archive.Joe Lamantia.com

I just posted slides from my talk at the recent Enterprise Search Summit in NY “Search Me: Designing Information Retrieval Experience”

Here’s the abstract from the session:

This case study reviews the methods and insights that emerged from an 18-month effort to coordinate and enhance the scattered user experiences of a suite of information retrieval tools sold as services by a major investment ratings agency. The session will share a method for understanding audience needs in diverse information access contexts; review a collection of information retrieval patterns, look at conceptual design methods for user experiences, and review a set of longer term patterns in customer behavior called lifecycles, and consider the impact of organizational and cultural factors on design decisions.

This session will presents reusable experience design tools and findings relevant for contexts such as enterprise search and information access, service design, and product and platform management.

Thanks to everyone who came by!

In a world that’s moving so fast it’s hard to keep track of when you are, let alone where, there’s a need for experiences that move at more relaxed paces. This basic need for deliberately moderated and human-speed experiences better tuned to the way that people make and understand meaning is the origin of the Slow Food movement.

Naturally, there’s room for a virtual analog of slow food. I’m calling this kind of mediated experience that flows at a kinder, gentler pace “slow media”. Dawdlr, “a global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: what are you doing, you know, more generally?” is a good example.

Assembled one postcard at a time, Dawdlr exemplifies the collective form of Slow Media, one you can contribute to by creating some content using a standard interface and then submitting it for publication, as long as it carried the proper postage. The paper blog – now updated and known as papercast – might be a precursor.

What are some other examples of Slow Media? Back in January of 2007, AdBusters asked, “Isn’t it time to slow down?” during their national slowdown week.

Slow food has a website, annual gatherings, publications, a manifesto, even a mascot / icon – the snail of course. What’s next for slow media? Maybe a slow wiki, made up of image-mapped screen shots of chalkboards with writing?

JG Bal­lard is one of the most archi­tec­turally ori­ented writ­ers I know. His writ­ing evokes the phys­i­cal and men­tal expe­ri­ences of spaces and places deftly and vividly. No acci­dent then that Ballard’s work is con­nected to psy­cho­geog­ra­phy by many (an idea I’ve men­tioned before as well). And so it is a plea­sure to read his piece on Gehry’s Bil­bao Guggen­heim, The lar­val stage of a new kind of archi­tec­ture, in Monday’s Guardian.

From the arti­cle:

More to the point, I won­der if the Bil­bao Guggen­heim is a work of archi­tec­ture at all?  Per­haps it belongs to the cat­e­gory of exhi­bi­tion and fair­ground dis­plays, of giant inflat­a­bles and bouncy cas­tles.  The Guggen­heim may be the first per­ma­nent tem­po­rary struc­ture.  Its inte­rior is a huge dis­ap­point­ment, and con­firms the sus­pi­cion that the museum is a glo­ri­fied sales aid for the Guggen­heim brand. There is a giant atrium, always a sign that some corporation’s hand is slid­ing towards your wal­let, but the gal­leries are con­ven­tion­ally pro­por­tioned, and one can’t help feel­ing that they are irrel­e­vant any­way.  The museum is its own work of art, and the only one really on dis­play.  One can’t imag­ine the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo or Picasso’s Guer­nica ever being shown here.  There would be war in heaven.  Apart from any­thing else, these works have a dimen­sion of seri­ous­ness that the Guggen­heim lacks. Koons’ Puppy, faith­fully guard­ing the entrance to the enchanted cas­tle, gives the game away.  Archi­tec­ture today is a vis­i­tor attrac­tion, delib­er­ately play­ing on our love of the bright­est lights and the gaud­i­est neon.  The Bil­bao Guggenheim’s spir­i­tual Acrop­o­lis is Las Vegas, with its infan­til­is­ing pirate ships and Egypt­ian sphin­xes. Gehry’s museum would be com­pletely at home there, for a year at least, and then look a lit­tle dusty and jaded, soon to be torn down and replaced by another engag­ing mar­vel with which our imag­i­na­tions can play.

Nov­elty archi­tec­ture dom­i­nates through­out the world, pitched like the movies at the bored teenager inside all of us. Uni­ver­si­ties need to look like air­ports, with an up-and-away hol­i­day ethos. Office build­ings dis­guise them­selves as hi-tech apart­ment houses, every­thing has the chunky look of a child’s build­ing blocks, stir­ring dreams of the nurs­ery.

But per­haps Gehry’s Guggen­heim tran­scends all this. From the far side of the Styx I’ll look back on it with awe.

Conflict is a natural part of human experience. It’s something we encounter every day on levels small and large, and learn to address. And conflict appears at every level of a user experience, from business goals and strategy, user needs, concept and mental models, to task flows, screen-based interactions, terminology, and visual design choices.

Yet many of our user experience practices and approaches do not consider conflict adequately, or at all. User experience design assumptions, artifacts, habits of communication, and working practices combine to bypass adequate consideration of conflict. The result is neglect of conflict as an area of investigation, discussion, and design responsibility. It becomes something we consider only in passing, generally by noting an order of priority for the personas associated with an evolving design

Minimizing conflict may seem pragmatic: exploring conflict makes many people nervous, and stakeholders may not react well unless properly prepared. But this view misses the significance of conflict. Conflict is a pointer to something people care about, pay attention to, need, want, or think is important in some way.

In the same way that smoke equals fire, conflict equals interest, and interest should be a focus for design.

Social Architectures, Experiences, and Environments
Conflict is an especially important area for User experience design to consider now, thanks to the emerging landscape of social media. Social networks, participatory architectures, business and community models dependent on co-creation of content, and collaborative media formats all emphasize social dynamics. These dynamics inevitably include elements of conflict. The continued growth of sharing, networks, interconnections, and complex relationships linking individuals and groups on-line will only increase the role and significance of conflict for successful user experience efforts.

Plainly, if we aim to design for user experiences now and in the future, we must account for conflict. In terms of the evolution of user experience design, the consideration of conflict marks another step in the continued maturation of the field. We might call design approaches that take conflict into account conflict-aware design.

Conflict-aware Design In Practice
Conflict-aware design offers substantial value for designers, stake holders, users – all interested parties, really – with little impact on timelines, costs, approaches, or existing methods. Conflict is simply another aspect of the user experience to explore and understand, share analysis of with decision makers, and direct design solutions to address.

Conflict-aware design builds on and enhances existing practices, adding a layer of context at each stage of the design cycle concerned with the specific conflicts that will impact the user experience. No specialized design documents or techniques are required.

The second part of this essay will consider how common user experience activities and artifacts can be adapted for conflict-aware design.