Currently:
Product Manager at Shapeways
Studio Director at Toy Studio
How many hammers are there available at Home Depot? 10, 20? There’s quite a few. When you need to build something you choose the one that seems to be the best and you start using it. After a few hours you feel that the handle is uncomfortable and would prefer a different type of handle. What happens next?
Do you start researching other hammers to see how they feel? After comparing hammers and concluding that there isn’t a hammer that suits you do you begin to design your own hammer? Or do you just keep on using the hammer you had and finish building what you started? You’re more than likely to have picked the latter.
Many times I have found myself in a position where the option to use a tool to make something today transforms into building something that will let us build something a long time from today. But why build something months from today when you could start today? I have let myself enter this trap many times. Some of the excuses have been:
1. We get to control our own future then!
- If what is being built is your product, then yes you are controlling your future.
- If what is being built is a tool to create your product then you might never have a product because you’ll be too busy building a tool to create your product.
2. We’ll Make Our Tools Better
- Middleware, service, and tools companies are solely dedicated to creating middleware, service, and tools. If your product or business model isn’t to create these services or tools then at what cost do creating these tools come at?
- Even if your tools were better how much time did it take to create those tools? What was the opportunity cost? What lessons did you skip or not learn because you weren’t creating your core product?
Next time you’re going to start a project remember that good enough is all you need to start buildling something today.
Another great design practice and technique that I once heard or read about but have not persistently used it in practice. The next time you design something, try having a conversation with your design or user interface. How did that conversation go?
http://mashable.com/2012/04/04/future-tech-home-design/
The future of our lives is customizable and instant. Through 3D printing we can optimize our every day lives by iterating our every day big objects. Iterating on your house, garage, coffee table, kitchen, and anything else.
Think back to the last time you went to a conference or sat in on a hosted talk. How often is what you learned from those events groundbreaking? Did you go back to the office or your home and your mind was turned upside down? Not likely. That isn’t to say what you just learned isn’t valuable. Quite the opposite. Most of the knowledge which I have come across that is inspiring or is a catalyst to great next steps is knowledge that I already had. I just needed to be reminded of it.
The longer we do something the easier it is to lose perspective and context of things we once had. These past months I’ve been teaching at University of Ontario Institute of Technology and while I’ve been involved in the game industry for 5 years, teaching that class and talking with my students reminded me of fundamentals I had not thought about in a long time.
Since then, I’ve looked for ways to remind myself of knowledge or rather perspective and context I once had. Reading some of the Entrepreneur Designers’ blogs such as Tony Chu’s and Sarah Adams’ have been invaluable. I live vicariously through their blogs and strive to obtain their perspectives. Rather than shy away from writing blogs I think are obvious I’m jumping at the chance to type away. I want to recreate a persistent environment of knowledge, objectivity, and perspective around me. I don’t want to forget what I know.
It seems that design is now the fad discipline. A few months ago it was programming. I agree that design is very important but it’s not design that is the holy grail but rather the form and function of a product. Helping define the essence of a product is what we should all strive to achieve. Products are created by people. Whether it be designers, programmers, mechanical engineers, or scientists the most important thing is the people you build a product with. The composition of the team also defines the composition of the product.
In one year Fab pivots their business and succeeds. This timeline is a great showcase of how they made it happen and their story along the way. It’s visual, it’s highly contextualized, and it has some damn good numbers in it.
Tasting menus are meticulously designed by chefs to give diners the best culinary experience possible. Nothing is left to chance. Each item listed on the menu is chosen specifically to present an overall theme or cuisine from start to finish. There are no substitutions, there are no “May I have this on the side?” There is just what the chef wants you to eat and sometimes even drink. You drink this while you eat that and you’ll like it. It’s a well thought out plan, a work of art, it’s what a master of their craft wants you to experience from the moment you sit down at the table to the moment you leave. We as designers have a lot to learn from tasting menus.
I find myself time and time again using a web service or app that starts out great but with time I find it’s value decreases. Or for that matter I start using a service, and decide that it isn’t for me. Then, a couple months later someone is talking up a storm about how amazing this one service is and to be honest - it sounds amazing and like everything I want! When I’m told what the service or app is it’s something I tried months ago. I wasn’t using it the way it was intended to so it served no purpose to me (more about this on my previous post http://bit.ly/lostsrvcs).
Why is that I enjoyed Twitter far more 2 years ago than I do today? My followers count has increased by 1,000 maybe even more but why should that matter? Or better yet, why was I allowed to destroy my own experience? Funny enough, there’s a Twitter feature which could have easily let me enjoy Twitter the same way I enjoyed it 2 years ago - and that’s Twitter lists. When I’ve reached a point where the number of incoming tweets per second I have in my stream exceed a particular limit why wasn’t I prompted to create a new list or better yet, why wasn’t a list created for me? It could have been populated with Twitter usernames which I reply to often.
None of this happened, not even a little bit. I think I remember Twitter lists being explained to me at one point when they were released. Something about I could create lists now but no reason for why I should or how it could enhance my experience. Had I known it could recreate what Twitter was for me in the past I would have created a list the very second it was released.
Senior Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design, Paola Antonelli recently held an exhibit at the MoMA titled Talk To Me which highlights and emphasizes the importance of what Paola calls script. Paola says, “The message of Talk to Me is that designers today cannot just think of form, function, and meaning. They also have to think of script. Now, as a designer, you really have to think of how those objects are going to interact with people. Of course, this comes naturally to interface and interaction designers, but not as much to product designers or furniture designers—but they all have to learn that this is what’s necessary today.”
Paola is talking about traditional designers - but, the truth is while we as interface, interaction, and even game designers do think more about the form, function, and meaning of our creation the concept of an infinite script is still relatively new to us. It’s something which we have yet to progress very far in but it’s still our responsibility.
It’s time we start to think of the never-ending script. We must deliver a complete experience during the existence of a service or product that doesn’t differ or break what we want our “diner” to experience. We must design an experience which will be the best for them - regardless of what they have to say. They will do this like that because that’s the best way to experience what we’re trying to create. And if they don’t like it, well there are plenty of other apps or services they can flock to.
Side Note: In case someone thinks I hate Twitter after reading this, I do not. I love Twitter. It just happened to be a rather mainstream example that I thought would resonate well with anyone reading this.
An amazing video which analyzes the systems of Megaman & Megaman X. Specifically shows how they were made visually obvious and how the visual taught you the systems of the game. Much thanks to Michael Todd - @thegamedesigner for tweeting this.
Since I’ve seen the great gamification debate pop up in Twitter discussions, forum boards, and unfortunately real life conversations I’ve always politely bowed out. Okay - perhaps not politely but regardless, I’ve bowed out. But there’s always a straw that breaks the camel’s back - or in this case a news article that won’t let me keep my opinion to myself.
This past week, TNW wrote an article about Piictu , a new photo sharing mobile app. The title read “Just launched: TechStars’ Piictu iOS app gamifies photo sharing”. Now before I go on I want to make it completely clear that I’m not criticizing Piictu or TNW. My opinions are solely based on society’s current semantics around the word gamification. With that aside, society’s semantics regarding gamification are wrong. That’s all that really needs to be said, but allow me to elaborate.
It seems that the context in which gamification is being used insinuates that gamification yields results and it does. However, this isn’t because the behaviors that lead to these results have been made into a game - it’s because the overall system design reinforces or causes particular behaviors thus yielding the desired results. It just so happens to be that the games have a lot of system designers and games have been focusing on design that yields results since the beginning of games (not just video-games).
Piictu “gamifies” photo sharing by providing context for the type of pictures you should upload. Example suggestive titles include “Show me your shoes”, and “Your favorite food”. Uploading pictures within the category of that suggestive title and earning a reward could be called a game by some but in truth it’s as Jesse Schell would put motivational design. The titles “Show me your shoes”, and “Your favorite food”, although simple are extremely powerful and provide the context that users need to understand how to use the service.
A great example of recent motivational design would be Get Amen. Their service recently launched and a gamification description of it would be: “Get Amen gamifies your strongest opinions”. But, what it really does is a great job at motivational design. It limits what you can post about, as well as the text you can post. Therefore, you end up with updates such as “Sandals and socks are the worst combination ever”, or “New York City is the best city ever”. Your replies to the updates are also limited. You can either agree by amen-ing an update or selecting hell no and then writing a counter opinion. Get Amen has brilliant motivational design but it is not a game.
I’m not upset about what we want gamification to mean. I understand the value and quite frankly feel that this movement should have come earlier. It’s about time we start thinking about our services with motivational design in mind (See my post “The Lost Features And Services” for more on that). But layering on badges, on points, on statuses isn’t a game nor is it good motivational design. In fact when a system is created with a poor set of rules and relationships the results desired aren’t yielded. And then, not only is the term game being misused but since the system wasn’t properly designed it could lead to yielding undesired results and in the end, crippling a service or product.
The improper use of game mechanics - such as points and badges - devalues and could potentially de-syntheisze us from the true meaning of what a game is. Something as organic and special as play could simply become the act of a check-in. Is that what we want? Are we to assume that anyone who makes badges and rewards available through some medium is a system designer who creates an intricate set of rules and relationships and then fine tunes them to perfection over the course of months? I fear the day when a parent asks their children, “Have you played your toothbrushing game yet?” I’d hate my children to associate play with brushing their teeth. The meaning of game and play is sacred and should be kept as such. So for it’s sake remember, it’s motivational design not gamificaiton that you seek. Speaking of which, don’t forget to like this post so you can achieve the status of mayor for this blog post.
Over a year ago I tried using Evernote. Everyone who spoke of it said it was a great service and that I should give it a shot. I was rather impressed with it’s ability to OCR my writing from a whiteboard and that was enough to keep me interested. The problem though was that I didn’t know how to use it so my sporadic Evernote use quickly turned into no use at all.
At the time I wasn’t really sure what I would use Evernote for. At first I thought I would use it exclusively for capturing whiteboard brainstorming sessions and I did. But when my whiteboard use dwindled so did my Evernote use. I remember trying to use it for project note taking but at the time, I did most of that on the studio’s wiki, project management software, or via e-mail. All three of those services provided me with rather substantial means of tracking and tagging my notes well enough so that I didn’t need to do much more.
Now, a year later I see the real power of Evernote. It’s not just meant for work, and it’s not just meant for play. It’s meant for my life. A collective digital scrapbook that I can scour at a moment’s notice. Whether it’s a recipe or an interesting game mechanic, my Evernote will give it a home and keep it safe until I need it. I didn’t quite understand that before my need for a service of that nature became so strong.
Almost over a year ago, a feature of a web service I use daily went unnoticed, lists for Twitter. When this feature was first introduced I asked myself, “Why would I want to make a list of people I follow? What would that list even be?” I couldn’t answer that question. Today I follow over 1,000 people on Twitter and lists make complete sense to me. Much like Evernote it wasn’t until I had a problem that Twitter lists showed it’s real value. I was having a hard time keeping up with people’s tweets whom I wanted to read on a daily basis. They were often hidden amongst several hundreds of other tweets and visiting their individual profile was time consuming. So I started a list of people whom I’d like to read every day on Twitter. The list works great and it really helps me keep up to date with those users.
So what does Evernote and Twitter lists have in common? They weren’t put in context to me when I was first introduced to them. I didn’t understand how either Evernote or Twitter lists would be effective yet yet now that they are effective, I can’t stop using them. Building a great service or a new feature is only half the battle the other half is presenting it in a way which will resonate with the target audience. Twitter could have created empty lists for me that could have been slightly suggestive as to the type of users I would add to that list. Entrepreneur, gamers, techies, any of those would have been great context for what lists are meant to do. Evernote similarly could have made suggestions as to how I should use their notebooks, and add media so it all makes sense and the value became apparent. In the end, it’s not just what you build but how you present it.
