Still, some consumers are profoundly unhappy with the new design. (“I hate it,” was one woman’s response.) Why? The new, rectangular bottle shape makes it difficult to pour the milk without spilling. Silly, stupid little detail! Yet a critical requirement, perhaps the most important one to the product’s success.

I’ve been in design meetings where the user’s needs and expectations are relegated to the “nice to have” pile; most requirements are about “efficiencies” and “cost savings”. While these are noble goals for a design project, they are irrelevant if the product’s interface annoys the end user. (No efficiencies at all can be realized if the product doesn’t get used.) UI requirements are critical to most projects’ success.

[Photo: Flickr]

When people visit your website, most won’t go through a fact-finding expedition to figure out your Series A numbers, who your investors are, and what your story is just to decide if your company can be trusted. Initial trust is a gut-feeling. The easiest way to put your company on that path is via well executed visual design that shows you put some effort, and money, into delivering a first-rate and satisfying experience to your customers.

I met recently with a prospect who wants to position his business as a high-end, “luxury” service provider. After much discussion about what this entails, I suggested we devise a strategy for their websites that tries to build trust rather than traffic or sales leads. This is, of course, a hard sell for most folks looking for ROI. It’s an odd objective, “building trust”. All the common indicators of website performance—traffic, sales, referrals, search engine positioning, etc.—are relatively easy to measure. But trust? Trust boils down to “gut feeling”, as the FoundRead article explains, and that is nigh impossible to quantify.

One of the biggest challenges I face in my day-to-day work is that much of what individuals consider trustworthy (especially when dealing with a primarily visual medium, like the web) is obtained from subtle cues that are specific to their own culture. Japanese users expect a different visual experience than someone from the Middle East, or from Central America. There are many companies in Central America that are trying to reach out to international audiences (especially in the US), and expect their websites to have “the best design possible” (in other words, to present a trustworthy image). However, in many cases clients are unprepared (or unable) to judge the trustworthiness of a design aimed at a different culture because their gut tells them something’s wrong. (In the case of designs aimed at US audiences, the reaction I usually get is that “it looks too dry”, by which they mean that not everything is flashing and blinking and bleeping and blaring music at the user.)

This is not an easy problem to solve. Empathy is one of the most valuable traits a designer can bring to a project, but empathy is not something that can be taught. While the designer can be very empathetic, there are good chances that the client won’t be, and the designer can do little to tell the client’s gut how to react.

Tiny displays, limited functionality, itty-bitty keyboard buttons and now the iPhone’s entirely virtual keyboard whose keys can be hard to hit for some people have given folks something to talk about. Taking matters to a level that I believe is unheard of in the technology world, however, 28-year-old Thomas Martel in Bonnie Brae (a Denver, CO neighborhood) decided to solve his large handed problem by surgically altering his thumbs to make it easier to use his iPhone.

Juicy details at tuaw.com.

Update: This is probably a hoax. Love the internets!

This is an exciting time to be a UX designer. How many more stagnant industries are in line to be turned into “a big happy iPod”?

Computers are hopeless! They?re so under-evolved! Of course, they offer the promise of the future of music, but Jesus, they?re badly designed! The fact that three million years of muscular evolution should end up being translated into an index finger clicking a mouse, this is the problem. Think of any analogue instrument: playing a guitar, for instance, you?re doing at least six things at once. I believe musicians have shrunk to fit the pathetic nature of the interfaces.

(From a 2001 interview for MOJO.)

There is much that information architects can learn from traditional “brick and mortar” architects: both fields aim to satisfy client needs within strict technical (and budgetary) constraints, all the while meeting (and hopefully exceeding) the expectations of end users. Mr. Prince-Ramus explains very persuasively how the limitations imposed by the project’s requirements can lead to innovative (and beautiful) solutions.

It’s worth noting the degree to which commercial and contextual factors define the final form of the designs presented in the video. It’d be great to be able to visualize the commercial constraints of an IA in a similar way to how Mr. Prince-Ramus’ team visualize the programatic aspects of their designs—sometimes to the point of having those programs become the design. (How could we do something similar?)

A recurring theme in the presentation is that design is greatly affected by how the designer manages his/her relationship with the client. Rem Koolhaas, who was the lead architect in the Seattle project, has a (deserved) reputation as one of the world’s most innovative designers. I doubt any clients engage him unaware of his unique portfolio. Even then, it seems the Seattle design team needed to convince the client of the benefits of approaching design problems from a fresh perspective. As I watched the video, I kept thinking “it must be hard for an architect that is not famous like Rem Koolhaas to get away with something like this”. Check out the beautiful presentation materials they use to “sell” clients on their approach; they help make very clear concepts that would otherwise be very difficult to convey using traditional design deliverables.

Speaking of which, the animations shown in the video rank among the best presentations of architecture I’ve seen on a screen. These artifacts are an order of magnitude more “readable” than the traditional plans, elevations, and even renderings. (This is a simpler problem to resolve in IA, because the end product is usually also screen-based.)

Mr. Prince-Ramus will be the keynote speaker at the 2007 IA Summit in Las Vegas. After seeing this video, I’m even more excited about the Summit!

[spl]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Central_Library

• I started things off with an explanation of user experience design for the web and information architecture.
• Jorge Yau spoke on how to improve the usability of blogs.
• Harold Maduro presented a case study of his work in redesigning the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute’s website, stri.org.

• Leon Kadoch explained how he’s designing a site for kids.

  The event was made possible thanks to the folks at the City of Knowledge, who kindly provided the space and technical infrastructure for us to be able to meet.

  There’s already talk of holding another UXcamp soon… we’re looking forward to hearing presentations from other colleagues of the panamanian web design community. Hopefully the next event will also be a bit longer - it’d be great to just hang out, perhaps share a meal.

  - technorati tags start—>

  Technorati Tags: ia, informationarchitecture, panama, ux

  ]]> http://www.jarango.com/en/blog/2007/01/26/uxcamp-a-user-experience-gathering-in-central-america/feed/ 5 http://www.jarango.com/en/blog/2007/01/15/the-boxes-and-arrows-redesign-is-live/ http://www.jarango.com/en/blog/2007/01/15/the-boxes-and-arrows-redesign-is-live/#comments Mon, 15 Jan 2007 20:12:08 +0000 jarango http://www.jarango.com/en/blog/2007/01/15/the-boxes-and-arrows-redesign-is-live/ Check it out! It’s been under development for a while, but the nice new design has been worth the wait.

  Technorati Tags: boxesandarrows, informationarchitecture

  ]]> http://www.jarango.com/en/blog/2007/01/15/the-boxes-and-arrows-redesign-is-live/feed/ 0 http://www.jarango.com/en/blog/2006/11/11/globocom-homepage-redesign/ http://www.jarango.com/en/blog/2006/11/11/globocom-homepage-redesign/#comments Sat, 11 Nov 2006 07:13:56 +0000 jarango http://www.jarango.com/en/blog/2006/11/11/globocom-homepage-redesign/
  Bruno Pinheiro and Ilka Porto from Globo just treated us to a great presentation on their recent globo.com homepage redesign. If you haven’t seen this site before, it’s worth checking out: it’s a large site, and the design is very clean and easy to navigate. The Globo team said that traffic has increased more than 30% since the redesign, so at least by that metric they’ve done an outstanding job.

  In general, I’m very impressed with the quality of work being presented at the retreat by our Brazilian colleagues. If these folks (and the projects they are working on) are typical of the Brazilian market, they are years ahead of other countries in our region - especially Panama.

  - technorati tags start—>

  Technorati Tags: brazil, iaretreat, informationarchitecture, ux

  ]]> http://www.jarango.com/en/blog/2006/11/11/globocom-homepage-redesign/feed/ 3 http://www.jarango.com/en/blog/2006/09/25/architecture-as-cultural-and-location-grounding/ http://www.jarango.com/en/blog/2006/09/25/architecture-as-cultural-and-location-grounding/#comments Mon, 25 Sep 2006 21:30:41 +0000 jarango http://www.jarango.com/blog/?p=528 Thomas Vander Wal has been traveling a lot, and he’s finding that the local architecture can have important effects on his feelings of connectedness.

  This is interesting to me because one of the hallmarks of the much maligned International Style of architecture is a trans-national vocabulary that is rooted more in fantasies about the machine age rather than in local context. Much of the design work we do online follows similar rules that hint at a global style (or styles), and results in a homogeneousness that is meant to convey “that we, too, can design like North Americans”. Here’s an example: an article by a Russian developer that proposes a categorization of different web UI styles, all based on designs for sites for US-based companies, presumably for replication by other designers.

  Perhaps more culturally-aware design can help bring a feeling of rootedness to websites, much like culturally-aware architecture can for cities. How should we approach this, when we’re being sold on the notion of “global commerce online”?