Comments on Alan Cooper Speaks! Impressions from BayCHI April 2002

Andrei Herasimchuk — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:02 GMT

“For example, in the case of a search engine, the presentation/visual design of the results really is ancillary.”

I can see Tufte turning in his grave… If he were dead of course.

Your disagreement suggests you don’t understand the full impact of the visual (choice of type, color palette used, iconography and emotional impact the design passes to the user) or informational aspect of the product design (how it is organizaed after results are found and such), in this case, with a search engine.

Which is fine. In my experience, most people in this field (of IA, Interface Design, whatever) tend to focus on only one aspect of a product’s design, and not understand the implications of the others.

Think of it this way:

When making a movie, there are director’s who focus on the story more than the photography, or director’s who focus more on the production design than the music, or the directors who focus more on the editing than the acting.

And all these director’s make fine movies, that make money, and that people enjoy. And there’s nothing with that.

But if you want to make Citizen Kane, or Lawrence of Arabia, or The Godfather, or anything that excels beyond the normal and becomes something extraordinary, something that defines the field, you better focus on all of them to create the full movie.

Andrei

Brad Lauster — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:01 GMT

Andrei, I disagree with your latest comment, from April 22. My disagreement is based on:

1. Avi’s assertion was correct: ”...if [the search engine] doesn’t find the information you want, it’s no good.”

2. For some products, it’s silly to focus equally on “visual, informational and interaction.” For example, in the case of a search engine, the presentation/visual design of the results really is ancillary. Regardless of the layout, typography, etc., if I search for tomatoes and get back pointers to potatoes, the product is useless.

Please explain why we should focus on all three of your aspects equally.

Thanks to everyone for the comments! Discussion is good.

RuthK — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:01 GMT

Andrei – I agree about the importance of the details in any/every aspect of product design, as you illustrated with Google. It’s these details that get people to use (more accurately, re-use) one product over another, especially when there isn’t much else to differentiate them (in this case, retrieving information on the Internet).

I also agree with a take on IA as product design in many respects. It’s not just the information that has to be architected in a single GUI, user experience, etc. It’s also the boundaries among features in products (speaking of modular, salable products here)—the way they can be bundled and marketed. Examples are content services (news feeds, web widgets, private label solutions, etc.), asp-model apps, and tiered services such as subscription v. free versions of online publications. So the IA has to have a strong business sensibility as well.

Andrei Herasimchuk — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:01 GMT

“It doesn’t matter how pretty or easy to use a search engine is, if it doesn’t find the information you want, it’s no good.”

It’s comments like these that make me believe that there are too many people that either do not understand what “interface design” is, or who lack an understanding of what “experience design” is *supposed* to be.

I mentioned in my first message that I thought Product Designer was a more appropriate term than Interface Designer for what I do. I’ll re-iterate that point.

Product Design, as I’ll now say, combines the three disciplines required to create a fully-fleshed out product. Areas that different people seem to focus on in our fields: visual, informational and interaction.

If your company focuses on one more so than the others, you do not have a wholistic product, or one that shines professionally, IMHO. To say that it doesn’t matter how pretty something is, or how easy to use it is, means you lack an understanding of how a whole product is designed.

A case in point is Google. Sure, the thing is fast, it finds good information, but with just the TINIEST improvement in visual design, and the TINIEST improvements in how the results are displayed, how the pagination works, and how the site is organized now that it does more than search, would make the product a Volkswagen Passat versus the old-school boxy Honda Accord it currently is.

“And that’s the double-truth… Ruth.”

Andrei

Avi Rappoport — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:01 GMT

I’ve encountered many people who see “Interface” design and forms and text, so I often have to explain that “User Experience” addresses the whole continuum, from the look and words to the functionality. This applies to my particular niche, search engines. It doesn’t matter how pretty or easy to use a search engine is, if it doesn’t find the information you want, it’s no good.

Paula Thornton — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:01 GMT

While we obviously need ‘doers’, like Kathryn, it will be the strategists who will (as I already have) start conversations with Alan to begin to find ways to further the significance and authority of our discipline by gaining C-level recognition and funding. [I keep ‘planting the question’ regarding the differentiators between ‘experience’ and ‘interaction’ and am yet to get any…let alone reasonably defensible…response from those in the ‘experience’ camp.]

Thanks Brad for filing this report and for giving me the inspiration that I needed to start the dialog with Alan. While Kathryn is busy ‘doing business’, we’ll focus on ‘creating business’ for the benefit of all of our futures…both are needed.

Elan — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:01 GMT

I laughed and chuckled many times during Alan’s talk. The fun was reason enough to attend.

Kathryn McKinnon — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:01 GMT

I enjoy learning about things that help me do my job better. News about company name changes and debate over job titles are useless to me.

I got nothing out of Cooper’s talk. Reimann’s presentation was very good though! Too bad he didn’t have time to share more.

Brad Lauster — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:01 GMT

Wow! Nothing important?

What could be more important than the one of the highest profile Interaction Design consultancies dropping “Interaction Design” from their name?

Please explain!

Kathryn McKinnon — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:01 GMT

I’m surprised that Boxes & Arrows even has an article about Alan Cooper’s BAY-CHI talk. I thought he had nothing important to say. In fact, I would have walked out if Robert Reimann weren’t speaking afterwards.

RuthK — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:01 GMT

I’ve been an information architect for several years but am new to IA communities, so a lot of this type of discussion is new to me. Having said that, I’d like to contribute this:
I have heard all these terms used by different companies and agencies (i.e., information architecture, information design, interaction design, interface design, experience design, usability specialist, business analyst, use case analyst, data analyst, the list goes on…). At the end of the day, companies and projects who have enough money to spend will hire someone to do a better job with the content modeling and the user interface—and this person is usually an IA of sorts. To design ‘interaction’ or ‘experience’ is, in my opinion, a grandiose undertaking—what you’re designing is an environment plus a business process, the latter of which can also be designed in writing use case scenarios.

In other words, IA-types don’t truthfully design interactions or experiences. People will have unique experiences and will interact in ways unique to their experiences regardless of the GUI before them. (I did notice that the article absolves IA’s from responsibility for the user’s satisfaction—an unsatisfied user may not have been an “appropriate” user to begin with…). Not even the most talented designer will successfully mediate an experience—unless the subject is a hand puppet. Designing user interfaces is like landscape architecture (and perhaps like many other things as well). Designing experiences is like producing a feature film or inventing a role-playing game.

On one hand, while many IA’s are right-brain/left-brain generalists, I also think that ‘experience design’ and ‘interaction design’ require quite a different skill set than, say, information modeling, requirements definition, and even usability evaluation, which are, on balance, more analytical practices.

On the other hand, perhaps as time goes on, specialties will be more focused on the type of content or application rather than the tasks at hand. For example, an IA who develops financial media web sites is a different “resource” than an IA who storyboards Flash sequences and children’s activities.

Whatever happens to the niche specialties, I hope the titles settle on a general one or two. In the end, we probably all do (or can do) all of this stuff, and we probably all hate to be pigeon-holed.

Robert Reimann — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:01 GMT

I think the one thing that Experience Design as a term gives us is a broader view of design as affecting not only products and services themselves, but also the way that products and services can be planned, marketed, and delivered in a user-centered fashion.

A possible definition (among many) of Experience Design is:

A term describing a “holistic” approach to design that encompasses all user/customer touchpoints with a product/client, including marketing/advertising communications, support/CRM, the product/service itself and how it behaves, and how the product ultimately interacts with the greater environment.

An alternative (narrower) definition might be:

A term describing the collection of practices and/or disciplines that work together to create interactive artifacts, systems, or environments, primarily used for the purpose of engaging a discussion in how said practices interrelate and collaborate.

I think Experience Design is only a “fluff” term if we allow it to be. But in any case, the argument over names is far less interesting to me than what “it” (whatever it’s called) *is* and how it gets done.

Robert M. Reimann
Director of Design R&D
Cooper | Humanizing Technology

Andrei — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:01 GMT

Robert says: “Experience Design may be *too* broad a term, in that it implicates every touchpoint that people have with a product and its brand, and implies that “experience” (whatever that really is) can be fully designed.”

So why are people in the field even considering Experience Design as a term?

Experience Design is a fluff term, meaningless jargon, that does nothing more than add more meaningless jargon on top of already jargon-heavy job titles. The AIGA is doing us no favors if they are pushing this term.

Andrei

Robert Reimann — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:01 GMT

Andrei,

Actually, the AIGA is using the term Experience Design to mean exactly what you refer to as Interface Design, and they are an organization filled with visual and information designers. If anything, I think Experience Design may be *too* broad a term, in that it implicates every touchpoint that people have with a product and its brand, and implies that “experience” (whatever that really is) can be fully designed.

Interface Design suffers from its history, in that it is too often considered synonymous with GUI design. Too frequently, GUI is considered something that can be added after the bulk of development is done, as more of a look-and-feel “paint job”. I think it’s important for us as practitioners to encourage the view that the work we do is strategic to businesses, and needs to be initiated at the start of the development cycle.

Although I concur that Product Design (or better yet, Product Definition) is perhaps a better term, Experience Design, for the moment, seems to have some steam behind it (though arguments continue), and rather than spend the time arguing about what the perfect term is, I’d prefer to spend the energy encouraging people to see the business and human need for this type of work, and its strategic importance to product development.

I would also like to generalize slightly your triad of “fields” to encompass the design of FORM, BEHAVIOR, and CONTENT, which I think is a bit more inclusive of such disciplines as Industrial Design and IA.

Robert M. Reimann
Director of Design R&D
Cooper | Humanizing Technology

Andrei — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:01 GMT

Interface Design is part of Interaction Design?

I don’t buy it. Never have, never will.

I’ve always believed that “Interface Design” is the union of three fields: Visual Design, Interaction Design and Information Design.

Visual covers typography, color, iconography and other graphical elements of the interface. Interaction covers the behavioral aspects of the interface, including workflow, system responses and how the product works with physical devices (like a mouse, stylus or keyboard). Information covers data display, organization, and structure of the interface.

All three relate to the interface. Getting all three to work in harmony with each other is where a good interface comes from. Therefore, it’s these three fields that combine into what I consider to be true Interface Design.

Now, I may just be splitting jargon hairs, and the bigger picture that I call Interface Design may simply just be Product Design, and that would make me just as happy. Maybe that’s what Cooper is growing towards. But to say Interface Design is a part of Interaction Design, which is a part of something bigger does those of us in the field no bit of good.

Interaction Design or Experience Design will never cover the ground that includes a visual element or informational element. The words just aren’t broad enough, nor do they carry enough weight.

Interface Design is seems to get a bad rap as a job title. Mostly, IMHO, because people haven’t taken repsonsiblity for what building the interface requires—A visual piece, an informational piece, and an interaction piece.

But if the word needs to change, Experience Design is simply NOT it. Product Design is more like it.

Andrei Herasimchuk
Interface Designer