ID FMP: Useful Definitions (a living post)

As I embark on my exploration of frameworks, models, and principles related to interaction and experience design I will maintain this working list of definitions regarding key terms and concepts.

This is by no means a comprehensive list. This is actually an utterly selfish endeavor as these definitions are solely intended to help me in my own study of this field. They have been cherry-picked, mostly from online sources and the book Universal Principles of Design.

Augmented Reality: "Augmented reality means that I have some mediating artifact that provides me with a visual overlay on the world. This could be a phone, it could be a windshield, it could be a pair of glasses or contact lenses, doesn’t matter. And you’re going to use that overlay to superimpose some order of information about the world and the objects in it onto the things that enter my field of vision – onto what I see." [source: Adam Greenfield, from interview by Tish Shute]

• Marker-Based: "Marker-based AR implies that there’s some reasonably strong relationship between the information superimposed over a given object, and the object itself. That object is an onto, a spime, it’s been provided with a passive RFID tag or an active transmitter. And it’s radiating information about itself that I’m grabbing, perhaps cross-referencing against other sources of information, and superimposing over the field of vision. Fine and dandy."
• Markerless: But there’s another way of achieving the same end, right? Instead of looking at a suit jacket on a rack and having its onboard tag tell you directly that it’s a Helmut Lang, style number such-and-such from men’s Spring/Summer collection 2011, Size 42 Regular in Color Gunmetal, produced at Joint Venture Factory #4 in Cholon City, Vietnam, and packed for shipment on September 3, 2010, you’re going to run some kind of pattern-matching query on it. And without the necessity of that object being tagged physically in any way, you’re going to have access to information about it. 

Cognition: “of, relating to, being, or involving conscious intellectual activity (as thinking, reasoning, or remembering)” [source: Merriam-Webster] ; “a faculty for the processing of information, applying knowledge, and changing preferences.” [source: Wikipedia]

Framework: "A basic conceptual structure used to solve or address complex issues. This very broad definition has allowed the term to be used as a buzzword, especially in a software context." [source: Wikipedia]

Interference Effects: "A phenomenon in which mental processing is made slower and less accurate by competing mental processes." [source: Universal Design Principles]; an example of an artifact that would generate this effect is a green stop sign.

Mapping: "A relationship between controls and their movements or effects. Good mapping between controls and their effects results in greater ease of use." [source: Universal Design Principles]

Model: "A hypothetical description of a complex entity or process; representation of something, sometimes on a smaller scale" [source: Princenton Wordnet]

• Mental model: "Representations of systems and environments derived from experience." [source: Universal Design Principles]; "An explanation of someone's thought process for how something works in the real world.” [source: Wikipedia]; “a mental representation that people use to organize their experience about themselves, others, the environment, and the things with which they interact; its functional role is to provide predictive and explanatory power for understanding these phenomena” [source: Virginia Tech]
• Conceptual model: “an abstraction, representation and ordering of phenomena using the mind.” [source: Charles Darwin University]; “conceptual model represents 'concepts' (entities) and relationships between them.” [source: Wikipedia]

Principle: "A basic generalization that is accepted as true and that can be used as a basis for reasoning or conduct; a rule or law concerning a natural phenomenon or the function of a complex system." [source: Princenton Wordnet]

Scaling Fallacy: "A tendency to assume that a system that works at one scale will also work at a smaller or larger scale." [source: Universal Design Principles]

Serial Position Effects: "A phenomenon of memory in which items presented at the beginning and end of a list are more likely to be recalled than items in the middle of a list." [source: Universal Design Principles]

System: "a group of independent but interrelated elements comprising a unified whole; 'a vast system of production and distribution and consumption keep the country going.'" [source: Princenton Wordnet]; "System (from Latin systēma, in turn from Greek systēma) is a set of interacting or interdependent entities, real or abstract, forming an integrated whole." [source: Wikipedia]

• Product and Service Systems: the independent but interrelated elements through which a users experiences a product or service. These systems encompass the product or service itself and indirect elements such as manuals, user groups, and communities. To that extent, a product or service system can vary significantly depending on context of use since these external elements often play an important role inthe user experience or a product or service.
  
• System Image: As used by Don Norman, refers to the overall interface available for a user to interact with a product or service system including both direct and indirect elements. Direct elements of the interface include the product or service itself. Indirect elements encompass things such as instructional manuals, user groups, and communities. [source: me]

** What the hell is ID FMP? **

Wearable Projection-Based Interface

Earlier today I came across a post on Wired about a new mobile device prototype that has been unveiled at TED. Designed by MIT Media Lab students, this device uses a projector to display the interface that is manipulated using gestures captured by a video camera. Video demos from Wired are featured below.

In many ways this prototype is similar to the Holographic Projection Interface that I wrote about back in October. The main differences about this design include that it uses normal projection technology rather than a holographic one which is not yet available, and that it leverages internet connectivity to provide contextually relevant information above and beyond GPS navigation. It is also impressive that they have managed to create an actual prototype using $350 worth of equipment - though they are far from creating a commercially viable product, it is pretty impressive prototype.





[via Wired]

Design and Adoption of Technology for Emerging Markets

For the past few months I have been thinking about the design and adoption of technologies by people in emerging markets and other under-served communities (a.k.a. Base of Pyramid, "BoP", markets). During this period I've come across several interesting ideas related to this topic. It is clear that many challenges and possibilities have been, and are being, created by technology's continued expansion into the lives of people who just a few years ago were "off the radar".

My interest lies in exploring the common features shared by products and services that have been successful in these markets, and understanding how the process of design can evolve to support innovation focused on creating products and services that are appropriate for these communities.

Perspectives from Emerging Markets
People in emerging markets have particular worldviews that are colored by the specific context in which they live. I am implying not only that numerous differences exist between developed and emerging markets, but also that an equal number of differences can be found between emerging markets alone.

Here I will focus primarily on key characteristics that differentiate most emerging markets from developed ones. First and foremost, consumers from emerging markets tend to be less confident when it comes to making purchases due to their tighter economic situation. According recent article from Interactions magazine written by a team from Human Factors International, consumers in these markets "are more cautious than their counterparts in the West; they would rather pay more for quality than risk product failure". Affordability is important to them but they are not willing to accept products that offer low-quality compromises as "every act of discretionary consumption is an act of sacrificing something essential." [read full article]

On Core77, interesting insights are offered by Niti Bhan about the behavior of people from low-income communities in emerging markets. "Buying behavior and decision-making criteria imply that those in the lower income strata—particularly in the developing world—are not 'consumers' but in fact extremely careful 'money managers' for whom an expense is often an investment whose return must be maximized... The BoP customer has not been bombarded by mainstream consumer culture and all the trappings of 'consumerism' that come with it." [read full article]

This is not to say that the choices of these consumers are not influenced by emotion - emotion plays an important part in determining the "return" that will be delivered from a given purchase. However, the role of emotion is somewhat tempered by the fact that most of their spending choices are focused primarily on meeting basic human needs such as clothing, food, shelter.

When approaching emerging markets most companies take the approach that the same basic value proposition can serve across all markets since people have the same basic needs. Pricing and cosmetics are often considered the only elements that truly need to change. This approach demonstrates a lack of understanding regarding the extent to which the needs of these audiences differ from more affluent markets. Santosh Desai sums up the point nicely: "the need is to develop products that are appropriate rather than merely cheap."

Adoption of Products and Services in Emerging Markets
There are many factors that influence a product's rate of adoption. According to the article from Interaction magazine, these factors include "infrastructure, culture, language and dialect, purchasing power, literacy, urbanism, and terain." Recently on PSFK Allison Mooney shared her perspective about the three fundamental forces that govern the adoption of new services and products. Though her post focused exclusively on the adoption of a clunky service in South East Asian emerging markets, these hold true for all markets. So here are the three fundamentals [read full article on PSFK]:

1. "Discovery: Is there an easy and reliable way for people to learn about it?" (Does their community use it? Can their teenager or friend explain it them? Is it something that people will feel comfortable sharing? If a device is required, is such a device common and easy to acquire and use?)
2. "Utility: Does it enable them to do something they need or want to do?" (Does it fulfill a real need or is it useful? The need can be practical, e.g. banking, entertainment, e.g. games, or something else - but it must offer some utility.)
3. "Motivation: How badly do they need or want to do this?" (How does the utility offered by this product compare to difficult required to learn how to use it, or the costs associated to its use - monetary, cultural and social costs? For hard to use or expensive products and services a lot of motivation is needed.)
   

To examine the value of this framework let's do a high-level analysis of successful products and services from emerging markets. First let's examine mobile-enabled financial services that have quickly gained adoption. In many developing markets, mobile phones have emerged as the communication standard because in large part due to the scarcity and expense of land lines. However. the role that these devices play has expanded far beyond calling; in the Phillipines and India they have evolved into important financial instruments and are often referred to as "wallet phones".

In these countries banks and phone companies have begun to support a wide range of phone-based financial transactions in ways not commonly available in the West. Services offered include checking balances, money transfers and even e-cash capabilities. According to the previously mentioned article from Interactions magazine, a "currency-free future is dawning in these 'developing countries... mobile phone providers like the Philippines' Globe Telecom have become a kind of shadow banking system."

In Mumbai, a start-up called Eko partnered with a local bank to offer these same types of services. Users carry out transactions using USSD messages that feature a complicated syntax consisting of long sequences of numbers, *'s and #'s (thanks to Anupam Varghese for pointing out that this service is provided using USSD as opposed to SMS). USSD enables a transaction to be just 'dialed' as if it were just a longish phone number. Here is an example of a transfer request for 100 rupees: "*543*190123456789*100*1133740274#" (I suspect the service from the Philippines has a similar interface). Despite the seeming "clunkiness" of the user interaciton these services have achieved wide adoption.

So how does it line up against the fundamentals we laid out above? To drive discovery of these services, the bank in Mumbai set-up a network of neighborhood service representatives that promote the service, and sign up and assist customers. The telecom company from Philippines is able to drive discovery via marketing and their existing network of representatives. From a utility perspective boths services are obviously useful, enabling mobile phone users to easily access money. Though the interface seems "clunky" it is easy to use because it leverages a known behavior (dialing numbers), a widely used feature (SMS) of a commonly available technology (cell phones). In Mumbai, neighborhood service reps also provide support so that it’s not necessary for people to know how to do everything themselves.

Design of Products and Services in Emerging Markets
I believe that good design delivers some form of usability, coupled with a pleasurable and meaningful experience. This perspective is based on the consumerist cultural and social context in which I live, my privileged economic situation, and my passion for design and aesthetics. In order to create products that are appropriate for emerging markets designers need be aware of cultural and social blind spots. Understanding the specific cultural, economic and social context is key to designing a successful product. Ken Banks of kiwanja.net recently wrote about what causes many products to fail: "lack of basic reality-checking and a tendency to make major assumptions are lead culprits, yet they are relatively easy to avoid."

The latest issue of Interaction magazine featured a study into the adoption of a mobile service. This piece highlights the importance of leveraging deep cultural and social understandings when designing services. The focus of this study was a project to leverage mobile phones to enhance education for school-age kids. In order to create a solution that was adopted by students the design and research team had to go through several prototypes. During this process they unearthed important social and cultural behaviors and beliefs that guided updates in the design of the user interactions and the way in which the education was developed and delivered. [read full article]

Niti Bhal outlined a human-centered framework for the creation of successful products and businesses for BoP markets. This framework, called 5-D, is comprised of 5 elements: development, design, distribution, demand, dignity. The first four elements roughly align to phases of a process, whereas the final element refers to the philosophy of the approach. Below is a brief outline of these 5 elements. [read the original post]

Development refers to the identification of opportunities for social or economic development that will serve as the basis for the design. Design refers to the creation of a product or service in response to the opportunity for development. Distribution refers to need for ability to make a product or service readily available for customers. Demand refers to the development of an appropriate value proposition that can communicate the benefits of your product or service. Lastly, Dignity refers to the need to create products and services that respect economic, social and cultural needs and with an intent to create a positive impact.

Book Summary: Making Meaning – How Successful Businesses Deliver Meaningful Experiences

Summary of book written By Steve Diller, Nathan Shedroff, Darrel Rhea

This book has valuable ideas regarding how to drive innovation in today’s experience economy. It was written by a group of experts from the field of experience design who have strong ties to Cheskin, a strategic design consulting and market research firm with a focus on helping companies to develop meaningful innovations. The concepts and framework presented here reflect the thinking and approach that were developed, and are currently used, at this leading design research firm.

Many of these ideas have been communicated via blogs and articles published over the past couple of years. The value of the book, in comparison to the content that you will find online and in magazines, is that it has enabled the authors to explore these ideas in greater depth. Here they are able to provide additional background and contextual information in defense of their perspectives, as well as a more in-depth description of the frameworks and methodologies they have developed to help their companies and clients succeed. At only 140 pages, this book is a fast and enjoyable read that is clear and easy to follow.

The guiding premise for this book is that “consumers increasingly make their purchasing decisions based on deeply valued meanings that companies evoke for them through their products and services… as opposed to simply responding based on features, price, brand identity, and emotional pitches.” In other words, we have entered an era of meaningful consumption. This new world is framed by the rise of globalization, the end of the mass market, and the empowerment of individuals. To succeed organizations can no longer innovate for the sake of novelty, they must focus their innovations on addressing the human need for meaning.

Once this initial premise is laid out, the authors shift their focus to mapping out the evolution of consumer demand in Western society. Next they define the concepts of experience and meaning, to provide a foundation for the second half of the book where they focus on the creation of meaningful experiences. During this section they explore how to find opportunities for meaning, and how to design and deliver meaningful experiences. Below I’ve included a more in-depth overview each of these sections.

Brief Evolution of Consumer Demand
From 1900 through the middle of the century most innovation was product-based, focused on price and feature improvements. With the rise of the assembly line and growth of distribution infrastructure, companies were able to produce products with new features (e.g. soap varieties, car colors, etc.) A “build it and they will come mentality” ruled the day.

In 1950 a brand-focused approach to innovation began to take hold. This shift in perspective became more prevalent as companies realized that serving a single market segment with specific needs and desires was a strategy for uccess. In this period the driving force of innovation evolved from product “features” to “benefits”, which can be physical, emotional, identity-focused or social.

More recently, as the branding has evolved to encompass all customer touch points, the focus of innovation has shifted to the creation of experiences. This brings us back to the premise of this book: to succeed in this market, organizations must base their innovations on delivering “meaning” rather than “benefits”.

Definition of Experience and Meaning
At the most basic level experience can be defined as a “sensation of change.” However, from a business and design perspective, “experience” refers to engagements that are created by consistent and coordinated systems of interactions, or “touch points’, that are designed to convey a specific brand characteristics or attributes.

The focus on creation of experiences “reflects a company’s effort to be consistent in its value proposition and its expression in every connection with a consumer.” That said, consistency is not sufficient to make an experience relevant, compelling, and valuable. Experiences must deliver meaning.

The definition of meaning used in this book refers to “connotation, worth, or import”. Here is a personal example: “going to music concerts is meaningful to me because it gives me a sense of beauty.” From this quote you can tell that I appreciate concerts because they inspire me by delivering pleasures to my senses.

Meaning is central to our experience of reality. It is created on a personal- and community-level and serves as the foundation for our understanding and actions. Going back to experiences, they enable companies to “evoke” meaning since they are not able to actually create meaning, which only arises in their customers’ minds.

Fifteen different “meanings” have been identified as being the most universally valued according to the fieldwork carried out by the authors. Here they are in alphabetical order: Accomplishment; Beauty; Creation; Community; Duty; Enlightenment; Freedom; Harmony; Justice; Oneness; Redemption; Security; Truth; Validation; Wonder.

The Starting Point
To deliver meaning, companies need to reverse their development process to start with an understanding of their customers, and what their customers’ find meaningful. The first steps on this path are for an organization to identify their innovation culture, and put together a team to drive change.

A company’s innovation culture ultimately drives its innovation process and rate of change. There are three different types of cultures explored in this book: Structured, Creative, and Dynamic.

Regardless of culture, companies need to leverage interdisciplinary teams to successfully create experiences that are meaningful “because [this] heightens the likelihood that all customer touch points of the experience will be cohesive and consistent.” Here is a list of the core participants that should be involved in innovation initiatives: Brand Management; Sales Management; Marketing Management and Research; Design; Development/Production; Information Technology; Human Resources; Operations; and CEOs. As with any team, a lead decision maker needs to be identified from one of these areas of expertise.

Design Principles and Process
To deliver meaningful experiences, companies need expand the role of design from viewing it as a function that is limited to visual representation and adornments to embracing it conceptually as a process across all disciplines.

The conceptual role design should play to drive the development of meaningful experiences should be driven by seven principles:

1. Design creates corporate value
2. Design is pervasive
3. Design is collaborative
4. Design includes execution
5. Design is a transparent, knowable process
6. Design is iterative
7. Design includes both short-term and long-term goals.

These design principles reflect a philosophy that views design as a process that can be broken down into five distinct phases:

1. Identifying the Opportunity for Meaning
2. Framing the Experience
3. Shaping the Concept
4. Refining the Experience
5. Expressing the Experience

The Process in More Detail
1) Identifying the Opportunity for Meaning: during this phase companies learn about the competitive landscape, market size, important trends and technologies, distribution channels, and customer lifestyles, preferences and needs. Key activities include defining the market and understanding the customer. Various types of primary and secondary research are needed to unearth these insights.

2) Framing the Experience: during this phase companies choose the audience segment on which to focus, identify the experiences they will create, and define the meaning the experience should deliver to customers (e.g. the scope of the experience) including articulating the value form functional, economic, emotional and identity perspectives. Key activities include choosing the experience and creating an experience framework to define the scope of the experience.

3) Shaping the Concept: during this phase companies think through all necessary elements that will enable them to deliver a consistent and meaningful experience and avoid the most common pitfalls, which include errors of omission and conflicts of interest. Key activities include defining the breadth of expression, duration of experience, and intensity of experience.

• From a breadth perspective, companies need to identify which components to leverage (most common components include product, service, brand, channel, promotion, marketing communications, customer support, and alliances)
• Companies then need to think through how these various components will be integrated during the various phases of the experience to deliver meaning: initiation, immersion, conclusion and continuation.
• Next companies need to identify the intensity of the connection a consumer will have with the experience. There are three separate levels of intensity, from weakest to strongest, reflexive, habitual and engagement.

4) Refining the Experience: during this phase companies fine-tune the experience being created by customizing characteristics of interactivity such as user control, adaptability, feedback and communication; and by designing the triggers of the experience including language, symbols, and sensations. Key activities include exploration of interactivity and definition of aesthetic details.

5) Expressing the experience: during this final phase of the design process companies produce and deliver the experience. Unlike the linear processes associated to assembly-line businesses, experience-based companies are in a perpetual state of production and need to maintain the appropriate mindset to support this reality.

Relevant Links
Here are links to the websites and blogs from the authors from this book. I specifically want to highlight Nathan's website because it has a wealth of resources related to interaction and experience design including lists of books, articles, blogs and courses. I have used these resources extensively in developing my personal curriculum.

• Nathan Shedroff’s website and blog
• Steve Diller’s blog (part of Cheskin blog)
• Darrel Rhea's blog (part of Cheskin blog)

Best of 2008: Yanko Design's Top 50 Pick

Since I started my design curriculum I have been following the Yanko design blog. This resource has proven to be a consistent source of fresh and innovative design concepts. Their focus is primarily on industrial design, rather than interaction design. That said, since most of the product ideas they feature are technology-based, the concepts often do address interaction design (though not at the level of depth that I would like them to be explored - but this is my problem not theirs).

Without further ado let me get to the point - today I came across their list of top 50 design concepts from 2008. This post includes all of the coolest products that they've mentioned on their blog throughout the year - ranging from simple bookmarks, curtains and clothing to advanced new portable phones and wearable computing devices. Here is a short list of some of my favorites in no particular order (with links to the original posts):

• E-paper Slap Bracelet
• Pocket Light
• Puffy Bookmarks
  
• Nike Hindsight Glasses
  
• Magnet-Embedded Curtains
• Napkin PCs

[via Yanko Design]