There's a tacit understanding with a panel title like "Worst Website Ever: 2 Stupid 2 Fail" that the content is designed to draw a laugh. Yes, the visual gags are there, and yes, the slightly-naughty puns were in force as well, but the actual content of the presentations (faux pitches for truly terrible ideas) revealed a lot about the things that are funny because they are so terribly true. Here are a few lessons that I was able to glean from the panel, and what they mean in a practical way.

Lesson #1: A pale copy is a bad place to start from.

Lots of the presentations presented ideas that relied on the humor of "almost, but not quite." Versions of popular (young-skewing) internet communities aimed at the over-40 crowd, transparent riffs on popular sites that offered no value over the original site, and blatant rip offs all drew big laughs from the crowd. The internet is full of just such clones, and they're always slightly missing the point. While you can often come up with some great ideas by thinking about what other people are doing, the angle always needs to be, "What aren't they doing?" not just an attempt to make something different enough that it won't cause a lawsuit. Some of the funniest fake pitches of the panel were obvious riffs that aimed to do less than the original (such as "Faceoffbook" for fans of the movie FaceOff, and Petflix).

Lesson #2: Your fax machine does not need an "App Store."

Really - it doesn't. It might seem obvious, but by the same token, who isn't trying to jump on the "App Store" bandwagon these days? I think the greater lesson to be learned from this point is that mindless bandwagon jumping leads to creating things that there is no demand for. Just like a fax machine doesn't need its own port of "Angry Birds," not every website needs a comments section or its own check-in system. People who are always looking to make the "next big thing" work for them are often missing the ways in which not every solution fits every problem. While each new craze might be worth consideration and exploration, it's perfectly acceptable for the conclusions drawn to end with, "We don't actually need this."

Lesson #3: You're not going to successfully use every technology.

One of the presentations didn't actually have much in the way of a proposed idea, instead, it relied on the joke that the website was so 'technologically advanced' that it used every technology. It even used "all of the clouds," and just about every possible API that is currently in vogue. I think we've all seen some variation of this site. There are so many social icons squashed together that you can't tell the difference between the little bird-shaped blob that you think is Twitter-blue from the tiny square that you think might lead to Facebook. You're not really sure if you're about to leave a comment with Disqus, send a Tweet, or post to your Facebook wall, and even if you could figure it out, you're probably not interested in sharing the content by that point. The page aggregates tweets, shows you the weather in Bangladesh, and lets you map things on google while you browse headlines. There's so much on the page that you reflexively lunge for the close button because you're afraid you might have a seizure.

Just because an API exists, doesn't mean you should use it on every page. Data is cool, but relevant data is even cooler, and when you don't bury the good stuff, your page gets a lot more interesting. I'm an API dork - I love to see them mashed up and filtered in brilliant ways. True story: after the worst website panel, I shook the hand of the guy who created WaitingForBieber.com. (I plan to retell this story to everyone who will listen for the next three months, so consider yourself warned.) The reason I love this site is that it uses the Twitter API in a way that is so bizarrely specific that it draws a cohesive (and terrifying) picture without any sort of long-form explanation. As best I can tell, the page is returning tweets sent to Bieber's username, and scanning the text of the response for the word "follow," so that it only returns the tweets asking Bieber to follow the user back. That's all the page does: display a constant stream of tweets, asking Justin Bieber for a "follow" on Twitter.

Now that we've established the concept, lets quickly ruin it with complications: imagine if it also pulled in headlines containing the terms "Bieber" and "Twitter." Imagine page real estate depleted by an option to share those tweets on facebook. Imagine a comments section where users could leave their opinion on tweets and rank their favorite. Imagine a series of music charts and store widgets so that users could see how Bieber is currently selling. Quickly, the idea becomes polluted and the page loses the laser-focus that made the joke funny in the first place. None of these things immediately sound like bad ideas, but compare the value added by the additional data to the value lost by distracting from the site's real purpose. There's a lot of cool, easily integrated stuff on the internet these days, but just like we don't always need to be jumping on the shiniest bandwagon, we also don't need to dilute every idea with 'value-adds' that act as distractions.

The panel definitely gave me a lot to think about (and when I'm not so exhausted and overwhelmed with information, I'll probably think of more things I gleaned from it), but most of all, it was amazing to me how not implausible most of the ideas were. Many of them didn't seem all that far off from sites that have actually been built, and I think that fact really speaks to how the best humor is close to the truth. (For the record, the "winner" of the contest was the "App Store" for the Fax Machine. The runner-up was a site for outsourced, webcam babysitting.)

Labels: bad ideas, sxsw, user experience

After my first full day at SXSW, I feel very much like Dorothy in 'The Wizard of Oz,' experiencing that famous moment when Toto pulls open the curtain hiding the man behind the machinery. Of course, if you're familiar with the film, the metaphor has two layers to it. We usually associate "pulling back the curtain" with a positive experience that satisfies our curiosity, however, let's not forget that the original allusion also carries with it a sense of betrayal. We want our "wizards" to be great and powerful, and finding out that they're only human can be disappointing. At the same time, this realization can also be freeing because it reminds us that the "correct" answers have not yet been settled upon, and that even the "experts" are often engaging in the same learning processes as the rest of us.

Running with the positive sense of the metaphor, I've peeked behind some amazing curtains today. At the morning's first panel, I was able to learn about the processes and logic behind the testing and development model behind "New" Twitter. As someone who watched the launch unfold (and personally adopted, abandoned, revisited, and finally embraced the changes), it was fascinating to hear about the way the new model of interaction was actually chosen. As a developer, I'm embarrassed to admit this, but until the presenter pointed it out, I hadn't thought about the fact that New Twitter's interaction model "breaks" our fundamental understanding of how the web works. Links open panels, not pages; layers and drawers present content, rather than page-turns refreshing information. Nothing does what you expect it to, and yet the final product works in a way that perfectly suits the data being presented. Still, after watching my timeline almost unanimously resist the changes, I have to think that the counter-intuitive behavior of the page contributed to the initial venom that the change inspired.

Do I agree with the choices? Yes, adamantly. No, vehemently. I can't commit to an answer. If I look at the question as a developer, then I can't quite stomach completely disregarding the value in respecting the system - links should behave as links. If I look at the choice with my anthropologist's hat on, then I suppose my answer boils down to the fact that all culture changes over time. As much as we like to place conventions and standards on a pedestal, they can become shackles if we allow them to become larger and more important than their practical purposes require. Links should behave like links when it helps our users; links should not behave like links simply because "that is how it is done."

When Twitter made the choice to break this model, it was done deliberately, and it was done because they saw a need to do things differently. I can't speak to it in any broad, official capacity, but based on my personal network, I think that after the initial shock wore off, people warmed up to the changes, and ultimately, the gamble was successful.

Another good example of having the curtains pulled back on a process that is usually opaque comes from listening to a panel on CSS3, given by people involved in developing the specifications. CSS3 will offer a whole new set of possibilities for web design, while simultaneously creating a whole new set of pitfalls, browser clashes, and headaches of backwards compatibility. While listening to the panel, I realized two things: that everyone there understood the problems, and that none of them necessarily had the answers. I feel okay about that fact, especially because I now know that the people developing the spec work with and for a variety of browsers, and that they're all going through this process collaboratively. No one browser is claiming to have the one unique solution, and hopefully this will make the transition to CSS3 run more smoothly than previous iterations have.

A lot of what I'm hearing at SXSW consists of some variation on, "This is really cool, and this is what we think it means, but we're not entirely sure just yet." The best panelists have been the people with interesting questions, rather than interesting answers. In a sense, these people are drawing back their own curtains. Not only do they make themselves transparent and honest by doing so, but they're allowing the conversation to flow in both directions. Twitter is learning from its users and developing new features based on what they perceive to be user needs. CSS3 is being defined by people who use and develop the web, and who are working together to make something that they hope will satisfy everyone. Even the man behind a popular zombie website spoke today about the value of letting your community shape your content, and of abandoning your own ideas when you perceive that they have become out of sync with the needs of your users.

So maybe it's best that we don't keep hoping that Oz begins and ends with the great and powerful facade. As it turned out for Dorothy, the man behind the curtain was much more accessible and helpful in the end. I believe the same premise holds true for our technological gurus, and that perhaps the reason I've yet to hear anyone claim that this isn't a messy, collaborative process might be the fact that those people have failed to thrive the way their more flexible contemporaries have.

Labels: CSS3, front end development, sxsw, user experience

One of the first questions people ask at a party is, "What do you do?" I dread this question. Not because I don't want to talk about work, not because I hate my job, but because the answer, "I'm a taxonomist." usually results in a lot of blank looks. Sometimes I just tell people I am a librarian (which I am) but explaining why Sears.com needs a librarian is even more difficult.

About 6 years ago I was at a SXSW party, and was faced with just this question. I told them the boring truth--I worked on metadata quality & harvesting, but that my research area was taxonomy & classification of online data. After waking from her nap, she replied, "You know, no one knows what that is now, but in 5 years, everyone will want someone who knows how to do that well."

At the time, newly out of grad school and not relevantly employed, this statement made me angry. I think I told her, "That's great--what do I do until then?!" But in retrospect, it's the most prophetic statement I've ever experienced.

Often in information architecture, we complain about how no one takes us seriously; no one understands what we do. We fantasize about all the great work we'll be able to do only when everyone recognizes us for the geniuses we are. That's the wrong way to go about it. Keep kicking ass at a solution to the problem instead of shouting about how everyone should pay attention to the problem. Eventually people will realize there's a problem themselves and need you. And no one else has spent the last five years solving their problem.

People will never like the person who keeps pointing out the problem, but they won't complain about the person who just fixed the problem no one saw.

Labels: IA, jenny, kicking ass, metadata, professionalism, sxsw, Taxonomy, user experience, UX

The long tail sucks, if your search can’t find what you’re looking for.

A few quick orienting thoughts, here. “The Long Tail” was brought ( relatively ) mainstream by Chris Anderson in an article he wrote for Wired in ’04. It’s a term that describes a graph of the distribution of ( among other things ) products that make you money. A few products make most of the big money, then all the other products in your selection all make you a little bit. The graph of this looks like a long animal tail. In aggregate, the stuff in the long tail is really valuable, but only if your customers 1. Like the more obscure stuff and 2. They can find it using your site.

Both points are important. There’s a maxim in retail that if you have more items to show, you make more money. A lot of assumptions underlie this point. Also, there’s an idea that choice can be demotivating. Iyengar and Lepper pointed this out in an elegant study entitled “When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?” This is the study that talks about how offering 24 different kinds of jam sells no jam, but offering 5 different kinds makes them go like hotcakes. Some people like to, need to research and pour over stuff. Finding the best price, the exact match, the most elegant whatever to buy. For these people, the long tail is golden. Provided of course they can find what they’re looking for. In some cases, this is a big If.

Enter a radical idea: let’s offer less. Like, a lot less.

I do a fair amount of experience design work for our social site, where we pile on goals like fluffy pancakes at a fundraiser. We’d like people to find stuff and buy stuff, but we’d also like them to “like” or “dislike”. And register. And leave a comment. And get a friend to register. And browse our new doodad and share out how cool it is. And ignore things when they’re slow. And become an expert on something we sell, and blog about it.

Please pass the maple syrup. We have 28 106 kinds, and adding more all the time via our Local Marketplace, so please be prepared to sort through them all to find just the right one.

I wonder how it would go if we offered less. Maybe set aside a site ( or maybe it’s just a filter? Hmmmmm I’m not so sold on the filter thing ) where we have all our categories and subcategories of stuff, but each subcat only shows the top 3 sellers from our “main” site.

You could tweak this idea a bit. Only offer one item per subcat. Or even one item per –category- if you were feeling libertine.

This site wouldn’t be for the researchers and the gluttons and the peeps that immerse themselves in all the joy that is sorting through 106 different hits for “maple syrup”. It’d be for the folks with not-so-much time or inclination to research, the ones who just know they need a bottle of maple syrup.

From a selling point of view, this kinda touches on the Woot and Groupon and even Twitter idea of offering more by really offering less. The one jar of maple syrup might not be the cheapest or even “The Best” ( whatever that might mean ), but then again, I’m sure it’s perfectly serviceable for pancakes. The smart designer might make sure that it’s the best selling maple syrup the larger site has. Or the highest rated. Or the one with the highest margin. Or the most customer-generated content. Whatever. Tinker a little. Maybe one type is right for consumables, another for hardlines ( what we call most everything that doesn’t have different sizes, like shirts or maple syrup ), and still another for clothing.

But yea, offer less. Our main site www.sears.com right now offers something like 15 milliion products.

Hmmmmzers.

I mentioned the social site a little earlier. That’s the place where we try to encourage as much customer-generated content ( reviews, wiki entries, commentary, questions & answers, etc ) as we can. This content helps customers find what they want and make purchase decisions, it also helps us because it provides a bit of credibility and yummy SEO goodness.

On our current site of 15 zillion products, we’re having a little trouble getting an appreciable amount of content from our customers. Lots of reasons for this, a whole other blog post, probably.

But on my microsite, I suspect customer generated content is a bit more easy to come by. There are still a couple thousand categories out there, so maybe we don’t include –all- the categories… just the ones that are most trafficked.

More and more, this is starting to sound like a good idea. At least to me. Not only because I have a thing for reducing the site, but I’d also reduce the pages we have. It’d be nothing to search a site with so few items, so search would be awesome. Promos are kinda focused, buying guides very relevant ( do we even have them, here? ) And a lot of the glut on the various pages could come off, too. This would “facilitate engagement” and I suspect a site of this kind could be fertile ground for a community… the people trying to figure out which item on the small site should be promoted up to The Show.

That’s my working url. http://theshow.sears.com. But yea, that link doesn't work, because this is just an idea I have, that we're sitting here talking about. At least at this moment.

Double hmmmmmm.

Crazy talk? UX genius? Let me know, I’d love to hear.

Also, after much deliberation and wrestling with slow search, long descriptions, and lots of pictures, my choice for maple syrup: Spring Tree Pure Maple Syrup.

Labels: ideas that could get me fired, long tail, Pete, user experience

Labels: AirDisplay, Apple, graphical user interface, GUI, HCI, HTML5, Human-centered design, i-Pad, IPad, Jaron Lanier, Mobile Mouse, Niel Stevenson, user experience

I run a large UX org, we bring great value to our company, it can be seen everyday in our companies bottom line. You can see it in the improved conversion on the site, increase in registered customers and the CSAT numbers. Due to the fact that we continue to grow and at a very fast clip we are always in recruiting mode. It is one of the biggest challenges we face, how do we attract and retain the best talent, period.

As is often the case the most valuable assets are the ones you already have. You want to keep the team happy and motivated. By doing so they become one of your greatest recruiting tools. It's pretty simple and is focused around two areas of social communication.

The first is just their own network, great talent begets great work, great work begets great talent. Smart, creative and motivated people often know smart, creative and motivated people (simple math, i think, but then again, i'm not so good at math). We have a really strong team that knows their jobs will only become easier and more fulfilling if they get to work with people just like them. This motivates them to refer the best and the brightest (not to mention a healthy $2,500 referral bonus). I know the team leverages thier FB and LinkedIn networks because I often see posts in those spaces for our open req's.

The second is positioning our organization and company as thought leaders in the industry. Leveraging our social communication tools like this blog, like our twitter and FB pages. I have often said that I would put our team up against anyone out there and we would kick their butts. We really have a very strong team, UX, FED, Vis Design, Taxo, Copywriting, top notch. So besides me talking about them I need to get them talking about themselves and the awesome work they do here at Sears. I need them to be publishing in these forums and others representing UX Sears as a force to reckoned with.

I think this is so important that this is going to be one of our goals this year, each and every person in the department has to publish/comment/communicate about what they do here or just to share an opinion. This will help in recruiting almost as much as leveraging our own networks. The more people hear about the great things we get to do here at Sears the more likely they will consider us as a possible place to work.

Don't get me wrong, working at Sears is no bed of roses, we bust our butts day in and day out, we have short deadlines, we get random changes in direction, we sometimes lose a battle. But since I have been here we have been winning the war. I have full confidence that when the dust settles we will be on top looking out over the vanquished, proud of what we have accomplished. Okay, I'm getting a little over the top, but, I am motivated and excited and sometimes can't keep it in.

So, if we are going to succeed, we will need to work as a team and leverage our most valuable asset to consistently bring in the best and the brightest.

Labels: copywriting, front end development, recruiting, resources, Taxonomy, user experience, visual design

UXsears hosts Chicago IxDA
Nov. 18, 2009
1 North State Street, 12th Floor
From 6 – 8 PM

What does it mean to be “actively engaged” in your community?

We think it means putting ourselves into the mix. We are more than members, we are more than passive participants, we are active in the ongoing dialog that continuously challenges and refines the very work we are so passionate about doing.

As an extension of our commitment to being actively engaged, UXsears is hosting the November 18th gathering of the Chicago chapter of the Interaction Design Association (IxDA). We'll share stories about Sears - the $50 billion start-up. And how UX leads the way.

In many ways this is a coming out party for us. We are in the moment where we want to step higher and acknowledge our accomplishments and define our aspirations and goals for 2010.

Experience design can be a change agent, we all know that. We would like to share some of the ways in which we’ve found success. In fact, businesses are starting to realize that success is tied into customer experiences – with products, services and people – as much as it is based on how many dollars customers spend. Saying experience design is a differentiator is one thing, bringing your talent and passion to your work everyday and creating opportunities to affect change and actually doing it is another. We're proof.

Hosting the IxDA event is an opportunity for us to showcase some of our thinking, designs and ideas for the future of online retail, and how experience design is a core ingredient for businesses to succeed.

So tell us your story, show us what you need most to affect change. Post your pictures to Twitter or Flickr with #uxsears – you’ll have a chance to experience the same from your community when you join us on Wednesday Nov 18th, 6-8pm.

If you’re in Chicago, please consider stopping by to say hi. For more information send us a note.

RSVP at http://bit.ly/qQbJF
Directions to the building: http://bit.ly/73FT3

Hope to hear from you soon!

Labels: community, design, interaction design association, ixda, user experience

Read this first

In a recent blog posting, Dustin Curtis took a UX Architect from AA.com to task. Give it a quick look. It made me think about and question how people approach UX at a large organization.

Where I’m coming from

I can completely relate to Mr. X’s situation. I, too, work for a large bureaucratic organization that often has trouble getting out of its own path to success. On the other hand, I also genuinely feel that you make your own opportunities and have the ability to change the situation.

When I first joined the UX team at Sears, we were considered a bottleneck in the process – part of the bureaucracy. Our team felt that we were understaffed and under appreciated. That mindset had to change in order for us to evolve. By making that shift in thinking – and proving ourselves via initiatives large and small – we changed perceptions throughout the company.

We demonstrated the impact that user experience had on small engagements such as Share This. We also tackled enormous efforts like making all of our core commerce-enabled sites liquid in a 57-day span. Through these efforts, we proved UX could be a force for change. We now partner with the Product and IT teams to define the future of the customer experience for Sears.com, Kmart.com, Craftsman.com and Kenmore.com. We are no longer passengers, we’re drivers.

What to do

I guess what I’m getting at is that you can either sit there and wish you belonged to a small, nimble, get-it-done type of team, or you can start acting like one and change your approach. One thing that works here at Sears is showing how you can make more money – it’s actually one of our three tenets. So everything we do is tied to revenue in some way – directly through conversion or indirectly through customer satisfaction.

I think everyone can be a force for change, it just depends on if you want to put in the effort. I recommend to Mr. X that he challenge himself and his co-workers to step it up. Spend time after work brainstorming ways to improve process, quality of the work and relationships with other parts of the org to streamline approvals.

And stop whining! If you don’t like the approach, do something about it or head for the door.

Labels: american airlines, brainstorming, iterative design, user experience, wirestorming