Let’s say you own a big building full of valuable stuff. How do you make sure that the night watchman patrolling your factory floor or museum galleries after closing time actually makes his rounds? How do you know he’s inspecting every hallway, floor, and stairwell in the facility? How do you know he (or she) is not just spending every night sleeping at his desk?

The Detex Newman watchclock was first introduced in 1927 and is still in wide use today.

If you’re a technology designer, you might suggest using surveillance cameras or even GPS to track his location each night, right? But let’s make this interesting. Let’s go a century back in time to, say, around 1900. What could you possibly do in 1900 to be absolutely sure a night watchman was making his full patrol?

An elegant solution, designed and patented in 1901 by the German engineer A.A. Newman, is called the “watchclock”. It’s an ingenious mechanical device, slung over the shoulder like a canteen and powered by a simple wind-up spring mechanism. It precisely tracks and records a night watchman’s position in both space and time for the duration of every evening. It also generates a detailed, permanent, and verifiable record of each night’s patrol.

What’s so interesting to me about the watchclock is that it’s an early example of interaction design used to explicitly control user behavior. The “user” of the watchclock device is obliged to behave in a strictly delimited fashion.

But before I go into the interaction theory at work here, let’s look at how the watchclock system works in a little more detail. The fundamental innovation — the trick, if you will — is that the device itself is only one part of a larger, external system.

Photo by Jeremy Brooks.

The Key is the System

The key, literally, to the watchclock system is that the watchman is required to “clock in” at a series of perhaps a dozen or more checkpoints throughout the premises. Positioned at each checkpoint is a unique, coded key nestled in a little steel box and secured by a small chain. Each keybox is permanently and discreetly installed in strategically-placed nooks and crannies throughout the building, for example in a broom closet or behind a stairway.

The watchman makes his patrol. He visits every checkpoint and clicks each unique key into the watchclock. Within the device, the clockwork marks the exact time and key-location code to a paper disk or strip. If the watchman visits all checkpoints in order, they will have completed their required patrol route.

The watchman’s supervisor can subsequently unlock the device itself (the watchman himself cannot open the watchclock) and review the paper records to confirm if the watchman was or was not doing their job.

This is an idea with long legs. The watchclock is built like a revolver, of good old fashioned brass and steel and encased in a thick leather holster. It requires no batteries and almost no maintenance. The “guard tour patrol system” concept, too, has a timeless elegance. The mechanism itself has barely changed for a century: although some more recent models incorporate GPS and other technologies, the mechanical key-based watchclock system is still in wide usage, with many buildings still employing the same keys and the same clockwork devices they’ve used since the 1940s. It’s a genuine example of an “if it aint broke, don’t fix it” kind of technology.

From a behavioral perspective, I find the watchclock fascinating not simply because it’s a kind of steampunk GPS, a wind-up mechanical location-awareness technology. I’m further fascinated at how this holistic system of watchclocks, keys, guards, and supervisors succeeded so completely in creating a method of behavioral control such that a human being’s movements can be precisely planned and executed, hour after hour and night after night, with such a high degree of reliability that almost a century goes by before anyone thinks of ways of improving the system as originally conceived. The watchclock is a primitive form of technology-mediated interaction design and narrowly-focused social engineering: The “interface” is the whole system: The watchclock, keys, and paper records.

Designing for Control

Many in the interaction design field(s) argue that user experience design most definitely is not about behavioral control, or at least it shouldn’t be. Dan Saffer entitled his excellent book “Designing for Interaction“, the “for” being a nod to the idea that users don’t need to interact with systems in exactly the way the interaction designer intended or envisioned. Interactive systems — whether social networks, desktop apps, or multiplayer online games — often shine best when users break the rules. Systems that explicitly and deliberately give users the freedom to interact in creative and unforeseen ways are some of the most interesting and powerful kinds of interaction design.

But the watchclock is another kind of interaction design, one whose function corrals the user into a single, linear, constrained sort of behavior. The night watchman has a fundamental social constraint — the desire to not get fired from their job. This constraint allows the watchclock patrol system to work so effectively (some would say insidiously) as an interaction design instrument of control.

As a former game designer, I think it’s important to recognize that a really fun user experience will often exist somewhere between these poles of freedom and control. The player can kill the bad guys in whatever clever way she wishes, but she’s got to collect the three crystals to operate the teleporter — there’s no other way off the ship, and no other way to get to the next level. (I wonder if it’s more than a coincidence that so many systems of controlled-play in games involve the use of keys, just like the watchclock.)

Giving a user freedom to interact however they wish seems admirable in principle, but requiring the user to jump through precisely the hoops you, the designer, want them to jump through is also a powerful way to create an emotionally and intellectually compelling experience. In a practical sense, it’s also a way to make sure that the user doesn’t get frustrated or even fail to do what they really need to do.

The watchclock’s user experience isn’t compelling or stimulating, to be sure, but in my mind it is truly an archetype of the “behavioral control” side of interaction design.

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A week ago, Jesse James Garret veritably bellowed the words “user experience designer” in his plenary address at this year’s IA Summit in Memphis, attempting to create some common ground between the information architects and interaction designers in the room and across the industry. In a strong and deeply-felt speech, he admonished the community (-ies?) for their factionalism, but in doing so may have helped stoke some controversy around the very term — user experience — he thought would help bring unity and focus.

I, for one, have called what I do “user experience design” for a decade. In 1999, working at Rare Medium before starting up Behavior, all of the visual designers, information architects, and HTML and Flash technologists were grouped in the UXD department, thanks, I suspect, to the vision of our creative director Gong Szeto. In 2003, I went to speak at my first IA Summit, serving on a panel entitled “User Experience and IA“, with no less than Peter Morville, Terry Swack, Jess McMullin, and moderated by… Jesse James Garret. The panel generated a lot of discussion, mostly about the meaning of “user experience” itself.

After this year’s summit, this conversation has sparked up yet again, most notably on the IxDA mailing list. I shared my own thoughts on Jesse’s argument there, and reproduce them here:

I found nothing whatsoever to disagree with in Jesse’s plenary. In fact, it all seemed obvious and non-controversial. Of course, it was neither. :-(

I hope that folks don’t see Jesse’s declaration as being synonymous with some kind of death of IA or IxD or whatever. He’s not asking anyone to change what they do, but merely to recognize that we are all involved in a broad but very special community of practice. “UX” describes it in a way that includes lots of people who should be working together more closely than it seems we are.

From day one at Behavior we’ve used the term “user experience” to describe everything we do — including visual design, sound design, and copywriting, for example. It’s enabled everyone on the team to feel like we share the responsibility for an important result: a compelling user experience.

On the other hand, we rarely actually use the word. It’s our ambient expertise, it’s the air we breathe. So ubiquitous and appropriate for describing the things it is that it’s almost not worth mentioning except when trying to distinguish it from something it is not.

Which is, of course, why humans have terminologies in the first place. We like the term UX because it doesn’t draw a line between IA and IxD and visual design and writing, but it does draw a line between all of those things and, say, database design, marketing, fashion design, and basket-weaving. Which we often have to do when, for example, we are pitching our services to clients who need to understand how we fit in to their needs.

It’s useful when discussing the strategies behind businesses making products, for whom executives need to distribute dollars between different areas — having a UX budget that’s distinct from a tech or marketing budget helps strategize how a product can succeed or fail.

And as said already, it’s useful when creating communities of practice: A UX conference, or a UX track at a conference, is a sensible way of organizing speakers and panels. Narrowing it down to IA or IxD (or writing or sound or video) might make sense if there are enough sessions narrowly focused on those areas, but I’ve found that most practitioners find it difficult to talk about any of these without talking about the others. It happens, and it’s a good thing that it happens, but it’s also a good thing that we blur the lines and wander across the borders.

In short: No need to throw down any walls here. Just open some gates.

Then, over this past weekend, I noticed David Gray from Xplane tossed his hat into the fray, this time on Twitter. An interesting Twitter-debate ensued (”askrom” is me):

davegray: #ux = hUman eXperience

billder: RT @davegray: #ux = hUman eXperience

askrom: @billder @davegray If we don’t say “user” then we’re not talking about interactivity. hUman eXperience would then include books, movies …

askrom: … It defeats the purpose of carving out an area of practice when it’s defined to include everything under the sun.

ggertz: @askrom @billder @davegray I define UX as an aesthetic not just an area of practice.So in tht sense it does involve everything under the sun

davegray: @askrom people don’t interact with books?

ggertz: @davegray <<

apolaine: @davegray People don’t interact with books in the sense of interactive media, no. They interact on a psychological level of course, but …

askrom: @davegray Sure. And people also interact with movies and sculptures. And to the extent that they do, we can certainly call them “users”.

askrom: @davegray I firmly beleive that interaction design has been with us for millenia, but it’s the concept/focus on “use” that’s especially new.

askrom: @davegray Only someone living in an era of pervasive machines — and their users — would consider a book something that can be “used”.

davegray: @askrom isn’t that the nature of design? Don’t all designers design interactions and human experiences? Why not just say “designer?”

askrom: @davegray I would agree, but realistically “design” includes perfectly valid but passive forms like wallpaper patterns and curtain fringes.

askrom: @davegray … and yet, at some level, even wallpaper has an experiential impact, too. Hmmmm…

mediajunkie: sorry, guys, but “human” is not any sexier (or, ironically, more humane) than “user.” human is a sci-fi nerd word in most ears

askrom: @mediajunkie Right. And some of the best UX designers (Temple Grandin) don’t design for humans at all!

davegray: @askrom Utility, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. defined by the context not the designer. I am losing your point.

askrom: @davegray Heh, I lost my point, too. I’m articulating both sides now. My core point, still, is that thinking about “users” has unleashed a..

askrom: @davegray … new way of designing things and a new way of thinking about design. Real utility is, indeed, a new kind of beauty.

davegray: @askrom if #ux designers only design things that can be used in a mechanistic sense, that seems needlessly limiting

askrom: @davegray Hmm. Can you clarify a “use” that is not mechanistic? Trying to wrap my head around that one.

davegray: @askrom nice. “utility has unleashed a new kind of beauty” I like that thought. I feel that way about clarity.

akacolleen: @davegray “I feel that way about clarity.” Now, I like *that* thought. #editorsforclarity

cchastain: @davegray @askrom How about: an exp that has a “user” must also have a function that requires interaction?

cchastain: Use, therefore, is not limited to pure utility….and it could include museum spaces, conferences, and, yes books.

askrom: @cchastain “requires” or merely “invites” interaction?

cchastain: @askrom Ah…invites, I think. That sounds much better. :-)

davegray: @askrom LOL just reading thru some of these tweets. I like the sound of “Wallpaper Experience Designer” :)

zakiwarfel: @askrom but do we really need to worry about being confused with someone who designs wallpapers? Really?

The conversation continued later in the day and into the night, and was similarly transcribed by Steve “Doc” Baty. Continue the thread there…

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Two weeks ago, BusinessWeek’s next Design and Innovation blog asked for my thoughts on this month’s Facebook home page redesign, as a kind of follow-up to my thoughts in those same virtual pages a year ago.

I was asked to opine on the new design without having viewed the actual live site, which was launching the following week. This seemed reasonable to me at the time given that the site’s new features were announced, illustrated, and widely-known ahead of time (via a very comprehensive home page preview announcement) to anyone who was paying attention to that kind of thing.

I was really excited about the real-time feed user experience described in the home page preview. My exact words:

The new FB real-time home page is pretty cool, actually… it’s crossing the line between the old-fashioned page-based web and the live experience of television and broadcast media. In this case, it’s broadcasting from friends to friends — which it always was, of course, but now it’s more visceral and more real. I think people will love it. They’ll be glued to their screens, and will want to add more friends and applications just to increase the flow of content on their home page.

This is “Web 2.0 Complete”: When web people use the term “Web 2.0″, they mean two different things. First, they mean the social web, where *people* make (and are) the content. Second, they mean the pageless web, where web sites react dynamically and fluidly, without page reloads and refreshes. The new Facebook design combines both of these.

I thought it was kind of clever, if a little corny, of me to note that the new Facebook home page was simply conforming to some kind of basic “Web 2.0″ bandwagon orthodoxy, bringing the two flavors of Web 2.0 niftyness into one delicious treat.

But a week later when the new home page actually began to roll out and replace millions of Facebook users’ old home pages, the backlash was immediate and seething and nearly unanimous (a Facebook poll found 94% of users didn’t like the new design). Oh man was I embarrassed! To have praised a user experience so breathlessly only to have my opinion immediately contradicted by the public’s rabid scorn!

Turns out, however, that users were complaining about the new page’s lack of real-time status updates from your friends. And yet Facebook had already clearly and prominently promised that feature as part of the redesign. In fact, I based the core of my analysis of the new site on that very feature, which they had already promised to deliver. They deployed the new design with much fanfare but without real time status updates.

Betrayed! Betrayed by a press release! There I am, praising a non-existent feature. Like an idiot.

Well, happily my premature praise no longer needs to cause me so much shame: Today Facebook has announced that the real-time reporting is going to occur after all. So the BusinessWeek report won’t be such an embarrassment to me after all.

Of course, this is the second time Facebook has announced this feature before delivering anything. Fool me once…

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One of the problems faced by designers trying to integrate their work with most software development processes, even (or possibly especially) with Agile development, is that the literature makes no distinction between software development and software design, or at least no distinction that makes any sense to dedicated user experience designers.

The common complaint among interaction designers working with Agile is that, with some important exceptions, the design of the “user interface” is seen as a cosmetic final stage in the overall software development process. The fundamental designing of the software itself, however — the interactions, the mental models, the metaphors and behaviors — is built-in to the overall Agile process, woven in with with and indistinguishable from the software architecture and code development.

In Mitch Kapor’s Software Design Manifesto, originally delivered in 1990 and included in Terry Winograd’s Bringing Design to Software (1996), it’s clear that this ambiguity has deep roots:

Software design is not the same as user interface design.

The overall design of a program is to be clearly distinguished from the design of its user interface. If a user interface is designed after the fact, that is like designing an automobile’s dashboard after the engine, chassis, and all other components and functions are specified. The separation of the user interface from the overall design process fundamentally disenfranchises designers at the expense of programmers and relegates them to the status of second-class citizens.

The software designer is concerned primarily with the overall conception of the product. Dan Bricklin’s invention of the electronic spreadsheet is one of the crowning achievements of software design. It is the metaphor of the spreadsheet itself, its tableau of rows and columns with their precisely interrelated labels, numbers, and formulas—rather than the user interface of VisiCalc—for which he will be remembered. The look and feel of a product is but one part of its design.

On my first read, the whole terminology of this felt alien to me. Is the paper spreadsheet metaphor not the “user interface design”? It seems “look and feel” is being equated with “user interface” here, but I think he’s implying that what I consider the user interface is, in fact, the software itself. I suppose this is a more glorified definition of the word “software” than what I am accustomed to, one in which the software design included the mental model of the user’s approach to the software.

On my second read, though, it became clear that Kapor is in fact laying the early groundwork for what we now call interaction design. He still sees it as closely bound with programming, although he is clear that it’s not the same thing. He is also working in a climate where user experiences are far simpler than they are now — graphic capabilities were primitive, network interactions were almost non-existent, and interfraces had few modes, even few features. Today, with the high level of complexity of both computer code and user interfaces, it’s easier to consider the two challenges (user experience and code) separately — or even better giving primacy to the user interface — the part that people actually see and use.

Design and Technology

It’s obviously important that interaction designers are well-versed in what the technologies they are designing for can actually do. I wonder, however, what interaction designers today would think of the degree of technical expertise Kapor requires of designers:

Technology courses for the student designer should deal with the principles and methods of computer program construction. Topics would include computer systems architecture, microprocessor architectures, operating systems, network communications, data structures and algorithms, databases, distributed computing, programming environments, and object-oriented development methodologies.

Designers must have a solid working knowledge of at least one modern programming language (C or Pascal) in addition to exposure to a wide variety of languages and tools, including Forth and Lisp.

In preparing the syllabus for my upcoming course this fall at SVA, I am quite certain that I don’t share Kapor’s technical requirements for a software design education, neither specifically (Forth?) or generally. Instead, I think a firm grounding in a broad range of designed experiences far outweighs any need for hands-on experience in the deepest challenges of technology implementation.

Yes, some designers will delve deep into technology, being hands-on coders and fabricators of interactive artifacts. In fact, some great interaction designers already spend most of their days thinking of themselves primarily as technologists. Others, however, will focus on the design parts of interaction design. These people will most often work closely with other individuals and teams to implement their designs.

In short, great design will come from great designers, and great technologists will make those designs happen. Sometimes these skills will be found the same person, but increasingly not. An interaction design education should support both models, of course.

Interfaces and Software

Despite my difference with Kapor’s admonition, I still think that in a way we are coming full circle. The recently-articulated idea that the “interface is the spec“, or even “the interface is the product“, isn’t so different from Kapor’s thinking. The metaphors, mental models, and processes that users experience using the software are, in both cases, the most definitive and salient qualities of the “design” of the software (not, as many software development processes presume, the architecture of the code or the technical features that happen under the hood).
The important thing that Kapor left out, however, is that the “user interface” — the stuff that comes between human beings and cold hard technology –  should be thought of as including graphic design as well as the underlying conceptual models of the interactive experience he rightly praises. In fact, the “user interface” concept should also include the software’s motion graphics, its sound and music, the copywriting, voice and personality, the community that builds around the product, and so many other qualities of software design that, frankly, had not really come to maturity yet in 1990.

We are only recently starting to appreciate the idea that interaction design is really about the intersection of the behaviors of systems and people (a favorite word of mine for obvious reasons). The explosion of new and innovative software experiences brought on since 1990 by the World Wide Web and console video games, I think, has fundamentally changed our understanding of what software can be.

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A few months ago I heard a fascinating woman interviewed on the radio, Noreen Grice. Ms. Grice is a blind astronomer — something that, while initially surprising to me, actually makes perfect sense when you consider that most of today’s astronomy research is based on radio signals, mathematics, physics, and chemistry — and not at all on optics.

What’s more, she has published a series of books about astronomy specifically targeted at blind and visually-impaired children. When I heard this fact, I knew I had to see that book. Sure enough, Grice’s Touch the Universe is for sale on Amazon. Within days I was holding a copy.

Notice that I said “I had to see that book”. Because ultimately that is how I expected to experience it — with my eyes. Indeed, from the moment I opened the box and laid eyes on it I was drawn to the book’s beauty. But not just because the pictures are visually staggering, which of course almost all astronomic photography is. And not just because the internal design, typography, and layout have a simple grace to them, which they do.

What attracted me the most was the braille. The way the embossed patterns directly translated the images below them, the way there were two languages in play at the same time. This book goes beyond at least my traditional understanding of braille as a language or an alphabet — this is the syntax of touch used for illustration. I closed my eyes and explored the universe.

Here’s a typical spread from the book. Notice how the red spot of Jupiter is expressed as a spiral, and that the spiral is identified in the key below the image area.

Here is a spiral galaxy, NGC-4603, where the density of the raised dots expresses the density of the stars clustered around the galaxy’s core.

The book also features some of the technology used by astronomers, although ironically this is the Hubble Space Telescope, a purely optical instrument.

The funny thing is that this book could in theory have been produced with no ink at all. How unfair it seems that a book for blind people is so pleasant to the sighted, and yet products for the sighted generally proffer so little for the blind.

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I loved this picture so much I just had to find a way to look at it every day to make the moment last. And now, if you have an iPhone, you can, too.

Presenting the Farewell George Bush iPhone Wallpaper!

Download it.

Credit for this image is “Reuters AFP/Saul Loeb/Pool” (UPDATE: Full credits in comments, below). I touched it up and modified it for clarity and to make it fit nicely on the start screen without the iPhone’s UI elements cropping off any of the important and meaningful imagery.

Enjoy!

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As you might already know, The School of Visual Arts, one of New York’s leading art and design institutions, is gearing up for a brand new MFA in Interaction Design program beginning this September. SVA has for many years been highly regarded, especially for its vibrant and cutting edge MFA programs (for example in Design and Computer Art) so it’s not surprising that they’d be leading the way in the creation of this highly-relevant and much-needed program.

I’m honored to be part of the inaugural faculty for the program, charged with teaching the first-year “Fundamentals of Interaction Design” course. For humility’s sake please excuse me from the following statement, but the faculty roster is an amazing group of professionals and thinkers across a wide variety of disciplines in the interaction design universe. We on the teaching staff are constantly commenting to one another about how much we’d love to take this curriculum ourselves!

Thursday, January 15 (tomorrow!) is the suggested deadline for applications. (although applicants will be reviewed and admitted on a rolling basis after that). So if you’re interested in the program and in the process of applying, it’s time to pull one more all-nighter to put together the best portfolio you can. There are merit-based scholarships available for some 2009 students, based on your portfolio, so going the extra mile could be even more valuable.

The first year of this program promises to be especially exciting, both for the faculty and students, as we try to produce graduates who will make their mark on the interaction design scene both during and after the two-year program. We’re looking forward to a dynamic, cross-disciplinary group on both sides of the lectern, sharing ideas and helping create a new epicenter of cultural, academic, and professional invention.

Also, please note that tonight, January 14, is the latest in the MFA program’s series of public lectures, the Dot Dot Dot lectures, held each month at White Rabbit on New York’s Lower East Side. This month’s episode includes, as usual, a few of my very favorite people:

“The Urbanists,” January 14
Wed, January 14 | 6:30-8:30PM
Through an exploration of new definitions of urban environments, four lecturers will examine the time when public space is more personal, ubiquitous computing is allowing cities to have an impact on users’ experiences, and the design of services to truly be vibrant and meaningful. Speakers: Adam Greenfield, Soo-in Yang, Rachel Abrams, and Phil Kline.

I’ll be at the lecture tonight, so if you’re also there please say hi to me!

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Like every other advanced human activity that can be taught and learned, there must exist a set of fundamental skills required to use interactive things. I’m not talking about behind-the-scenes design or development skills, but end-user skills. Not just what used to be called “computer literacy” (although that’s part of it), but more basic cognitive and motor and physical skills. Skills analogous to riding a bike, drawing a portrait, writing a business letter, multiplying numbers, or frying an egg.

Take something super-simple, like clicking a link in a web browser. Any designer who has ever attended a usability test, or watched their relatives use computers, will probably have witnessed perfectly competent and computer literate people double clicking links on web pages, just as they would do with a file icon on their desktop. Clearly such users are muddling through just fine, but with a little less than what might be considered optimal computer skills.

Off the top of my head I can come up with a dozen or so skills that people who use interactive systems must learn to be successful — skills that are, however, deficient in a large number of users I’ve witnessed in user testing:

• Point a mouse at a target
• Construct a simple Boolean search
• Rotate a 3d object with a mouse
• Move the cursor around the page with the keyboard
• Select text — whole words, paragraphs, multiple pages
• Cut-and-paste text
• Resize an image
• Zooming and panning
• Use a trackpad instead of a mouse

There are many angles to this idea: Someone who is great at using Excel may be a total klutz when it comes to using Google Earth. An expert at a twitch-shooter video game may not be able to use a search engine to research a report. People who can pan and zoom with a mouse may still have a very hard time with navigating a folder hierarchy.

And of course many of these skills can be dramatically shaped by physical and cognitive disability (which makes me realize that there are different skills that disabled people must learn, for example navigating the web with a voice browser).

The difference between a product’s success and failure with a given user might come down to a simple degree of mastery of some of these basic skills — not, as we often assume, some conceptual misunderstanding of the product itself. Should designers identify their users’ expected skill levels to this level of detail? Should these skills be reflected in user persona documents?

It would be interesting to gauge how well users do at these low-level skills in a survey or broad-based user study, a comprehensive test of basic skills much like the standardized tests schoolchildren are given. I’d be interested in seeing the test results show not just an overall computer skills course, but a breakdown by skill sub-areas: Hardware skills, search skills, text manipulation, image manipulation, 3D object manipulation. That would be fascinating.

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