A Tesla politely welcomes you to open it by presenting its handles as your approach. The Apple Watch coerces you to stand up by gently tapping your wrist. When you finish your ride in an Uber, you simply hop out without the anxiety of fumbling for your wallet in traffic. In business, these details would be considered ‘hygiene factors’ but they evoke emotion. They make the experience.
Yet these are the kinds of details that are left behind as we commodify design to be leaner or more agile. As we employ templates, frameworks and GELs in an effort to be efficient and consistent.
In this presentation I draw on some of the work we've been doing and reflect on how we're helping our clients sit up and take notice of the details.
Your Company Culture is Awesome, But Company Culture is a Lie All Things Open
All Things Open 2014 - Day 2
Thursday, October 23rd, 2014
Pamela Vickers
Software Developer with Big Nerd Ranch, Atlanta Rails Girls
Business
Your Company Culture is Awesome (But is Company Culture a Lie?)
Find more by Pamela here: https://speakerdeck.com/pwnela
Technology by itself is not the real disruptor.
Not being customer-centric is the biggest threat to any business.
Let’s make experiences that are connected, seamless and personal.
Notes are not enough! Why relying on your notes will lead you down the garden...Ash Donaldson
You take great notes, right? Have you ever compared them to a transcript?
It’s amazing how much of the important stuff we miss as we take the time to interpret what someone says, formulate what we’re going to write, then go through the physical act of writing before switching back into listening again.
In this presentation we’ll walk through the model of communication, exploring the limitations of perception, cognition, attention and memory. By the end I hope you’ll appreciate why your notes are not enough.
Presented at Design Research 2017, Sydney
Your Company Culture is Awesome, But Company Culture is a Lie All Things Open
All Things Open 2014 - Day 2
Thursday, October 23rd, 2014
Pamela Vickers
Software Developer with Big Nerd Ranch, Atlanta Rails Girls
Business
Your Company Culture is Awesome (But is Company Culture a Lie?)
Find more by Pamela here: https://speakerdeck.com/pwnela
Technology by itself is not the real disruptor.
Not being customer-centric is the biggest threat to any business.
Let’s make experiences that are connected, seamless and personal.
Notes are not enough! Why relying on your notes will lead you down the garden...Ash Donaldson
You take great notes, right? Have you ever compared them to a transcript?
It’s amazing how much of the important stuff we miss as we take the time to interpret what someone says, formulate what we’re going to write, then go through the physical act of writing before switching back into listening again.
In this presentation we’ll walk through the model of communication, exploring the limitations of perception, cognition, attention and memory. By the end I hope you’ll appreciate why your notes are not enough.
Presented at Design Research 2017, Sydney
Affecting relationships with alcohol using Behaviour DesignAsh Donaldson
How do you change something as endemic in Australian culture as excessive alcohol consumption? This isn’t a typical consulting job. It requires a design partnership.
Hello Sunday Morning approached Tobias & Tobias to help them better understand their users and find more effective ways of helping them change the relationship they have with alcohol.
In this presentation, we’ll walk through how we’ve been working together to do research, analysis and design:
Forming a design partnership
Immersing everyone in research
Using Behaviour Design to create design hypotheses
Working with multi-disciplinary teams to define and carry out experiments
Evolving the platform
Under the influence: Dark patterns & the power of persuasive designBen Tollady
Design is always a balance of user needs and business needs. As good designers, we strive to put the user first and make things that are usable and useful. A big part of what we want to do is help people to achieve what they need to do, avoiding pain or seeking reward.
In this talk, Gareth and Ben explore the idea of ’persuasive design’, where elements of cognitive psychology are employed to influence a change of user behaviour, for good and evil.
A 45 minute talk about designing a single buttonolliecampbell
You know those presentations where someone waves their hand at fancy screenshots and says some vague and general things? This is pretty much the exact opposite. Mies van der Rohe once said that "God is in the details" and that's what this talk is about. In fact it doesn't get much more detailed than talking about a button for 45 minutes. This presentation aims to reveal the true depth of thinking that goes into great design.
This presentation was given at UX Australia in Melbourne, 2016.
Beyond best practice: Crafting purposefully distinct experiencesAndrewUX
Best practice makes a great starting point but a mediocre end game. Why? It simply doesn’t create sustainable competitive advantage. For that you need to craft experiences that are not just well designed and seamless but experiences that are meaningful, purposeful, distinctive to the brand and - ultimately - transformative in your customers and employees lives. You need experiences that are purposefully distinct. An experience that is purposefully distinct is not just deliberately distinct but purposeful in a deep, meaningful and human way that is unique to the organisation that delivers it. This concept is particularly effective for more ambitious transformation projects - especially ones with multiple touchpoints and stakeholders - and uses storytelling to create meaning and competitive advantage in design.
How do you create a User Centred Design culture when the user doesn't even get a mention at the table? Two years ago, I made a bold career move - moving from Australia's largest UX consultancy (Stamford Interactive) where everybody was a UXer to a consultancy where UX was someone else's remit and the UX community hadn't heard or couldn't even pronounce the company's name (DiUS). My goal was to help DiUS not just build products right, but to build the right products.
In this talk I'll share my last two years at DiUS and discuss how I've tried to shift the focus from 'tech stack' conversations to conversations that talks about human centred design, design thinking, end users and customers.
It hasn't been all smooth sailing. So I'll share my approach and strategy, and delve into what has worked and what hasn't.
And as always, I'll engage the audience using some live online polling tools.
http://www.uxaustralia.com.au/conferences/uxaustralia-2016/presentation/building-the-right-products/
Presented at Agile Australia 2016.
My team has spent 5 years figuring out how best to follow Agile methodologies and maximise the opportunities we have through design. This journey has had many ups and downs. Along the way we have tried many new methods, evaluated, twisted and turned to get where we are today. My guess (and hope) is that there will be many more twists and turns in the future.
One thing I have learned is that the ability to communicate the value of what we do and the way we do it is paramount to the continuous improvement in our practices.
In this presentation I will step through 5 diagrams I frequently draw on whiteboards that not merely explain the way we work as designers but help others to understand why we design. These will be our “designer mindset”.
Take away clear visualisations around experience, design thinking, process, expertise, collaboration and the effectiveness of design. Recreate and iterate these visualisations to enhance your own designer’s mindset.
What's next for Interaction Design? The future is now! Robots, autonomous machines, AI, IoT, sensors, data, networks and intelligent systems. Here's a whirlwind review of some of the more transformational aspects of Interaction Design in the coming years, as portrayed by a select few of the fantastic speakers at interaction16 in Helsinki earlier this month. #IXDASYD #IXD16
The Perfectionist’s Bathroom
What does it take to get a User Focused Design process introduced into a large Australian Health Insurer – some pitfalls, some observations and just a little bit about bathroom design.
Ten minute presentation that attempts to distill a handful of IxD14 talks down into 30 second snippets then questions what it means when people say design is part art and part science. Special thanks to the legends: Bernard Lahousse, Christina Wodtke, Klaus Krippendorff, Stephanie Akkaoui Hughes, Giles Colborne, Dan Rosenberg, Irene Au, Peter Bil’ak, Antonio de Pasquale, Jason Mesut and Dave Malouf.
The gap between physical and digital has blurred: we use Wiis to get in shape, computers to order a pizza, or our smartphone’s GPS to find hot dates. People want to interact with products and services when they want to and how they want to – and that’s not always on the web.
The future of design is everywhere the customer touches our product or service - digital or physical. User experience practitioners must move beyond the screen to designing a holistic customer experience that is seamless across channels and devices.
Potholes on the Journey to Design TransparencyJake Causby
Design transparency is the most effective way to communicate with your stakeholders and give them insight into your design process. This presentation focuses on cultural changes, ways to share, and how to collaborate with stakeholders. To hear the audio, visit http://www.uxaustralia.com.au/uxaustralia-2012/potholes-on-the-journey-to-design-transparency
A Million Little Ideas – Design Panel
Farbs, Terry Paton, John Lycette, Ash Donaldson. Chair: Simon Joslin
Everyone has an idea for a game (or a million of them), but how do you identify which ones to pursue and which ones to leave by the wayside. And how do you evolve that idea into something workable, incorporating everyone else’s ideas along the way. This session looks at the pursuit of that one brilliant, shining, life changing moment – and the work that goes into making it real.
http://www.freeplay.net.au/2010-session-details/
What is trust and what does it mean? I'll explore the concept of trust, why it's so important, boundaries and context, how we can earn it and what it means for business. I'll illustrate how we might leverage trust to design products and services that encourage an equitable society.
Delight 2015 | More Than a Feeling: Designing for Digital ComplexityDelight Summit
This presentation was given by Erin Moore from Twitter at Delight 2015 on Oct. 5, 2015.
Designing and building products that have a meaningful impact on people’s lives is an exorbitant amount of work. Yet products that do this successfully are the ones we return to again and again. Despite their complexity, these products make interactions with others and environments seem effortless, desirable—and even addictive. How do we as designers do the hard work of creating products that are useful and relevant? What repeatable process can we look toward to solve problems for people whose motivations and behaviors can be hard to predict? Erin will share how coaching collegiate athletics helped her understand complex systems, and how that experience still influences her daily design process at Twitter.
http://delight.us/conference
Affecting relationships with alcohol using Behaviour DesignAsh Donaldson
How do you change something as endemic in Australian culture as excessive alcohol consumption? This isn’t a typical consulting job. It requires a design partnership.
Hello Sunday Morning approached Tobias & Tobias to help them better understand their users and find more effective ways of helping them change the relationship they have with alcohol.
In this presentation, we’ll walk through how we’ve been working together to do research, analysis and design:
Forming a design partnership
Immersing everyone in research
Using Behaviour Design to create design hypotheses
Working with multi-disciplinary teams to define and carry out experiments
Evolving the platform
Under the influence: Dark patterns & the power of persuasive designBen Tollady
Design is always a balance of user needs and business needs. As good designers, we strive to put the user first and make things that are usable and useful. A big part of what we want to do is help people to achieve what they need to do, avoiding pain or seeking reward.
In this talk, Gareth and Ben explore the idea of ’persuasive design’, where elements of cognitive psychology are employed to influence a change of user behaviour, for good and evil.
A 45 minute talk about designing a single buttonolliecampbell
You know those presentations where someone waves their hand at fancy screenshots and says some vague and general things? This is pretty much the exact opposite. Mies van der Rohe once said that "God is in the details" and that's what this talk is about. In fact it doesn't get much more detailed than talking about a button for 45 minutes. This presentation aims to reveal the true depth of thinking that goes into great design.
This presentation was given at UX Australia in Melbourne, 2016.
Beyond best practice: Crafting purposefully distinct experiencesAndrewUX
Best practice makes a great starting point but a mediocre end game. Why? It simply doesn’t create sustainable competitive advantage. For that you need to craft experiences that are not just well designed and seamless but experiences that are meaningful, purposeful, distinctive to the brand and - ultimately - transformative in your customers and employees lives. You need experiences that are purposefully distinct. An experience that is purposefully distinct is not just deliberately distinct but purposeful in a deep, meaningful and human way that is unique to the organisation that delivers it. This concept is particularly effective for more ambitious transformation projects - especially ones with multiple touchpoints and stakeholders - and uses storytelling to create meaning and competitive advantage in design.
How do you create a User Centred Design culture when the user doesn't even get a mention at the table? Two years ago, I made a bold career move - moving from Australia's largest UX consultancy (Stamford Interactive) where everybody was a UXer to a consultancy where UX was someone else's remit and the UX community hadn't heard or couldn't even pronounce the company's name (DiUS). My goal was to help DiUS not just build products right, but to build the right products.
In this talk I'll share my last two years at DiUS and discuss how I've tried to shift the focus from 'tech stack' conversations to conversations that talks about human centred design, design thinking, end users and customers.
It hasn't been all smooth sailing. So I'll share my approach and strategy, and delve into what has worked and what hasn't.
And as always, I'll engage the audience using some live online polling tools.
http://www.uxaustralia.com.au/conferences/uxaustralia-2016/presentation/building-the-right-products/
Presented at Agile Australia 2016.
My team has spent 5 years figuring out how best to follow Agile methodologies and maximise the opportunities we have through design. This journey has had many ups and downs. Along the way we have tried many new methods, evaluated, twisted and turned to get where we are today. My guess (and hope) is that there will be many more twists and turns in the future.
One thing I have learned is that the ability to communicate the value of what we do and the way we do it is paramount to the continuous improvement in our practices.
In this presentation I will step through 5 diagrams I frequently draw on whiteboards that not merely explain the way we work as designers but help others to understand why we design. These will be our “designer mindset”.
Take away clear visualisations around experience, design thinking, process, expertise, collaboration and the effectiveness of design. Recreate and iterate these visualisations to enhance your own designer’s mindset.
What's next for Interaction Design? The future is now! Robots, autonomous machines, AI, IoT, sensors, data, networks and intelligent systems. Here's a whirlwind review of some of the more transformational aspects of Interaction Design in the coming years, as portrayed by a select few of the fantastic speakers at interaction16 in Helsinki earlier this month. #IXDASYD #IXD16
The Perfectionist’s Bathroom
What does it take to get a User Focused Design process introduced into a large Australian Health Insurer – some pitfalls, some observations and just a little bit about bathroom design.
Ten minute presentation that attempts to distill a handful of IxD14 talks down into 30 second snippets then questions what it means when people say design is part art and part science. Special thanks to the legends: Bernard Lahousse, Christina Wodtke, Klaus Krippendorff, Stephanie Akkaoui Hughes, Giles Colborne, Dan Rosenberg, Irene Au, Peter Bil’ak, Antonio de Pasquale, Jason Mesut and Dave Malouf.
The gap between physical and digital has blurred: we use Wiis to get in shape, computers to order a pizza, or our smartphone’s GPS to find hot dates. People want to interact with products and services when they want to and how they want to – and that’s not always on the web.
The future of design is everywhere the customer touches our product or service - digital or physical. User experience practitioners must move beyond the screen to designing a holistic customer experience that is seamless across channels and devices.
Potholes on the Journey to Design TransparencyJake Causby
Design transparency is the most effective way to communicate with your stakeholders and give them insight into your design process. This presentation focuses on cultural changes, ways to share, and how to collaborate with stakeholders. To hear the audio, visit http://www.uxaustralia.com.au/uxaustralia-2012/potholes-on-the-journey-to-design-transparency
A Million Little Ideas – Design Panel
Farbs, Terry Paton, John Lycette, Ash Donaldson. Chair: Simon Joslin
Everyone has an idea for a game (or a million of them), but how do you identify which ones to pursue and which ones to leave by the wayside. And how do you evolve that idea into something workable, incorporating everyone else’s ideas along the way. This session looks at the pursuit of that one brilliant, shining, life changing moment – and the work that goes into making it real.
http://www.freeplay.net.au/2010-session-details/
What is trust and what does it mean? I'll explore the concept of trust, why it's so important, boundaries and context, how we can earn it and what it means for business. I'll illustrate how we might leverage trust to design products and services that encourage an equitable society.
Delight 2015 | More Than a Feeling: Designing for Digital ComplexityDelight Summit
This presentation was given by Erin Moore from Twitter at Delight 2015 on Oct. 5, 2015.
Designing and building products that have a meaningful impact on people’s lives is an exorbitant amount of work. Yet products that do this successfully are the ones we return to again and again. Despite their complexity, these products make interactions with others and environments seem effortless, desirable—and even addictive. How do we as designers do the hard work of creating products that are useful and relevant? What repeatable process can we look toward to solve problems for people whose motivations and behaviors can be hard to predict? Erin will share how coaching collegiate athletics helped her understand complex systems, and how that experience still influences her daily design process at Twitter.
http://delight.us/conference
Presentation: Hearts, Heads and Hands: How cupcakes, sidewalk chalk, and the story of a teen driver connected a CEO with his workforce and connected the workforce to the company strategy.
Presented by: Stephani Gordon, Internal Communications Business Partner to the CEO, Zurich Insurance Group
With an employee demographic that trends outside the ‘social’ scene, Zurich Insurance Group has achieved tremendous communications and engagement success by refreshing traditional marcomm channels with enticing storytelling, strong visual imagery, creative video and ‘social’ buzz. Stephani Gordon will share several executive communications project samples that include a strategy rap, a mobilization campaign built on the concept of graffiti tagging, and a CEO’s invitation to people to ‘walk away’ from their desks. This presentation is the story of coaching senior executives on what it means to connect in today’s world.
Yes, and! How lessons from improv comedy can help your communication and care...Michael Hagesfeld
Everything is communication. As such, the more we improve our communication, the more it helps our career. By utilizing the rules of improv comedy, we can work with our communication partners to find, affirm, and meet our shared communication goals.
Official speaker book for the NOAH 2018 Conference in Tel Aviv with comprehensive background information on all presenting speakers and their companies.
10 Things Disney Can Teach Us About Running a Security Awareness Program. by Ashley Schwartau, Creative Director of The Security Awareness Company.
Download to have the GIFs work! :)
Perkbox isn't just a company, it's a way of life. Happiness isn't just part of our product, it's at the core of everything we do. Turn the pages of our Culture Book to discover what it's like to work behind the scenes of the UK's fastest growing employee engagement provider.
Perkbox isn't just a company, it's a way of life. Happiness isn't just part of our product, it's the core of everything we do. Turn the pages of our Culture Book to discover what it's like to work behind the scenes of the UK's fastest growing employee engagement provider.
Yes and! Using the rules of improv comedy to improve your communication and y...Michael Hagesfeld
A developer walks into a bar - then he walks out because people are scary. Improve your communications using the rules of improv comedy, including Yes and, no negation, and honesty. Every communication has a shared goal - learn how to find and reach it!
The Next Decade of Agile Software Development and TestTechWell
After almost fifteen years of history with agile practices, J.B. Rainsberger sees some alarming trends in our attitudes, practices, and even what we teach about agile. At the same time, he sees some progress in approaches and technologies—e.g., behavior-driven development, naked planning, and continuous delivery. Sadly, we still have maturity models, complicated process checklists, and unnecessary certification schemes. In the coming decade, unless we begin to focus on fundamental ingredients absent from many agile teams, J.B. fears we are doomed to miss many opportunities for getting better. It's not good enough anymore just to be a great agile tester. J.B. says testers, programmers, product analysts, and managers must encourage workplace transformations so we can take full advantage of new tools and techniques. He shares a vision of these transformations and calls on testers and test managers, who work with all stakeholder groups, to stand up and lead us into the next decade of agile.
Human Connections - Innovation Circus Presentation 2018Ph.Creative
Slides from "Google Dave" Hazlehurst's presentation at Innovation Circus https://www.innovationcircus.co.uk/ For more resources, visit www.ph-creative.com
With all the advancements today, why does most conference education still feature a talking head and passive listeners? Is this the best way for attendees to learn and remember information?
Preparing L&D for the Age of Search - The Fuse Tribe AcademyAde Risidore
As learners increasingly turn to Google and YouTube for their learning material L&D teams have an opportunity to reinvent themselves. By embracing new learning delivery methods and shifting from competencies to capabilities they can provide a viable alternative for their learners, offering timely, valuable learning when it's needed most.
Similar to The details are not the details: How small things have a large impact (20)
Hello everyone! I am thrilled to present my latest portfolio on LinkedIn, marking the culmination of my architectural journey thus far. Over the span of five years, I've been fortunate to acquire a wealth of knowledge under the guidance of esteemed professors and industry mentors. From rigorous academic pursuits to practical engagements, each experience has contributed to my growth and refinement as an architecture student. This portfolio not only showcases my projects but also underscores my attention to detail and to innovative architecture as a profession.
Between Filth and Fortune- Urban Cattle Foraging Realities by Devi S Nair, An...Mansi Shah
This study examines cattle rearing in urban and rural settings, focusing on milk production and consumption. By exploring a case in Ahmedabad, it highlights the challenges and processes in dairy farming across different environments, emphasising the need for sustainable practices and the essential role of milk in daily consumption.
You could be a professional graphic designer and still make mistakes. There is always the possibility of human error. On the other hand if you’re not a designer, the chances of making some common graphic design mistakes are even higher. Because you don’t know what you don’t know. That’s where this blog comes in. To make your job easier and help you create better designs, we have put together a list of common graphic design mistakes that you need to avoid.
Expert Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) Drafting ServicesResDraft
Whether you’re looking to create a guest house, a rental unit, or a private retreat, our experienced team will design a space that complements your existing home and maximizes your investment. We provide personalized, comprehensive expert accessory dwelling unit (ADU)drafting solutions tailored to your needs, ensuring a seamless process from concept to completion.
19. Where good ideas come from
Research and development teams
Pure research and space to experiment
image credit: Magnus Manske
20. Design is becoming valued
Apple
Coca-Cola
Ford
Herman-Miller
IBM
Intuit
Starbucks
Starwood
Steelcase
Target
Walt Disney
Whirlpool
Newell-Rubbermaid
Nike
Procter & Gamble
34. My wife hums along with it when the
clothes are done.
My Dad
made up lyrics
to go with it:
“Come get your
clean clothes out
of me, its time to
do another load.”
It's nice to have a machine that sings
to you, that offers a melody to let you
know it's time to fold the clothes.
The joys of modern technology. Who
was it came up with the idea to play
Schubert?
I like to sing a little song when it goes
off. “La la la your laundry is dahahone
thank you for putting your laundry in
me. You are so super cool and you
have really nice clothes”
35. We had a vision to make
ACOUNTING
SEXY & FUN
- Philip Fierlinger
36. I think I may
love Xero a bit
too much.
It’s addictive.
And fun.
This is where all the fun begins and
trust me, using Xero is addictive so
don’t say I did not warn you!
It’s the most fun you’ll ever have
while using accounting software.
I believe even my grandmother
would be able to understand and
figure it out.
The process is so easy it almost
makes accounting fun!
52. A few words can increase conversion
~3x
I’m on Twitter. 4.7%
Follow me on Twitter. 7.3%
You should follow me on Twitter. 10.1%
You should follow me on Twitter here. 12.8%
58. “The details are not the details
THEY ARE
THE
P R O D U C T ”
- Charles & Ray Eames
Editor's Notes
Space, The Eamses and small things making an impact
A nice segue from Andy
As you heard, the project had experienced many delays. The pressure was on for this launch to succeed. What harm could come from it being a little cool for the o-ring’s operating range? It’s such a small component in such a large, complex machine. The project was overtime and over budget. There was so much pressure to launch that a tiny detail like that wasn’t going to hold them up again.
The details are not the details. Small things can have a large impact.
I’m lucky enough to work with a talented team. As we were moving into our new digs, we got together to reflect on where we were as a company, what we were doing, how we were doing it, and how we want to do it in the future. Of course, we burnt through lots of Post-its.
(We also got to design our office fit-out and furniture.)
A recurring theme that came up across a span of exercises was a lack of time and space to learn and reflect.
My team are all great researchers and designers. But they need breathing room to really excel. Time to soak up, reflect and focus on the details.
So why is there this relentless time pressure with our clients?
It all comes down to the quest for efficiency
World War 2 prompted manufacturing to make leaps and bounds forward. On one side, it saw the birth of Human Factors - the foundations of Human-Centred Design. But it also ushered forth the birth of rapid production on a scale nobody had experienced before. Of course, with this came defects and inconsistencies. This drove a number of trends in manufacturing over the coming decades:
From Total Quality Management to continuously improve processes; Toyota Production System to reduce waste; and Lean Manufacturing to increase efficiency and remove waste.
The design of corporations have their origins in the assembly lines of the industrial revolution, so it’s no surprise they adopted the same approaches as the manufacturing industry. White collar work moved from highly structured but often wasteful waterfall projects - that mimicked the assembly line
…to six sigma in an effort to reduce defects
agile to increase velocity
and lean to remove waste.
Corporations have shareholders to answer to quarterly. And the shareholders expect continuous growth. When a market is saturated, this means a drive to find efficiencies.
Because corporations are built on the assembly line model, every unit and every staff member have their KPIs to meet.
Marketing needs something new and shiny to promote.
Business needs to deliver more projects on time and budget.
Engineering needs to increase production velocity.
Their one common theme is speed. Speed to business case. Speed to develop. Speed to test. Speed to market.
So each year those KPIs get higher and arbitrary deadlines become shorter.
Research and design has been forced to follow suit. These tools are all good for maintaining consistency across a large organisation and they’re great for scale, but they are often developed quickly and wielded heftily as incontestable truths.
Corporations used to have research and development units. Places where pure research was often able to be conducted and labs in which experiments could be run. Some companies like Steelcase, Ford and Intuit still have this but for many, the need to demonstrate direct, tangible benefit to the quarterly results meant that R&D was shut down.
To fill the vacuum left and try and propel new products, corporations started relying on outsourcing agencies or simply having management generate new ideas.
Now that design-centric companies have proved their worth by significantly outperforming the market, corporations are again sitting up and taking notice. They’re bringing research and design in-house with innovation centres, internal start-ups, and incubators.
But even these are given little time and breathing room to really understand problem spaces. They follow lean methods and so researchers and designers only ever get to scratch the surface of the human needs that drive real innovation.
And the agency model continues as a large part of supplying and supporting these internal research and design functions. Hell, that’s what my team do daily. But the purpose of this talk is to explore how we can do it better.
The title for this presentation obviously came from the famous quote by Charles and Ray Eames. The Eameses obsessed about details. They espoused that every product is just an emergent property of its details. When they designed the Eames Upholstered Wire Chair it had simple, screw-on feet with steel caps. But after months of use, they found that the metal feet weren’t as fit for purpose as they hoped. They slid on hard surfaces and could, under the wrong conditions, break. So they worked through many iterations before they settled on a welded ball covered by the durable nylon glide you see on the chair today.
You can feel the difference between a genuine Herman-Miller Eames Upholstered Wire Chair and a knock-off that looks exactly the same.
The details are not the details.
Space shuttle challenger was a horrific lesson in details adding up to the overall function. Eames’ chair was about details adding up to the overall quality. But there’s so much more.
There’s a strong desire for industry to shift from a manufacturing economy to an experience economy. To shift the focus to what people feel, think and do.
Everyone wants their customers to love their product or service. That’s why our field exists. Organisations want to design for experiences, but if we commodify design, it faces the risk of producing bland, boring and homogenous results. Trying to please everyone pleases no-one.
Good design finds it hard to exist within a culture of manufacturing. It requires time to reflect, refine and obsess over the details. It also helps to have a deeper understanding of how we feel, think and do.
Humans are pattern matching creatures. We can’t help it. We’re so good at it, that we see patterns where none exist - in randomness. And although this enables our creativity as Denise told us this morning, it’s sometimes also our downfall - think gambling.
Seeing patterns where none exist is known as apophenia.
The best known form of apophenia is pareidolia: our inbuilt bias to see faces in randomness. This is my son Archer, reading a book before bed. He just told me that the truck was angry. I asked him how he knew that. He said, it’s on his face.
We all know cars have faces, so when you design a self driving car that you don’t want anyone to hit, it’s best to make it look neotenous and innocent. Well that’s what the designers over at Google have done with their overly cautious autonomous vehicle. Even if you got frustrated at its Grandma-like driving, you’d be less likely to hit a car that looked like a big-eyed puppy.
We see patterns in randomness of every kind - from hearing sentences in records playing backwards to seeing Jesus in our toast
Our brain is constantly seeking shortcuts to save a few calories by substituting equivalents that are good enough
This leads us to ascribe human traits to anything we interact with - what’s known as anthropomorphism.
That’s why we swear at buggy software and services (hello, Census), coerce golf balls to find their holes (c’mon, c’mon, please go in), snuggle pillows and give our cars names.
We emotionally engage with any product that comes to our attention. As designers, this is a powerful insight we should use but rarely do. And it’s expressed in the details of the product.
The details can affect how we feel
Tesla Model S door handles extend as you approach the car. An assertive, welcoming gesture that says “I’ve been waiting for you. Let’s go.”
A perfect gesture to expect from a sports car.
The reason the door handles are flush with the car is to reduce drag, thereby increasing the battery range. From an engineering efficiency point of view, it would be best to keep the handles extended, and retract them only when the car is put in drive. From an emotional point of view, however, it’s best to highjack some of the proximity sensors and keep them active so that the handles can greet the driver as they approach. Details like this frame the mood for a driver. It starts the experience on a high note. Experience can’t be designed. We can design a product or service, but experience involves a person’s memories, knowledge, context and mood at the time. This little detail is an effective way to design FOR an experience. To get it kicked off on the right foot.
Tesla has put thought into many such details and is disrupting the auto industry.
The details are not the details.
One of my team members, Alyce, was sad when she had to change her Samsung washing machine for a Miele. She said she missed the happy little song it sung to let you know the washing was finished. Whilst most washing machines buzz or click at the end of a wash cycle, it plays Schubert’s Trout Quintet.
In a culture driven by efficiency, the circuit board and speaker required for this would be considered a redundant and wasteful addition. But ask the customers…
Samsung washing machines and dryers gained the highest customer approval ratings, due to a happy little song they sang to inject a little joy into the tedious chore of washing.
Of course, there’ll be people that hate this - that’s the risk of designing for emotional engagement - but most people love it. It can make their washing a better experience - one they’ll tell others about - like the thread about it on Reddit.
The details are not the details.
Speaking of tedious chores, Philip Fierlinger is the Head of Design at Xero. The founders wanted to ‘make beautiful accounting software.’ Together with Philip, they upped the ante to a vision that posed a momentous design challenge for him: make accounting sexy and fun. He’s described the amount of obsession they built into the reconciliation process on mobile. Not just the way it can quickly learn and match entries for you, but the timing, the easing in and easing out animations of the matched cards. The way they flip over and quickly fall away as if to say “See. That was easy. Let’s do another!”
Xero was a small software startup out of New Zealand. It’s now taking significant marketshare from accounting behemoths like MYOB, Sage and Quicken.
The details are not the details.
The details can affect how we think
The problem with maps is we don’t really trust them yet. We like to feel in control. If we see traffic ahead and know the area, we take the back roads, just to feel confident that we’re making progress. Problem is, it often takes us longer as many other people have the same idea.
Google solves this with a little reassurance. When they bought Waze and folded their technology in, they kept the voice prompts with what might seem like redundant information from a map system designed to get you to your destination in the least time.
It tells you: “You are taking the fastest route. It is all clear ahead to your destination.”
If there’s congestion building ahead, it jumps in before you see the traffic and turn down the back road and says:
“There is a 7 minute delay ahead on Pittwater Road. This is still the fastest route. You are 20 minutes from your destination.”
This helps the driver feel in control AND get to their destination in the quickest possible time.
The details are not the details.
In the judicial system, timing is everything.
Researchers analysed 1,100 decisions by an Israeli parole board. Parole was granted about a third of the time overall. But prisoners whose cases were heard early in the morning received parole about 70% of the time. Prisoners with similar circumstances appearing late in the afternoon were granted freedom only 10% of the time. This is due to a cognitive effect known as decision fatigue. The time of day can impact your freedom.
The details are not the details.
We all know that clothes can make you feel different: relaxed, more confident and whatnot, but they can also change how well you think. In an experiment, people were asked to do the Stroop test. This is a standard cognition test in which you have to try and say the colour of the type, not what the word says. Of course overcoming this conflict is tricky, so people make errors when they try and go fast.
For this experiment, one group was just…
…dressed in their street clothes.
The other group was given a white coat that they were told was a lab coat.
The people in lab coats performed twice as well as those in street clothes.
The experimenters worried that it was the heft of the coat, the colour or fabric that improved cognition, so they ran a second set of tests.
This time, everyone wore the same white coat.
The first group were told is was a painter’s coat whilst the the second group were told it was a doctors coat. The doctors coats outperformed the painters.
This effect is known as enclothed cognition. A piece of clothing can affect how well you think.
The details are not the details.
The details can affect what we do
In a bottleshop, there was an in-store display of German and French wines.
Over a 2-week period, German and French music was played on alternate days.
When German music was played, it led to German wines outselling French ones by 73%, whereas
playing French music led to an even more robust effect on sales of French wine - to the tune of 77%.
Were these consumers aware of the music and it’s impact on their decision?
86% of people said no, the music had no effect.
This is a simple demonstration of priming.
Fun fact: Your behaviour is always being shaped by your environment.
The details are not the details.
In dentistry terms, people who book an appointment but never show up are known as ‘Failure To Attends’ (FTAs). This behaviour of course poses a significant problem to dental practices. We addressed the issue for a client by leveraging social commitment and consistency in their practice handbook:
1. In person, the front-desk staff gives an appointment card and simply asks “Could you please write down you're appointment on this card and read it back to me?” This creates a physical and social commitment.
When the NHS implemented a similar intervention for GPs, their FTAs dropped 30% nationally, saving 250 million pounds.
2. Over the phone, the front-desk staff ask “Will you please call if you have to change your plans?” Then pause, waiting for the patient to verbally agree.
An experiment carried out in a Chicago restaurant demonstrated that that simple pause dropped their ‘No-call, No-show’ rate by 66%
These recommendations are now proving their value across a national network of dental practices.
The details are not the details.
Dustin Curtis is a blogger who famously did an experiment to increase Twitter followers. He conducted a simple series of multivariate tests on his call to action, building on success each time.
At the bottom of each post, he had a short blurb about him and a call to action to follow him on Twitter.
The baseline was his original call to action “I’m on Twitter” with a conversion rate of 4.7%
Trying some variations on this led him to “Follow me on Twitter” at 7.3%. He built on the success of this by trying variations of preceding words to get him to 10.1%, then proceeding words to get him to 12.8%
Tweaking a few words in a series of cheap and quick experiments increased his conversion almost threefold.
The details are not the details.
Writing a presentation is a great time for reflection. Writing one on the back of an internal workshop to improve our practice is perfect timing.
In the rush to meet deadlines, it’s easy to forget about the details, rationalising that they’ll be picked up later. But the reality is that products in BAU have little budget to refine or improve. There’s little chance of injecting meaningful personality, persuasion or action into a product after release.
In our practice, there are a number of things we’ve been doing - some unconsciously, some haphazardly and some insufficiently
Here are a few things I’m starting to formalise in our studio
As we’ve discussed, good design requires time to reflect and cogitate
We can try and educate clients, but this won’t change their KPIs or reality, where the demand for greater velocity is unabating <break>
But here are some things that have worked for us when planning engagements:
Waterfall: Staggering research and analysis throughout a project. Breaking research into small chunks and starting thematic analysis early to allow digestion, reflection and pivots.
Agile: Building in more space to create quality presentations for showcases and retros to give us the ability to discuss and reflect on the prior sprint better and adapt for the next sprint
Lean: Building in daily summaries for stakeholders during research. This usually means dropping one participant per day to play back research to stakeholders but that give us the space to discuss and sketch our experiences that day, take on feedback and adapt for the next day
And Fly-home Fridays is something we’ve recently implemented: This is something we’re establishing with clients in the SOW up-front, so our teams can shift gears to allow for abductive thought. We’re structuring Fridays so everyone can learn something new. Share projects internally. Give and receive critique and support from the wider team - giving the client the benefit of more smart minds on their project.
We should design for emotional engagement. Create a personality for our products. What Jon Kolko refers to as a product stance.
We’re not going to please all of the people all of the time, so we should stop trying. It guarantees nobody will love your product, but they may still hate it.
To define a product stance is simple:
First, identify aspirational emotional traits: 4 or 5 things like spirited, light-hearted, playful and free
From these, establish emotional requirements like ‘Our product will always be revered in a crowd.’ or
‘Our product will always tempt users to do slightly illogical things.’
Finally, use the requirements as a set of constraints to determine product features, content strategy, launch priorities and so on
This is where you’ll define the need for handles that invite driving, or washing machines that prompt singing.
At Tobias & Tobias, Behaviour Design is something we’re passionate about and known for. But it’s a field in it’s infancy, so staying on top of it is critical as the corpus of knowledge - and the size of our team - grows
To encourage continuous learning in this area, for fly-home Fridays we’ve instituted a Behavioural Bias a week that we learn about.
We’ve also started playing Dan Ariely’s Irrational Game as a fun way to learn the results of more studies and test our knowledge
We’ve designed platforms for clients to run randomised controlled trials to test behaviour change interventions
Of course, we’ve also used these same platforms to rapidly refine details for engagement and interaction much like Dustin Curtis did for his Twitter call to action
Trials run on variations of HSM’s on-boarding over a few weeks increased conversion by 40%
We need to sell the idea of product as an experimental platform more effectively. It’s setting our clients up for long-term success when they transition to the often cash-strapped world of BAU. Long after we’ve gone, they should be equipped to continue to create experiments to learn from and evolve their product or service.
The Challenger disaster is a cautionary tale of what happens when we bow to arbitrary time pressures. To do good design, we have to care about the details. We can’t just succumb to the pressures of the manufacturing economy when our clients want to shift to the experience economy.
We have to create the time to reflect and understand. Use our knowledge of emotional engagement to bravely design interactions that may polarise users. Learn more about how people make decisions and what affects behaviour. Create platforms to encourage the products we design to be continuously refined.
We have to create ways to design well within the assembly line mindset; to find ways to prioritise details that don’t correlate with the manufacturing economy if we want our designs to be loved by those who use them.
Because the details are not the details. They ARE the product.