Comments on Expanding the Approaches to User Experience

George Olsen — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:07 GMT

I’m not sure how my work habits are relevant to the pros and cons of the model I’ve proposed.

If I choose to take a little time out of my day to converse about this and am willing to stay late to ensure work gets done, what makes that a concern of yours?

Yes, I do enjoy engaging with our community. I also enjoy my real work cranking out schematics / wireframes / use cases / deliverable reviews / design reviews etc. I just make time to do both.

Pramit Nairi — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:28:22 GMT

More to come, but I have 2 things right off:

1. Why the censorship? Why was ‘fifa_mifa’s post removed? Agreed that it wasn’t eloquent etc, but it did raise an important point: ‘How does George have the time during the working day to be doing a back-and-forth on this discussion list’?

2. I, and I’m sure I am not alone, for one work for a company that does real work. I shoulder quite a bit of responsibility and crank out a good amount of work. The IAs- and pretty much everyone else here- is not looking for the next blog to post to or the next book to write. We’re cranking out schematics/ wireframes/ use cases/ deliverable reviews/ design reviews/ etc… So, to re-iterate fifa_mifa’s point (and this time a little more eloquently), ‘George, how busy are you? And is replying to blogs/ discussions/ etc the most exhilarating thing you do in the day?’

PS: Before flaming me and accusing me of double standards for writing this during the work-day, I’m currently sitting at an airport, connected via GPRS, waiting for my plane to leave

Daniel Szuc — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:28:22 GMT

“It’s a question of finding an appropriate balance between these type of experiences.” This is the core part of the article for me :)

George Olsen — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:07 GMT

I guess my definition of the Web would be pretty similar to my Mom’s (who I think is a pretty typical user): pretty much anything that gets displayed through a browser.

This would include HTML, CSS, JavaScript, DHTML and back-end applications that enable functionality through the browser. It also includes the major plugs-in displayed through a browser: Flash (and Director), audio/video (QuickTime, Real, WindowsMedia Player). Obviously my Mom doesn’t have the technical language to describe it this way, but that’s what she refers to when she talks about “the Web.”

She doesn’t distinguish between things on the Web that are site-ish and those that are application-ish and those that are experience-ish.

Admittedly stuff presented via plug-ins can straddle the border between Web-based interactive multimedia and “passive presentations,” depending on how they’re used.

(In short, the longer the viewing experience and the less potential the user has for actively interacting, the more I think these become akin to traditional media. On the other hand, that’s not that much different than lengthy passages of text just being thrown up on the Web without being “translated” to be appropriate the medium, for example, brochureware.)

I admit it’s a broad definition, but again I’m arguing that we _should_ see things broadly. That’s what I thought was powerful about your original model—it showed the connections between traditional application development and hypertext systems, and it highlighted the convergent nature of the Web. I just think that convergence includes yet another dimension.

jjg — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:05 GMT

I’m not sure, but I think you may have misunderstood every single point I’ve raised. All I’m saying is that understanding the model entails understanding the context in which it was created.

I don’t understand your hostility at the suggestion that some kinds of network applications aren’t Web sites. I don’t think everything on the Internet has to be labeled as “Web” in order to be valuable or important.

jjg — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:05 GMT

Maybe this will help me get a handle on the intended application of your model, George: What is excluded from your definition of the Web? By what criteria?

George Olsen — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:05 GMT

Well it’s useful to hear how narrowly you define the Web because that’s not an assumption that’s clear in your model. It’s your model, so you’re free to define things as you wish, but I think many people would disagree that the Web is _only_ HTML-over-HTTP.

However my assertion about interactive multimedia/immersion doesn’t rely on Flash or Director—which I mentioned mainly as clearly understood references, and which weren’t available and/or practical on some of the early movie sites I worked on. Heck, animated gifs were a big deal at the time.

And back in 1996, sites like “The Spot” tried to create immersive experience without even that, just using text and photos. I suppose you could call it hypertext, but it went beyond the sort of thinking I saw in “traditional” hypertext circles at the time (folks like Eastgate Systems), who were text-focused.

Or in another lo-res example, sometime right after frames came out Feed had one of the most innovative uses of them I’ve seen, in essay by a feminist who was pursuing a career as a stripper. The reader had to “lift the dress” on each page to read the article itself. (In my oversimplified description it sounds crass, but the effect worked beautifully with the particular subject matter.) It was still graphics rather than animation or video, the interaction was minimal, but it still created a memorably immersive experience.

Besides, by the time of your diagram, there had been some (quite elaborate) dynamic HTML sites with interactive multimedia that technically were still just HTML-over-HTTP. (Or are JavaScript and CSS not part of the Web? And what about SMIL or SVG, which after all are W3C standards specifically for creating interactive multimedia for the Web, even if they never got widely supported.)

So it’s not like the immersive dimension hasn’t been part of the Web for quite some time.

Again I think we’ve just got a fundamental disgreement over the nature of the medium. What you seem to see as muddying the waters, I see as painting a complete picture. Not sure we’ll ever convince each other otherwise.

jjg — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:05 GMT

When I say the Web is different from Flash, I’m not saying the Web is better or more important or anything like that. Just different. When I refer to “the Web” I’m referring to a very specific set of technologies (namely, HTML delivered over HTTP) with a specific set of constraints. The Elements model was never intended to be applied in contexts where those constraints are absent, or where differing constraints exist.

Now, there is a class of applications that I would characterize as “Web-like”—WinHelp and wizard interfaces spring immediately to mind—and I suppose the Elements model could be stretched to accommodate these without straining. But Flash and Director are rather further removed from HTML-over-HTTP than these cases, and the constraints involved seem different enough to merit consideration on their own grounds, rather than trying to shoehorn them into some definition of “the Web” that thereby becomes so broad as to be rendered meaningless.

Talking about the user experience of interactive multimedia is fine and important and valuable and necessary, but mixing multimedia up with Web sites does a disservice to meaningful discussion of both classes of applications.

Jan Jursa — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:28:22 GMT

it really irritates my to find the “surface” layer on the bottom of your diagram.
I also don’t understand your assumption that content is information-oriented. wouldn’t it be better to say content is experience-oriented where receiving information in a special way would be one, but not the only part, of a possible content ?

@jjg: saying the flash-technologie doesn’t belong to the web, is like saying fish doesn’t belong to the ocean. it is one of many creatures and manifestations of the ever-changing and evolving ocean called “www”...

George Olsen — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:05 GMT

I’m flattered Jesse. To answer your points:

I inverted the planes mainly because when I’ve shown your original diagram to people, they’ve tended to be a little confused because they tend to associated “moving down” as “moving forward through time” and didn’t necessary get the “building up from the foundation” logic.

But I don’t have strong feelings about this, and it would be interesting to see if having the planes explicitly labeled clarifies things. If it’s clear, I don’t mind revising the order of the planes.

On the second point, I guess that’s where we have a fundamental diagreement about the nature of the web—I think immersive/interactive multimedia _is_ part of it. (As I mentioned in my article, in years past I did lots of movie sites where providing a “cool experience” was the primary focus.) But we can agree to disagree.

That said, these extensions wouldn’t have been possible without your excellent base. If I see further, it’s because I’ve stood on the shoulders of giants…

jjg — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:04 GMT

Nicely done, George. This is the diagram I’ve been hoping you would produce for a long time now. I have two minor quibbles, one extremely minor and the other merely quite minor.

First, the extremely minor one: I’m not sure what you gain by inverting the visual arrangement of the planes. It complicates side-by-side comparison of the models, loses the building-up-from-strategic-foundation idea that the original diagram evokes, and conveys no discernible advantage in return.

Second, the somewhat less minor: It hardly seems fair to describe the Elements model as having “weaknesses” and “omissions” when one tries to apply it beyond the context for which it was devised. My diagram is explicitly about the Web, and it seems to me that Flash movies and CD-ROMs constitute something qualitatively quite different. Stretching the definition of the Web to include interactive multimedia renders that definition meaningless.

Characterizing the model as falling short when applied beyond the scope of its original intent strikes me as rather like saying a screwdriver falls short because it does a poor job of pounding in nails. That said, I’m impressed with the elegance of your extension to the Elements model.

George Olsen — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:04 GMT

Glad people are finding it useful. As Christopher noted the model’s primarily intended for users’ experiences with websites, software, videogames etc. There’s definitely crossover with the larger issue of brand experience—i.e. every direct and indirect experience someone has with a company/organization—which Paula seems to be concerned about.

But trying to come up with a grand unified theory of everything tends to be so abstract that it’s typically not that useful to practical application. So I opted to work from the bottom-up. Hopefully, this is a piece of the puzzle that can be integrated into a larger picture.

For example, I think much of it can be extended in to product design and development—which is where my interests are these days. As far as a designing a stapler, it’s probably less useful, simply because it’s overkill. The functional and sensory aspects are applicable (in a simple way), but staplers don’t have a lot of content.

It’s more applicable to what I like to call “products with brains,” stuff like a cell phone, your VCR, medical imaging equipment, etc. The good/bad news is there’s going to be more and more smart products. There’s definitely some things we can learn from industrial designers (who’ve dealt with functionality), but they’re less familiar with the sort of interaction that comes with software (nor obviously with content issues).

The web is an especially convergent medium in the sense that it typically involves all three dimensions in a way that projects from each of the roots don’t. For example, traditional software applications focused on functionality, and while they dealt with data they didn’t have content, in the sense that a lot of websites do. Likewise, sensory/immersive qualities were rarely thought much about.

Which it typical, I’d say. In most of the root professions, projects generally dealt with two of the dimensions at most, and usually one dimension was predominant. What makes our work hard is having to 1) involve more dimensions and 2) strike an appropriate balance among them.

As far what “interactive multimedia” refers to, while I suppose you could include applications and hypertext in a technical sense, I’m using it to things like the CD-ROMs of the early 1990s (which were commonly referred to by that name). The difference is the emphasis on sensory/immersive qualities _and_ having interaction, which makes it different from a film or other multimedia presentations.

As far as the time dimension, since the diagram was already crowded, I dropped it because I thought it was implicit in moving from conception to completion. The time needed to each dimension and each step depends entirely on the particular project at hand.

As far as the notion of communication, one of the key things that’s still missing is content strategy, which is implicit both my model and Jesse’s original, but not explored in detail. I made some nods in that direction, but I ran into difficulties of muddying the waters by trying to include too much. That said, having been a journalist and knowing filmmakers, I think most of the these non-fiction/fiction content strategy steps fit within the various dimensions of model, which is why I didn’t feel the need create a fourth dimension around content strategy.

However, it’s true this model tends to focus more on what is said, rather than _how_ it’s said—i.e. rhetoric—as well as how that fits into the larger relationship between those having the “conversation.” Originally, I was going to wrap that into the model, but again doing so caused the model to be too confusing.

But I’m still working on modeling that issue. There’s actually a lot of interesting thoughts from the service industry about this. Which makes sense, since really the computer is just taking the place of one of the participants in a service encounter. Stay tuned.

Christopher fahey — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:28:22 GMT

Excellent article! I’m going to be thinking about this more, but my first reaction is that it’s great to see the skills and practices of “immersion oriented” interactive design practices so clearly defined. This is a step in the right direction: towards a practice and nomenclature for interactive experiences that are useful, usable, and a pleasure to use.

Paula, if Jesse and George had been a bit more overt in their focus and used the term “Computer Interactive Experience” instead of “User Experience”, would you be happier with the essay(s)? I’ve always thought that in this field the term “user” was assumed to mean “user of a computer system”... It seems to me that you are (re)defining “user” as “a person who interacts with an organization”. It’s an admirable definition, but I think most people in these parts are trying to have a discussion about computer interaction design, not customer relationship management (i.e., HCI not CRM). I’m not even sure that the topics raised in these diagrams are sufficient to cover those topics associated with CRM.

-Cf

peterme — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:28:22 GMT

forgive this tangent, but, paula why do you use ‘scare quotes’ around so many words? it suggests an ironic detachment, and at times makes following your train of thought difficult.

just say what you have to say!

Paula Thornton — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:28:21 GMT

Good ‘additive’ observations for a very specific scenario-set.

I would hope that we can eventually come up with a more ‘exacting’ term to align with the distinct scenario-set represented by this article than ‘experience’ (perhaps ‘deep experience’). As noted in “The Experience Economy”, every interaction a business has with an individual is an experience and the majority of them are not online and yet still ‘should’ require the involvement of the types of skills/activities alluded to by the model.

While George suggests a way to add to the model by inclusion of another ‘narrow’ perspective, I see opportunities to add to the model due to more ‘broad’ perspectives.