I took part in a panel discussion at a local college a while back and witnessed something fascinating. There were five of us on the panel and each of us had about seven minutes to cover our aspect of the topic. The auditorium was equipped with a projector hooked to a laptop and the MC asked for our PPTs so he could load them onto the laptop. One fellow pulled out a mini CD-RW. "Here you go," he said. "Everybody can burn their presentations on this. You won't need to fumble with lots of disks." He was thanked and the CD was passed around.
One panelist had a very flashy little lap..noteb...palm...something. No CD drives, no floppy drives. It was an incredibly fast little machine which could find any wireless network from ground level to the International Space Station and with enough USB ports to pilot the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy through heavy seas. This fellow pulled out a USB drive on a keychain, copied his presentation to it, pointed to those of us passing around the CD and said, "You're obsolete."
The laptop attached to the projector, however, was a Compaq Armada 7200 (266MHz, 256M shared RAM, 4GHD running W98se). It was attached to the projector because it was not being used for anything else, worked perfectly as the "driver" for the projector each and every time, and nobody wanted it (think Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel). The Compaq Armada 7200 had a built-in CD reader (not a burner) and nothing else. No PCMCIA cards, no wireless capabilities, wasn't internet ready, nothing, nada, zip.
Did I mention it didn't have any USB ports? I walked over to the fellow who had offered everyone the use of his CD. "You've been here before," I said. He smiled one of those "Oops. You caught me" smiles and said, "Yeah, but can you guess how many times?"
It ain't obsolete until it's obsolete
Obsolescence and usability share a common heritage; the only time something is obsolete is when it's no longer usable ... by anybody, at anytime, anywhere (remember Clint Eastwood in "Space Cowboys"?). Software upgrades that aren't backward compatible aren't successful. Ven-dors who tell their customers, "Here, use this. Everything you've done before is incompatible with it but don't worry, this is better," don't keep customers very long.
The first law of design is "know thy user"
Mr. CD knew his audience, both technologically and psychologically. He knew what to expect from them so he came prepared for them. His tools may have been obsolete to Mr. USB, but to the people in his audience, he was dead center of the curve. Mr. USB, meanwhile, was from another planet as far as his audience was concerned.
Knowing your audience, knowing what they're prepared to do, what they definitely won't do, where they're willing to go and how they're willing to get there, are crucial to the design of new systems and redesign of old ones.
(Re)design a clear path to the past
Gather information about your audience before you design for them. Companies tend to stay companies by mixing two polar opposites; risk aversion and innovation. Learn how they're doing things now and you'll have a much easier time navigating them to something new later. You'll also need to make sure they can access their historic methods of doing business while you're getting them to use the new interface or design. You win with a two-fold strategy. First, make sure the new design is implemented in small, easily negotiable steps. Two, make sure your suggestions provide a clear path to the past. These two steps meet the requirements of being risk adverse while providing marketable innovation.
Providing a clear path to the past doesn't mean giving the client an easy out. People won't change without a clear incentive. The new interface or design must provide the client with two things. First and most important, make sure client-requested features are easy to use and promi-nent in the new design. Give people what they wanted and they'll come back for more. The second thing is much less important to clients; it's the features the designers and engineers wanted to put in.
Martyrs and Evangelists
Users who refuse to give up the old interface are going to become your strongest allies during design and development. Remember that design and development are mutual processes. Ask intransigent users their opinions first and keep them involved. Make sure they know the new design is just as much their idea as yours. They were going to be martyrs to the old design. Now they'll be demonstrating the new interface for you. Martyrs and evangelists are a company's two polar opposites personified. Work with the one knowledgeably and you'll find yourself working with the other.
Client Knowledgeable Design
Creating a look and feel -- be it a website, marketing material, a software interface, leave-behinds, assorted collateral -- involves making sure people can
- Achieve their goals
- Get their work done
- Do what they want to do
- Communicate their message effectively
You might have the flashiest, pizzazziest interface design in the world but if the client doesn't want it or isn't psychologically ready for it, you're obsolete, not them. There is no mystery to creat-ing winning interface designs. It is a three-step process and it works every time:
1 - Take the time to learn from your client and your client's user community what they want and more importantly, what they're doing now.
2 - Learn as much as you can about yourself, your own likes and dislikes, your preju-dices, what frustrates you and engages you in a design or interface.
3 - Whenever what you've learned in number two gets in the way of fulfilling the requests of number one, stop. You've stopped creating Client Knowledgeable Design. You've started designing for yourself, not the client. Get yourself out of the way and you'll be designing for the client again.
The secret to knowledgeable interface design is simple; save your cutting edge work for the awards show. Your client needs to get a job done. As New Paradigm CEO Don Tapscott says, "Cooler is not better; better is better." And when you get to the point where your best work is getting the client's job done and winning at the awards show? Oh, Young Jedi ...
Joseph Carrabis has been everything from butcher to truckdriver to senior knowledge architect to chief research scientist. His 22 books and 225 articles have ranged among cultural anthropology, mathematics, information mechanics, language acqui-sition, neurolinguistics, psychodynamics and psychosocial modeling -- and other eclectic topics. His knowledge and data designs have been used by Caltech, Citibank, DOD, IBM, NASA, Owens-Corning and Smith-Barney among others. Carrabis is CRO and founder of NextStage Evolution and NextStage Analytics, and founder of KnowledgeNH and NH Business Develop-ment Network. He's inventor and developer of Evolution Technology. Carrabis will be speaking at Chicago AD:TECH in July on Persona Marketing for Multimodal Con-sumers. Come on by and introduce yourself.
