No Virginia… you are NOT the user2
As individuals, we have many user experiences over the course of a day. Certainly over the course of a week, month, year… indeed a lifetime. In a sense, we become experienced users over time of many things, and remain inexperienced users of many other things. In some instances we feel we can extrapolate the experience by comparing it to ‘like’ experiences.
When it comes to designing apps for use on the internet, software, or web, everyone is an experienced user. At least that’s the impression I’ve gotten over the years in dealing with clients and colleagues.
Let’s take clients. They are often made up of many constituents: a business owner, stakeholders, marketers, project managers, IT geeks, editors, business analysts, and possibly even cobbled together components of a web team. Each of them has an opinion. Each of them view digital projects in terms of their own interests, experience, discipline and exposure (or lack thereof) to similar types of projects. They also have their own agendas – which are a double edged sword – that guide their actions.
I could almost forgive them, as they try hard, they all want to succeed for different reasons, and if their business does well, they will all look good. Unfortunately, just because 8 people are rowing in a boat doesn’t mean they are all rowing together – that takes time, collaboration, recognition that they are all working towards the same goals and objectives, and an honesty about their capabilities.
I could almost forgive them. But I won’t. They should know better by now.
But it’s not the clients that worry me most.
It’s people I’ve worked with over the years – and will work with in the future. The ones for whom the phrase ‘you represent the user on this project’ applies. The people who say it often have no clue what they are talking about. Of course, the only people who can represent the user on the project are, well, the users. And the Information (or Experience) Architect, who gets used to being beaten down when talking about inclusion of the user, after a time begins to believe that the only way to include the user is to ‘be’ the user. This is the one that really frightens me.
No Virginia… you are NOT the user.
The Information Architect brings a bag of skills and tools, a degree of experience, and the capability to open the doors to engaging with users on a project. The user should be the first port of call. Who are they? What do they want? How do they live? Why would they use or want a client’s products or services? When is the best time to engage them? Quantitative statistics that can only answer, to some degree, some of the questions above can only provide pathways to partially thought out designs.
The IA is often left to sort out the rest. And the worst part of this is that the more it happens, the more confident they become in their own capabilities – those of actually representing the user on projects.
Where UX represents a world of ubiquitous experiences for users (also see my blog posts on UX and the Art of Digital Appropriation and Pervasive UX – Who is Responsible?), more Information Architects, with their own values, interests, varied experiences and goals provide a dangerously seductive (and less costly) alternative to representing user experiences on projects.
I think this is something that everyone needs to be aware of and consider when they limit the potential of a project from the beginning by assuming the inclusion of Information Architects solves the issue of user engagement in the process. You cannot say you practice user-centred design when you do not engage users in the process.
No Virginia… you are NOT the user. The user is the user. Someday, you may have the opportunity to be a user on a project – where you are not doing the design. But until that day, please, everyone involved in projects, work harder to get to know who your users are, and please, do involve them in the process. It can be really quite rewarding!
Update 6 September 2011:
A good example of why this is important can be found on @pubstrat‘s latest blog post, ‘Cleaning up the user interface‘.
UX and the Art of Digital Appropriation4
So, I feel caught in a language loop recently. I talk about (and practice) User Experience. I do these things in the digital/mobile space. And really, I’m mostly focusing on good, strategic paths to design.
But all of it is an illusion.
User experience is pervasive. It is ubiquitous. Like air. And I don’t design air… I breathe it, I need it to live, I experience it, it’s all around me. It’s ubiquitous too.
User experience is about more than just digital experiences. If we accept that it is pervasive, ubiquitous, we have to accept that it extends well beyond our digital boundaries. But we most often hear about “UX” in relation to developing digital experiences.
User experience has always existed. It’s just that we only really thought about it in terms of something that we create in the last half century. Product design is about creating user experiences. It pre-exists digital.
I think the discourse around User Experience needs to change. We need to move away from the tactical side of the now, ‘nameless’ profession, where practitioners argue over whether they are Information Architects, Experience Architects, Interaction Designers, etc. As long as we stay anchored to the pedantic, we’ll never aspire to the greater good.
I repeat, User experience is pervasive. It is ubiquitous. Companies and agencies need to step back and realise that the concept of user experience will mean change in the way their businesses operate. It’s too big to be owned by any one team, shoved down any one silo. It is too fundamentally important to leave to any one concept, methodology or team. To understand user experience is to create a fundamentally open and collaborative environment with a healthy exchange between and amongst users, businesses, agencies.
And we need to get away from it being a digital construction. It isn’t just about digital. Customers have more than just digital experiences. And as much as Martha Lane Fox and the current Government work to shove everyone down the digital path, if it is really about user experiences (ubiquitous, remember?) then it is about understanding people first and then creating products and services that meet their needs.
Digital has appropriated a universal experience. Digital is not ubiquitous… not yet, even though it’s easy to believe, living in London, that the entire world must be digital.
We’re at a pivotal point where organisations have the opportunity to become horizontally integrated extending all the way out into their communities – and with their communities invited into their organisations.
It’s time to be disruptive, silo-breaking collaborative horizontally-integrated experimentalists. Or whatever we want to be called.
Mobile Cloud Summit0
On 21 September, 2011 the Mobile Cloud Summit will take place in Hoxton.
It is a one-day event that will focus on how cloud-based applications delivered via smart mobile devices are transforming business and society. It will also focus on the Mobile Cloud investment opportunity and will be an opportunity for leading IT companies, investors, entrepreneurs, and the tech media to get together and discuss.
I will be moderating a brand new session at Mobile Cloud Summit called The Evolution of the Mobile Cloud.
For more information on the event, visit the Mobile Cloud Summit website.
You can also track the event on Lanyrd.
The internet and living away0
Living abroad (having lived most of my life in NY and Boston and now living in London) for the last 10 years has had its ups and downs. When things are going well, phone calls and emails with family, occasional Facebook chats, and the all too infrequent trip home serve to bridge the gap.
When they aren’t going well, like when my brother had a debilitating car accident 6 years ago, or today when a Hurricane (though I suppose by then it was a tropical storm) bore down on my parents’ home, things can be incredibly frustrating.
The internet and phone have helped today. Constant communication, and the ability to follow what’s happening back home on Twitter and Facebook. Even my mother taking pictures on her digital camera, uploading them and emailing them to me could at least give me some sense of what they were going through. 
In a small way, I’m able to participate in the experience, and with more input can at least better gauge and understand what is happening.
But it doesn’t make up for the distance. I hope everyone back home is safe and this storm will soon be a distant memory.
Pogo url and another look0
I keep moving my blog about. It’s down to this continuous issue of where does it sit in relation to the various things I do and am interested in. I’ve decided that as my blog is from me, and has survived with me through many clients, businesses, etc, that I’m going to keep it here at www.brianhoadley.com. You can still find my consulting website at www.digitaloptimist.com, but check here for my latest thoughts.
