Misdirected Text Messages: Volume 2

For an explanation, and for Volume 1, see the original post from February, 2009. I've found recently that the grammar, punctuation, and capitalization of these messages has been getting better. This may be correlated with the widespread adoption of smartphones with keyboards.

Apr 26, 2009 9:09:56 PM

From: 6174489502@VTEXT.COM

Oh God Im starting not to feel right again and Lisas having health problems again Stop over doing it with your back

Apr 26, 2009 8:12:43 PM

From: 2086807024@VTEXT.COM

FWD: FWD: -Fwd: What's 7 inches long, inside a man's pants, has a big head on it & women love to blow it? Yep, money. Keep this going pervert!! lol

Apr 26, 2009 2:57:30 PM

From: 2567101031@VTEXT.COM

at a funeral. going to cemetery. will call

Apr 24, 2009 11:07:42 PM

From: 5415302609

kickin it with. every one else tell me the So far just me n this pro skater guy that i been kickin it with. every one else tell me they dont have a deat

Apr 19, 2009 7:43:34 PM

From: 4802762205

busy today another night my ex will not he can we reschedule? ex being an ass again need to get my kid soooooo sorry!

The design process: Part 1

Unlike the scientific method, the design process is not a well-defined thing. Most design professionals have a preferred process, and many are quite stubborn about theirs being the right one. Usually, there is some good logic to a well-developed process, but I've always had trouble taking people seriously when they claim that theirs is the only way to do things. Based on my admittedly limited experience, the most accurate representation of the true process is something like this: (Creative Commons, Damien Newman)

In his book Designing for Interaction, Dan Saffer describes four distinct methods for design: User-Centered Design, Activity-Centered Design, Systems Design, and Genius Design. Without going into the details of each of these methods, suffice it to say that they are quite different. As far as I can tell from what I am being taught at the Segal Design Institute, User-Centered design is the hot one right now. UCD places the user at the center of the process, and allows a design to form and be refined based on the needs (latent or expressed) of this user.

Of course, as Daniel Nettle explains, humans are notoriously bad at knowing what will make them happy. This presents a problem for the practitioner of user-centered (or human-centered) design. Because of this, rather than simply asking people what they want, a designer needs to make rather unscientific inferences based on ethnography and a slew of other observational data-gathering tools.

From this qualitative data, design concepts somehow emerge. But how? Designers are typically encouraged to shelf their own personal biases and prejudices in forming conclusions from what they see in the field. But the real world seems a lot more complicated. From a given set of observations, there are infinite conclusions to be drawn. How the data is clustered, what meaning is ascribed to it, and what initial solutions are proposed will all be different with a different set of designers working on the job. This is ostensibly a good thing (there's more than one way to skin a cat, after all) but this is the time that those latent prejudices can slip back in.

Designers are people too, and all people have their own agenda. For an academic project, the goal is to get a good grade; for a client, it is to impress the client; for a business, it is to make something marketable that fits within the constraints of the company's structure and culture. How can a designer avoid pushing their interpretation of the data--and thus the initial design concepts--toward meeting this unrelated agenda?

Why not embrace the fact that designers have biases? It seems logical that the more you try to keep yourself out of something, the less you understand how you're skewing the results. There must be a better way of doing things.

More on this to come.

A Sign

Something struck me about this sign. It's just so... simple! Easy to read. Easy to interpret. Attractive. No logo or trademark to clutter it up. Durable.

So what if it's not multilingual? So what if there isn't braille or a 'pool' icon, or a map of the building with a 'you are here' and directions to the pool. Maybe it's not as functional as it could be, but who cares? I'm sure the designer didn't put a lot of thought into the creation of this sign--it was likely a standard design, ordered for a hotel chain in bulk as an afterthought. Maybe that's why it's so simple and straightforward. Contrast with this:


This is the device used for trivia games at The Spread--a bar near my apartment in Lincoln Park, Chicago. In theory, the trivia games are a good idea: questions are put up on a TV screen in the bar, and groups designate a person to quickly enter the correct answer into this device. People compete not only against other groups at the bar, but against other bars across the country as well, with the winners receiving free drinks or other rewards.

There are obviously many more constraints on the design of this object than the pool sign. It has to be rugged and waterproof, and it has to support a vast array of functionality. To use, however, it is a nightmare. Imagine being delegated by your friends as the data entry person for your trivia team. First of all, no instructions are given as to how to set up the device, enter your team name, or respond to the questions. Do you type your numerical answers in the number pad on the right, or in the numbers above the keyboard? Do you have to lock in your answer, or does it automatically send it in once you type something? How do you correct a typo? These are not trivial (pun intended) issues, especially considering that most users are a few drinks in and have five or six people screaming answers at them simultaneously.

If you know how to use it, the device functions very well. It's always charged (there is an easy to use docking port), the wireless signal is strong, and you don't have to worry about spilling a drink on it or dropping it on the floor. But it has major feature creep, is ugly, and the membrane switches just don't feel right. I can't decide whether it was more likely designed by engineers or business people, but it is clear that no regard was given to its usability or aesthetics.

So both the sign and the trivia device likely had minimal thought put into their design. Why then is one pleasant and functional and the other ugly and abysmally hard to use? Is it simply because the second one is much more complex? It seems that simple things often suffer from over-design, and complex things suffer from under-design. An iPod is a classic example of a well-designed complex thing. I'll be on the lookout for an over-designed simple thing to round out this theory.

New Domain

Just to let you all know, this blog can now be reached from www.benjaneering.com. All of you enterprising readers who were scheming to buy the domain and sell it back to me after this blog blows up: your plain has been foiled!

Service Design: Pizza Delivery

I am a pizza snob. Born of New Yorker parents, I prefer the floppy thin-crust variety that is essentially impossible to find in Chicago. Having tried dozens of local pizzerias, Cafe Luigi has won a place in my heart as the best of all possible evils; so when going out to eat with friends, I will invariably push for a trip there.

While a trip to this establishment meets my needs on weekends when I have lots of time to go out for pizza, sometimes delivery is the best option. Unfortunately, like most mom-and-pop restaurants, the delivery service at Cafe Luigi leaves much to be desired. Having located their phone number, you call, carefully explain your order to a multitasking employee who barely speaks English, hope they write it down correctly, wait anywhere from thirty to sixty minutes, pay the delivery person an unpredictable amount of money, and enjoy your probably cold pizza. After going through this process twice (which indeed began to overshadow my multiple positive experiences going to the restaurant), I decided to give somewhere else a try.

Dominos is not well known for the quality of its pizza, but it is a large chain with ample resources to hone both its front-stage user experience and its back-stage operational efficiency. One night a few weeks ago, pressed for time and looking for a predictable low-stress option, my friends an I ordered Dominos delivery. My reaction: wow! Dominos.com, in particular the Pizza Tracker feature, is a refreshing solution to many of the service quality problems plaguing pizza delivery.

Once you place your order through the incredibly intuitive website (or over the phone, if you wish), you are directed to your personal Pizza Tracker timeline, which lets you know exactly what is happening with your order and almost as exactly when to expect final delivery. The feature gives a visual representation (see below) of your pizza's progress through the various stages of preparation and delivery. It also provides humanizing explanations such as "Alejandro put your pizza in the oven at 7:32pm" and a place for providing feedback on various aspects of the service.

The pizza tracker simultaneously provides a buffer, giving customers something to look at while waiting for their pizza, and concrete feedback on what is happening. It has low service intensity in the traditional sense, since you are not actually dealing with people (thus costing Dominos nothing), but it feels like a high intensity service because an incredible amount of information is being exchanged between the service provider and the consumer. It provides accountability, demonstrates low-variability in delivery time, and assures hungry customers that somebody is doing something about their order.

Thus, my new strategy: Cafe Luigi at the restaurant, but Dominos delivery.

Fidgeting

Often when I'm on the phone or in a long lecture, I find myself fidgeting with something. Yesterday it was a disposable roll of double-sided scotch tape. Few of my plastic pen caps have pocket clips any more, as I have absent-mindedly twisted them off. I have no straight paper clips.

Doing this helps me focus. As long as it's not a particularly thought-provoking fidgeting object, using my fingers for something trivial provides just enough stimulation to focus my other senses on the lecturer or the phone conversation. Doodling serves the same purpose. Looking back on my old class notebooks, there seems to be a strong correlation between the number of doodles and the interest that I had in the class. The type of doodle also seems to matter; more abstract or thoughtless drawings (an array of cross-hatching, squiggles along the boarder of the page) tend to happen when I am interested in something but slightly too restless to just sit still and listen.

I frequently notice other people doing this too. What are some of your favorite mindless fidgets? Is this a bad habit, a good tool for focusing, or just an inescapable part of human nature?

Cat Tech helmet redesign featured on Discovery Canada

I'm finally back to Chicago after a couple of weeks on the road. It was a great, refreshing trip down to New Orleans, book-ended by weekends in St Louis and with a stop for lunch in rainy Memphis. Lots of great people watching, and it felt like summer down in Mississippi.

Now for a bit of shameless self-promotion; one of my projects was featured on the Daily Planet show on Discovery Channel Canada. I had worked on this helmet redesign two years ago with Pat Bell, Andrew Prince, and Joe Russino. This year, it got passed on to another team at Northwestern (including Sarah Hulseman) that is working on the airflow regulators.

My first time on TV! Check it out (begins at around the 8:20 mark)