Applied Design Group

Designing for Exploration

Posted in Inspiration, Thoughts - May 28, 2008 - tim

We’ve been working on a project that has a very large number of UI elements (both control and data) that have to be presented to the user at one time.  As we debate static comps there is a recurring tendency to say “we need to describe this element – with a tag or label”, or “we need to prompt the user here”.  And with every tag, label and prompt the interface becomes increasingly complex – both visually and functionally.

All of which points to one of the great dilemmas in interactive design: how much design can you do in static comps before you have to resort to prototyping to figure out whether your interface is “working”.

Over the years I’ve become more of an ascetist in design as I’ve realized that interactive design relies far more on time than layout.  Where print design will often focus on situational clarity, interaction design should often focus more on affordances in an interface that deliver “clarity on demand” and do it in a natural, predictable, ambient kind of way (the most primitive example of this being the venerable ‘tooltips’).

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Perspective

Posted in Latest - May 10, 2008 - tim

My sister Allison is the installation maven for Gagosian Gallery in New York. She sent me this photo of her mid-installation of a piece by Robert Therrien: giant metal folding chairs and tables. Would love to see this show in person (click to enlarge – worth it).

The Wisdom of Crowd-Support

Posted in Latest, Thoughts - May 1, 2008 - tim

In James Surowiecki’s great book The Wisdom of Crowds (recommended: Amazon) he says:

“The idea of the wisdom of crowds isn’t that a group will always give you the right answer, but that on average it will consistently come up with a better answer than any individual could provide.” Including, potentially, “experts”.

I’ve been hopped up on this concept for a long time – since my Management Science years at Berkeley buried in statistics – but we haven’t really even scratched the surface of this notion online. And yet I think the basic concepts of crowd-sourcing may in fact define the consumer online experience of ten years from now.

Crowd-sourcing of search results (Google’s PageRank algorithm wouldn’t exist otherwise) and news (e.g. the Digg model) are becoming relatively prevalent now. But it seems like the place it could contribute the most – and alleviate the most pain – is in simple tech support. Support costs and logistics for companies like mobile carriers are simply insane. And the quality of the support – if you can get through – is frequently no better than the result you’d get by asking any other user of the same product, much less the result you might get polling many other users.

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