Monthly Archives: February 2010

Reflections as a ‘Mobile Guerilla’ at the MWC2010 (Barcelona)

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MWC2010 Barcelona

We went to MWC Barcelona 2010 for the first and second days.

During our stay there, my colleague JC Fantechi and I covered almost everything we wanted to see. The following paragraphs are some reflections and experiences gathered during my time there. I’m very grateful to my colleagues at Ergonomidesign for having sent me there to represent them despite my relative inexperience. Even though as an interaction designer, I felt woefully out of place at times, I managed to stay afloat through the experiences and emerge with (hopefully) some new opportunities and insight for my team and also some important personal lessons.

On Windows Mobile 7

We did not make it for the actual launch (too costly like everything else!), but were there in Barcelona for the launch of Windows Mobile 7 Series! Woohoo!

The ‘buzz’ (apologies, Google!) that was felt around it was definitely positive. I am pretty sure the MWC2010 event will earmark itself in history as the first time Windows actually gave Apple a real vicious bite. Game on, Cupertino! There are clearly more knowledgeable reviews in Wired and Engadget, so let it suffice to say that from what I saw of the launch online and at their massive stall – my friends at Redmond/Pioneer Square have done an amazing job in bringing together Windows Live, Xbox and Zune experiences to one mobile platform. The UI looks and feels great and I like the panoramic ‘hubs’ that are used to create a very fresh metaphor in user experience design. WM7’s activity-centric UI is in direct contrast to the application-centric world of Apple, which is brilliant. Hopefully it proves to designers like myself that there are several great metaphors that are waiting to be tapped, if the right conditions are set in place. I’m still curious to know how their store and app-world would pan out, but the die is cast. With Google clearly looking to go aggressively mobile with its Android platform (seen all over the MWC) and now Microsoft entering the game as serious contenders – I think we’ll see exciting times ahead in this space.

Ramble: I believe that with the launch of the iPad (last month), and now with Android and WM7 creating some stiff competition for Apple – we’re witnessing the cornerstone of a whole new galaxy of entrepreneurship and creativity. The giants have put their infrastructure in place for entrepreneurs, developers, (hopefully) designers and ultimately - people to create a world where content of all kind are fluid currency in the form of actionable knowledge. It’s takes no rocket science to guess that once the iPad and other clones enter the market we’re stepping a little closer to making the world witnessed in the living room of Minority Report.

Round 1 : Getting my bearings

From

The MWC was a massive melting pot – an ocean of opportunities and new discoveries. I heard languages from nearly every part of the World discussing business in every nook and corner of the venue. I’d never seen so many people in business suits and ties in one place! Everyone had something to sell – from the smallest headsets, handsets and apps to the largest antennae. There was some exciting new technology on display, some even bordering on the ridiculous. The halls were like giant aquariums and there were fish, sharks, whales and bait of all sizes. The App-World stall was particularly colorful, though I failed to see any app or idea that really blew my mind. My favorite stalls had to be the Samsung and Sony Ericsson stalls.

It was a very different language of profit, business interests and salesmanship that I was exposed to. This was clearly the place where business houses came to sell themselves to those with the right kind of interests. Time and talk were precious; badges were continuously checked to see if credentials matched the interests of those concerned. It took the first few hours to refine our ‘approach’ for the stalls we wanted to see and talk to. We had to learn to fish out the right people to talk to about design, without wasting anyone’s time or energy.

We were quite dazed on the first day, perhaps because I went with different (in retrospect, almost naïve) expectations that people would really be open to ‘user experience design’ and roll out a red carpet. What I learnt was immensely humbling, and a bit confusing at the same time. It was humbling to learn how small we were in this large ocean of competitors. Yet, when we spoke and presented to people – their awe and appreciation would always leave us feeling warm and fuzzy.

Without naming specific cases, we had a pretty 60-40% first day. Several contacts were made and will be followed up on. I felt it was a great christening to the big bad World of ‘sell, sell, sell’ and was glad to have the experience of my colleague JC to lean on.

Round 2 : Picking up momentum

Day two at the MWC was a relative feeling of déjà-vu. However we were emboldened by our experience from the previous day. We approached stalls with greater clarity and conviction and mostly followed up on discussions and loose-ends from the previous day. There were social events and gatherings planned for the evenings, but unfortunately I’d be back in Stockholm by then.

Experiences:

  • Express check-in (via barcode) was very efficient; buying a pass was a bit slower and tedious but given the manic crowds – very efficient overall.
  • Tip for 2011: Get to lunches earlier to avoid long queues.
  • Mobile presentations work in such large venues. A venue as large and indifferent as the MWC2010 needed presentations tailored for short attention spans. Our strategy to use a 1-minute presentation/show-reel on iPhones worked! Since we didn’t have any sit down meetings booked in one of the expensive VIP-lounges at the venue – our best strategy was going to be to approach the right people at the stall directly and hopefully get them interested enough in 5 minutes. No laptops, nothing clunky. We showed our video in 1 minute, left ED-books wherever needed and spoke about work and ideas through the rest. Can’t wait to get going with better versions of the show-reel, on an iPad! 
  • Quite understandable – the biggest enterprises were next to impossible to connect to without some serious prior appointments. If you’re planning to get real, meaningful relationships from such an event, you’ll definitely need to book, pay, grovel and do a lot of follow-up work to get royal audience.
  • Not the ideal venue for designers unless you make a clear stand (literally!) - I do not believe the MWC to be the most ideal venue for industrial design to be showcased. However, service design heavyweights like Fjord and The Astonishing Tribe were there with big stalls and they definitely made their presence felt. There was quite a lot of talk around app-development, services, infrastructure and strategy so it wouldn’t entirely be out of scope for representation on these fronts.
  • Design (especially interaction, service design) was not a clear, tangible offering to make in 60 seconds as ‘mobile guerillas’. It would require a slightly different approach in future. We found ourselves often being ‘reduced’ in conversation to mere handset manufacturers. Many understood what we were talking about as user-interface design, but the language of the marketplace was intensely reductive. We were either handset designers, or icon designers.

There are several other reflections I had, which I shall reserve for my colleagues at work. They concern our own approach and strategy to this intersection ahead. It’s a space we’re not entirely entrenched in yet – and it requires a fresh approach, thought and action. Until next year! :)

(More pictures to come.)

Some important lessons from Windows Phone 7

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 The lessons learnt are from 2 links -

Albert Shum, one of the key thinkers behind the new Windows Phone 7 Series design, admits that 12 years at Nike doesn’t sound like an obvious springboard to becoming director of Microsoft’s Mobile Experience Design team.

There’s a very interesting video on the blog (follow link above), but I am unable to post it on this blog. Guess it needs authorization from MS.

Meanwhile, I also stumbled upon this very interesting blog post by Luke Wroblewski (currently the Chief Design Architect at Yahoo Inc.)

While the Windows Phone 7 Series user interface may not be optimized for high information resolution, it does make interesting use of teases and transitions as highlighted in the video below.

Because it is a touch-based device, the Windows Phone 7 Series uses a Natural User Interface (NUI) paradigm that turns actual content into interface controls. NUIs frequently need to let people know what elements are interactive. (Ideally everything is interactive in a touch-based UI but that’s a different point.) NUIs should encourage exploration and give people “permission” to touch things. Teasing people is one way of encouraging interactivity and exploration.

Teasing and transitions are vital elements in the design of great UI. Tjeerd Hoek (frog design) had also written about the importance of transitions in their blog ‘Design Mind’.

Excerpts from the article ‘Mind the Gap’ which had a profound impact on me:

Transitioning smoothly between changing interface states using animation is not a new design theory or practice, but current technologies and tools have made it far more sophisticated. The most basic example is the animation you see when a Web page is “loading.” The hourglass sifting sand and the spinning color wheel are old examples. These days, Web designers have created elaborate sites in which elements in the UI move, resize, and cross fade in a much more holistic and smooth flow. The same is true for mobile interfaces. Apple’s iPhone features a number of elegant animated transitions such as the “wheel” animation for setting a time or the “turning page effect” you get when starting a new “note.”

These kinds of transitions are a powerful way to make users feel more in control of what they are doing. It allows users to understand the relationships between different states, and to observe the link between their actions and the responses of the interface. Why is this important? Like the horse enthusiasts of Muybridge’s time, users of digital devices want a full understanding of their experience. Also, users don’t want to be distracted from their tasks with staccato or clunky exchanges between tasks. They want a seamless, harmonic experience.

For UI designers, creating transitions and motion into the interface allows us to convey this kind of continuity. These animations also instill impactful emotion and meaning. Would the iPhone excite as many people if all it did was flip between static UI screens? Probably not. The pinch-zoom on a photo, the sense of zooming back out to home screen, the little bounce-back of a scrolling list when it hits the end — these small animations in the UI are delightful, and they evoke a profound emotional response to the product when you use it.

Beauty lies in what you read between the lines of experience, perhaps? :)

My shaky debut on Johnny Holland…

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via JohnnyHolland

Great interaction design is a delicious soup. You boil a variety of different ingredients and spices in the right proportion,  and voila – pure bliss! Unlike other branches of design, however,  it’s extremely hard to write a recipe for interaction design. By its very nature, the interaction design process needs to be fluid and dynamic.

Interaction design tingles the complete experience over time. It tastes most satisfying in conditions when multifaceted flavors and ingredients are brought together. The bigger the challenges are —the more diverse and mixed the ingredients need to be. This beautiful paradox sits at the heart of the interaction design menu, very differently from other design cuisines.

During my time as a Master’s degree student in Interaction Design at Umeå (Sweden), I often found our group repeatedly doing the following:

  • Obsessing with finding the ‘perfect’ solution to a problem.
  • Frequently questioning the value of having mixed, diverse groups of professionals studying Interaction Design together. Were frustrating debates stemming from disparate backgrounds and differences of opinion really the most efficient way to designing interactions?

I haven’t found ’the perfect solution’ yet, but I do believe the process is a lot more interesting. Having experienced the inherent value of a multifaceted approach professionally, I believe that mastery in the interaction design process lies in perfecting those moments when the room is packed with people who won’t share your views and probably don’t have your skills.

Mastering the science of ‘We, not I’.

The quest for perfection and the myth of genius are timeless aspirations that meet with sporadic and rare success. Genius chefs (like genius designers) never seem to be able to cook the same dish twice.  Some modern authors, such as Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers: The Story of Success, debunk the notion of genius altogether. According to Gladwell, even geniuses like Mozart, The Beatles and Bill Gates had more than 10,000 hours of practice at doing what they did—iteratively—constantly improving their craft while focused on process. I believe that a mastery of interaction design process does not rest in divine inspiration and confined sketching (read: genius!). The key probably rests in learning to churn together – a pool of motley professions, backgrounds, skills and interests. Interaction design is a team-sport at its most intense, meaningful climax, and we need to change the way we train for this sport. We need to rearrange our kitchen in order to cook this soup – and we need to do it often, depending on what we’re cooking.

The big hurdle – we’re conditioned to think and act as individuals, not as groups. Could this be the un-learning needed in order to be able to synthesize truly well-rounded experiences?

As a former architect, the process of design was inevitably intensely personal. My colleagues in architecture were all inspired by the singular genius of Corbusier, van der Rohe and Gehry. Moments of solitary and inspired sketching were thought to be the catalysts for the ‘eureka’ moment. Graphic and product design Masters of that era worked in much the same way. Processes in interaction design, on the other hand, seemed to work in quite stark opposites. After migrating to interaction design, students from very different backgrounds were thrown amidst multifaceted peer groups—something many struggled to cope with. A group of motley backgrounds, each with their own stubborn opinions, conflicting ideas, dissimilar skills oft resulted in frustrated groups and heated differences of opinion during projects. Many were left questioning the value and efficiency of such a process. Product and transportation design classmates seldom faced this problem. They were still relatively blissful in the peaceful confines of their work-spaces, diligently pursuing that perfect sketch.

Wouldn’t too many cooks in the interaction design kitchen spoil the broth?

Read more HERE