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On the Semiotics of Fashion Branding & Advertising

Nov 23, ’11 9:27 AM

Soundtrack: Shahrooz: Raoofi Watching Stars

“Fashion is never anything but an amnesiac substitution of the present for the past” – Roland Barthes

Perhaps nowhere except in the semiotics of fashion advertising is the use of transportation, narrative, dreamworld, and experience design more sophisticated in its hegemonic beauty.





Further, fashion advertising is an excellent example of identity-image producing media where signifier and signified collapse. The nature of the fashion object is tied directly to our manufacture of identity – those objects which we encase and adorn our bodies for public consumption – and fashion is acknowledged as a co-created cultural language of “style”. In the realm of Haute Couture fashion advertising, those products and identity-image advertisements at the top of the social-economic spectrum: brands such as Dolce Gabbana, Gucci, Alexander McQueen, Prada, etc, media such as runway shows, Vogue, Allure – the goal of producing an attractive identity product is pursued with an affluence of money and artistic talents drawn internationally to create the most emotive and entrancing hyperreal simulacra within those media channels.

I found these articles to be exceptionally well researched in articulating a stance on the cultural implications of fashions’ highly developed grammar of sign systems within advertising and how that relates to identity manufacture. I hope you find them equally fascinating.

“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.” – Oscar Wilde

PRADA

Speaking of Fashion: Consumers’ Uses of Fashion Discourses and the Appropriation of Countervailing Cultural Meanings

This article explores the ways that consumers use fashion discourse to inscribe their consumption behaviors in a complex ideological system of folk theories about the nature of self as it relates to and exists within the context of society. Verbatim texts of 20  interviews concerning consumers’ perceptions and experiences of fashion are interpreted through a hermeneutic (interpretive) process with specific consideration given to gender and identity issues. Whereas critics of consumer culture frequently argue that fashion discourses enshroud consumer perceptions in a common hegemonic outlook, the authors analysis suggests that this ideological system offers a myriad of countervailing interpretive standpoints that consumers combine, adapt, and juxtapose to fit the conditions of their everyday lives. Read Article.

Narrative and Persuasion in Fashion Advertising

Narrative transportation—to be carried away by a story—has been proposed as a distinct route to persuasion. But as originally conceived, narrative transportation is unlikely to occur in response to advertisements, where persuasive intent is obvious and consumer resistance is expected. The authors of this article analyze fashion ads to show how narrative transportation can nonetheless be a possible response to ads, if specific aesthetic properties are present, most notably when grotesque imagery is used. The authors then situate narrative transportation as one of five modes of engaging fashion advertising, each of which serves as a distinct route to persuasion. They explain how aesthetic properties of ads call forth different modes of engagement and explore how grotesque imagery can lead to either narrative transportation or immersion. As routes to persuasion, transportation and immersion work by intensifying brand experience rather than boosting brand evaluation. Read Article.

Fashion Photography as Semiotics: Barthes and the Limites of Classification

Semiotics, the system of signs asserting meaning by way of language and image, proves to be enormously relevant and valuable when looking at fashion photography as a means of communication. The author argues that fashion photography speaks both to the reality and illusion of garments and of bodies, and in deconstructing how these elements are organized and presented, a new language and system emerges from the photographic work. The author explores how Roland Barthes places fashion photography within a semiological framework, applying semiotic structure and rationale to the genre as a system of communication for symbols and signs present within any given image. Read Article.

The Counterfeit Body: Fashion Photography and the Deceptions of Femininity, Sexuality, Authenticity, and Self in the 1950s, 60s and 70s

Fashion, as it is actualized and spoken through the medium of photography, represents some of the most beautiful and hideous elements of culture and society. Invariably, fashion photography pictures and proffers standards of beauty, self and display that, by sheer style and omnipresence, overwhelm common sense and rational thought. The innate contradictions within fashion photography and the larger industry it represents burden the form with criticism. This precarious position fashion photography exists in endangers the possibility of looking at the form outside a purely non-decorative or aesthetic framework, and further, problematizes the reconciliation of a place for its valid study in the academic schema. Read Article.

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Introduction to Design Studio Methodology

Apr 30, ’11 12:00 PM

(I first learned the Design Studio methodology from Todd Zaki Warfel, founder of Message First, and perhaps one of the best designers I’ve been fortunately enough to learn from. While originating in architecture and industrial design schools, I believe he was the first to apply it to collaborative design of complex software systems.)

This is a two part series on design studio. Part 2 was just published.

Introduction to Design Studio

“It is hardly possible to overrate the value… of placing human beings in contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar.”
~ John Stewart Mill (1806-73)

Framing

The early stages of product innovation can crucially influence the success and direction of any product. Yet these stages tend to be fuzzy, highly politicized and under-documented. This brief article is to give you a high-level overview of how teams can use Design Studio to explore opportunities and innovate products to better serve customers needs.

Design Studio is conducted in a highly interactive, fast-paced team setting following a methodology, commonly used in architecture and industrial design, with some important twists. It has been called the “Iron Chef,” of ideation. It can be intense, focused, and chaotic at times; but for those lucky enough to have participated, they understand the power and effectiveness of this tool.

Getting Started

Coming on the heels of market and customer research, contextual inquiry, as well as open brainstorming sessions to fully explore the “problem space,” teams use the Design Studio methodology to achieve a few key goals:

  1. Collaboratively work to understand the nature, opportunities, and constraints of some articulated problem space. If you imagine your current state, and then some positive future state – the problem space, sometimes called the Design Gap, is the place between those.
  2. Allow ideas from various perspectives and insights to percolate up between team members.
  3. Turn “ideas” and especially unstated assumptions from tacit or verbal states into cognitive artifacts that can be shared, evaluated, and iterated upon.
  4. Create a culture of shared ownership around future product vision.
  5. Generate a lot of ideas in a very fast time frame – usually no less than 3 hours, and sometimes as long as 10 hours.
  6. Allow open and honest critique of various concepts.
  7. Force participants to defend their concepts and negotiate with other team members.

Why Collaborative Design?

There are no rockstars in collaborative design. Stephen Klocek in “Better together, the practice of successful creative collaboration,” states the problem:

Ninja. Rockstar. Gifted genius. Many of the ways we talk about creative work (whether it’s design or development) only capture the brilliance of a single individual.”

Having spent time in some larger digital agencies, it is often the case that the Account Planner, Strategist, and Creative Director spend time around a conference room with the client trying to suss-out requirements. The process then moves to the ivory tower (or black box, if you will) at the agency’s office where a few select people lock themselves away until they generate “The Insight,” often followed by “The Solution,” which is then communicated to the art directors and technology teams responsible for execution. I could, and will, write an entire article about how fucked up that is, but not today. Needless to say, those days of the black box Rockstar/Ninja/Douchebag Creative Director are quickly coming to an end. Thank God!

The reality of designing modern digital solutions is that no one individual can possibly capture all the complexity of creating a truly vibrant social ecosystem with various customer engagement points, different usage patterns and behaviors based on different needs, goals, and customer backgrounds all interwoven into an emergent ubiquitous engagement tapestry. This is why innovation really is, and should be, a team sport.

How It Works

The Design Studio methodology provides a collaborative, pragmatic process of illumination, sketching, presentation, critique, and iteration leading to a shared vision and hopefully more coherent and elegant solution – but this is not “design by committee,” by any stretch. The Design Studio guides participations through an evolution in experience ideation. Just like business school, it uses a case study approach to solve a unique and clearly defined problem which the assembled team has agreed upon and which also aligns with the business’s strategic roadmap as articulated by the executive team. This ensures that teams don’t wander off the reservation and create the next great snack delivery platform.

Process

The goal of the design studio is to arrive at some solid design solutions in a collaborative setting. Using the following process of illuminate, sketch, present, critique, and iterate, multiple cycles at first individually, and eventually as teams, which allows us to arrive at some solid concepts by the end of the day. Along the way, the process helps develop greater trust amongst participants, and surfaces unknown requirements from key stakeholders.

“Co-creation needs externalized material. Sharing the fuzzy, early, raw concept gives your partner material to work with, to respond to and evolve. Externalizing ideas allows for closer collaboration, earlier input, and deeper thought partnership. This is true when generating and proposing ideas, and equally important for synthesizing and evolving concepts.”
- Klocek,  “Better together, the practice of successful creative collaboration“

Importance of Sketching

Illumination

Illumination in Design Studio

The key to the illumination phase, sometimes less than 45 minutes, is for the team to gain a shared understanding the business context, customer, challenges and market opportunities. What is important is that this helps enframe the articulation and exploration of the problem space, but shouldn’t be the only thing. Too much emphasis should not be placed on the so-called “voice of the customer,” since this is rarely a good source of insight. Simon Rucker articulates this very well in his article “How Good Designers Think,” in the Harvard Business Review when he writes:

Good designers aim to move beyond what you get from simply asking consumers what they need and want. First of all because they understand that most people when asked don’t say what they mean or mean what they say, but also because people often don’t know. Good designers want to unearth what consumers can’t tell them: latent & emerging needs and motivations; actual behaviors and attitudes; and, crucially, barriers to as well as drivers of change — or simply put, what your competitors don’t also already know.

Simply put – your competitors are talking to the same customers you are – do you really think disruptive and differentiated ideas will come from listening to your customers in focus groups? Another important consideration is that potential solutions should never be brought to design studio, and most certainly not introduced during the illumination phase.

Generation

Through rapid sketch-boarding activities the teams focus on getting as many ideas (good & bad) down on paper as quickly as possible. I have often thought that the activities such as sketching can best be described as modalities of decision analysis. This is the essence of abductive thinking – a generative exercise of exploring what could be, as opposed to what is. With each new design decision explored, new constraints are introduced as new opportunities arise. Sketching, by its nature is fast, transient, and has a tempo which allows us to not become to attached to a particular solution.

Generating sketches in Design Studio

Why Sketching?

Importance of Sketching

But why is sketching such a fundamental part of design studio? Externalizations of different kinds (sketches, wireframes, paper or code prototypes) are most useful for communication & reflection where we want to present ideas to our design team, to the client, or to a customer – sketches are rhetoric instantiated, because every sketch is an argument, and every design argument must have a form. For a complete exegesis on the importance of sketching, read my article “Shades of Grey: Thoughts on Sketching,” published in UX Magazine.

Presentation

Participants learn to sell their ideas, accept change, negotiate positions to arrive at the strongest set of potential solutions worthy of further exploration and iteration. Cognitive psychologist Herbert Simon says “everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.”

It is through the articulation of design concepts in the Presentation phase that participants argue for what the preferred state is, and potentially how to get there. As Richard Buchanan says, “products are vivid arguments about how we as humans, situated in social context, should lead our lives,” and taken another step, sketches in design studio serve the same purpose – to make a clear argument for solving the problem space being explored.

Presentation in Design Studio

Critique

Critique in Design Studio is a formal but flexible framework used to highlight strong ideas worthy of further expansion while discarding weaker ideas in a safe, friendly environment. The aim of critique is to provide actionable and positive counter-arguments to those being made in the sketches presented. A simple framework for design critique Who, How, What, and Why.

Starting from the problem space and goals articulated at the beginning of the design studio, the critique should focus on the 2 or 3 strongest or most compelling concepts in each sketch addressing these questions:

Who:  Does the sketch solve a problem for the intended audience? Does the solution speak to the customer or does it speak to the designer’s ego?

How: How does the concept solve for the problem and more importantly, how can that solution be simplified?

What: What is the argument being made by the solution and is it effective in achieving it’s goal – is it an compelling argument? And finally,

Why: When sketching potential solutions, each participant will choose different angles of attack based on their own stance (or prejudices); understanding that stance, the focus of attention – in essence, the Why, is as important as the What.

The specific insights from critique will provide the participants with an increased understanding of the assumptions and biases of fellow participants. The criticism will feed back into design in the Iteration Phase, specifically by pointing to inconsistencies between the solution and its surroundings, context of customer use and business constraints. Finally, the criticism will give the designer feedback for concepts that, while brilliant, may not be fully fleshed out.

Iteration in Design Studio

Iteration

Concepts from each round of the design studio are then extracted, stolen, re-combined and transformed within teams and across teams. Participants are encouraged to take the feedback from critique, as well as concepts presented by others, and engage in another round of sketching – remixing and reinterpreting concepts to arrive at a more solid argument. Refined ideas will be honed, with the strongest ideas chosen by each team gathered and distilled into a unified group solution. It is at this point that the teams pitch (Present) their solutions to other teams, and the process of Present, Critique, Iterate, starts all over again until only 1 or 2 solid concepts survive.

———-

Next Up

In Part 2, I will explore the logistics of designing a Design Studio including how to select participants, design their respect teams, provide just enough background information for the illumination phase, as well as the the most important element – the timing of each phase and setting the guardrails and ground rules.

Thanks,

@semanticwill

Resources

How Good Designers Think, Simon Rucker, Harvard Business Review

Criticism as an Approach to Interface Aesthetics (PDF)

Better together; the practice of successful creative collaboration (Cooper)

Playing well with others: How to create effective design teams (Cooper)

Wicked Problems in Design Thinking, Richard Buchanan (PDF)

Shades of Grey: Thoughts on Sketching (UXMag)

Shades of Grey: Wireframes as Thinking Device (UXMag)

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An Executives Guide to Sparking Creativity in Teams

Apr 14, ’11 1:27 PM

Sparking Creativity in Teams

“Nemo igitur vir magnus sine aliquo adflatu divino umquam fuit” ~ Cicero

Right on the heels of Bruce Nussbaum declaring that Design Thinking was dead, and Creative Intelligence (CQ) becoming the next great bubble in management thinking (with the rush to publish more pablum before the bubble bursts into vapour) as it relates to increasing organization’s competency in generating not just incremental (N+1) but disruptive innovation within their respective market, McKinsey released a new report this morning called, “Sparking Creativity in teams: An Executive’s Guide,” (PDF) to which I can readily admit that I opened it preparing to be underwhelmed by the audacity of the report’s mediocrity. I was not disappointed, though I will refrain from an excoriating exegesis on the topic and just give some quick thoughts.

My sentiment might be because just yesterday I read Robert Fabricant’s “3 Things Wile E. Coyote Teaches Us About Creative Intelligence,” and was really inspired by the notion he proposes that creativity exists ‘in-between,’ people and is not necessarily an innate trait divino afflante spiritu. It requires context, yes, but more important, it requires the “other,” to borrow a term from social psychology. Creativity – especially of the disruptive kind, requires friction and interactions between people because most interesting problems, most problems worth thinking about, “wicked problems,” as Richard Buchanan calls them in his article published in 1992, “Wicked Problems in Design Thinking,” are bigger and more complex than any one person can hope to solve on their own. What’s particularly insightful about this notion is that it reminded me of the  ideas of power explicated by philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault in his book L’archéologie du savoir – that power is not an innate trait of individuals, but instead arises and exists in-between people within a social group. It’s more a friction and a flow, depending on the ever changing dynamics of interaction. A person standing alone in the forest exerts no hegemony within a social group – because there is none. S/he has no power except as it arises in a social context.

McKinsey doesn’t follow this path, instead focusing on how executives can, dare I say it — design a context, culture, and environment, where individual creativity can flourish – but even that is overstating things (wishful thinking on my part), because really, the report doesn’t focus on a strategic framework, but on 4 simple tactical considerations. While the article is about teams, they come from the perspective of ‘creativity as innate creative trait’ possessed by the rugged individualists that Ayn Rand wrote about in Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead. We’ll let that slide down the left side of the IQ bell curve into the cesspool of failed ideas, and move forward. McKinsey identifies 4 practical (read: tactical) ways executives can make teams more creative.

Immerse Yourself

The article argues that “would-be innovators need to break free of preexisting views. Unfortunately, the human mind is surprisingly adroit at supporting its deep-seated ways of viewing the world while sifting out evidence to the contrary.” The antidote seems pretty straight forward, and actually one practiced by great design teams as a best practice – design ethnography.

“The antidote is personal experience: seeing and experiencing some-thing firsthand can shake people up in ways that abstract discussions around conference room tables can’t. It’s therefore extremely valuable to start creativity-building exercises or idea generation efforts outside the office, by engineering personal experiences that directly con-front the participants’ implicit or explicit assumptions,”

This is actually one of the best recommendations, because it allows teams to understand their customers, embracing the UX notion that “you are not the user.” Great – good start, I can feel a tingling in my soul. Remember – this doesn’t mean just executives or product managers – this means the entire team being immersed in the daily lives of customers to understand their context – for generating insights into problems the team would never uncover sitting at their desk or in a conference room – no matter how many white boards, post-its, or sharpies are present. Insight is extrinsic, it comes from going out into the world.

Overcome Orthodoxies

The second way the article argues executives can design an environment for more creative teams is by overcoming orthodoxies. The funny thing about orthodoxies is that they can’t be seen when you are inside the bowels of the beast – you don’t know you’re living in the Matrix until you step outside the system and that kind of re-framing of perspective is important. From the article:

Exploring deep-rooted company (or even industry) orthodoxies is another way to jolt your brain out of the familiar in an idea generation session, a team meeting, or simply a contemplative moment alone at your desk.

Okay, yes – I agree that challenging orthodoxies is great, in theory. Problem is, most organizations don’t even realize what their orthodoxies are because they are the intrinsic rules embedded within the DNA of the organization. I would argue that only through engagement with outside help, or bringing in fresh blood with strong personalities willing to challenge deep-rooted beliefs, is this possible. I don’t think it’s as easy as the report seems to imply. Liberation is only possible if you first understand and accept that you are a slave to entrenched organization culture.

Use Analogies

This could just as easily be called “Use Metaphors.” Since Lakoff and Johnson published “Metaphors We Live By,” we have come to realize that metaphors aren’t just a poetic devise, but actually a way we understand and make sense of the world around us. It is through the use of analogy – or metaphor – that teams can reframe a problem space, or better understand unmet customer needs, desires, or fears. Use of metaphor is a common brainstorming technique in creative user experience design teams – one that is used rather explicitly (For a great read, check out Dan Saffer’s CMU masters thesis “The Role of Metaphor in Interaction Design.” The report explains the benefit by stating that,

“As we’ve seen, by forcing comparisons between one company and a second, seemingly unrelated one, teams make considerable creative progress, particularly in situations requiring greenfield ideas.”

My only caveat to use of analogy or metaphor in brainstorming is that you want to have facilitators skilled in this process. It actually is an art form to create an environment where people can engage in open ideation that is positive, generative, and exploratory. There are many other great techniques that will allow teams to achieve the goals of open, abductive, generative ideation, Check out Dave Gray and Sunni Brown’s fantastic book “Gamestorming,” for more activities and methods of focused play to spur creativity and innovation.

At a high level, this may be what Nussbaum is alluding to in the article he just published today called “3 Reasons You Should Treat Creativity as a Game,” and he introduces the notion playground as metaphor, or the  “Magic Circle,” and explains that:

The playground is the place where we leave behind the usual hierarchies, procedures, statuses, and behaviors to act out “as if…” games of discovery. I even have a name for this playground of creativity — the Magic Circle.

Create Constraints

It is only after you understand and have embraced some of the activities above, must you remember the importance of constraints. In a process I have used for years to good effect – the Design Studio – we impose design constraints across different parts of the process. The most explicit of which is time. For instance – your team has 1 hour to go out on the streets of NYC and interview as many people as you can in the pouring rain about their vision, goals, and intent as it relates to their professional development. This was actually an activity I participated in just 2 weeks ago. It was cold, hostile, and exhilarating.

“Imposing constraints to spark innovation may seem counter intuitive—isn’t the idea to explore “white spaces” and “blue oceans”? Yet without some old-fashioned forcing mechanisms, many would-be creative thinkers spin their wheels aimlessly or never leave their intellectual comfort zones.”

Another example of introducing constraints is saying, “Your team has 10 minutes to generate 8 unique concepts that solve for some clearly defined problem. These concepts must be sketched – no bullet points – ready – GO!” Time boxing team-based ideation narrows the field of view and forces participants to focus and flow. It’s a beautiful thing to watch 5 people act as a single unit to generate ideas as music plays and the clock ticks down.

The article ends by stating that “creativity is not a trait reserved for the lucky few,” which, given Fabricant’s article yesterday in Fast Company, I am forced to disagree with. Perhaps artistic creativity is an innate trait, but creativity in the context of business innovation is a friction and flow that arises between people in teams working towards a common goal of solving a problem in a unique, compelling, and differentiated way. As Peter Drucker once said, “the purpose of business is to create a customer,” and what better way of doing that than immersing yourself in your customer’s lives; completely understand their context; and uncovering insights that can generate elegant solutions that make a person’s life better. Else, why the hell are we doing this, anyway?

Finally, in the beginning of this little blog post I mentioned that I was underwhelmed with this article, and perhaps I should explain that. While I am happy McKinsey published this report, I expected more. There is really nothing new that hasn’t been covered in most of the Design Thinking books to come out in the last five years. The four recommendations are actually activities and methods practiced by many user experience design and product teams, including my own. Nussbaum’s article about treating the creative process as a game actually backs up my argument when he says:

“Designers are the interface between science and society, technology and people. Because of this, design uses ethnographic tools and methods, but its use of sociology, anthropology, and sociolinguistics is shallow. Deliberately framing creativity within a social model pushes it to embrace the rich social-science literature on charisma, calling, sharing, risk, aura, ritual, and, of course, play to deepen our understanding of the making of innovation.”

The biggest benefit, I suppose, of an article like the one published by McKinsey is that perhaps these ideas will find more traction in the C-Suite and ultimately lead to more disruptive, not just incremental N+1 innovation. Less ‘me-too’ products which seem to litter the digital noosphere like cockroaches after the Zombie Apocalypse would be a good thing for society as well because it would free up capital to invest in projects and products that actually make the world just a little better.

My opinion is that the greatest failure of the McKinsey article, which they might have learned if they had decided to consult people in the design or user experience space is to know your damn audience! They are highlighting 4 tactical considerations for spurring creativity and providing them to C-Suite Strategic leaders within organizations (operations and production resources within organization tend to not read McKinsey). Does that make any sense whatsoever? Anyway – let’s cut to the chase and I will let you decide if you think there are any worthy nuggets in this report.

How any of this is *not* design thinking (or simply Design) still confounds me, but I’ll keep slogging through like a banana slug moving across a salt bed in July.

@SemanticWill Out.

Articles Cited

Sparking Creativity in Teams: An Executive’s Guide

Design Thinking is a Failed Experiment

3 Things Wile E. Coyote Teaches Us About Creative Intelligence

3 Reasons You Should Treat Creativity as a Game

Gamestorming Website, Dave Gray & Sunni Brown

The Role of Metaphor in Interaction Design

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Design and the New Rhetoric: A Review.

Apr 9, ’11 12:55 PM

Design and the New Rhetoric

Soundtrack: Philip Glass, Koyaanisquatsi “Prophecies”

This morning, after having let my coffee steep in the french press for as long as I could possible wait (approximately 4 minutes), I stumbled upon a somewhat older article by famed design theorist and professor Richard Buchanan. entitled, “Design and the New Rhetoric: Productive Arts in the Philosophy of Culture,” (PDF). I pounded the first 2 cups of black sinful brew and dove deep.

(Here is Richard Buchanan’s keynote at IxD11 Conference.)

Design and the New Rhetoric

The typical view of design was once as a styling of the appearance of products. A view which many have, over the past few years, come to realize as a serious misconception of the actual work of designers. Buchanan argues that stance, ensconced in ignorance, is comparable to the popular view of rhetoric as the mere styling of verbal expression, often for the purposes of propaganda or insouciant embellishment. Buchanan’s article argues that for both arts (design and rhetoric), the deeper work lies in the invention and disposition of form and content. This is the major thrust of the article, and he moves forward to draw the conclusion that design is the new rhetoric.

Buchanan states that in approaching design from a rhetorical perspective, the hypothesis should be that all products – digital and analog, tangible and intangible (like service design and software) – are “vivid arguments about how we as humans, situated in social context, should lead our lives.” It’s a positivist argument for use of design to foresee, craft, and impose a set of values upon a culture. One fundamental value Buchanan argues for, not in this article, but later in his speech to the IxD11 crowd was that the principle behind interaction design, in fact, all design, is human dignity.

It is no surprise then when cognitive psychologist Herbert Simon says,

“everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones,”

Simon identifies cognitive processes of decision making as the key to understanding design, and it’s predicated on a modality of ethical judgment as to what one defines as “preferred,” hence design as a political act through the use of argument and not simply the styling of an ersatz object.

(For an excellent article that further explores this, read “The Known Unknowns: Exploring the evolution of design education in response to the industry’s expanding role” by Ian Curry at Frog)

Buchanan also posits that the design of products can have a persistent consequence in the behavior (think recent definitions of Interaction Design) of human beings, whether we consider a product’s style or its deeper synthesis of technological reasoning. He argues that this is why the establishment of criteria for successful products is one of the central “wicked problems” of design thinking today (Nussbaum’s recent screed against Design Thinking not withstanding).

I especially appreciated the way Buchanan finds the consanguinity between Aristotle’s four causes and compares his definition of rhetoric with a formal definition of design such that:

  • The creative capacity of individual designers as an efficient cause;
  • The sequence of goals around which the methods of design thinking and practice have taken shape as a final cause;
  • The outcome of the design process in products that serve human beings as a formal cause; and
  • The subject matter of design as found in any activities and purposes of human beings as a material cause.

However, in exploring this notion further, Buchanan states that “traditional rhetoricians have been slow to recognize their intellectual resources for exploring the new directions of technology,” and says that, as an example, rhetoricians have:

“not considered the possibility that designers are the agents of rhetorical thinking in the new productive sciences of our time.”

He amplifies this statement by saying that they have not considered the way in which design – as the intellectual, aesthetic and practical craft provides discipline in the creation of the human-made world  – and employs “rhetorical doctrines and devices in its work of shaping the products and environments that surround and persuasively influence our lives to an unprecedented degree.”

Design of Barack Obama

Design is essentially a political problem of competing values and priorities that designers must learn to navigate with integrity. It is no small surprise, then, the importance that design played in the 2010 election of Barack Obama – where design itself became a major component of the campaigns political rhetoric.

I highly recommend reading the entire article, especially when it delves deeper into the ideas of logos, ethos, and pathos from a rhetorical perspective and then recontextualizes it to better understand the positioning of design as argument. This he further extends – placing design in the center of a triangle of logos, ethos, and pathos, what he calls his “Triangle of Doom,” at the IxD11 conference.

@semanticwill Out.

Sources

Design and the New Rhetoric: Productive Arts in the Philosophy of Culture

Design Thinking is a Failed Experiment. So What’s Next?

“The Known Unknowns: Exploring the evolution of design education in response to the industry’s expanding role”

Richard Buchanan’s IxD11 Keynote Speech “Who Are We? Where Are We? Where Are We Going?”

“Form in Design,” by Dan Saffer

Richard Buchanan Bio

Richard Buchanan is Professor of Design, Management, and Information Systems at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University. Before joining the Weatherhead faculty in 2008, he served as Head of the School of Design from 1992 until 2002 and from 2002 until 2008 as Director of Doctoral Studies. While at Carnegie Mellon, he inaugurated Interaction Design programs at the Masters and doctoral level.

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The UX Canon: Essential Reading for the User Experience Designer

Aug 25, ’10 10:00 AM

For some time I had been slowly acquiring books, reviewing books, and recommending books to colleagues who were interested in “getting into” interaction design, user experience design, information architecture or usability. This eventually led to me cataloging my list of what I consider the best books in the field. With help from my friend Dave Malouf (co-founder of the IxDA and Professor of Interaction Design at SCAD), we edited this list of my canon, and now I want to share this list with you. If you have a question about a particular book, feel free to email me.

Next steps, besides slowly acquiring and reviewing more books, is to begin further classification of books. Until that can happen, this is my UX library. If I don’t own it or haven’t read it, it’s definitely not on this list. At the same time, there are books that I own that aren’t included because I thought they sucked for one reason or another. The fourth option is that I have it, have read it, liked it, but simply forgot to include it. So if you ask “Why haven’t you included X, Y, or Z – it’s one of those reasons.”

The Big UX Picture

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity by Alan Cooper

Emotional Design: Why We Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman

Leonardo’s Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies by Ben Shneiderman

Core: Required Readings in User Experience Design

About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design by Alan Cooper , Robert Reimann, David Cronin

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites by Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville

Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge

Designing the User Interface by Ben Shneiderman

Introductions to UX

The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web by Jesse James Garrett

A Project Guide to UX: For user experience designers in the field or in the making by Russ Unger and Carolyn Chandler

Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design by Bill Buxton

Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices by Dan Saffer

Thoughts on Interaction Design by Jon Kolko

Thoughtful Interaction Design: A Design Perspective on Information Technology by Jonas Löwgren , Erik Stolterman

Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web Application Design by Robert Hoekman Jr.

Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web by Christina Wodtke

The Electronic Design Studio: Architectural Education in the Computer Era by Malcolm McCullough

Digital Ground: Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing by Malcolm McCullough

Practice, Methods and Tactics in UX

Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning by Dan Brown

The User Is Always Right: A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web by Steve Mulder , Ziv Yaar

Design Research: Methods and Perspectives by Brenda Laurel and Peter Lunenfeld

Rapid Contextual Design: A How-to Guide to Key Techniques for User-Centered Design by Karen Holtzblat, Jessamyn Burns Wendell, Shelley Wood

Contextual Design : A Customer-Centered Approach to Systems Designs by Hugh Beyer, Karen Holtzblatt

Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner’s Guide to User Research by Mike Kuniavsky

User and Task Analysis for Interface Design by JoAnn T. Hackos, Ph.D , Janice C. Redish

The Persona Lifecycle : Keeping People in Mind Throughout Product Design by John Pruitt , Tamara Adlin

Context and Consciousness: Activity Theory and Human-Computer Interaction by Bonnie A. Nardi

Design Research: Methods and Perspectives by Brenda Laurel (Editor), Peter Lunenfeld

Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior by Indy Young

Card Sorting: Design Usable Categories by Donna Spencer

Prototyping: A Practitioners Guide to Prototyping by Todd Zaki Warfel

Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Design and Refine User Interfaces by Carolyn Snyder

Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become by Peter Morville

Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design by Jenifer Tidwell

Designing Social Interfaces: Principles, Patterns and Practices for Improving the User Experience by Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone

Search Patterns: Design for Discovery by Peter Morville

Modular Web Design: Creating Reusable Components for User Experience Design and Documentation by Nathan Curtis

Web Form Design by Luke Wroblewski

Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook by Dan Cederholm

Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman

User-Centered Website Development: A Human-Computer Interaction Approach by Daniel D. McCracken , Rosalee J. Wolfe , Jared M. Spool

Usability

Don’t Make Me Think: A common sense approach to web usability by Steve Krug

Human Factors in Information Systems: The Relationship Between User Interface Design and Human Performance by Jane M. Carey (Editor)

Web Usability: A User-Centered Design Approach by Jonathan Lazar

Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines by Sanjay J. Koyani , Robert W. Bailey , Janice R. Nall

Usability for the Web: Designing Web Sites that Work by Tom Brinck , Darren Gergle , Scott D. Wood

Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests by Jeffrey Rubin

A Practical Guide to Usability Testing by Joseph S. Dumas , Janice C. Redish

Prioritizing Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen , Hoa Loranger

Designing Web Usability : The Practice of Simplicity by Jakob Nielsen

Site-Seeing: A Visual Approach to Web Usability by Luke Wroblewski

Web Site Usability (Interactive Technologies) by Jared Spool , Tara Scanlon , Carolyn Snyder , Terri DeAngelo

Visual Thinking & Info Viz

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd edition by Edward R. Tufte

Beautiful Evidence by Edward R. Tufte

Envisioning Information by Edward R. Tufte

Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative by Edward R. Tufte

Information Design by Robert Jacobson (Editor)

Information Graphics: Innovative Solutions in Contemporary Design by Peter Wildbur , Michael Burke

Visual Function: An Introduction to Information Design by Paul Mijksenaar

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Communities of Care – Strategic Social Interaction Design in the Healthcare

Aug 24, ’10 4:07 PM
Strategic Social Interaction Design in the Health & Wellness Industry

Strategic Social Interaction Design in the Healthcare

Details:

Date: Thursday, March 25, 2010
Time: 6:00PM – 8:00PM (Social time from 6:00-6:30PM)
Location: Baiada Center for Entrepreneurship
Drexel University
3225 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104
Google Map: http://bit.ly/9kvEPP

Register: http://phillychi2010-3.eventbrite.com/

Description:

Social Interaction Design is not web design. It’s not interaction design. It’s about designing complex ecosystems that support conversation, collaboration, intimacy — in short, community. Problem is, many people – even in the IxD world – don’t understand what conversation is, or how to create engaging communities.

Many healthcare providers and startups are rushing to deliver on the promise of creating supportive online communities for people while simultaneously trumpeting personal health records and electronic health records at the same time creating potential privacy and trust issues.

To design Communities of Care, you must commit to writing a narrative of human behavior mediated through time and space. While great strides have been made over the last 40 years drawing on a rich history of Cybernetics and Human-Computer Interaction, those models of interaction are limited in explaining social and psychological modalities of social interaction in physical space and particularly in mediated online spaces which is becoming more the norm for collective and collaborative group social interactions in the healthcare industry.

Speakers

Amy Cueva

Amy Cueva is Founder, Chief Experience Officer, and Healthcare Principal at Mad*Pow, an experience design agency. She partners with clients like Google, Aetna, Fidelity, and Monster to create strong cross-channel digital strategies, first class user experiences, and streamlined internal processes. She has built Mad*Pow’s user-centered design methodology as the vehicle to synergize business goals, customer needs, and technology requirements.

She was selected as one of Mass High Tech’s Women to Watch in 2009 and grew Mad*Pow along her business partners, Will Powley, and Bradley Honeyman to be noted as one of Inc 500’s fastest growing privately held companies in 2009. She is the secretary and one of the charter members of the NH UPA and is speaking at the 2010 IA Summit in Phoenix, AZ and the 2010 International UPA Conference in Munich, Germany.

Will Evans

aka @semanticwill, your host.

Presentation

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Design Ethnography & Mood Maps

Aug 3, ’10 9:29 PM


Over the last years I have noticed that many books and articles talk about the usefulness (or not) of personas, delving a little into the actual production and design of the persona as well as defending it’s usage. Very few explicitly define some of the activities that occur within the design research phase. It was Jared Spool that mentioned the real value of personas being the actual process of engaging with users and developing empathy towards their circumstances and experience interacting with a product.1 The following article grew out of a conversation with Nathan Curtis of Eight Shapes (author of “Modular Web Design“) when I offered to contribute what I called a “Mood Map” to the Unify Documentation System. Let’s start.

You can read the entire article on Johnny Holland.

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Shades of Grey: Thoughts on Sketching

Jun 26, ’10 7:26 AM

Design in art, is a recognition of the relation between various things, various elements in the creative flux. You can’t invent a design. You recognize it, in the fourth dimension. That is, with your blood and your bones, as well as with your eyes.
- D.H. Lawrence

Shades of Grey: Thoughts on Sketching

In designing mostly interactive systems (spaces, processes, and artifacts for people to use), I must increasingly stretch the limits of communication tools to explore and document what it will be like to interact with the things I create. Artifacts used in communicating design create an inherent frame of experience between the subjective response of the person for whom I design, and my expectations of their response. There is a divergence of meaning in that the audience can only experience the communications artifact, not the object being communicated.

Read the entire article on UX Magazine.

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Dynamic Visualization: Introduction & Theory

Apr 27, ’10 1:30 AM

(So instead of the usual post modern critical musings, I figured I would write some professional articles to provide a vocabulary for anyone interested in the topologies of modern information visualization theory in the context of some recent RIA applications seen on the web — I expect an audience of 4 for this article). Oh – I introduce a few concepts in this article that are common in cognitive psychology, so I will try to provide links to definitions or articles in wikipedia to provide more information.
~ SemanticWIll

Abstract

I’ll take a more conversation tone (more conversational than I am on twitter) in introducing the concept of dynamic visualization of quantitative information for a couple of reasons. First, I feel that often times the theories discussed in the ‘ivory towers’ are considered too esoteric for the lay reader (which isn’t really true); and secondly, I wanted to share some of the fruits of my overpriced MS in information design with as many people as possible. So – put simply, dynamic visualizations can be thought of as extensions of multivariate displays (or multiple-variable displays). They attempt to overcome problems of static data by allowing real-time manipulation of information objects through dynamic data queries displayed in the user interface using such technologies as AJAX or rich internet applications with front ends implemented in Adobe (Macromedia once upon a time) Flash.

The visualizations that are created must support the cognitive requirements such as pre-attentive processing, working memory, etc.. To do this, many of the same theories, strategies, and techniques are also duplicated in a dynamic visualization (Image Theory, the Gestalt Laws, verbal / visual dual-coding, etc.) Instead, I will give a brief overview of the literature, cognitive processes, and techniques that are unique to dynamic displays. This article is roughly organized into the following sections: Introduction (WTF), Dynamic Visualizations (BBQ), and Conclusion (FTW), References, and Apologia.

Introduction (WTF)

What is a dynamic visualization? Simply stated, it is an alternative way of accessing a database in which it can be queried multiple ways in order to form a changing and multi-dimensional visualization of the data. Shneiderman (1999) states that dynamic queries involve “the interactive control by a user of visual query parameters that generate a rapid (100 ms update), animated, visual display of database search results.” (pg. 236) The visual results can be displayed in many ways. Tables, node and line diagrams, tree-maps, hierarchical data, data landscapes, geographical representations, and two-dimensional diagrams are just a few of the ways that dynamic visualizations can be displayed on a computer. (Shneiderman, 1999; Ware, 2000)

As with other types of visualizations, dynamic visualizations are an extension of working memory. However, its main goal is not to enable creativity or support problem-solving (although they are involved). The main goal of a dynamic visualization is to amplify cognition often times to aid decision making. A designer of a dynamic visualization must take into consideration all previous concerns about visualizations and add an additional dimension of real-time variances. The dynamic visualization acts “as an extension of cognitive processes, augmenting working memory by providing visual markers for concepts and by revealing structural relationships between problem components.”(Ware, 2000, pg. 335) While the main goal may be to amplify cognition, the designer shouldn’t just add vast amounts of data into a display, making it dense, complex, and confusing. Instead, the designer must focus on “the principle of reducing the cost structure of information.” (Pirolli, Card, & Van Der Wege, 2001) Dynamic visualizations must support search techniques, provide an overview of the data, and a specific subset of it.

Gapminder.org

Figure 1: Gapminder.org

The process of interacting with dynamic visualizations is typically broken down into three parts. Ware describes a process that consists of three interlocking feedback loops: manipulation, exploration and navigation, and problem-solving.(2000) Manipulation occurs when objects are selected and moved. Exploration and navigation is an intermediate level in which a user explores data and build a cognitive spatial model. Hypothesis generation and refinement occur in the problem-solving stage. Dynamic visualizations support cognition in this stage because users “can quickly perceive patterns in data, ‘fly through’ data by adjusting sliders, and rapidly generate new queries based on what they discover through incidental learning.”(Shneiderman, 1999, pg. 237) They can also quickly discover which sections of a multidimensional search space are densely populated and which are sparsely populated, where there are clusters, exceptions, gaps, or outliers, and what trends ordinal data reveal. Gapminder (Figure 1 by Ola Rosling) is a fantastic example of this – perhaps one of the best in turning dynamic visualization into a cognition-amplifying and gestalt-generating machine)

“Humans can recognize the spatial configuration of elements in a picture and notice relationships among elements quickly. This highly developed visual system means people can grasp the content of a picture much faster than they can scan and understand text. Interface designers can capitalize on this by shifting some of the cognitive load of information retrieval to the perceptual system. By appropriately coding properties by size, position, shape, and color, we can greatly reduce the need for explicit selection, sorting, and scanning operations.” Shneiderman, pg. 241)

Dynamic visualizations are most valuable in environments that require monitoring or manipulation of large quantities of data, in real time, and under tight time constraints. There are several benefits for the ability to directly manipulate data and have returned visuals. Beginners are able to learn basic functionality quickly, there is little need for error messages, users can immediately see if their actions are accomplishing their goals, and users feel in control (On Kayak.com, user un-checks a particular Airline, and those automagically disappear from the display of results is an example). However, there are risks to using dynamic visualizations. Bad, missing, or erroneous source data could lead to wrong conclusions, and false relationship identification. De-skilling, coupled with a false sense of security, could have serious consequences where patterns are missed. The face-validity of any visualization must be questioned when the decisions that are based off of the displays have serious consequences.

Revealicious - Hyperbolic Tree

Figure 2: Revealicious - Hyperbolic Tree

Dynamic Visualizations (BBQ)

There are many types of dynamic visualizations. Tables are perhaps the most simplistic display option for dynamic data. Other options are more visual such as hyperbolic tree browsers (See Figure 2 Revealicious), overview and detail displays, three-dimensional data landscapes, and tree maps. Inputting data into these displays are done through forms in which a user selects data to query. Radio buttons are preferred for selecting binary nominal variables whereas sliders “allow setting a single ordinal or quantitative variable value.” (Card, Mackinlay & Shneiderman, 1999, pg. 235)

Eick describes sliders as “a generic user input mechanism for specifying a numeric value from a range.” (1999, pg. 251) He goes on to explain that they have an added visual effect because the space inside the slider can serve as an interactive color scale, a bar plot for discrete data, or a density plot for continuous data. Eick states that the purpose of a slider is to control filtration and restriction of displayed information. Doing so reduces visual clutter and enables “users to see important underlying patterns. The pruning of visual clutter from data-rich displays by adjusting sliders is particularly effective in information visualization, and even more so when done dynamically.” (Eick, 1999, pg. 251) Figure 3 below is the interface for Kayak.com I designed which utilizes sliders to dynamically prune data by attributes such as price, departure time, airline – all facets attached to flight manifests.

Kayak.com Sliders

Figure 3: Kayak.com Sliders

Bertin and Greene’s planar and retinal variables are an integral part in any visualization in which data must be pre-attentively sorted and identified with graphic variables. Briefly, the process of data extraction consists of three stages in which the viewer

  • determines what components are being represented,
  • determines which components are mapped to which visual graphic variables; and finally
  • perceives correspondence between components.

Bertin stated that a visual variable must have as many steps equal to or greater than the number of components it represents. A user can distinguish types of data either through serial or parallel processing. In serial processing, the user goes from target to target to determine differences in data. In parallel process, targets reveal measures through pre-attentive visualization techniques.

Overview + Detail

Overview + Detail refers to a group of visualizations that allow a general overview of information with the ability for a user to search and explore data to discover details and patterns. Within the visualization there is dedicated space for each and so there are really two displays within one visualization. “It reduces search, allows the detection of overall patterns, and aids the user in choosing the next move. A general heuristic of visualization design, therefore, is to start with an overview. But it is also necessary for the user to access details rapidly. One solution is overview + detail: to provide multiple views, an overview for orientation, and a detailed view for further work.” (Card, Mackinlay & Shneiderman, 1999, pg. 285) Examples of these types of displays are dashboards with spatial zoom displays, semantic zooming, zoom-and-replace, and tree maps (see the dashboard mockup Figure 4 below, where overview data is presented, but detailed views can be seen by clicking and graphs to drill down). One drawback from this type of visualization is that loads for working memory and visual search are increased which in turn degrade performance.(Card, Mackinlay & Shneiderman, 1999) Furnas (1981) explains that in the zoom system, local and global information is not available at once and so integration of the two must occur in human memory.

Sample Dashboard

Figure 4: Sample Dashboard

Focus + Context

Focus + Context is another technique that supports the ability to see an overview of information while having access to detailed data. Context refers to the necessity of a user to see the overview of the data while focus relates to detailed information. Another term for this group of techniques is distortion-oriented presentation techniques. (Leung & Apperley, 1999) Single visualizations are created with the knowledge that the information that is needed in the overview may be different from the data required for the detail. Focus + context techniques were created in the attempt to build one visualization which displays overview and detail information in a way that peripheral information is displayed in less detail while the information that is in focus is dynamic and dependent on the user’s interest.

The essence of these [focus + context] techniques is the concurrent presentation of local detail together with global context at reduced magnification, in a format which allows dynamic interactive positioning of the local detail without severely compromising spatial relationships.(Leung & Apperlay, 1999, pg. 352)

Focus + context displays are also referred to as attention-warped displays in that they distort the display in order to provide the maximum space for a use’s attention. This can be accomplished by filtering, selective aggregation, micro-macro readings, highlighting, and distortion. (Card, Mackinlay, Shneiderman, 1999)

Focus + Detail: Election Dashboard in Flex

Figure 5: Focus + Detail: Election Dashboard in Flex

There are many types of visualizations that use the focus + context technique. This technique “supports visualizing an entire information structure at once as well as zooming in on specific items.” (Rao & Card, 1999, pg. 343) The detailed view is blended with a view of the overall structure in a way that manipulation operations can navigate through the data. (Lamping & Rao, 1995) The context + focus techniques support different types of data and different user goals. Some of these are cone trees, fisheye view, bifocal lens, table lens, magic lens, hyperbolic browsers, perspective wall, polyfocal display, map displays, and bar charts such (see Figure 5 above – a dashboard example for the 2008 election).

Furnas (1981) proposed the fish-eye view as an alternative way to display a large structure. He uses detailed algorithms called the degree of interest metric to determine an appropriate balance between “the need for local detail against the need for global context: by showing full detail in the immediate neighborhood some place of current focus, but requiring increasing a priori importance as the distance from the focus increases.” (pg. 312) The variable zoom algorithm that creates the fisheye lens has been proven to support a user’s ability to maintain a global context within hierarchical clusters.(Schaffer et. al, 1996) Spence and Apperley’s (1999) bifocal lens is based on an overview + detail display. They inserted the detailed view into the overview in a way that resembled a bifocal lens. They used a point of interest where data that surrounds it is mapped and compressed based on their positioning within and from the focal area. A variation of this technique was extended into two dimensional form by Leung and by Mackinlay’s Perspective Wall. (Leung & Apperley, 1999) Rao and Card’s (1999) table lens is based on a focus + context fisheye technique to display tabular information using label information and multiple distal focal areas. Their hyperbolic browser is an additional focus + context technique that was “based on hyperbolic geometry for visualizing and manipulating large hierarchies. [It] assigns more display space to a portion of the hierarchy while still embedding it in the context of the entire hierarchy.” (Lamping & Rao, 1995, Pg. 382)

Conclusion (FTW)

Dynamic visualizations can be considered one of the most difficult displays to create. Systems can be extremely large, data could be constantly entering the system, and users can change queries instantly. Communicating the information in a meaningful way must be seriously considered. There are several techniques a designer can utilize to help reduce the cognitive load of a user and to support his/her cognition. Image Theory, the Gestalt Laws, working memory, learning theories, and biological processing all come into play in these visualizations. In this article, overview + detail and focus + context techniques were discussed. These techniques were created in the attempt to solve the problems “associated with the presentation of data in a confined space: a spatial problem and an information density problem.”(Leung & Apperlay, 1999, pg. 362)

The distortion techniques such as the hyperbolic browser and fisheye view largely address these issues, however there are always risks involved in using such techniques. Users can miss patterns and connections as well as make incorrect assumptions. Designers must understand how different displays support different types of data and different tasks in order to support user cognition. One of the places significant improvements can be made is that, given the increasing ubiquity of dynamic data visualization applications on e-commence websites and common applications like hotel and travel booking, the more important it is for designer’s to take these theories into account and try them in the real world.

Apologia (#formarketingreasons)

I realize there are a number of important concepts which I only briefly introduced here, as well as some more technical terms that I take for granted that the reader knows. These assumptions are problematic, and for that reason, on the next iteration of this article – I will need to include a glossary of terms and overview of some the basic concepts of information theory. Any further recommendations are always appreciated.

References : Everything you wanted to know about information visualization but were too darn cheap to buy the books. Note: I am exhausted, but need to include the appropriate links to the following resources for further information.

Card, S.K., Mackinlay, J.D. & Shneiderman, B. (1999) Readings in information visualization: Using vision to think. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufman.

Eick, S.G. (1999). Data Visualization Sliders. In S.K. Card, J.D. Mackinlay, & B. Shneiderman (Eds.), Readings in information visualization: Using vision to think (pp. 251-252). San Francisco: Morgan Kaufman.

Eick, S.G., Steffen, J.L., & Sumner, E.E. (1999). Seesoft – a tool for visualizing line oriented software statistics. In S.K. Card, J.D. Mackinlay, & B. Shneiderman (Eds.), Readings in information visualization: Using vision to think (pp. 419-430). San Francisco: Morgan Kaufman.

Furnas, G.W. (1981). The FISHEYE View: A New Look at Structured Files. In S.K. Card, J.D. Mackinlay, & B. Shneiderman (Eds.), Readings in information visualization: Using vision to think (pp. 312-320). San Francisco: Morgan Kaufman.

Greene, M. (1998). Toward a Perceptual Science of Multidimensional Data Visualization: Bertin and Beyond. ERGO/GERO Human Factors Science.

Lamping, J. & Rao, R. (1995). The hyperbolic browser: a focus + context technique for  visualizing large hierarchies. In S.K. Card, J.D. Mackinlay, & B. Shneiderman (Eds.), Readings in information visualization: Using vision to think. (pp. 382-408). San Francisco: Morgan Kaufman.

Leung, Y.K. Apperley, M.D. (1999). A Review and Taxonomy of Distortion-Oriented Presentation Techniques. In S.K. Card, J.D. Mackinlay, & B. Shneiderman (Eds.), Readings in information visualization: Using vision to think. (pp. 350-367). San Francisco: Morgan Kaufman.

Lin, X. (1999). Visualization for the Document Space. In S.K. Card, J.D. Mackinlay, & B. Shneiderman (Eds.), Readings in information visualization: Using vision to think. (pp. 432-439). San Francisco: Morgan Kaufman.

Pirolli, P., Card, S., & Van Der Wege, M. Visual Information Foraging in a Focus + Context  Visualization. CHI 2001, 3(1) 506-513.

Preece, J., Rogers, Y., & Sharp, H. (2002). Interaction Design: beyond human-computer interaction. John Wiley & Sons.

Rao, R. and Card, S.K. (1999). The table lens: Merging graphical and symbolic representations in an interactive focus + context visualization for tabular information. In S.K. Card, J.D. Mackinlay, & B. Shneiderman (Eds.), Readings in information visualization: Using vision to think. (pp. 343-349). San Francisco: Morgan Kaufman.

Schaffer, D., Zuo, Z., Greenberg, S., Bartram, L., Dill, J., Dubs, S., & Roseman, M. (1996). Navigating hierarchically clustered networks through fisheye and full-zoom methods. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 3(2) 162-188.

Shneiderman, B. (1999). Dynamic Queries for Visual Information Seeking. In S.K. Card, J.D. Mackinlay, & B. Shneiderman (Eds.), Readings in information visualization: Using vision to think. (pp. 236-243). San Francisco: Morgan Kaufman.

Ware, C. (2000). Information Visualization: Perception for Design. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann.

A/

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Shades of Gray: Thoughts on Sketching

Feb 10, ’10 10:24 AM

“Design in art, is a recognition of the relation between various things, various elements in the creative flux. You can’t invent a design. You recognize it, in the fourth dimension. That is, with your blood and your bones, as well as with your eyes.”
D.H. Lawrence

Increasingly, as a Big “D” designer, mostly of complex dynamic systems (spaces, processes and products for people), I find myself stretching the limits of communication tools to explore and document what it will be like to interact with the things I design, which by their nature creates a ‘frame of experience’ between externalized object and the intersubjective experience of the person for whom I design. In an upcoming workshop at Interaction10, “The Right Way to Wireframe™,” four friends and designers explore design through each of our approaches to problem space definition and present shared commonalities we see in our processes even while specific tools vary.  We chose wireframing among many other design communication activities because of it’s contentiousness in the user experience (UX) community – at least as it relates to religious arguments of tools over craft, or indeed, principles.

If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.
Kahlil Gibran

I have described “wireframing” as a form of design communication that enables stakeholders, team members, users and clients to gain first-hand appreciation of existing or future problem spaces and solutions. Wireframing can be considered first order: the wireframe itself; second order: the process of creating a vehicle of design communication; and third, the cognitive process of envisioning, external actualization and reflection through the selection of a cognitive artifact which expresses a dialogical subjectivity between the Ego and Alter and a multiplicity of positions which they can take with respect to one another.

While “wireframes” are representations of a design made before final artifacts exist, their formalism over sketching makes them problematic. They are created to inform both the design process and design decisions, but they can be conceived as more reified than sketches, and therefore considered more final, which is unfortunate.

“An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail.”
Dr Edwin Land

I have often thought that the strategies of both sketching and wireframing can best be characterized by modalities of combinatorian decision analysis. What do I mean by that? At an abstract level, a particular problem space is defined and enframed by the tools we feel most comfortable with: problem space, domain, expertise, theme, context of problem, bias towards types of design tools and documents, timeliness of artifacts created. While I believe I effectively reflected upon wireframes in Shades of Gray, while working through the design of our workshop, it seemed necessary to step back and discuss the role of sketching in my personal design process.

I see sketching as an important pre-wireframing technique for doing divergent and transformative design, something that fundamentally differentiates what has been called “big D,” and “small D” design – not to put to fine a point on it – it is what separates the Designers from the wireframe monkeys. This is the argument that I have made, and base it in part on how Buxton defines design in “Sketching the User Experience,” when he writes:

“What I mean by the term “design” is what someone who went to art college and studied industrial design would recognize as design. At least this vague characterization helps narrow our interpretation of the term somewhat. Some recent work in cognitive science (Goel 1995, Gedenryd 1998) helps distinguish it further. It suggests that a designer’s approach to creative problem solving is very different  from how computer scientists, for example, solve puzzles. That is, design can be distinguished by a  particular cognitive style. Gendenryd, in particular, makes clear that sketching is fundamental to the design process. Furthermore, related work by Suwa and Tversky (2002) and Tcerksy (2002) shows that besides the ability to make sketches, a designer’s use of them is a distinct skill that develops with practice, and is fundamental to their cognitive style.” (Buxton, 2007, p. 96)

Amen. I think as designers we must go out of our way avoiding intra-mental thinking and instead use sketches to restore presence so that we can work interactively by seeing and doing in the recursive, iterative manner sketching seems more suited to than wireframing. As I wrote previously in Shades of Grey: Wireframes as Thinking Device:

“I think of “D”esign as an exploration of the conceivable futures. I use my sketches and wireframes as means to make explorative moves and assess the consequences of those moves. As I explore the problem space, I could relatively easily keep the design models in my head, but I would fail in my primary objective to create a framework for a conversation among the stakeholders, the intended audience, and me.”

My sketches are a model I employ to be able to conceive and predict the consequences of a certain design arguments (for to sketch an interaction, we are making an argument – even one that will be tossed away) within an unresolved problem space whose borders have not been fully defined. Representational means such as sketches, wireflows or  physical models like paper prototypes are important tools for my design since they help in assessing and reflecting on the details of a solution in relation to the whole problematic context in which it is situated. Using pencil and paper speeds up my doing-seeing loop of creation, judgment and reformulation. Few other tools are as fast as pencil and paper in this respect. As a designer, I can draw a line and immediately evaluate it. This conversational process between myself and visualization of the design situation has another effect in that it generates new ideas.

As I draw sketches, I see the problem in another way, perhaps because a line came out slightly wrong on the paper. Taking a step back or looking at a sketch from a different angle may also lead to new ideas and thoughts. New ideas are then nothing but old ideas in new combinations or old ideas looked upon or interpreted from a new perspective  – sketching than becomes what Goffman calls “framing.” This is also what Laseau calls “a conversation with ourselves in which we communicate with sketches.” It is also related to Schön’s concept of a reflective conversation with the materials of a design situation, where I as the designer shape the situation in a way that is in me, so that I can respond to that back-talk. Schön writes:

“In a good process of design, this conversation is reflective. In answer to the situation’s back-talk, the designer reflects-in-action on the construction of the problem, the strategies of action, or the model of the phenomena, which have been implicit in his moves.” (Schön, 1983, p. 79)

The sketches also form a documentation of my design process without adding any administrative overhead. As a designer, I can learn much by browsing back in old sketches; watching the evolution of an idea as my understanding of the problem space is explored, and refined, and this documentation can tell a narrative of design decisions to be shared with internal and external stakeholders who can then see why certain moves where taken, others discarded. Externalizations of different kinds (sketches, wireframes, prototypes) are then especially useful for communication purposes where I want to present ideas to another member of the design team, to the client, or to a user. The presentation sketches are usually not as rough as working sketches are and their purpose is not only to communicate an idea, but also to persuade the other part that a particular design alternative is better than other alternatives.

“Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.”
Isaac Bashevis Singer (יצחק באַשעװיס זינגער)

As noted above, the sketch can be rapid and spontaneous, but it leaves stable traces in contrast to conversation, which is evanescent. Conversation (or Talk) is, however, important for the argumentative assessment and communication of design alternatives, which is at the core of my design activities (sketch, present, critique, regine). As designers, we employ a language of talking and sketching in parallel. Schön describes the work of an architectural design professor named Quist in a session with a student:

“In the media of sketch and spatial-action language, he represents buildings on the site through moves which are also experiments. Each move has consequences described and evaluated in terms drawn from one or more design domains. Each has implications binding on later moves. And each creates new problems to be described and solved. Quist designs by spinning out a web of moves, consequences, implications, appreciations, and further moves.”

The quote above is a clear statement of what much of Design work is about. In terms of distributed cognition, it describes design work as distributed over designers and my representational means (e.g. sketches). The representational means (sketches or wireframes) are, in turn, physical embodiments of the culture and history in which they have evolved through the lifecycle of a project I am working on. I think the cultural practices of designers, including the spatial-action language, provide therefore the structural resources for performing experimental design moves. It is part of this ‘knowing-in-action,’ the know-how revealed in spontaneous and I would hope skillfully performed actions. The spatial-action language is also constitutive of our professional community of practice to which I belong in the ways in which we communicate both with ourselves, but also with our teams, clients, and now to you as well.

Photos (on Flickr) by Michael Leis

References:

Buxton, Bill (2007). Sketching the User Experience. Boston, MA: Morgan Kaufman.

Schön, D. A. (1987). Educating the Reflective Practitioner: Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

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