Boxes and Arrows: Stories by Chris Baum

Transitioning from User Experience to Product Management

Jeff Lash, Chris Baum — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 14:52:24 GMT

“Becoming a product manager is a logical move for many UX practitioners, as it requires many of the same skills, traits, and competencies involved in crafting a user experience.”User experience (UX) professionals are increasingly becoming interested in the business aspects of what they do. At their core, the user experience roles focus on understanding user needs and creating useful and easy-to-use products that address those needs.

User experience professionals often get frustrated when their research, designs, and ideas are not given the respect they feel they deserve. There isn’t a UX professional who hasn’t had a bad experience with a stakeholder who, despite their lack of customer interaction or knowledge of needs and workflows, overrules a research-based design on their gut feeling or unfounded opinion.

Increasingly, many UX professionals feel that they have the experience and insight to wield more authority and make a larger impact on the products they help to build. Product management is garnering more interest from interaction designers (IxDs), information architects (IAs), and UX designers looking to increase their influence and ensure user-centered product development.

Becoming a product manager is a logical move for many UX practitioners, as it requires many of the same skills, traits, and competencies involved in crafting a user experience. Additionally, product management is a common role within many organizations, making it easy to transition to a role that already exists. However, IAs and IxDs looking to make this move should examine the trade-offs if they choose this direct path to influence.

What is a product manager?

In the classic sense, a product manager is the president of the product. For the purposes of this discussion, we will define a product as any piece of software, website, web application, intranet, or technical product.

As presidents, product managers hold responsibility for the overall success of the product, including the user experience. For technology products, the user experience is a significant part of the success of the product. Product management (PM), though, also must ensure that all aspects of the product come together, including sale of the product, technology, legal, business model, positioning, branding, and marketing of the product.

To succeed, product managers need to act like leaders, not dictators, with support from cabinet members. Where a president will work with officials responsible for defense, transportation, and agriculture, product managers’ cabinets consist of stakeholders responsible for marketing, technology, finance, and other areas. Rather than by a vote-driven democracy, product managers are held accountable by their users and customers, demonstrated by revenue, profit, usage, and other market-driven metrics.

The variety of tasks and areas involved in product management necessitates that product managers be well versed in the many areas of the business.

Responsibilities of product managers

The base responsibility of product managers is to understand the market and guide the development of a product to serve their market. Because user experience professionals are often already fluent in understanding customer needs and knowledgeable about the markets for which they are designing, they have the potential to make good product managers.

Product managers have several high-level responsibilities:

* Creating a strategy for the product. They focus on the long-term horizon and creating a compelling vision for the product’s future. * Translating that strategy into a product roadmap. With a clear vision and strategy, they lead efforts with stakeholders to identify how they can execute on that strategy. * Composing requirements that support both the business strategy and the needs of the market. The roadmap identifies the major areas, which are then detailed out as specific actionable requirements. * Making sure that the right features get built in the right order and at the right time. They prioritize the features based on customer value and relevance to the market. * Ensuring proper communication with the market. By sending the right messages to the right people in the right way, product managers ensure that customers are aware of the great product they have spent time working on.

At the same time, product managers are responsible for ensuring that the detailed tactical work supports the higher-level strategic thinking. Product managers need to constantly monitor and revisit the strategy and adjust as necessary as customer needs, usage, market conditions, technology, and societal trends change.

Additionally, product managers are usually responsible for:

* Internal communication surrounding the product. Michael Shrivathsan describes the product manager as a “communications hub on product-related matters.” (1) This also includes being the internal face of and cheerleader for the product. Especially in organizations with many products, product managers need to generate interest and excitement within the organization about their vision and roadmap. * External leadership and communication about their product. Many product managers are the primary point of contact for industry analysts and reporters, speak at related conventions and trade shows, operate as the external face of their product, and lead or assist with marketing and sales support efforts. Larger organizations may have dedicated roles or groups devoted to sales support, but even in those companies, product managers will invariably spend part of their time assisting with marketing and supporting the sales staff. * Portfolio management. Most products don’t exist on their own. For example, iPod works with iTunes, Gmail works with Google Calendar, and the whole suite of Microsoft Office works together. Unless you work for a very small company, you will need to work with other product managers on a combined portfolio strategy.

The differences between product management and user experience

While the responsibilities of product managers are broad and strategic, product managers are also held accountable for tactical activities to create a product that embodies that strategy. At this more granular level, there can be some questions about how PM and UX overlap. As Jonathan Korman writes:

When I describe what I do to people who have not encountered the term “interaction design” before, I say first that “I look at users’ needs, figure out what kind of product best addresses them, and create a behavior specification for that product which the development team then uses as requirements to drive their work.” Often people say, “In my organization, we call that a ‘product manager.’” (2)

At first glance, UX roles and product management can seem amazingly similar. However, when you take a closer look, you see that PM and UX differ pointedly in responsibility, focus, and reliance.

Responsibility: Product managers are responsible for the overall success, while UX practitioners are responsible for ensuring that the interface is designed to meet users’ needs and be easy to use. User experience professionals should still be concerned with the overall success, just as sales, marketing, and engineering should be, but are not held accountable for that success.

Focus: While UX professionals focus on the interface and the user experience, product managers watch the interface and user experience, along with overall market feedback, specific marketing plans, competition, technology, profit and loss, and resources available to the product.

Reliance: Information architects, graphic designers, and usability specialists’ main focus on the interface allows them to rely mostly on themselves or others in the same role to accomplish their work. Product managers rely constantly on other people to do the execution of their product strategy. The role requires a delicate blend of vision and strategy, influence, and firm-but-fair decision-making more so than required for most UX roles.

Jonathan Korman offers perhaps the best distinction between product managers and other roles like UX/IA:
Product managers are responsible for what the product should do; other roles are responsible for how the product does that.

Conflict between product management and user experience

The most common conflict between user experience and product management roles comes into play when discussing what the product should do and how it should do that. There are often arguments about who should be responsible for defining the features and functionalities of the product. Product managers feel as though they should be responsible since they manage the product, but user experience professionals feel as though they should be responsible since they spend time researching user needs and interacting directly with customers and users.

Ultimately, since product managers are responsible for the overall success of the product, they are the final arbiters of what the product should do. A good market-focused product manager understands the market context and customer needs and makes appropriate decisions about features and functionality based on first-hand experience and all available research.

User experience professionals often chafe at this idea, feeling as though since they are closer to the customers and users, they should be responsible for requirements gathering and definition. Good product managers are just as close to their customers as user experience professionals, if not more so. Product managers should not be detached from customers, sitting in the office in meetings while user researchers are conducting research.

Good product managers understand the role and importance of user experience specialists. They value their input and use their research and recommendations to create good products. Just like the president takes advice from cabinet members, product managers should use their cabinet members—user experience, marketing, technology—to inform decisions that they need to make.

Transitioning from user experience into product management is more than just getting to call all the shots on the interface design. Product managers have an important but challenging role, responsible for defining a vision and strategy, internal and external product leadership, creating business cases and obtaining funding, sweating the details while keeping their eye on the big picture, and coordinating the various aspects that go into a successful product—marketing, engineering, finance, sales, and, of course, user experience.

Here we’ve outlined the responsibilities of product managers, the distinctions between product management and user experience, and why there is sometimes conflict between the two roles.

In Part 2 of this series, we’ll cover what you can do to prepare yourself to move into product management, including what you’ll do as a product manager that you won’t do as a user experience professional (and vice versa), how you can prepare yourself for being a product manager, and common pitfalls that product managers, from a user experience background, have made when making the transition.

Read Part 2 now.

Endnotes
Seven Traits of Successful Product Managers, by Michael Shrivathsan

Where do product managers fit?, Jonathan Korman

Read Part 2

Want to learn more? Listen to Jeff Parks in conversation with Jeff Lash and Chris Baum in Boxes and Arrows’ FIRST EVER podcast… (but not our last!): Download the MP3

Transitioning from User Experience to Product Management

Jeff Lash, Chris Baum — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 05:44:17 GMT

This is part 2 in our series on product management and user experience. Previous parts in the series include Transitioning from User Experience to Product Management, Part 1

In Part 1, we outlined the responsibilities of product managers, the distinctions between product management (PM) and the user experience (UX) profession, and why there is sometimes conflict between the two roles.

Now, we’ll cover how moving into product management will change your focus, responsibilities, and challenges; what you will gain and lose leaving user experience work; and some ways to prepare yourself for the move.

Before you jump off the PM cliff, you should be aware of how making the leap affects your role.

What you do as a PM that you don’t do as UX professional

As a product manager, your everyday work life will change greatly. You get to take your deep knowledge of the users and use it to permeate the whole product. You were able to do this as a UX professional, but perhaps you didn’t have the official license to interact with as many decision-making groups across the company. Here are some of the ways you can do that in your new responsibilities:

Focus product strategy on customer and end user needs. This is why you make the leap.
Find the place where what user desires meet the business goals. You have been studying the customers and users for a long time; take that knowledge and make it the purpose of the product.

Help ensure user focus throughout entire product, not just the design.
The communications, policies, and pricing should all coalesce into an entire “customer experience.” We often don’t appreciate the importance of these aspects in shaping the user experience, but as a product manager you will be responsible for every aspect of the product that contributes to the overall product experience.

Balance the various forces.
It is important to ensure your product is focused on customer and user needs, but many other forces that need to be considered. Some (but certainly not all!) include: * Sales objectives * Marketing/branding objectives * Technology strategy * Portfolio management * Budget management * Market trends * Competition * Business model effects and revenue considerations (possible cannibalization, affect of changes, leveraging value, etc.)

Doing what is best for the product is a series of constant tradeoffs among internal business objectives, user needs, and market effects. As product manager, you manage tradeoffs to achieve balance where these forces meet.

Evangelize the product.
You must champion of the product both internally (to sales, marketing, executives, and developers) and externally (to customers, users, industry analysts, and the press). It’s not enough to develop a good product; you have to let people know about it and communicate the benefits.

Provide input on strategies for other products within the organization.
If you’re a product manager at a medium or large company, you’ll be in a position to influence other products as well. As you interact with other product managers across the business, you need to consider the company’s overall portfolio of products and how your product fits within it.

Challenges and forces working against you

Your new role in product management may seem all glory and power. And although your title will give you a bit more influence than you may have had otherwise, it’s not all wine and roses. There are some challenging aspects to the role and forces working against you.

As a product manager, you have little to no actual authority.
Guy Kawasaki described a product manager as “someone who has all of the responsibility and none of the power.” [1] Most of the other people working on your product will report into different management. Few, if any, staff will report to you. You must align these disparate resources and guide their work even as they get differing direction from their direct managers.

You will make and be held accountable for decisions, not recommendations.
In fact, you will make a lot of decisions and be held accountable for them. Not everyone will agree with you, of course. If you do your job well, you can justify those decisions, explain your rationale, be transparent, and people won’t be too upset or take it personally. But it’s tough.

Former user experience professionals may find it difficult that the decisions contributing to creating an experience are not necessarily the “best” for the user. Since there are other key factors to consider (e.g., other stakeholders’ needs, business strategy, business model, etc.), there will be times when a product manager has to make a conscious decision that may seem bad for users, but is ultimately the right decision for the product.

You will be at the center of regular disagreements between stakeholders.
Sales wants different functionality; development is pushing back against your timeline; finance needs new back-end functionality; business development wants changes to support partnerships; designers want to change a feature implementation; customers want a new feature a competitor just added; executives want integration with a new company product.

The product manager is right in the middle of these competing forces, and this can be dangerous political ground in some organizations. You need to manage these conflicting ideas and priorities while making progress on your strategy and keeping everyone happy (or at least not too angry).

Successful product managers balance these forces by focusing on the overall vision and strategy, making decisions that best support those higher-level objectives. The more a PM can understand about each stakeholder’s objectives and goals, the easier it is to navigate the various trade-offs you have to make. Sometimes it may mean conceding small points to obtain buy-in from stakeholders. Other times it may mean working to better align objectives across the stakeholder groups.

Management will look to you for information about the product.
The product manager is not just another player on the product development team—you will be the figurehead for the product. Whether things are going well or falling apart, whether you really have control or not, you are accountable.

What you do as a UX professional that you won’t do as product manager

Those making the transition from UX to product management will take on exciting and challenging new responsibilities. At the same time, you may miss some aspects of UX:

Product managers do not get dirty hands.
This is one of the hardest challenges for those used to being involved in pixel-level decisions. Most of the detailed work will be delegated to other people. PMs that spend more than a brief period of time dealing with product decisions at the detail level are not doing their job well. Product managers need to be more strategic than tactical.

Product managers do not have the luxury of shooting for perfection and the theoretical ideal.
The joke is that user experience people always answer a question with “It depends.” As a product manager, it may depend, but that’s irrelevant. It’s not about what theoretically should happen, it’s about what we should do right now in this situation and why.

You will need to get comfortable with the idea of “good enough” and be OK with decisions that may not be ideal for the user but make optimal use of limited resources.

Product managers do not make recommendations about the core areas of the product.
This is the opposite of the point we made above. While UX practitioners make recommendations constantly, product managers make decisions about the strategy, high-level user experience, feature set, marketing plan, pricing, and other aspects of the product. The reason we mention this again is to encourage you to reflect. If you like making recommendations or have difficulty making decisions, you’re probably not cut out to be a product manager.

Product managers are not artists or expert practitioners.
They are not the go-to person for any one aspect of the product. Instead, they need to know a bit about all aspects of the product. They serve as captains or coaches and drive the bus. In this capacity, product managers lead partly by working with those around them to ensure the strategy and vision are reflected in other areas such as marketing strategy, UI design, and copywriting.

It may be difficult to adjust to not being the expert in any one area. Learning how to lead other experts towards a shared goal is a challenge that will serve you for the rest of your career.

Work better with your PM now

If, after learning about the “behind the scenes” of product management, you are interested in making the move, there is one very simple way to get started: work more closely and productively with your product managers now. This is a worthwhile strategy even for those do not have the traits, skills, or desire to be a product manager. Better understanding of the responsibilities and challenges that that other team members face can help you as a UX practitioner adjust the way you work with these other roles and ultimately help you become more valuable, respected, and influential.

As recovering, er, “former” user experience practitioners, we have identified areas where UX practitioners can work better with product managers. These are some of the best ways to feel out a new role and can help you no matter whether you actually make the move.

Lead!
Don’t want for a product manager or other team member to request a specific research activity or design deliverable. In many cases, other team members will welcome your initiative and ideas. At other times, there will be differences in opinion, but action brings those out in the open quickly and focuses the debate on something concrete rather than theory or conjecture.

We do not suggest you be sly or hide things from the product manager, but his or her signoff on every action you take is not necessary. This is one case where it is better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

Ask product managers what their goals are for their product.
Asking about goals is great for two reasons. First, it makes them think about the product goals, which they may have never explicitly considered before. If so, you have an opportunity to be a trusted advisor and help them establish the goals.

Second, if the product manager has established goals, you will have a very clear set of objectives and expectations. If their goals do not make sense, you can get clarification, identify where you are not in alignment, and determine how to make corrections.

Help your PM factor in all aspects of a design and evaluate alternatives.
Don’t just propose designs and wait for a decision. Prepare yourself to discuss the impacts of specific design choices. Present the reasons behind your decisions and how they relate back to the broader vision and objectives. Listen to what the product manager says about the design, and probe for the reasons behind their objections and endorsements.

Make strong recommendations and include the big picture.
By giving counsel supported by evidence and experience, you become a more integral part of the product and will be seen as more than just an ancillary consultant. This will also provide practice on making decisions in the face of conflicting evidence and varying factors, which can be useful if you decide to move into product management.

Show your grasp of the big picture in your work, and you will be a more important member of the team and show your potential for greater responsibilities, no matter what direction you decide to take.

Help product managers get out of the office!
Product managers should not need coaxing to meet with customers and users in person, but many do. You can help by asking them when they last met with a customer, bringing them along on formal or informal research, or telling stories about valuable meetings with customers. Invite them along next time, and if they say no, keep asking.

If product managers are going to meet customers on their own, ask to go with them. In addition to learning about customer needs, these are great opportunities to spend time with your product manager and learn more about his perspective, interests, and goals.

If you really cannot get product managers out of the office, bring users and customers in. At that point, there’s absolutely no excuse for product managers (or anyone on the product development team) to not be interacting regularly with customers!

Studying and preparing for your PM role

So, you want to be a product manager? Not sure where to start? In addition to focusing on the ideas described above, you can start adding to your knowledge of product management to get a feel for what you’ll need to focus on as you start to make the move.

Think about the steps you took when you started in user experience. Books, blogs, conferences, discussion groups, organizations, and mentors all probably played an important role. The same opportunities are available if you’re interested in product management.

A great introduction to product management is through training and conferences. Apologies for the shameless plug, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention our pre-conference session at the 2007 IA Summit: So, You Want to Be a Product Manager. This half-day workshop will focus on how to make the transition from user experience to product management, including how to most effectively leverage your current skills and how to avoid potential pitfalls.

Other training classes related to product management are offered by many organizations, including: * Pragmatic Marketing * 280 Group * Blackblot * ZigZag Marketing * Silicon Valley Product Group

Plenty of great blogs discuss product management. You might start with these select: * Roger Cauvin’s blog * Pragmatic Marketing’s blog * SVPG Blog * The Product Management View * Tyner Blain * Michael on Product Management & Marketing * How To Be A Good Product Manager (by co-author Jeff Lash)

While there are not as many books written on product management as user experience, these staples can anchor any product manager’s library: * Winning at New Products: Accelerating the Process from Idea to Launch, by Robert Cooper * Software Product Management Essentials, by Alissa Dver * The Product Manager’s Handbook, by Linda Gorchels

Additionally, aspiring product managers would be wise to read up on general management responsibilities such as leadership, management, marketing, finance, technology, and strategy.

There are two major organizations for product managers: PDMA (Product Development and Management Association) and AIPMM (Association of International Product Marketing and Product Management). Both offer training, conferences, local groups, and other product management resources.

Also, use your professional network—maybe with the help of a service like LinkedIn—to find product managers with whom you can set up informational interviews or discuss product management questions. Product managers within your company may be able to mentor you, and product managers from other organizations can give you a different and potentially more honest perspective.

As you learn more about product management and think about making a move, talk with your own manager. Most good managers will be glad to help someone grow personally and professionally, even if it means helping them move to another position within the organization.

So, DO you want to be a product manager?

We have tried here to provide some insights gleaned from making the move to product management ourselves. Choosing such a path can leverage your understanding of how people use products and give you an opportunity to suffuse that insight through all aspects of a product and experience.

If after reading these articles you’ve decided that product management is not for you, that’s great-there are still plenty of other ways you can take your career, including everything from being a manager to starting your own company, continuing to practice design or beyond.

No matter what you choose, we hope that you have learned something from our experiences. Best of luck!

Want to learn more? Listen to Jeff Parks in conversation with Jeff Lash and Chris Baum in Boxes and Arrows’ FIRST EVER podcast… (but not our last!): Download the MP3

References

[1] seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002033872_codenames13.html

Interactions 08 in the Garden of Good and Evil

Chris Baum — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 05:50:01 GMT

In 2003, design luminary Bruce Tognazzi called for interaction designers to get their collective act together and become a force for better software design. As a result, a small group of impassioned professionals kick-started what is now the “Interaction Design Association”:http://ixda.org/index.php (IxDA).

After being hard at work starting the organization and getting local groups off the ground to seed its growth, the IxDA is now inviting people interested in interaction design to join the community in person at Interaction 08, the first IxDA conference.

Boxes and Arrows supports all UX communities of practice, so we like to see new endeavors like the IxDA that provide places to have focused discussions that don’t exist. B&A is thrilled to be a media sponsor of Interaction 08, so we will be bringing you some stories about the conference and the speakers before it happens February 8-10, 2008.

The first is this interview with Dan Saffer, Conference Chair and IxDA Director. Dan discusses the context of the organization, how the conference emerged and formed, what the conference will be like, and how one might get a flavor even if attendance is not an option.

Boxes & Arrows: In the “User Experience as Communities of Practice” presentation, Andrew Hinton discusses how the different practices in UX relate and overlap with each other.

The IxDA is a good example of an organization that emerges because one of those communities feels under-supported, also exemplified by the IA Institute, which at first glance would potentially fall under the aegis of UPA, CHI, or AIGA. Tell us a little about how that fits with what you’re doing at the IxDA.

Dan Saffer: The IxDA is definitely the AK47 of the UX world! Inexpensive, networked, and built of mostly off-the-shelf parts. It’s designed for conversation, not for instruction, and it is constantly evolving. That’s why we want to keep the barrier to entry and participate low, even if it means some risks to the organization (like running out of money).

When Bruce “Tog” Tognazzi first did his call to arms to create a professional organization, I think the founders of the IxDA (at that time the Interaction Design Group) did look around at all these large organizations and ask, “Could we live there?” And the answer was always, on closer look, no. Most of those organizations overlap our organization in some ways, but there is still a monstrous piece in the center of the Venn diagram that was empty and that was where our interests lie.

We aren’t human-computer engineers, usability professionals, information architects, or industrial or graphic designers, even though we have a lot in common with all of those groups. We’re professional designers, not engineers or researchers or testers, and what we design is behavior—how systems behave in response to human action. The combination of interaction and design really set us apart from what existed.

And aside from that, we simply wanted a different kind of organization, a 21st century organization, designed and built differently, focused on the members and how to best serve them and not some self-perpetuating organization. The conference isn’t being done just because some people wanted to do it, but because it is a vessel to serve the needs of our members in the best way we know how.

B&A: What made you consider creating a separate conference rather than doing presentations or tracks at existing ones?

DS: It’s really for the same reason there is an IxDA at all: We feel there are issues and experiences and techniques that are unique to the field of interaction design. The conference is just an excuse to get a large group of people from around the world in rooms together to talk about those things and create a community of practice.

The mailing list and our online tools do this already to an extent, but we know the face-to-face contact is important, the personal network is still important. For any organization. That’s why we have local chapters in cities around the world—from San Francisco to Hong Kong to Stockholm to Pune, India.

For years, interaction designers have spoken at various conferences: CHI, the IA Summit, IDSA, AIGA, DUX, DIS, and numerous web design conferences, just to name a handful.

I’ve always had to wade through the taxonomy and tagging sessions at the IA Summit to get to the interaction design material, and CHI and DIS and other conferences were always far too academic for my taste; they were all about academics presenting research papers that had little to do with professional practice.

We did briefly consider combining with another conference, but we knew we had so much material and interest that it simply didn’t seem feasible. Part of the reason we’re doing the conference is to really cement and spread the word about interaction design as a separate discipline.

B&A: In an ideal world, what would a relative neophyte experience there? A long-time expert?

DS: Hopefully both will experience the same thing: a fun, well-designed conference that features some of the world’s best interaction designers. It’s a chance to rub elbows with luminaries like Alan Cooper who literally wrote the book on interaction design, as well as up-and-comers like frog’s Michele Tepper talking about interaction design across platforms. We’ve set up the conference to have a lot of great content—and insane amount of content, really, in just two days—but also to have activities and social time to hang out and talk to other designers.

For newcomers to the field, it’s a chance to experience the breadth of what interaction design has to offer the world. We have Carl DiSalvo talking about interaction design for community empowerment, Gabriel White on everyday design ethics, and Yasser Rasid talking about visualizing radio for the BBC.

For experts, it can be learning new tricks like Dan Brown’s Concept Models or how Jenny Lam “hits it with the pretty stick.” Or you can get deep and conceptual with Sarah Allen’s Cinematic Interaction Design or Dave Cronin’s Designing for Flow.

But it’s definitely not all theory; we have a lot of great practical sessions like Jonathan Arnowitz on effective prototyping and case studies like Saskia Idzerda on redesigning Sony Ericsson’s Product Catalog. And if you want more hands-on, we’ve got four great workshops on the Friday before on prototyping, designing in an Agile environment, turning research into design, and effect mapping.

B&A: How did you pick Savannah? It’s an interesting place to consider visting as a tourist, but we would guess that it wouldn’t occur to most people to got there for a conference.

DS: We knew we wanted to do it early in the year in a small city—both for budgetary reasons. We looked at several different cities like Portland, Austin, and Providence alongside Savannah. The people at Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD) were so accommodating and excited about having us there that the answer was clear. They are showing us some real Southern hospitality.

Plus, Savannah is a great city; one of America’s little gems. It’s beautiful, filled with history, fun, and very walkable. I’m personally a big fan of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which captures the spirit of the city so well.

B&A: What has it been like creating the conference? What has surprised you as particularly difficult or easy?

DS: It’s taken a while to get the conference off the ground—over a year now. Some of it was simply generating the willpower to do it, but once we committed and found a location, it’s been all-go. Of course, the logistics of setting up a conference for the first time is a challenge.

Choosing and balancing a program was also very difficult. We got 80 entries in our call for submissions, which we had to whittle down to 20 lightning sessions.

Any one of them could have gone on the program, so getting it down to 20 was agonizing. We initially set the sessions at 14, but we couldn’t bear to exclude so many so we squeezed in six more. Even then, some excellent sessions and interesting topics had to be excluded. It was an awful lesson in design constraints.

What has been great is the support SCAD is giving to us. We’re excited about the launch they are giving this conference. Having the students and faculty of SCAD participate in the conference is going to be a real added bonus.

Another good surprise is the enthusiasm people have for the conference. People always want to talk to me about it and are psyched at the program. I’m thrilled at the caliber of speakers we were able to get our first time out of the gate.

B&A: The IxDA is doing some interesting things to show what it means to be an IxDA member. Tell us a little about those and how these things might affect people that want to, but cannot, attend the conference.

DS: We’ve been working on a number of initiatives for our members, while keeping our commitment to keeping membership free and open to all. Not only do we have the IxDA Mailing List, which has some 4000 members, we’ve also recently created the next generation of the IxDA website, so you can follow threads and topics in various ways, such as via RSS.

We’ve also stepped up our efforts at getting local IxDA chapters off the ground. We now have groups that meet regularly in cities around the world. We have groups in cities all across the US, Europe, India, and parts of Asia.

Conference-wise, we’re hoping to share, via Boxes and Arrows and other media partners, some of the content we’re going to have at the conference available via articles, reviews, slides, and podcasts of the speakers. It won’t be like being there, but it’ll be the next best thing.

B&A: Thanks for all the great information, Dan. We’ll look forward to seeing you at the conference!

DS: Thank you. See you in Savannah!

For more information, visit the “IxDA”:http://ixda.org/index.php or Interaction 08.

What Is Your Mental Model?

Chris Baum — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 09:16:10 GMT

Rosenfeld Media has just released Indi Young's Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy With Human Behavior. Boxes and Arrows sits down with Indi to talk about: * The origins and evolution of the mental model * How the mental model is a way of visualizing nearly any research data * What shortcuts you can use to get started on a mental model with minimal time investment * Why "combing" an interview is like riding a bicycle * How Webvan failed because it ignore the mental model of its customers If you're unfamiliar with Indi's mental model diagrams, download the excerpt(.pdf), check out the "book's description":http://www.rosenfeldmedia.com/books/mental-models/info/description/ for more information on the method, or visit "this Flickr set":http://flickr.com/photos/rosenfeldmedia/sets/72157603511616271/ for images from the book.
Discount for Boxes and Arrows readers: Get a 10% discount by purchasing the book "directly from Rosenfeld Media":http://www.rosenfeldmedia.com/books/mental-models/. Just use the code BARMMM10.

Mental Models: Origins & Evolution

Boxes & Arrows: Our readers would benefit from the story behind the Mental Model. Can you tell us how you created it? On a project at Visa back in '93 or '94, I was the interaction designer on a team of consultants including developers, business people, and analysts. The business analysts didn't have their work together, so I started working on the customer service rep workflow table in MS Excel, a kind of state diagram from "Computer Science":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_diagram. At the same time, a Stanford professor did a presentation on the layers of user experience at "BayCHI":http://www.baychi.org/. One of those layers was a "task" layer, very much like the state diagram. At first I only documented the the behaviors; I didn't let any of the emotions or philosophy get into it at all. For one client, I presented the state diagram by lining up the internal workflow underneath their customers' workflow, the flip of the mental model. Kevin George was there and immediately encouraged me to pursue this method as it was a very powerful way to explain these relationships to a customer.
B&A: It's interesting how this really arose from trying to allow communication between stakeholders. How has the mental model changed since then? I did some projects at Charles Schwab, and started using the long horizon diagram. In doing that format, I started realizing that I was trying to capture motivations that influence behavior as well as the behavior itself. I was never interested in the granularity about how you actually use an application that the usability people were seeking. I wanted to know understand what you're thinking about.

Figure 1: A mental model diagram (click to enlarge)

"Todd Wilkens":http://adaptivepath.com/aboutus/toddw.php mentioned a year or two ago that I am looking for behavior, and I realized that they weren't tasks. He was absolutely right. These days I'm trying to call it behavior, motivation, philosophy, and emotion but stay away from statement of fact, references to things, preference, and the actual use of the tool. I want to know what people think as they walk down the hallway to go do something. I call this the hallway test. Customers are just thinking about their reactions to the tool. They are not trying to squeeze water out of a water bottle, they are trying to quench their thirst. Of course you want to listen to them, but at the same time you want to interpret. They aren't going to approach you and say, "I'm trying to quench my thirst, make it quench faster." When you try to do it at the level of the tool, you're blinkered by what that tool does already. I'm interested in the mind process - what you are you trying to get done.
B&A: This doesn't acknowledge the base influences that are going to make that successful or not. As a business, you have an objective you're going for and need to balance it with the customer's objective, not their preference. Even business decisions are many times colored by preference. I like to talk about how CEOs and founders for startups have the original mission statement at heart. "I do this because my son is having trouble in school, because the school system doesn't work." They sometimes lose sight of all the details. They start off down the path with one certain solution, they're solving the problems associated with that solution and losing track of the mission. What if it's the wrong path? What if they branched left when they should have branched right? They start losing the ability to go back and explore other branches or go back to the root and start in another direction because they have so much investment in it.
B&A: Interesting. What you're doing is taking a mission statement and giving it a skeleton to grown on, to iterate a strategy. The mental model includes the details of what both the business and the customers are trying to do. Is that right? Yes, the diagram looks like a skeleton or a spine if you turn it on its side. That's the whole idea! It's something that's going to last for a very long time, and you can hang all of your decisions off of it. It's something that you want to go back to on a regular basis when you want to start a new path or shake things up. The diagram also helps you show others how you've prioritized your current focus and how their item fell into the quadrant of things that you'll do later.

Comparing Methods

B&A: How do mental models compare with different research methods? Many different methods allow you to collect data, but I have not found others that let you represent the data effectively. The mental model diagram can visualize ANY research data as long as it's data about why customers do things. For example, diaries can feed into mental models. You can process them the same way you process a transcript. You won't be able to drill down into the "why" further, as you have no control how deep people go. Ethnography (field studies) can also get built into a mental model. Once you've followed people to their offices, you have third-person notes (she did this, he did that) rather than transcripts. Just translate it to "I" and make a mental model. At "Adaptive Path":http://adaptivepath.com/, when we were asked to do usability, we'd run an interview either the first part of the last half of the test. Then, we would add the interview data to the mental model as well. Just get this information somehow. What is going on in their head before they use the product? Why are they using the product? How are they using the product isn't that important. Ignore the product.
B&A: So you just do some research and dissemble it into the mental model. They aren't mutually exclusive. That's why I have all these shortcuts and why anyone can create a mental model. It's just a representation of a process, and the purity of that representation is dependent on how much time you put into it. That purity arises from how much you can disengage yourself from your own world and tools. Look at the user from their perspective.

Creating a Mental Model

B&A: Ok, let's shift gears a bit. You go do your interviews. Can you talk about extracting the behaviors, what you call "combing" the script? You were saying that sometimes it's difficult. It is hard to do a mental model, until you get it. As I mentioned, this is not just tasks. It's behavior, motivation, and philosophy. You have to think about how to distinguish preference from philosophy and statements of fact from actual behaviors. Here's an example: When interviewing a manager who oversees fleets of vehicles, she might say: "I believe in not overloading my employees with work." "I'm gonna assign 3-4 jobs per day." "We send out 300 vans a day." These words come to me as 3 things: * Assign 3-4 jobs per day. This is a true task. * Not overloading the drivers. This is a philosophy that guides how the jobs are assigned. * Send out 300 vans a day. That is just a statement of fact that I will not include in the mental model. Sending 300 vans out sounds like a task. It has a verb, but it's not a task. You aren't doing it, the organization is. They can talk about the process of how they decide where to send the drivers, prioritize things, or deal with emergencies. All of that is behavior. It can be difficult for designers to sort between those at first. You also want to leave preferences out of the diagram. They actually began with the verb "prefer." "I prefer to come into work early." In his next statement if a driver told you his philosophy behind coming into work early "because..." That is what you want. If you picked that up during the interview, you could have explored it a little bit. There may or may not be a reason. Maybe he's just a morning person. Philosophies are important to get into the mental model because your business is going to want to be aware of and support those kinds of things.
B&A: There's a subtlety there. Both statements sound like descriptions of why they do something. One has a reason, the other is just what they like or don't like. Not only is it difficult when you're trying to comb tasks out of a transcript, but it's also something that poses difficulties when you're writing the interview. Before you try running an interview, you have be somewhat aware of what the tasks are going to be. A great way to do that is to practice combing a transcript. Be careful that you don't ask leading questions using do, did, would, or could. Rather, start with who, what, where, when, and how. If you do this, you're generally scott free. And always remember to follow up by asking why, like a 4-year-old. It may be annoying, but that's kind of what you're trying to do. Even with all of my experience doing this, I still find myself not going deep enough. One blatant example: one woman told me that she holds meetings with her team every week. In my head, I made this instant assumption of what those meetings were about, because i've been to weekly meetings with a team leader. When I was combing it, I thought, "Why is she holding those weekly meetings? Is she trying to...?" The assumption I made was that she was trying to find out status on everybody's project. In the end, I had no idea why she was holding those meetings. A lot of these interviews that I do are a little more psychoanalytical, because it is not conscious why were doing some of these things. Maybe the woman holding the meeting has never had to enunciate why she's doing it. I ask her to do that during the interview.
B&A: In the "Women in IA podcast":http://iavoice.typepad.com/ia_voice/2007/04/women_in_ia_ind.html, you mentioned that you don't find it difficult to get people do to mental models. I have to press on that fact. It's not a very simple, easy process. Well, let me go back to the shortcuts. You and i could sit here in Starbucks (where we met for the interview - Ed.) and sketch out what the baristas do. If we watched them greet the regulars and non-regulars, we could sketch out their tasks and mental processes. There is a real strong mental model right there. We could note what we see, but we're going to miss things. For example, we won't capture what they do in before opening the doors in the morning. You don't necessarily have to do it the hard way - going out, doing the interviews, and combing the transcripts for tasks. However, that's the most agnostic and data-driven way to do it, and by going through the extra effort is how you're going to make discoveries of things that aren't already in your head. I list a couple options in the book. For example, you really believe in this, but your employer doesn't. Well, I've heard people interviewing people and combing the interviews and creating a mental model in their spare time. Then they unveil it in some team meeting to kisses and hugs.
B&A: It just sounds like that will be a little more focused on the tools that exist rather than the philosophies around them. That's the problem. All of these shortcuts have the same troubles. I actually ran a lot of the "stakeholders around the table" discussions back in the dot com era because every wanted to spend the time to doing it. I even did this for Webvan, but I could not get them to pay attention to it. For example, their interface was about picking delivery windows, which made the customer pick the end of the transaction up front so the company could maximize the efficiency of the trucks going out. It just wasn't working. Customers didn't like picking the delivery window first. It wasn't in their mental model. "I want to tell you what I want, because that's what I know now. Then we can discuss how you bring it to me." Every single one of the Webvan mental models was missing the mental spaces that would have gotten them ahead of their competition or help them understand their customer base. So the "sitting around the table" method is a little dangerous, as it might mislead you to believe you've got it all.
B&A: Luckily for those of us still standing, we can try to avoid those mistakes. Mental models seem like fantastic tools. Thanks so much for taking the time, and good luck with the book! I enjoyed it, too. Take care!

Excerpt

If you liked this interview, download the excerpt. (.pdf)

Boxes and Arrows readers can get a 10% discount by purchasing the book "directly from Rosenfeld Media":http://www.rosenfeldmedia.com/books/mental-models/. Just use the code BARMMM10.

About the Book "Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy With Human Behavior":http://www.rosenfeldmedia.com/books/mental-models/ by Indi Young Paperback, 299 pages Publisher: Rosenfeld Media (2008) ISBN-10: 1933820063

IA Summit 2008, Day 3

Chris Baum, Jeff Parks — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 04:06:25 GMT

The IA Summit was held in Miami, FL from April 10-14. Boxes and Arrows captured many of the main conference sessions ("see schedule":http://iasummit.org/2008/sessioncal.html) starting on April 12. "Day 1, April 12":http://boxesandarrows.com/view/ia-summit-2008-day-1 | "Day 2, April 13":http://boxesandarrows.com/view/ia-summit-2008-day-2 | Day 3, April 14 Podcasts will appear on this page as we produce them from the audio files so please check back regularly or subscribe to the iTunes feed below. iTunes Del.icio.us IA Summit theme music created and provided by BumperTunes™
Audiences & artifacts - Nathan Curtis Nathan Curtis explores both the articles we produce and the audience we produce them for, revealing what works and what doesn't. (published 04/25/08)

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Data driven design research personas - Todd Zaki Warfel Todd Zaki Warfel engages his audience sharing new visualization techniques he has been using that have personas even more effective and valuable to the design process. (published 04/25/08)

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Re-experiencing information: dealing with user-submitted data - Lucas Pettinati In this session, Lucas Pettinati, senior interaction designer at Yahoo! draws from his personal experiences in redesigning the Yahoo! registration and account recovery systems. (published 04/27/08)

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Information Horizons: Proposing an alternate approach to assessing website architecture - Anindita Paul, Sanda Erdelez (Kyungsun Park unable to attend) Anindita and Sanda report the use of Sonnenwald's Information Horizon's (IH) framework for assessing a website architecture based on Morville and Rosenfeld's components of website architecture - organization, labeling, navigation and searching information (published 04/30/08)

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Good News on your Cell Phone: Optimizing the UX - Jorgen Dalen and Tone Terum Jorgen Dalen and Tone Terum talk about the challenges involved when transferring content from one media to another; how to create good user experinces in different media within mobile UI; and the diverse user behavior of cellular phones in Europe, the US, and Asia.(published 04/30/08)

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IA for Tiny Stuff: Exploring Widgets and Gadgets - Martin Belam Martin Belam examines what makes a successful widget from an information delivery point of view. As well Martin looks at how informations professionals can help develop more playful ways of representing and structuring the information presented. (published 05/07/08)

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Designing with Patterns in the Real World - Christian Crumlish and Austin Govella Yahoo!s' Christian Crumlish and Comcasts' Austin Govella share case studies that illustrate ways pattern libraries can both aid and stifle innovation, how they help solve real-world web design problems, and how they support rapid production of common IA Deliverables. (published 04/80/08)

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Checking the feel of your UI with an interaction audit - Peter Stahl and Josh Damon Williams Peter Stahl and Josh Damon Williams show how to evaluate consistency of your site's "feel". Using a recent audit of the interaction design of a major web site as an example they discuss how to collect and catalog the variety of interactions users encounter.(published 06/07/08)

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Embodying IA: Incorporating library 2.0 and experience integration concepts in a small public library renovation - Michael Magoolaghan Michael Magoolaghan describes one IA's volunteer efforts to revitalize a small public library's website and bring a user-centered focus to its building renovation efforts through working with blueprints, photos and architectural renderings and others within and outside of the library. (published 06/07/08)

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Thanks to Jeff Parks, Jackie Wu, and Kit Seeborg of the B&A/V Podcast team for working their hearts out, as well as ASIS&T and the IA Summit organizers for their support.
More big thanks to "Mark Blevis":http://www.markblevis.com/ and "Bob Goyetche":http://www.bobgoyetche.com/ for their assistance while at the Summit; taking phone calls and FTP files from Miami to Ottawa and back again, and lessons in Audacity for decreasing the bit rates, stereo sound, etc.

IA Summit 2008, Day 2

Chris Baum, Jeff Parks — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 04:06:29 GMT

The IA Summit was held in Miami, FL from April 10-14. Boxes and Arrows captured many of the main conference sessions ("see schedule":http://iasummit.org/2008/sessioncal.html) starting on April 12. "Day 1, April 12":http://boxesandarrows.com/view/ia-summit-2008-day-1 | Day 2, April 13 | "Day 3, April 14":http://boxesandarrows.com/view/ia-summit-2008-day-3
Podcasts will appear on this page as we produce them from the audio files so please check back regularly or subscribe to the iTunes feed below. iTunes Del.icio.us IA Summit theme music created and provided by BumperTunes™
Search patterns - Peter Morville Peter describes a pattern language for search that explains user psychology and information seeking behavior, highlights emerging technologies and interaction models, illustrates repeatable solutions to common problems, and positions us all to design better search interfaces and applications. (published 04/25/08)

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The information Architect and the Fighter Pilot - Matthew Milan Matthew argues that fighter pilot and military strategist John Boyd can teach us a great deal about how to understand, interpret and design for human decision making. (published 04/25/08)

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E-service: What we can learn from the customer-service gurus - Eric Reiss In this passionate and entertaining presentation, Eric Reiss talks about the design and execution of a system of activities - people, processes, and technology - that ultimately build brand, revenues, and customer satisfaction. (published 04/25/08)

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Practical Prototyping - Todd Zaki Warfel, Chris Conley, Anders Ramsay, and Jed Wood The panel discuss various methods for prototyping with a focus on why we don't prototype in software as much as we should and why we should be doing it more. (published 04/25/08)

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The Impact of Social Ethics on IA and Interactive Design - Karl Johan Saeth and Ingrid Tofte Karl Johan Saeth, and Ingrid Tofte illustrate four cases showing that interactive design in one way or another is always based on interpretation of ethical rules, expressed or latent. IA and design are bound by cultural imperatives and this, Karl and Ingrid argue, is a fact we cannot ignore. (published 04/28/08)

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What do Innovative Intranets Look Like? - James Robertson James' presentation provides highlights into the winning entries from the 2007 Intranet Innovation Awards and provides "lessons learnt" for organizations looking to drive innovation via their intranet. (published 04/28/08)

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Panel: Presence, identity, and attention in social web architecutre - Christian Crumlish, Christina Wodtke, Andrew Hinton, and Gene Smith In this discussion about presence, identity, and attention in social web architecture the panel talks about core IA related issues including: Structure of social sites, tagging and folksonomies, data models for people and their relationships, and navigating in a community site(published 04/28/08)

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UX in the Wind: Finding Experience on a Motorcycle - Joe Sokohl Keane's director of user experience, Joe Sokohl, brings together his passions for motorcycling and user experience design in this talk about the intersection of industrial and interaction design in motorcycling.(published 04/29/08)

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Placemaking and Information Architecture - Dennis Schleicher Dennis Schieicher explores how we as IAs can learn from placemaking in the physical world and investigates markets and public places around the use of mobile technologies and how they add another layer of communication and sense-making on top of physical public places.(published 05/08/08)

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Code blue: How service design can revolutionize patient care in hospitals - Aaron Martlage In this presentation, Aaron Martlage explores techniques for leveraging the varied skill sets of those in the UX design field to provide service design in a complex environment. Aaron argues that experts must balance the social dynamics between different personas; capture and sift vast amounts of data in an attempt to distill pertinent information; and visualize their findings with precision to ensure that the experience is improved.(published 06/07/08)

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Taxonomy is User Experience - Dave Cooksey It appears that taxonomies are becoming more important to the work we do as metadata and ontologies extend their reach further into user experience. Dave Cooksey demonstrates the virtues of thinking of taxonomy in terms of the user experience, ways of talking about taxonomies that communicate it's value, and how to craft a user-centric taxonomy by examining several e-commerce redesign case studies.(published 06/07/08)

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Hotel Yeoville - Jason Hobbs In this presentation entitled, "Hotel Yeoville" South Africa's Jason Hobbs talks about how ethnographic research methods and an empathetic approach to users can form the basis for information architecture solutions that attempt to directly address and improve the lives of people in developing countries.(published 06/07/08)

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Extending the gaming experience to conventional UI’s - John Ferrara The video game industry produces an enormous volume of highly innovative user interface experiences, but this rich source of creative thinking is largely unseen by communities dedicated to conventional software or Web design. Vanguards' John Ferrara argues that as gaming becomes a ubiquitous activity among a vast worldwide customer base, its direction and conventions will become not merely relevant to HCI design, but indeed impossible to ignore.(published 06/08/08)

IA Summit 2008, Day 1

Chris Baum, Jeff Parks — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 04:06:32 GMT

The IA Summit was held in Miami, FL from April 10-14. Boxes and Arrows captured many of the main conference sessions ("see schedule":http://iasummit.org/2008/sessioncal.html) starting on April 12. Day 1, April 12 | "Day 2, April 13":http://boxesandarrows.com/view/ia-summit-2008-day-2 | "Day 3, April 14":http://boxesandarrows.com/view/ia-summit-2008-day-3 Podcasts will appear on this page as we produce them from the audio files so please check back regularly or subscribe to the iTunes feed below. iTunes Del.icio.us IA Summit theme music created and provided by BumperTunes™

Journey to the Center of Design - Jared Spool There’s a growing sentiment that spending limited resources on user research takes away from essential design activities. Is it time for user- centered design to evolve into something else? Or is there something else happening in our world of experience design that makes UCD obsolete? Jared Spool gives and entertaining and enlightening key note address at the 2008 IA Summit.(published 05/01/08)(published 04/25/08)

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Tagging: Five Emerging Trends - Gene Smith Tagging has been the subject of much discussion over the last several years. But recent trends show that tagging is evolving quickly, and that today’s conventional wisdom might not be accurate for long. nForms’ Gene Smith explores five counterintuitive tagging trends that provide a glimpse into the next generation of user-generated classification.(published 05/01/08)

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The Business of Experience: The Experience Impact Framework - Jess McMullin nForm's Jess McMullin outlines three dimensions of The Experience Impact Framework including: the elements of business, the fundamentals of user experience practice and the kinds of impact we can have.(published 05/02/08)

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The Long Wow - Brandon Schauer Brandon Schauer lays out an experience centric approach to fostering and creating loyalty by systematically impressing your customers again and again.(published 05/05/08)

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Content Page Design Best Practices - Luke Wroblewski Luke Wroblewski discusses a set of best practices for Web content page design that focuses on appropriate presentation of content, context, and calls to action. (published 05/05/08)

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Blind Ambition: How the Accessibility Movement Overlooks Sensory Experiences - Claude Steinberg In this presentation Claude Steinberg argues that you'll have a better grasp of user experience when you can translate it into something even a blind person would recognize. (published 05/05/08)

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Inspiration from the Edge: New Patterns for Interaction Design - Stephen Anderson To increase our own field of vision, Stephen Anderson takes a macro view of interface design, focusing on alternative UIs - and emphasizing patterns that can be leveraged in a business context.(published 05/05/08)

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How to be a User Experience Team of One - Leah Buley Leah teaches techniques that any individual can use to generate and refine ideas, outlining flexible, simple activities that can be used quickly, wherever they're needed.(published 05/06/08)

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A management fable: The little UX that went a long way - Dan Willis UX Management often feels like a mystic art. It can entail moving people and processes within an organization without the enchantment of an official mandate. This presentation by Dan Willis deconstructs an illustrated fable about an intrepid creature who introduces user goals to a development process that would have otherwise been dominated by royal business owners and technological black magic. (published 06/07/08)