Challis Hodge’s UXblog

Interesting post on Cabel’s Blog LOL about the demise of URLs and the rise of Search. He just returned from Japan having noted a dramatic shift from URLs to search terms on outdoor advertising. Makes plenty of sense given the lack of quality URLs and the proliferation of .extensions! Seems especially interesting for short term campaigns where a unique phrase could win near-term then poull out as the competition tried to cut in.

There are a small minority of people in the world who when they focus their attention in a specific direction something big always happens. More often than not they possess a rare combination of intellect, passion and skill allowing them to locate the haystack, assemble the team to find and remove the needle, and spin the straw into gold–all the while working toward a greater good!

Steve Wolf, a friend, colleague and inspiration, happens to be one of those people and he’s recently set out on a new path to stir up something big in the nonprofit space. To that end he’s launched a blog called FindingMyDotOrg where he intends to gather thoughts, inspiration and research toward his next venture while simultaneously allowing us to share in his journey.

I suggest you check it out. I know I’ll be watching!

Great article…read it!

For the average U.S. company, Gilmore and Pine have simple advice: think less about where to put ads—ubiquity is killing advertising’s power—and more about how to shape the places customers interact with their products. Example: REI, the outdoor-gear company. In 1996 REI opened a flagship location in Seattle with a climbing wall and a walking trail. The climbing wall isn’t some little display—in fact you have to pay to use it. The location also features a meeting space for local nonprofits. The store was more ambitious than any other the company had built, but it has become the city’s No. 2 tourist attraction after Pike Place Market. Consumers bond with REI’s goods in a way they never will with an ad. True, only 1.6 million people a year visit the REI store, but Gilmore and Pine reason that creating 1.6 million knowledgeable customers will be more lucrative than reaching 5 million with an ad campaign: “Stop saying what your offerings are through advertising and start creating places—permanent or temporary, physical or virtual—where people can experience what those offerings, as well as your enterprise, actually are.”

For those of you who have known me for a while you’ve no doubt heard me on my soapbox lecturing about the distinction between art and design. Simply put, Design is a creative problem solving discipline whereby we solve problems for a particular group of people, more often than not,  in the interest of furthering a business interest.

Andy Rutledge has written a nice piece over on A List Apart titled On Creativity. He does a great job at teasing out some of the same issues as he challenges and defines creativity. Great piece of work Andy!

Andrew Hinton wrote a great piece over on Boxes and Arrows about Personas and the Role of Design Documentation. I responded over there but thought it was also worth sharing here.

Andrew:

Thanks for taking the time to share your perspective. Obviously a lot of thought went into this piece. Couple of comments to add.

1) Cooper’s approach to personas works well for Cooper however it doesn’t necessarily transfer to the rest of us working in our varied environments with myriad different partners and stakeholders.

2) The 37signals thoughts on designing for oneself are noted. I am familiar with this line of thinking and believe it works for some. I refer to this approach as Designer-Centered Design. My personal preference is to practice User-Centered Design. Here’s the continuum as I see it.

Design for Myself (hit or miss)
I am the user (good)
I asked the User (better)
I Observed the User (best)

Like many folks who’ve been in the this field for a while I started in product design and software before the Internet blossomed. I have always been a staunch believer in User-Centered Design even before I knew what it was. Designing software using a UCD methodology meant designing for the required user groups and involving them in the process from beginning to end. The end result was a designed product guided and approved by the people who would use it. Personas were not really necessary.

That all changed when individual software products were adopted and used by masses of people. Suddenly it became impossible to design for and involve all the user groups in the process. It was personas that allowed us to construct archetypal users from these masses. These personified users were developed in a way that allowed us to design for their needs and simultaneously meet the needs of the broader user groups.

In the beginning the personas were one off creations for a specific problem at hand. They were used by the internal team for a current project. IMO we began to run into all kinds of problems when our clients, partners and stakeholders took a liking to the personas we were creating. One the one hand this was a wonderful thing because it brought everyone together in the process. On the other hand there were several negative effects…a few include:

1) The personas were interpreted more deeply than the data behind them allowed.
2) The personas were used outside the scope of their intended use.
3) We began to make the personas more and more general to allow for mixed use which meant they were less useful for specific tasks at hand.

To this day I’m still a fan of a more rigorous approach to designing personas. I do think they can be extremely valuable tools for broader audiences and as such I have moved a bit more in the direction of generalizing them for multiple uses. I think it’s also worth noting that personas are not the end-all-be-all tool. There are times when alternative outputs from research are better suited to guide design.