Loyalty is so 20th century

I was recently involved in a project that involved the creation of a "status economy" on the web, i.e. a system in which businesses reward loyal users with stuff — a representation of increased status, better service, cash, etc. The parallel in the real world is the loyalty program, but the word "loyalty" seemed to imply a sort of exclusivity that is inconsistent with fluid and flexible world of web commerce and relationships. The web already has a variety of ways of displaying status, and the word "economy" more appropriately spoke to the web's transactional nature.

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Beyond trust

At Cooper, we spend a considerable amount of time understanding the experience requirements of the products that we're designing. Our client stakeholders often request a design that our users will react to as feeling simple, intuitive, innovative, and so on. In many cases the products we're asked to design must display a sense of trust.

Why is trust good?

Trust can play an important role in the successful adoption of a product. For example, in data backup and management, if the software does not give a user, such as a backup administrator, the confidence that his data is safe and securely managed then he's unlikely to want to use, or switch to, this software. Especially, when considering that his job is on the line in cases where servers go down and critical data could be lost. Likewise, for online banking websites, customers want to know that their personal information is securely housed and not at risk of being stolen.

How do we make software that appears trustworthy?

All aspects of design and technology contribute to improving a product's trustworthiness whether it be through the visual presentation, the tone of content, the accurate and clear communication of data, or the brand awareness of a company or product. Ultimately, when considering visual design it's our task to create a visual language that appears professional, high in quality, and appropriate to the user's expectations. For content and data, it should be clear, concise, error-free and accurate. Finally, repeated interactions with brands can build trust over time if consistent, dependable, and memorable.

When trust can be bad

Right now you might be wondering, "Trust can be bad?" You've got a point. No client has ever asked me to design a software application, website, or device that's intended to be untrustworthy. But, our continuing reliance on complex information systems could lead us down the path of blindly relying on data, even when we don't fully understand that data. Trust must always be cultivated in users, but too much trust, like too much of anything, can be a bad thing.

Consider the financial meltdown. I don't pretend to fully understand what has happened, who's to blame, and how it could have been prevented. What seems clear is that many of those responsible were only looking out for themselves. Michael Lewis, author of Liar's Poker, discusses this issue that began decades ago in "The End of Wall Street's Boom,"

The shareholders who financed the risks had no real understanding of what the risk takers were doing, and as the risk-taking grew ever more complex, their understanding diminished. The moment Salomon Brothers demonstrated the potential gains to be had by the investment bank as public corporation, the psychological foundations of Wall Street shifted from trust to blind faith.

In assuming that a system is correct, users assume that what they are doing is correct, ethical and in the best interests of everyone. In doing so, they (perhaps unconsciously) absolve themselves of accountability. It is incumbent on the system to ensure that users are fully aware of their accountability, so the system must leave no doubt about that fact.

In Jerome Groopman's How Doctors Think, he discusses a surgical protocol for cardiac tamponade, a condition in which "fluid has accumulated around the heart and was compressing it." In the story, Dr. James Lock retells of how a standard procedure, where a needle is used to remove the fluid, had been nearly fatal for a young patient,

"Why do you stick the needle under the xiphoid?" Lock asked. I paused. "Because that was how my teachers taught me in my training."

"And why do you think your teachers taught you the way they did?" Lock asked.

"Because that's how they were taught."

By not fully understanding the procedure or its history, the medical staff ceased to improve the procedure and more critically put the patient at great risk.

When viewing complex systems, users should not only understand data but, when necessary, ascertain its origin. Consider the frequency with which patients receive the wrong medication in healthcare environments. Relying too much on a system could give a nurse the false sense that she has administered the correct medication when in actual fact, a pharmacist prescribed the wrong dosage in her computer.

So what's the solution?

The solution is to dive deep into the research problem and fully understand the trust need from your stakeholders and users. Regarding the stated examples, users should be made to feel like the software they're using is reliable and dependable. But most of all, users should understand the system, be accountable for managing it, and be empowered to change it.

 

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Storytelling with found objects

When I saw Christoph Niemann's recent piece in the New York Times, I LEGO N.Y., I was struck by the way that simple physical objects, accompanied by text, can beautifully illustrate ideas.

Both images are from Christoph Niemann's I LEGO N.Y.. He has a blog called Abstract City on nytimes.com.

At Cooper, I find that I'm often looking for new ways to activate design thinking, or to clearly and directly represent ideas. It can be easy to think too literally, to work over the same terrain again and again, and this is why I'm inspired by work like Niemann's — it gets back to basics. It speaks clearly, but also invites interpretation. It reminds me of Bill Buxton's discussion of "storytelling with found objects" in Sketching User Experiences:

As a child, when your parents got a new refrigerator, did you not take the box and transform it into a fort or spaceship? We have all seen and done such things — made free associations between objects and their meaning and purpose. The key observation here is that such transformations are as fundamental to design thinking as they are to childhood imagination and discovery.

I'm curious to hear from the design community: Are there techniques that you've used to radically reconsider familiar concepts? Or to vastly simplify the communication of your ideas?

 

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Economizer: A Cooper service concept

People are looking for ways to economize in these uncertain times. We can all see the evidence of environmental crisis brewing alongside the economic downturn, and it's easy to feel powerless in the face of such global forces. With politicians and businesses seeking avenues to a sustainable future, Cooper wondered how design might help individuals cut costs while also encouraging behavior that was environmentally responsible.

This all started when Environmental Defense approached Cooper, asking us to imagine new ways to make it easier for people to save resources. We performed research throughout the Bay Area, then collaborated with Environmental Defense to model our findings and identify design opportunities. From this point of inspiration, we continued on our own, crafting a quick eco-friendly concept: Economizer, a service that helps consumers save money while making sustainable choices. The service consists of a core set of internet-aware services with optional components such as hardware data collectors, social networking applications, and dedicated smart phone interfaces.

Economizer: Scenario 1 on Vimeo
(Watch this video in fullscreen mode by clicking the icon in the lower right of the player.)

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The 5 habits of highly effective project teams

Here at Cooper, we’re pretty well known for our holistic and methodical approach to design, but don’t let that fool you - when the situation calls for it, we’re more than happy to get all “mavericky” with our clients and provide some good old fashioned ad-hoc consulting.

For example, I was recently asked to provide management support to a client who is in the midst of implementing a Cooper re-design of their robust web application. As I immersed myself in the project, I was quickly reminded of my previous life as a project manager and business analyst at a large software company, and how easy it is to fall into the many efficiency traps that often permeate large-scale development projects.

Over the course of my recent engagement, I identified several critical success factors for effective project teams, and some specific things that both project managers and team members can do to ensure project success.

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Beautiful Monsters: Be the change

The Market Street grid, Courtesy: bricoleurbanism.

This week, San Francisco started choosing sides for another Market Street Mêlée, which we fight once every ten years or so. On one side of the double-yellow line are arrayed various assorted starry-eyed, bipedal dreamers who propose closing down the main artery of our fair city to most carbon-emitting traffic so as to give pedestrians and bicyclists a break, reduce pollution, and increase the beauty and overall mellow vibe of the grid. On the other side stand the self-styled hard-nosed rationalists who see in this as a pedal-powered economic and moral calamity in the making.

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Beautiful Monsters: The odds are in

Beautiful Monsters is a series by David Fore, head of Cooper's consulting practice. It is intended encourage conversation about how interaction designers can grow more sustainable practices, with the goals of improving our fortunes, our relationships, and the health of our planet. Start at the beginning, or read the latest installment below.

Critics may charge that I’m loving on WunderMap too much. But these guys have vision. They provide fantastic resources for visualizing many of the changes afoot, which is a necessary precursor to visualizing solutions. But what they haven’t done yet is provide us the coordinates of our honeybees, one in three of which have disappeared from these parts. Without honeybees we don’t have agriculture as we know it — and, ipso facto, culture.

"How would our federal government respond if 1 out of every 3 cows was dying?" a scientist recently asked a bovine Congress.

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Beautiful Monsters: Why on earth does this matter?

It used to be that everybody talked about the weather, but nobody did anything about it. Not anymore. Through the magic of technology, I am empowered to make better decisions about where not to breathe. That’s because the good people at WunderMap have devised a smoke map. For a few days there, the smoke from local wildfires were absorbed by our (formerly) infinitely capacious atmosphere. So I didn’t think I’d need the smoke map. But then temperatures hit new epochal records, humidity took a dive, and the wind began fanning the flames again.

Should our misfortunes expand to include plagues of frogs, boils, and gnats, I know WunderMap will have my back.

In other news last week, the U.S. continued to emit vivid plumes of interactive graphics displaying our industrial might, which nobody can deny … it’s just that my emissions are necessary, while yours are not. World leaders at the G8 Summit in Japan, meanwhile, decided to postpone serious action on climate change for another few decades. Tomorrow’s always the best day to begin a diet.

Why on earth should such things matter to interaction designers? Put another way, why does earth matter to interaction designers?

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Beautiful Monsters: With such a late start, we best get moving

From our position at the confluence of human desire, technology, and business, interaction designers can make a tremendously positive—or negative—impact on the biggest issues facing us today: the sustainability of commerce, human societies, and natural systems. Despite these opportunities, software makers are discouraged from thinking outside the aspect ratio of the computer ’s monitor.

This is the first in a series of articles intended to serve as an ongoing conversation about how interaction designers can move the industry toward an Ecosystem Centered Design to improve our fortunes, our relationships, and the health of our planet.

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