-and-white pictures of Picasso, Einstein, Muhammad Ali, Rosa Parks, Bucky Fuller, amazing music and Richard Dreyfus reading this poem, seeing it for the first time brought the hair up on the back of my neck. So here I am, practically with tears rolling down my face, and Steve just looks at Lee, shakes his head, and says, ‘You've lost it.’

I thought, ‘What?! That's one of the greatest ads I've ever seen!’ And here's Steve going, ‘No. The music isn't right. It was right before. And you've changed the pace of the pictures, and you've got them in the wrong order.’ He sends them packing, back to LA. They came back after probably 30 hours with no bodily functions, and I was stunned. It was a lot better. Steve has a vision of what great is, and he's never going to settle for anybody else's standard of great.

That's great for Steve. What does that mean for the rest of us?

For the rest of us, it's about the experience. We might not have Steve's vision of what's going to be great, but each of us knows what ‘insanely great’ is when we see it and use it.

It's easy for product companies to fool themselves that what they're doing will get them there. They convince themselves that they know their technology, that they know their domain, and that compromises and half-measures will get them there. But what I’ve learned is that true impact in the market only comes from maintaining an undying commitment to creating something that is truly “insanely great.”

Are there any lessons to learn from tough economic times?

In hard times, executives focus on cost and time-to-market. The impact of controlling these two factors to the exclusion of everything else is two things go out the window: adherence to the company's vision and attention to the customer's experience. Engineering is motivated to find shortcuts to meet timelines, figuring they can always come back later and ‘Fix the UI.’ Product marketing is motivated to get something out quickly and let the users sort it out. Suddenly, user research is too time consuming and, ‘Besides, aren't the users’ needs always changing?’

The fact is, if you really study your users, their needs actually are knowable and don't change very quickly. If you want to thrive in tough times, you have to craft a vision that meets those needs in a way that exceeds expectations, and nail the delivery.

What do you think? Join the conversation in Comments

A “to do” list for integrating design into your organization

The good news: whether it’s thanks to the economy or to the iPhone, more senior executives understand that they need to get some design love. The bad news: Most expect that it will be easy. Most execs who want to integrate design into their organizations (or expand the role of an existing team) ask us for help with training, establishing some best practices, or perhaps developing some design tools. Sooner or later, though, real success with such efforts requires attention to five different areas.

1. Process
   Figure out how design is going to work in your organization. This can’t be treated as purely a design process problem; you have to consider the product development process overall. How will designers work with product managers, subject matter experts, engineers, and others from early problem definition and concept through shipping product? How will you figure out what users and customers need, and what can differentiate your product or service from others? How will you arrive at one or more good solutions, and how will you ensure that they actually are good? How will you communicate, build consensus, and ensure accountability along the way? And how will this approach differ depending on the scale and type of problem you’re trying to address? While of course I’m a fan of Cooper's own Goal-Directed Design process and think it’s widely applicable, any process has to be adapted to its environment, whether because you need to comply with FDA regulations or because you’re tweaking the product for every customer. Of course, if you’re in a healthy, learning organization, your process will always be something of a work in progress.


2. Structure
   Determine not just how design teams are structured, but what comprises an entire project team. Look beyond the project level, too; where does design live in the org chart? How will you ensure that designers have close working relationships with their product teams, but still have an opportunity for design mentoring as well as sharing ideas and skills across multiple projects? What reporting line gives design the necessary authority to champion desirability alongside technical feasibility and market viability? What work will you do in-house, and what will you outsource? How many designers do you need, and do you need generalists, specialists, or both? Do you need to pair designers with business analysts or subject matter experts?


3. Skills
   Having process and structure without the necessary skills is a bit like sitting down at a table full of dishes without any food. What skills do you need, and how will you obtain them? It’s difficult to start or grow a design team without hiring some talent (especially design leadership) from outside. That said, there are only so many trained designers in the world, so some organizations build part of the team by training product managers or engineers who have the right attitude and aptitude. Even if you hire a group of experienced designers from outside, existing product management and engineering teams will need to learn some new skills to work effectively with them. How will you hire? What training will people need to begin with, and how will you ensure that new hires get the skills they need?


4. Tools
   Although experienced designers can get away with standardized tools, they’re more efficient if they’re not reinventing the wheel for every project. Less experienced staff often benefit from templates that help ensure they’re thinking through the right aspects of a problem, whether that’s a user interview, a description of design behavior, or a usability test plan. Engineers typically appreciate standardized styleguides and document templates so they get predictable output, too. It’s essential, however, that everyone understands the why of their tools; otherwise, documents and forms become part of a rote checklist and cease to be helpful.


5. Culture
   If you’ve ever bought a house, you’ve probably heard this little mantra: “Location, location, location!” When it comes to organizations that really put design in the driver’s seat, the chant should be “Culture, culture, culture!” I’ve seen clients with lousy process and average (or no) designers beat the heck out of the competition because they’re focused on delivering quality customer experience from top to bottom. Cultural change is the to-do item that nearly everyone neglects, and it’s the one that will make or break your success with design. What does your organization value? Consider what your hiring, evaluation, and compensation practices say about that. What do executives and managers talk about not just in big company gatherings, but also in day to day interactions? Where does the company invest its resources, and where does it take shortcuts? Developing process, skills, and tools without changing the culture is going to result in incremental improvements at best.
   
   
   If you try to change an organization without addressing its culture, you may never get where you’re going.

   
   Of course, you also need a plan for tackling all five of these areas in a coherent fashion. John Kotter’s Leading Change is a good place to start learning about what it takes to move an organization. Changing an organization is much harder than the toughest product design problem you’ve ever tackled; pixels, unlike people, generally do as they’re told.

    

   What do you think? Join the conversation in Comments

Each One, Teach One: Get Involved in Mentoring!

In my closing keynote at Interactions 09, I spoke about some of the challenges facing interaction design as a profession, perhaps the most important of which is a shortage of designers just when the world is starting to demand what we do. Increasing numbers of college and university programs will help, but the fact is that interaction design—or any kind of design, really—is a craft that takes time to master regardless of one’s educational background. If you believe the 10,000 hour rule recently popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, that mastery should take something along the lines of five years doing nothing but design.

In my experience, people get more out of those hours when they’re not working in isolation, but are surrounded by more experienced people who can challenge, support, and advise them. Consultancies and large in-house design organizations often have some kind of coaching built into their structures and processes, and good managers are often good coaches. However, it can be hard to see your manager as approachable because, regardless of his personal qualities, he controls your career track and compensation. Sometimes, a senior person who isn’t responsible for your career is easier to get advice from. This is why everyone at Cooper with “senior” in her job title is explicitly expected to mentor others.

Unfortunately, not all companies have this kind of mentoring built in, and many young designers (or not-so-young PMs and engineers who want to be designers) work in environments without experienced design leaders. This is one reason the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) has decided to create a mentorship program to hook up people who’d like a little career coaching with those experienced practitioners who are willing to coach. As you might expect, so far the program has attracted more people looking for mentors than people willing to mentor.

So here’s my pitch to all of you potential mentors out there. First, mentoring isn’t a one-way transaction. As a friend of mine who recently earned his black belt in Aikido told me, a black belt isn’t a sign that you’re a master; instead, it’s a sign that you’re ready to become a true student. Teaching others will make you far more conscious of your own craft. Also, consider this: you, yourself, can only design so many products and services that make the world better. The people you mentor will go on to design many more. Finally, mentoring doesn’t need to be a huge time commitment; just an hour or two here and there can make a big difference.

So, what are you waiting for? Sign up to get a mentor or become a mentor today!

What do you think? Join the conversation in Comments

Innovation Games for your Agile UX Toolbox

A few months ago, Luke Hohmann visited Cooper to teach a special session of his Innovation Games class. Alan Cooper, Steve Calde, Tim McCoy, Jeff Patton and I and spent two days with Luke learning about the games and practicing how to apply them in different situations. Since the class, I’ve often found myself reflecting on what I learned. I’d like to share with you how I’ve adapted some of the techniques in my User Experience consulting practice:

• I look for opportunities to make all my meetings more engaging and participatory. A collaborative process generates a different kind of results than a meeting run by a single facilitator. When people work together to create an artifact (as you do in “Spider Web,” “Start Your Day”, and several other games) they are more engaged in the conversation and it’s easier to get participation from the entire group. You also have a useful record of what you talked about for future reference. My meeting room “kit” now contains large newsprint pads, sticky notes and thick black markers so we can jump into an Innovation Game at any time it becomes relevant.
• At our ChiFoo workshop, Jeff Patton and I used a variation of “Speedboat” to guide a group discussion about blending Agile and User Experience (UX) techniques. We asked people to tell us what “anchors drag them down” and what “winds support them.” You can see a picture of the results on flickr. We budgeted about 45 minutes for the exercise, and people wanted to keep going well into lunch. The process of sharing our thoughts visually and verbally created a sense of community and shared direction in the room that surprised and pleased me.
  
• I found the Innovation Game role of “observer” and the process of recording one observation per index card useful in another context. While teaching interviewing skills at Atomic Object. We grouped the interviewers in pairs (main interviewer, backup interviewer) and had the rest of the people sit behind the interview subject and act as observers, taking notes on index cards, one observation per card. After the interview, we did a group debrief of the observations and found that we had excellent coverage of what we’d learned. Even though none of the student interviewers caught all the details, as a group they covered everything. Another benefit; we quickly reached a shared understanding of the key insights from the interviews. I can imagine this would be equally as useful during usability testing, either behind glass or with silent observers.
• And, for my personal and professional planning, I’ve found “Remember the Future” valuable to help me clearly articulate my long term objectives, and the specific measurable steps I need to follow to accomplish them.

What do you think? Join the conversation in Comments

Blending Agile and UCD at CHIFOO

The Computer-Human Interaction Forum of Oregon (CHIFOO) hosted Lane Halley and Jeff Patton for a talk and workshop on blending agile practices and user-centered design. On Wednesday night, May 6th, Lane and Jeff presented a talk titled “Making Sense of User-Centered Design and Agile.” Thursday, May 7th, Lane and Jeff taught a full-day workshop titled “All Together Now: Blending Interaction Design and Agile Development Techniques.”

The slides from the May 6th talk are available on SlideShare. Pictures of the May 7th workshop are available on Flickr.

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A reminder about system conventions

I'm a Facebook user. I'm also an iPhone user. I'm also a bit lazy about updates. So having the Facebook app on the iPhone seems like a good idea. But there's one interface element in the application that frustrates me and makes me prone to not want to use it at all.

If you use your iPhone to email, you're used to sending it using the SEND control in the upper right hand corner of a message. It's a good place to be for right-handed people, as it's easy for your right thumb to jump right there. I send emails all the time from my phone, so I'm really used to this behavior.

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Is Interaction Design a dead-end job?

IDEO’s Bill Moggridge made a comment last week after a screening of Objectified that hit close to home. To paraphrase, he said interaction design has become pervasive, that anyone and everyone can be an interaction designer, and so the role of professional interaction designer is (or is becoming) unnecessary.

So, is Interaction Design a dead-end job?

As an expertise, no. But as a discrete service offering or a career path, I say absolutely.

This position has not made me any new friends around the office, but to be clear, I'm not suggesting our profession is akin to flipping burgers at the mall. Instead, it's that interaction design has reached a point of maturity where growth is constrained. I see three major factors behind this and hope that by acknowledging them we can find a way forward.

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After-market device solutions: What are they good for?

Why are after-market casings so popular with consumers especially for portable devices? Are they just about protecting the product? Are existing product designs too boring? Have consumers lost confidence in the quality of product manufacturing? Or, do they just want to customize their devices to be unique and special, as we have seen in Asia's extensive customization culture?

Leather, custom decals and heavy-duty rubber covers.

The iPhone is beautifully designed, engineered, and manufactured. Apple has used high-quality materials to avoid scratches and heavier damage that come along with daily use. There are no painted parts, which would easily scratch to reveal the substrate. The early complaint about the physical construction was that its sleek finish made the phone too slippery. The absence of grip details on the surface, and the aluminum casing of the first generation, made the problem worse. Apart from this flaw, the physical form of the iPhone is well-designed, and I think it has great potential to display the aged patina that comes from long life and high-quality materials. Which makes me wonder: Why cover it up with a cheap plastic cover?

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Video of Kim Goodwin speaking about how to integrate interaction, visual and industrial design at IxDA NYC

Last night, our own Kim Goodwin presented her talk "Designing a Unified Experience" at the IxDA NYC, generously hosted by our friends at LiquidNet.

(Click the button on the bottom right of the "screen" for a fullscreen view.)

About the talk

Interaction design, visual design, and industrial design are distinct disciplines for good reason: Each excels in different ways. Interaction designers must be good at imagining structure and flow, which requires strong analytical skills and a high degree of rigor, especially for complex systems. Visual designers and industrial designers are masters of visual and physical usability but are also masters of emotion: They know how to evoke caution, attract attention, and instill desire for a product at first glance. Users have just one experience of a product, though. All three aspects of the design must work in concert, or the product will fail to satisfy. Integration of the three disciplines is a central theme of Kim’s new book, Designing for the Digital Age.

What do you think? Join the conversation in Comments

You're only a first-time user once

We’ve all got our own personal benchmarks for what makes a good user experience. My personal list includes a few: Does it delight me? Will I recommend it to my friends and colleagues? Would I have used the same approach if I had designed the product? I’ve found among some product executives one particular pattern for this subjective evaluation criteria that is both humorous and troublesome: “Would my mother/grandmother/Luddite Uncle Bill be able to use this product on the first try?”

While there is a sort of noble aspirational quality to this kind of thinking—let’s make everything so dead simple that any person can use every product—it also sets the bar for the experience rather low. I imagine a sea of step-by-step wizard dialogs that target the lowest common denominator and force everyone else to step through the same predefined (and very explicit) experience. If I’m designing a product for people who have specialized knowledge, I want to leverage that knowledge in the product. Why force people to walk when they can run? I’ll want to provide these people with clear, appropriate pathways through the product, but I also want these specialized users to be able to forge a variety of their own pathways through the interface, dependent on the specifics of their situation or how they want to do things.

I once worked with a client to design an intravenous medication delivery device called an infusion pump. This is a machine that nurses in hospitals use to administer drugs to patients by attaching a bag of medication to the device and specifying delivery parameters such as how long and how fast to dispense the medicine. This is critical stuff; the consequences of a mistake could be catastrophic.

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