Siri may be the thing to really watch, however. While the simplicity of pulling up a contact and making a call on iPhone was a revelation a few years ago, the total effortlessness of asking Siri to call a contact is completely revolutionary. If tasks like moving objects around on screen can be done without even touching a UI, my agonizing about drag handles will be just plain irrelevant.  It’s related to the search boxes that have appeared in iOS: I don’t have to think about where to find a program of file if I can just type it’s name in the search at the top right; I don’t have to remember where the menu item is if I can just type it into the search box under Help. The importance of those little thoughtless moments can’t be underestimated.

I’m going to predict that when people look back from 2020, they’ll say the real revolution was ditching GUIs and letting the devices figure it out for us. On the other hand, tablets will just seem like a different shape of computer.

I’ve been starting to doubt it for a couple of months. It’s such a mainstay of innovation thinking, but I’m starting to seriously question it for the following reasons.

It is often couched as ‘follow your dreams, just make sure you don’t spend too long on it if it’s a bad idea’ which actually sounds irresponsible to me. I don’t think people should run with any random project, idea or pipedream. Use consumer research to find unmet needs or brainstorm 100s of ideas and filter them down by potential and desirability.

If you look at the case studies in Lean Startup (I’m a fan) and the notion of pivoting, they didn’t just fail and move on, they kept working on their product. Instead of seeing setbacks as failing they pivoted their product concept at the appropriate level, based on what they learn through experiments and iterations.

Nobody wants to admit failure, especially not at work. It might sound good when you think of it for other people but when are you personally OK about saying you’re a failure and that you failed? We can be more honest about what we’ve truly succeeded at, but I’m really skeptical about anyone ever getting comfortable with calling themselves a failure.

Incentivizing failure is a bad idea! I’ve yet to hear an effective way to incentivize the ‘fail forward’ approach.

The only time in the innovation work I’ve been doing at Gannett when we do something akin to failing forward is during early concept testing, a small moment in the overall process when we want to sift through many ideas quickly and learn from the ones we’re shelving.

Recently I heard someone say ‘having innovation in your job title dooms you to failure, because people’s expectations will always be unrealistically high’. I feel similarly about this: Anyone who tries to convince their organization that they need to ‘fail forward’ is doomed in their efforts for the above reasons.  I think we’re better off skipping this one and focusing on better ideas for growing a culture of innovation.

The most readily apparent is the moment when your dearly held preconceptions about the product are dashed during user testing. It’s hard to let go of ideas you are personally in love with, but when the overwhelming evidence from user testimony is that the idea won’t work, you have to let it go.

Self-discovery also comes in a subtler form through putting your concept into the world and learning that the way you actually conceived of it and framed it was lacking. When we put a language translation prototype into a realistic situation, factors such as eye contact, social graces and nonverbal cues turned out to be major considerations – and less so the product interface that had been obsessively crafted. We also found that the conversational moments that most needed translating weren’t ones that the device was really capable of providing effectively. Revelations such as these are exactly what you’re looking for in user testing, and don’t just change the prototype but also your mental model of the concept and how you need to define it.

Consider this though: While the checklist helps you get through the activity/list/whatever with economy, how does it keep alive the important nuances of each step? Even the most carefully worded checklist item will have difficulty capturing a handful of considerations in a few words. This is where rituals have potential to do better.

A while ago, we visited Arlington National Cemetery with friends and watched the changing of the guard there. The closest I’ve got to the military is playing Call of Duty on a games console, so bear with my description here. What fascinated me about the guard-changing was that this ceremonial ritual was deeply practical. The guards didn’t just bow, salute and switch places, but in fact each movement was a carefully considered motion that they would need to do in real guard post situations. The pacing, facing and standing were optimised versions of watching and staying alert in a space. The inspection of the arriving guard’s gun was a comprehensive check that the gun was properly set up and working. Anyone who knew this guard-changing ritual was equipped with all the best actions to perform the role, with detailed nuances about how to perform each part.

So how about turning checklist moments into rituals? We have a set routine – fully checklisted – for running a brainstorm. But what if it were a ritual, encompassing not only the steps to prepare and run the activity but also to shape the moderators behaviour and interactions with the brainstormers.

Admittedly a ritual requires a time investment for learning that doesn’t exist for a checklist – someone has to teach you the ritual and show you the unique nuances that are embedded in the ritual. This may not be a bad thing if you think about the interpersonal value of the learning session, the potential for the ritual to become handed-down from one person to another, and the scope for individuals to add their own personal touches.

Finally, and what may be most interesting of all, is that unlike the checklist, the ritual offers the chance to bring art and culture to something simple and formulaic. Guard duty as a checklist may simply be defined as series of walk-stand-look commands, but guard duty as a ritual is a sophisticated, nuanced performance that transcends the basic requirements.

We quickly noticed that the type of experience characterized by hierarchical menus and tapping through trees of information felt mentally laborious and aesthetically tedious. Looking at apps like Flipboard we found the flow of swiping from one feature to the next to be mentally undemanding and important for not breaking you out of the browsing and reading immersion. So a core principal of the experience became about building effortless flow from one item to the next. We approached this through making the swipe gesture the primary interaction: one item swipes to the next, lists are a swipe-through experience, and even supplementary information is a swipe-in from off-screen. Each moment that you’re not tapping and decision-making feels like an easy, onward flow.

The obvious thing would be to have a page-turn animation for when you move between content or a web-like live build of content on the screen. However, we steered clear of both because the live build was far less polished than an iPad app seemed to deserve and the page-turning seemed overdone and uninspired in a lot of magazines transitioning from offline to iPad. Instead we saw an opportunity to add delight through movement. Building on Apple’s toolbox of transitions and animations, we wanted elements to glide into and out of position in synchronicity. With the ultra-simplified content layout (no web-style headers, footers, menus) there were typically two or three major content sets on the page that could flow onto the page with a lightly orchestrated rhythm, or visual ballet.

We went through a number of prototypes to understand what this experience should look like, a few of which were before the iPad launched. As always, these started out as pencil-and-paper sketches, but as the importance of transitions, animations and flow became apparent we need a tool to bring flat layouts to life. Surprisingly, the tool that helped most for prototyping was Keynote. As a quick way to put a visual flow concept together it was surprisingly effective – using the built in flows and transitions an animated experience concept could be flesh out in just a couple of hours.

Inevitably the app may not quite reach the ideal of the concept, but so far it’s looking to live up to a lot of what I’ve outlined here, despite the brutal limitations of the iPad’s memory and processing power.

The flip side is that it highlights the sorry state of web browsing. Just the other day I was explaining the design direction of an iPad app that we are building and without thinking too much said ‘we are clearing out all the junk that you can get away with on a web page’. On reflection that’s a pretty sad and revealing statement. iPad and iPhone have done an incredible job of not only reducing the junk from webpages but also raising the expectation of users and developers about what’s  acceptable.

Apple have lead by example for sure, but there’s also an affordance of the platform (affordance is jargon for the type of interaction you perceive when you interact with something – for example a door handle affords pulling and turning, not pushing).  Compare web browsers to other applications that you’ve been delighted by and you’ll quickly notice shortcomings of web browsers that provide little affordance for good experience design.

URLs, bookmarks and a history list. Is that really as good as it gets for finding web pages?! At least the search engines make up for it with intelligent search results.

The haphazard and messy build up of a web page before your eyes. There’s no reason the browser can’t mitigate this awful aspect of every page experience.

The ‘browser’ application concept in itself brings assumptions about your ‘view’ onto the web. I’m not ‘browsing’ when I’m using a web app like Google docs or Facebook, or playing a flash game. This is where the iPhone notion of Apps has been triumphing, by moving in from the notion of a ‘browser’ view of everything.

With apologies to my fellow experience designers, many of them do a horrible job on navigation design, page layout and judgements on content to present. It’s not always their fault, but either way there is a good argument for browsers to take some of this work out of their hands using consistent, effective design patterns. For example those site maps everyone has at the footer of the page now.

Come on web browsers, let’s see you evolve out of your old fashioned ways.

The Windows/Mac/Xerox PARK graphical user interface with a mouse cursor and windows is over.  It will probably hang around in nooks and crannies of big corporations, like green screen text displays do, but the new paradigm for the personal computer user interface is here: the iPad.  This is the conjunction of two things.  First, we’re on a rebound from the over-complicated, super-cluttered, needlessly-confusing user experience that Microsoft has so roundly delivered on the Windows PC.  Apple has rode that wave to a degree with Mac OS, but the iPhone/iPad OS is the truly effective response to that.  The second is the arrival of a new, more intuitive physical control in the mainstream: touch and twist. Nintendo may be able to claim first move on that one with the Wii, but Apple are the ones who really brought it to the computing realm with the iPhone.

So here it is. Start designing for the iPad. Start thinking iPad design for other channels: web, legacy operating systems. If your website/application feels incongruous on an iPad screen, your users are going to consider it outdated and irrelevant.  If your website/application doesn’t work on iPad you’ll be a late-comer to the next generation and playing catch-up for a while.  My advice is – start now.

The signs are already there on the iPhone.

I had a delightful experience on the American Express mobile website just a couple of days ago when I paid a bill. Simple, clean, uncluttered, in fact a better experience than the standard website, and a testament to how Apple has elevated UI design.

Contrast that with a growing number of apps I’ve encountered which are needlessly over-complicated and cluttered. Sorry for naming names, but Gamespot’s app and the app edition of GQ come to mind. There’s a natural urge to cram functionality and content into screens that has been the bane of website and application design for as long as I remember. iPhone was a respite, with it’s tidy controls and limited screen space. Unfortunately those well-intended but poorly considered urges will be constrained much less by the greater screen real estate of the iPad.

I hate to be the bearer of ill tidings, but it’s not going to be all good on the iPad, in fact it will probably be pretty ugly for the most part.

The first rule of thumb is to not make it personal.  Don’t say ‘I want’, and don’t focus on the negative.  Talking about the design in those terms is guaranteed to create ill-will and resentment, if not a blow-up argument.  Is this about creating great work or just pleasing your whims?  Instead talk about constructive, positive changes and the reasons (from research, the project objectives, etc.) they will move the work forward.

Don’t suggest full solutions.  Figure out what’s missing or what problem exists, and give that to the creative to come up with a solution.  It’s OK to suggest some approaches but don’t say ‘you have to do this’ as (a) nobody likes being given diktats, particularly creatives, and (b) they may actually have a better idea than you, particularly if they’re subject matter experts.

Be respectful.  Ideally you have already fostered an atmosphere of trust and respect on your team. If you haven’t you should start working on it now, as giving and receiving feedback happens far more effectively when the people feel trusted to improve on existing solutions, respected in their abilities to do so, and appreciated for the work they put in.

Receiving feedback is also a skill, which is more about fortitude and discipline: criticism of work you’ve done is nearly always a little painful – and you have to develop a thick skin.  It also pays to put aside your ego and not be defensive of decisions and ideas you’ve provided.  As much as it feels in the moment, it’s really not about you and whether you got it right, it’s about the work being the best it can be.  Developing a thick skin and putting away your ego are very tough things to do and even the best creatives aspire to these things rather than achieving them 100% of the time.

Score 7

I’ll still publish to this blog about general digital design stuff, I’ll just have them going in parallel.