Careful with Labels

Be careful with labels.

I was at a communications conference that ended with a session on what "millennials" do and don't do, and what "they" believe and don't believe. There was wide agreement and only a little pushback among the ethnically diverse group, which ranged from 20-somethings to 70-somethings.

But...

If you replace "millennials" with "old folks" or "women" or "black people" soon someone will point out what's wrong with making sweeping statements or generalizations about a segment of the population.

Generalizations (which follow labeling - or other words, categorization or, really, the creation of models) are useful, it's true. But only when they inform your decision-making. When you let the labels define decision-making, you do a disservice to yourself and to the people you're trying to reach.

To rearrange the famous Box/Deming quote: Some models are useful; but all models are wrong.

Multi-Purposing Media to Serve Different Use Cases and Different Usability

The same video (actually, any media - what I'm describing could be done just as well with audio or cartoons) can be used in a variety of ways to suit different needs.

Note that I'm using the phrase multi-purposing, as distinct from repurposing, because this is not a situation where we took media from an old project and recycled it. The multiple uses I'm discussing here were planned, if not from the very start, certainly from an early point in the process of course development.

I recently completed a long-term project using archival and purpose-shot video to illustrate ongoing public health policy issues. The end product was, on the surface, a web-based page-turner course, and it continues to be referred to a a course, simply for convenience. It doesn't look like anything else as much as it looks like a standard online course.

Except that it isn't really a course. It has several intended use cases - and none using quizzes or other traditional assessments.

Here's what it is:

• It's a supplement to a traditional classroom course on policy and ethics
• It's a self-guided informational piece for anyone interested in those topics
• It's pre-reading (and viewing) to stimulate a flipped-classroom discussion environment

We started with archival recordings of a congressional hearing around the issues the course addresses (yes, we'll continue to call it that). It struck us early on that including current perspectives would be valuable and, as we had access to the majority of the witnesses from the original hearing, it would be feasible to do follow-up interviews. We did a round of interviews that tied the historical materiel into present-day viewpoints on the same issues. Each set of video clips was followed by un-scored questions, intended to prompt both reflection on the part of the individual student and to stimulate discussion in a classroom environment.

Conventional wisdom on using video effectively in online courseware is that it's best to present it in short segments. Only about five minutes at a time, tops. We've all suffered through endless lectures that were presented under the guise of a webinar. We determined that we would present a single idea at a time, with short statements from one or just a few speakers, supported as appropriate with related content.

But, when you interview experts, you will come away with far more than a few minutes on each topic.. And that was the case here. When we completed the "Perspectives" lesson we found we had hours of relevant, good, material that just would not fit into the course.

What to do with this valuable material?

We decided that we would use the interviews to produce a short documentary. The film would support the course and raise the profile of the issues. The course would support the film, in that participants in the course would be likely to go to it for more in-depth information from the expert interviews, 

Each product can function as a standalone, and each can be used to supplement other educational activities. 

A short film can go places that a course never would. To see if the film was a successful effort on its own, we submitted it to several documentary-focused film festivals - and received an award. IN the academic/policy world, it's been accepted as a conference presentation.

The course, apart from the film, has been reviewed by university instructors and public health policy people. Also getting high marks for being engaging and useful. 

What does this have to do with the "usability" focus of this blog?

Every form of media has different usability. A video can "work" in a situation or a context where a course wouldn't . Similarly for a book (or a podcast, or a song, or a game). In this case, we started from the same raw content, and developed two distinctly different, successful products.

If you've ever read Marshall McLuhan, you can see how this way of looking at different presentation modalities is in line with what he said about pre-web media forms.

We wanted our content to reach casual users as well as formal ones. We needed to serve professional workers in policy and public health, as well as university professors and their students.

Watching a short documentary is an easy investment of time for someone who can't take a course over many hours or days. The course-that-is-not-a-course (with or without the short doc) is easily used by an instructor as a supplement to a formal curriculum. It's like an assigned reading. Either or both is accessible for someone who is interested in the subject, but can't commit to signing up for  a class.

Another way to look at it is: we already had the noodles, so we used them as an entree on Monday and as a side dish on Tuesday.

If you can think ahead to where, and how, and to whom, you want your content to be delivered, considering more than one modality (using the same content) may be the key to reaching a broader audience.

Links to the materials discussed will follow - the products were not opened for wide release as of this writing.

"Mindfulness" VS "Sunk Costs"

At first glance, the idea of meditating to ground yourself in the present, to view things in terms of  'here-and-now', has little to do with design or usability.

But consider that design is about making decisions.

Your ability to make good decisions is affected by the extent to which you feel an obligation to stick with a course of action that you've already invested time and resources in.

This doesn't mean you should change course whenever things get difficult, but consider your motivation when you feel the need to continue on with something that isn't working.  There is a real difference between having reason to believe things will improve and being stubborn because of the investment you've already made.

The previous investment -- the "sunk costs" --  is less valid than your present understanding of the situation.

Momentum and inertia both refer to movement. You want the positive trait of momentum. You don't want the negative trait of inertia.

This post came out of a piece I read from from  UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center:

Can Mindfulness Improve Decision Making?

http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/can_mindfulness_improve_decision_making

"When you do it right, it's like you did nothing at all"

I was commenting on a recent training workshop (systems thinking for medical school deans. No, I'm not one), and my point was that the expert running the session had done such a smooth job that it felt like he hadn't taught us anything, but had felt instead as if we'd been talking about ideas we all knew well and were part of our everyday internal dialog.

It struck me that it's the same sensation as when you hear a new song that feels like you've known it forever. Or see a movie, artwork, etc., that already seems like it's yours.

When it's done just that well the audience doesn't have to get comfortable with it, they're already comfortable.

With good design (good teaching, good art) the audience feels like the material has always been a part of their world.

Usability of Usability Infographics

For anything to be usable (not the same as useful, but not unrelated) it has to be fairly easy. Your reception of it should be natural and intuitive. Any barrier to your easy acceptance will slow or stop your interaction with the content.

And (despite years of hearing 'content is king') that means the use case is as important as the nature of the content when making design decisions.

Infographics aim to tell you or teach you or make you think about something in an easy, natural way. You just look at a picture, instead of reading or listening or working through problems or pages.

This is a nice "hundred years of usability" piece from people that know a lot about the subject. I only have one issue with it. It's horizontal.  Which works if you're getting it as a physical poster (and they have a link to purchase one). And I think the physical poster  would be a great addition to office space or a classroom.

Horizontal infographic from www.measuringusability.com

 But to view it onscreen a vertical orientation works better. That goes for any screen -- landscape or portrait, you would still move through it in an up - down path more naturally.  We expect to scroll down, but scrolling sideways is more of an effort.

Here's one (similar style, from the same site) that works better onscreen.  Because it's vertical.

Vertical infographic from www.measuringusability.com

What's my point? 

Usability starts with a use case. If your user is being encouraged to hang something on his wall, that suggests one way to design the product. If the expectation is that they'll view it on a monitor or phone or tablet - that's another.

Content may well be king, but the use case is the power behind the throne.

Mobile Learning Infographic

Why Mobile Learning Is The Future Of Workplace Learning


Click to view the complete infographic. | Infographic by Upside Learning

Habits

We're all creatures of habit.  The trick is to establish good ones.

Slate on the daily rituals of creatives.

Managing Creatives Creatively

The Harvard Business Review blog posted recently on how to manage creative types. They make some good points (in a Thurston Howell III kind of way).

I think it's great that there's recognition that structure and uniformity can be at odds with innovation and experimentation; and particularly that the piece acknowledges that there is a cost incurred when a company decides it wants to get out front and really be creative instead of playing it safe.

I'm not thrilled with the part about paying creatives poorly, though. Starving artists are only more motivated than well-fed ones when they're actively seeking a better job.

Seven Rules for Managing Creative People.


But HBR's points did not go unchallenged.Our friends at Despair.com respond with the following: 

How to REALLY Manage Creative People.

Questions and Answers

You might never know all the answers, but it's good to know the questions.

I've always been impatient with high-sounding mission statements that often state nothing at all. This piece from Warren Berger in Fast Company suggests another approach to stating your purpose.

 Forget The Mission Statement. What’s Your Mission Question?

Plans Laid Best

Dominoes will refuse to fall according to plan. Expect to improvise.

Visual.ly is an infographics clearinghouse. They're set up as a marketplace - where people who need infographics can connect with people who make them. Even if you're not shopping, it's a great stop for inspiration.

LEGO Minifigs infographic by Hot Butter Studio.

What I get from browsing this kind of material, apart from seeing good work from good designers, is an appreciation of the many different ways to clearly present data.

Design Philosophy Shapes a Nation

In his November 29th Per Square Mile piece, Tim De Chant tells us about looking down from a flight between Boston and Chicago to see the ribbon farms in what used to be Nouvelle-France.

The idea is that long, thin farms were established along an existing transportation route, in this case the St. Lawrence River (but the concept applies equally well to roads), this maximized efficiency in getting good from many farms to market (more access to transportation for more farms), and provided other benefits that he describes much better than I can.

The ribbon farms arrayed to share river frontage more compactly were a French tradition, and are uncommon in North America.  Square farms -- parcels plotted out and transportation figured out later -- became the standard.  That led to lots of road building and shaped the landscape we see in the US and Canada today.

Don't Get Struck in Analysis

Michael Allen's Leaving ADDIE for SAM, reviewed at  http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/1012/, looks worth a read. The preface is available as a free download from Allen Interactions (yes, they will want your contact info).

The point is that the time-honored ADDIE model (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate) used in instructional design is not exactly, shall we say, nimble. It's slow, cumbersome, and does not always lead to a good, finished product. It's too easy to get sucked into endless trips back to the drawing board. 

He says "The foundation of any traditional process is an accurate analysis. You can’t move forward until the analysis is complete and flawless – the problem with that is no analysis can ever be complete and certainly not flawless. So, training departments get stuck in the Analysis Paralysis – and the schedule slips and keeps slipping."

Allen suggests SAM --the Successive Approximation Model -- as a replacement.  Sketch a broad picture of the product you're designing, then go into depth, then iterate/refine -- but only a few times. I've worked on too many project that are in revision as soon as they launch -- I think he's onto something here.


Dell Inspiron One 2320 Desktop Intel Core i3-2120, 500GB, 23" Multi- (Google Affiliate Ad)

Form and Function

Form has to support and follow function. Pretty things that don't work...don't work.

The image posted below - I still see it as taking an elegant shot at  integrating aesthetics with accessibility -  drew a Facebook comment from Jonathan David Post, and he's right.

And Mr. Post's comment:
"This is a cool solution visually but maybe not the most functional. A few problems: Too steep. Too long. No railing (If you slip what happens? Tumble to your death?). What if there's a crowd of people going up/down? Roll through them?

My mother's been disabled my whole life so I tend to notice poorly designed ramps and doors..."

The original image came from DoSomething's page, the post was on October 4, and you can read more good comments, both supportive and critical, there.

Just goes to show - there's always more to think about.

A Flavor of 'Why'

Regarding security issues, user choices, and design decisions: sometimes people do things just because they can.

Apple's Patents

Hmm. Maybe the courts should view this kind of issue more like a copyrighted artwork and less like a patented physical invention. See Information Week's Babcock on Apple's patent win over Samsung.

Design for Mobile First

Think of users working from their phones or tablets. The point is to keep to simple. But I don't think I'd agree with  the title of this piece from Slate. You have to know you'll be scaling to the desktop, too.

Forget the Desktop

"This isn’t a radical proposal. Many Web designers build their sites according to this principle—Jason Kottke and John Gruber’s blogs were designed for desktop browsers, but because they load quickly and aren’t cluttered by extraneous elements, they look like they were built with mobile devices in mind."

Check your baggage

You don't need it, it adds no value, and it takes up space - either measurable real estate or conceptual space. It's there because you thought it was important, or that you might want it or need it later. Those things might be true but, like the suitcase of next week's clothes when you're on a plane, you don't need 'em right now.

So you check it. You can still get it back when you need it, if you need it.

Opposition

While one of the usability ideas I really believe in is "if you have to explain it, you've failed," sometimes you do have to explain it. Sometimes more than once.

A while back I got a message that availability of the Little Black Book of Design had been suspended in the Kindle store:

We're writing to let you know that at least one of your readers has reported some problems within your book.  To prevent new readers from experiencing these issues, your title has been temporarily removed from sale.

One or more forced page breaks appear in the middle of the body text. You can see this error at the following location(s): Kindle Location: 2, 3, 4, etc.

My response: 

Hello, The book is intentionally formatted so that one statement appears per page. I believe a reader may have simply misunderstood the "one thought per page" format.

Amazon's reply: 

Hello, I am sorry for the trouble you've had while formatting your book for Kindle. From your email, I understand that extra spaces is necessary in your content. However, please note Kindle content is reflowable and if you include extra spaces, it may cause formatting errors and it may affect the display of your book. To avoid these errors and to provide a good reading experience, we recommend you to remove the extra spaces.

I try again: 

Thank you. You don't seem to understand. I have not had trouble formatting the book. The flow of the book requires the specific formatting that was applied. This matches the layout of the print version and the book, as it is a collection of statements - much like a book of poems - will not work laid out another way. This is not simply a matter of "extra spaces." If you look at sample pages you should understand. Please give me contact information for a manager or supervisor if you are not able to reinstate the book.

Amazon responds: 

Thanks for letting us know the title is formatted one statement/page per design. Our quality team will review your comments and get back to you.

The next day the LBBD was again available for purchase. And no, they never got back to me.

My guess is that a reader skipped the description, didn't know what aphorism means, or genuinely could not see a page that was not covered in text without concluding that the book was somehow broken and bringing that to Amazon's attention. There has been feedback from some who didn't like or understand the format. Maybe they expected a nuts-and-bolts how-to for Product X, Version 5.

I don't know. And I will never know. I do know that someone's dislike or discomfort took the book off the market briefly. And the fact that someone felt strongly enough to make that happen is positive in one sense: it means the book make an impression. Somebody noticed.

The villagers wouldn't have come with their torches if they hadn't cared about what Victor Frankenstein was up to.

View opposition as a sign that you're making progress.

Another Good Alertbox

This is good info (as always for Jakob Nielsen). Applicable not just to international sites, but also to national companies that have localized presences within one country. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/country-site.html