Alamo Drafthouse Cinema

As a family man, I don’t often get the opportunity to catch my type of movie on the big screen, but I was recently blessed with two such opportunities. Both films were blockbusters with all of the high budget features and marketing push one would expect, yet I walked away from one of them with seething anger at having wasted such an opportunity. In the days that followed, I came to realize that my emotions had nothing to do with the movies that I watched and everything to do with the difference in theatre experiences (hint – the bad experience was at a ‘traditional’ movie theatre).

There is a new type of movie theatre that’s gaining traction at lightspeed, the type that serves restaurant quality food and drinks in-theatre while you are watching. My favorite of these is the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema chain, started right here in Austin, because it serves up the most completely satisfying user experience, from admission to lights up. Let’s take a closer look at how “The Drafthouse” (as we locals like to call it) is seizing market share from traditional theatres through its usability improvements.

Even Waiting Can Be Fun

Blockbuster movies are attended more heavily, so even The Drafthouse’s customers must wait in a queue for their auditorium to be readied. What a drag in terms of a user’s first in-theatre experience, right? But not at The Drafthouse – their lobby offers a fully staffed bar, comfortable benches to lounge upon, a gallery of cinema-themed artworks, and smartly placed TV monitors that loop through nostalgic film footage. Dare I say it? Waiting is fun at The Drafthouse. As hardware and software creators, what can we learn from their example when designing the user experience for our less desirable (but necessary) components?

Alamo Drafthouse Lobby

You Can’t Get That At Home

Movie viewers have so many options for consuming films at home that we can justifiably ask, “Why even go out to a theatre?” The Drafthouse has transformed this business threat into one of their differentiating strengths, by ensuring that their auditoriums offer an experience far exceeding the one at home.

First and foremost is the food and beverage service; it’s restaurant quality and you don’t have to leave your seat to get it. Secondly, the experience is made more immersive than home through completely dimmed lights and the stringent requirement that there be no talking, device use or other distractions. And lastly, every film is preceded by a non-stop ‘pregame reel’ of snippets from classic movies, TV shows and commercials that directly relate to what’s about to be viewed, supplanting those mundane in-theatre commercials with a personalized trove of found-footage treasures.

The Drafthouse figured out that customers will come to their theatres if they can’t get the same experience at home. On the hardware and software front, if we want to convert our users into paying customers, then we should honestly consider if our designs offer an experience that can’t be had elsewhere.

Alamo Drafthouse Auditorium

The Attraction Is Just A Wrapper

It’s no longer a secret that movie theatres don’t profit much from ticket sales, but rather from the concessions that they sell, so The Drafthouse has teflon coated its bottom line by ensuring that their concession experience is best of breed. Their drink selection is as diverse as the “drafthouse” name implies. Theatre patrons order from a menu and consume food prepared by real chefs. Servers take these orders and deliver them to tables. The upshot is that all of their attraction viewers are converted into concession consumers, who eagerly fork over their cash because they perceive a high value in the experience. From this example we can learn that regardless of what originally entices users to try our hardware and software, we must always invest in the experience that is core to our business model with nothing less than best of breed in mind (that is, unless we don’t care much about revenues).

Alamo Drafthouse Concessions

It’s All The Buzz

I can’t even remember which traditional theatres are still in business, but I always seem to know what’s going on at The Drafthouse. Maybe this is because there’s always something(!) going on there – from live music shows, to audience sing-alongs, to movie-themed menus, and cult classic marathons – no week passes without some buzzworthy special event that places them at the forefront of cinematic social media. I would even say that it’s impossible to NOT mention them in any serious discussion of “What to see this weekend?” The Drafthouse has maintained its market leadership through a tireless reinvention of itself, and in doing so has relegated its competitors to afterthoughts. Any hardware or software business that is equally serious about maintaining market leadership should take this into account when considering how often its product should be redesigned for ever-evolving user expectations.

Alamo Drafthouse Austin

Film content has been stretched about as far as it can for the purpose of enticing consumers into visiting a movie theatre, or even returning to one on a regular basis. It’s now up to the theatres to provide a user experience that differentiates them from competitors who are offering the same films, or from equivalent experiences at home. The same can be said for the hardware and software we create – content and features must satisfy user expectations for such, but it is the user experience that will ultimately decide which product will dominate its market, for today and into the future.

With special thanks to the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema for its inspiration.

This idea is not exclusive to Adrià and elBulli.  All restaurants seek to provide some kind of experience to their diners and, in turn, the diners chose where they eat based on the experience they desire.  Everyone wants to have an exceptional experience when they eat, but “exceptional” can mean something different to everyone, not just “an elaborate display of culinary creativity.”  In fact, if all meals were as elaborate as those in elBulli, they would lose their ability to delight and surprise.  There is a time and place for all types of dining from thirty course meals to quick lunches to family dinners.

There are many variables that factor into the overall experience a diner has in a restaurant, but none are as basic as the place setting.  The dishes and flatware can easily be taken for granted but they go a long way to set the expectations for the experience of the meal.  An elaborate table setting with several forks of different sizes and multiple spoons with different shapes certainly suggests that the meal is going to be drawn out.  On the other end of the spectrum, walking into a restaurant with no tables and no utensils in sight suggests that the meal will be quick.  For diners to have an exceptional dining experience, the utensils presented to the diner need to align with the restaurant’s intention.

The same is true of the user experience for any type of digital application.  The food is the content the application serves up and the place setting is the framework and tools that support that content.  A restaurant is more successful in the execution of its intent when it can clearly define the type of experience it wants to offer.  Likewise, an application is more successful when the desired experience is clear and well defined.   If the goal is to provide an on-the-go solution for users, then the framework and tools provided to the user should be simple and minimal, much like the place setting of an on-the-go meal.

Digital Place Setting Typology

Here are a few different place setting types that can help us understand the different type of experiences they create and how they can be applied to a digital environment.

On The Go

This is a hamburger, sandwich, burrito, or something from the state fair served on a stick. There is generally no utensil needed, and it’s a quick and easy meal.  Translated to a digital place setting, there are few, if any, tools and the interface is very minimal.  This type of place setting works well for mobile applications that serve up simple content for consumption like a news reader or a video player.

The On The Go Meal

Family Dinner

The family dinner place setting is one that covers a wide range of users from children to adolescents to adults. This is very much like creating an application intended for use by those of different skill levels.  The flatware consists of a knife, fork and spoon and the meal generally doesn’t last very long.  This type of place setting works well for a social networking site, an internet browser or a simple game.

The Family Dinner

Nice Dinner

The nice dinner place setting is a little more complex than the family dinner place setting.  There might be more than one fork or more than one knife, and the meal usually consists of an appetizer, main course, and dessert.  This type of place setting works well for an email client, photo editing applications, and presentation tools.

The Nice Dinner

Seven Course Dinner

The seven course dinner place setting is very complex.  There is generally a complete set of utensils for each course as well as specific utensils like oyster forks. Though the place setting appears complex and intimidating, there is an underlying order to the layout.  This place setting works well for accounting software, graphic design software, and role playing games.

The Seven Course Dinner

Determining the most appropriate place setting

One of the easiest ways to determine what kind of digital place setting is appropriate is to look at how the application will be used.  If those using it will be working at desks for the majority of the day, it is appropriate to use a digital place setting similar to that of a seven course meal or a nice dinner.  It is much easier to work with a large set of tools when there is ample time and space to work with that tool set.  If users are using an application on the go, or in small increments of time throughout the day, then a simple and minimal interface is best. With both a large and minimal tool sets, there are very specific tools that can improve the overall experience, but a table full of flatware and dishes leaves little room for much else.  Likewise, a screen full of tools and framework elements leads to a busy and crowded screen.   While there is no single user experience solution that is ideal for all situations, an appropriate solution can be found for each individual use case.

In the end, a great meal is about the food but everything else, including the place setting, is critical in creating the best dining experience.  A great application is great because of the content it serves up, but without the right type of place setting, the experience can be ruined. A proper table setting is just as important for a meal as it is for a digital application.

During the test drive, the first thing I noticed was that the user interface of the infotainment system was very confusing. It had a very small screen and lots of buttons, including a full numeric keypad. It also had some strange buttons with icons that looked like hockey sticks pointing in various directions. I didn’t know where to start. As Megan continued driving, I kept pressing buttons trying to get the gadget to do something, anything at all. After a few minutes, I was able to turn on the radio and immediately Tejano music came blasting out of the speakers.

The music was very loud so I tried to lower the volume, but instead, the car started speaking to me.  Then something started to blink on the gadget’s display, but Tejano music was still blasting. After a few minutes of not knowing what to do, the car salesman said, “You are in the wrong mode. I don’t know how to get it out of there. Just press this button to turn the system off and then turn it on again.”  In my disappointment, I thought, “Do they expect me to read the manual just to use the radio?” We all know that’s not going to happen.

This experience made me think about my years as Product Manager for a software company.  At that time, I was leading the release of our next generation enterprise software. For that release, part of our goal was to make the software easier to sell and to reduce the number of support calls. The plan to accomplish this was to add new features and develop a better user manual. At the time, working with UX experts was not even a consideration.  It was not how we did things.

I spent a considerable amount of time and money working with professional technical writers. I also allocated several hours of my developer’s time to explain to the writers how to use the software.  Once we released the software our support volume remained the same, and we lost some potential clients during sales pitches as they (and our sales guys) were unable to intuitively navigate through the software. I quickly came to the sad realization that no one had read my beautiful (and expensive) manual.

They say hindsight is 20-20.  The real issue with my software, and the car’s infotainment system for that matter, was not documentation or lack of functionality. It was simply a failure to understand what users want to do and our inability to support them through a clean UI.  For us (and many companies), it was easy to get caught up in our product’s development cycle and lose sight of how users would interact with the product or even what problems we were helping them to solve.

I’ve also seen that it’s usually easy and convenient to put the UI design burden on the engineering team. After all, they developed all the features in the backend, so they are the best equipped to surface that functionality in a friendly, compelling way, right? In my experience, this didn’t work out so well. By focusing on adding as many features as possible and leaving usability as an afterthought, we ended up with products that were hard to use and therefore had trouble in the marketplace.

Companies often launch products without paying enough attention to the user experience. UX is rarely in the radar of engineering-based companies.  Once the companies receive complaints from real users they start recognizing that there are issues with the product, but their first instinct is to think “the product is fine, it’s the users that don’t know how to use the product.”  In their mind, the product has all the features their customers need, so from a company perspective, it is often hard to understand what went wrong.  As companies see their support load increase, more often than not they opt for investing in more documentation, user training, FAQs, Internet knowledge-bases, etc — documentation no one will ever read.

Meanwhile, the development team is busy adding more features for the next release, creating a vicious cycle that will have significant impact on the product’s performance in the marketplace.  At the end of this cycle is the sad realization that the product is not selling and they need to start working on another product to hit their revenue goals.  As you can imagine, the new product follows the same cycle and the company is never able to gain traction in the market.  All of this could be prevented early in the cycle by starting with  some user research and user centered design.

Next time you are starting a product development cycle, whether it is enterprise software, an infotainment system, or anything in between, don’t fall for the same trap I did. Take a step back and ask yourself:

• Is my product easy to use?
• Who are my users and what is their technical level?
• How will my users use my product and what problem are they looking to solve?
• Are product features exposed in a way that makes it easy for the users to accomplish their goals?
• Do I really need more documentation, or am I better off focusing on UI research and UX design?
• Do I have the right UX skills in-house, or do I get better ROI by contracting UX experts to help me with my product?

Answers to these questions will not only save your company a lot of time and money, they will also give your product a better chance to succeed in the marketplace the first time around.

Ideally, as designers, we like to see our projects through from start to finish; but there are times when we may be thrown into the middle of an existing and complex project. This may feel like an intimidating situation, but with the right attitude and strategy, it can be a great opportunity to showcase your best work.

When I first joined the projekt202 UX design team, my first project led me deep into the weeds. Luckily, I was surrounded by a smart and supportive team. I survived the project, and our team thrived. Along the way, I’ve collected a few tips that have helped me, and will (hopefully) help you. If you ever find yourself as a UX designer in the middle of multi-faceted project, try these 7 strategies to quickly ramp up:

1. Don’t panic.
Go to your safe space, take a deep breath, and accept your assignment. Yes, it’s is complicated, but you can handle it.

2. Get your mind right.
Psych yourself up. Create a mantra and place it in a highly visible area on your desk. I know a fellow p202er who gracefully leads large, complicated, and frequently changing projects. He has the mantra, “Every day is a new beginning.” taped to his monitor.

3. Be a good listener.
“A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he knows something.” — Wilson Mizner
If you’re lucky, you’ll have at least one seasoned project member to help get you up to speed.  Actively listen to what your team has to share, and don’t be afraid to ask questions.

Find the most recent wireframes and visuals and discuss them with your team. Before you meet, identify any uncertainties you have about the final design. Then let your team educate you about how the final design came to fruition. Do you see a better way to accomplish something? Ask them why that option didn’t make it. This will allow you to learn more about your team’s decision-making process and the client’s role in that process.

4. Be resourceful.
Do you have access to a Design Research team? If so, consider yourself lucky, and make friends! A good Design Research team will have a wealth of resources for you to peruse such as personas, contextual inquiries, heuristic evaluations, information architecture mapping, and other documents. Use these assets to learn about your users and your client.

As a solo activity, consult existing research documents, client websites, team photos, organization charts, wireframes, and other assets. Try to get a high level view of the project, and then dive into the details as you find ambiguities. Make a list of items that need more clarification and work through each one. If you come to one that you can’t figure out, set it aside to discuss with your team.

During client meetings, take advantage of the informal time before or after a meeting and meeting breaks to speak directly with members of the client team. This can be a great way to build and relationship with the client and learn about the stakeholders and their expectations.

5. Fail early and fail often.
“If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.” – Woody Allen
Finish your first set of wireframes as soon as possible. You won’t know everything at the beginning of your project, but the faster you get your work out there, the faster you will know if you are going in the right direction. If you find you’re off track, it will be easier to refocus your efforts since you haven’t spent a lot of energy and time working on an ineffective idea.

6. Be patient, yet persistent.
It will take time to adjust to a new project, team, and client. You may feel unsteady and overwhelmed at first, but as you gain more hands-on experience, your confidence will grow. Always be patient with yourself and always strive to do your best work.

7. Create good karma.
If you’re involved in a long and frequently-changing project, consider creating a monthly progress report to track your team’s activities. Periodic progress reports will make it easier to onboard new designers. Also, if you happen to leave a project for some reason, it will make it easier for another designer to pick up where you left off.

Are you holding your users hostage?  Is your application so hard to learn that users are afraid you’ll change it?  Do they not make any adjustments to the app out of the box or after they get their basic needs met for fear they “might break it”?  These kinds of interfaces often have loyal user bases who have been kept in the room long enough to learn to get along with the application.  But products with long, steep learning curves risk alienating new users. The accumulation of lost time spent on regular tasks cuts into efficiency and makes the tool vulnerable to new competitors.

I love it just the way it is.

Usually hostage-taking applications are mission-critical production apps – they’re running supply chains, medical billing or banking transactions.  They’re tracking parts, DNA or versions of a document used by ten people.  Some applications have such a large market-share that they’re difficult to migrate from, such as the Microsoft Office Suite.

These applications take users a long time to learn – weeks, sometimes months, and even longer to get it working the way they want it to.  Once a user has learned the app, they are beholden to it.  They’ve spent days understanding it and contorting to its ways.

It’s not uncommon in our user research to spend an hour watching a user struggle with a product and then profess a love for it.  They say “Don’t change it!  I like it the way it is!”  They are hostage.  They look lovingly on a challenging interface because at this point it is all they know.

It calls for an intervention.

You have to start by finding out what’s working and what’s not.  This goes far beyond reviewing support issues and feature requests.  Have you watched both new and current users work with the product?  Use in-depth research to guide you.  This user research is not taking users at their word, but rather looking deeply into their environment, tasks and behavior to arrive at new solutions to old problems.

Based on this research and company and market conditions there’s usually a choice: make tactical changes that incrementally improve the product’s core workflows; or, go for the bigger risk and potentially larger win – change the way people fundamentally interact with your tool.  This may be changing the navigation paradigm, moving key tasks to mobile platforms, or automating data collection and connection on the backend so tasks are eliminated entirely.

If you go for the big change you need buy-in from the top of your organization that they will support and fund the changes through the major design and development effort required.  Stakeholders must also know that they will have to ride out the initial howls of disbelief from users who are pried from the clutches of the existing system they spent so much time learning.

Let your existing users know that changes are on the way.  Give them a chance to accept their upcoming new life outside the confines of the current application.  Use existing communication channels to talk about how the changes will make users’ lives easier.  If there is a public user community, it may help to release the new version to a small group of champion users who can spread the word that the new system is not only not the end of the world, but a big improvement.

As with treating Stockholm syndrome, it may take some time for long-time users to let go of what they’re used to. If you’ve done the right research and prioritized users’ needs, the ease of use will quickly win over existing users, while opening up the application to a wider audience who expects to use a tool, not be hostage to it.

Nic is proud to be able to create 95% of his product from inside his trailer.  The problem is, the sandwich takes a long time to make, what with the toasting on the grill, and its hard to get just right.  And Nic wants to scale his business. He believes the key to this will be replacing his bread with flat-bread, which will allow for more volume during the lunch rush.

It’s not like flat-bread would be selling out. Nic makes it himself, from scratch, early in the morning, as opposed to his current bread which is bought at Whole Foods.  Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as replacing one type of bread with another and moving on.  The char is gone. The sauces don’t soak into anything. The current bread dances with the chicken but the flat-bread is just the dance floor.  In another sandwich, the flat-bread might be better than regular bread, but this sandwich evolved in regular bread, and putting it in flat-bread is like dropping a South American iguana into the Galapagos. Nic continues to refine the recipe.

Two blocks away at projekt202, we see this all the time. Someone makes a product and successfully evolves it over time, then they are ready to expand it.  Everything, including the product, the technology, the target users, the entire experience, has to be re-examined.

When this kind of client comes to us, we help to identify the ingredient that is the essence of the product before re-building the rest of the product offering around it.  Contextual research and user testing is extremely valuable in this process.  So is developing a clear strategy for the future.  Research and strategy work hand in hand until they align to effectively inform design decisions.  Once these decisions are made and carried out, we check in with our client’s users to see if we were right.  Then we tweak and refine before delivering a successful, scalable, redesign product.

This is what happened when we re-designed the UI for Logitech’s Harmony 1000 remote.  We made significant improvements based on our user research, but having no control over the hardware, we could only do so much.  We could envision a holistically re-designed sandwich, but had only been hired to do the bread.  When Logitech built their next version, they brought us in earlier to give input on the hardware in addition to UI design. The result was the Harmony One, which earned a Best of CES award, a CNET Editor’s Choice award and became one of the best selling universal remotes on the market.

Nic won’t scale up until he has the right holistic product locked in.  Before focusing on chicken sandwiches, Nic was a banking and business consultant.  He knows the benefits of investing time to find the right pattern before pushing it hard because that’s where the ROI is. After all, he didn’t quit consulting to make a mediocre sandwich.
http://jalopyaustin.com/

The Design Research team at projekt202 recently ran into two challenges as a result of this new dominance of touch screens. First, although there are many design guidelines regarding touch based UIs there are no comprehensive heuristics available. Therefore we decided to establish a set of metrics at projekt202 that could be used to evaluate touch-based UI applications, and ensure our designs have the best possible user experience. These metrics are the subject of a future blog post. Instead I want to focus on our second challenge which is how to usability test prototypes for touch-based UIs with target end users in a realistic setting while also allowing for remote observers.

The team’s first goal was to create a prototype that was relatively low fidelity but at the same time would operate on the actual anticipated hardware (in this case an iPad) to ensure a more realistic experience. This was successfully built by projekt202 designers who used the exporting dialog in Adobe Illustrator to export art boards to JPEGs, but because of certain attributes given to various ‘hot spots’ (interactive areas e.g. buttons, pop-overs etc) html files were also exported which could then easily be loaded in the iPad browser.

After the prototype was created we proceeded to tackle the second challenge; how to efficiently complete and record usability tests on a device, without being connected to a computer? A number of different type of cameras were tested as candidates by the p202 Design Research team for recording interactions between users and the iPad but one emerged as a clear winner with exceptional picture quality, and very minimal user experience interference – the Samsung SDP-860 Digital Presenter.

The SDP-860 captures images with up to 30 frames per second at full HD and with a 6x Optical and 8x Digital zoom, resulting in great visual quality. Our experiment setup had the Digital Presenter focusing on the iPad displaying the prototype and the user’s hand motions. This was also coupled with a web camera conveying the user’s facial expression during testing.

During most user testing sessions we normally utilize Morae by Techsmith to record statistical data and transmit sessions remotely in real-time. However, the picture and transmission quality through Morae during the use of the Digital Presenter was degraded which forced us to select a different solution – GoTo Meeting. Using GoTo Meeting, a web camera, the Samsung Digital Presenter and two lavaliere microphones, we were effectively able to record and transmit our usability testing session in real-time with great picture and sound quality.

Setup for user testing of tablet and observer view

This is a setup that we can definitely recommend to others who wish to perform user testing on portable touch-based hardware.

We’re not sure where this will go, but we’re going to have a little more fun with it. Check it out – you might see some familiar faces.

Oh, did we mention that we are taking submissions?

AR in Construction

Today, architects and engineers are creating 3d BIM computer models of their projects, but these models are only being utilized at a fraction of their potential.  These parametric models are rich with information; however they are mainly only utilized in the design process and not during construction.   For construction, the digital models are ossified into sets of 2d drawings called construction documents.  This invariably results in wasted time and energy when architects and contractors meet about a 3-dimensional detail that is difficult to understand from the 2d construction documents.

BIM model example

Finished space

What is missing is a way to get that rich, 3d information into the field without printing out large and potentially outdated paper documents or gathering around a computer and monitor.  The job site is a harsh condition and it is hard enough to find a place to set the construction documents, let alone a desktop or laptop computer to view a 3d model, so the value of the model is unrealized.

The solution is to utilize the latest in Augmented Reality on mobile devices to display the architect’s virtual model over a contractor’s live phone camera feed.  The mobile phone already plays a prominent role for contractors as it is usually the only method for communication on-site.  By leveraging this ubiquity, the contractor would be empowered with the richness of the 3d model and be able to increase efficiency and construction schedules.

What goes here?

I'll pull that up...

Looks like we need to make room for the conduit.

AR for Networking

What if you could know about your next important business contact before you even meet them?

The social connections we make have always been important to being part of the business community.  Networking and conference events provide great opportunities to expand those connections, but often the events are chaotic and intimidating.  Because there is limited time to network around an event, you want to make sure you spending your time efficiently by meeting with the people that are most important to your business.

With Augmented Reality on mobile devices you could find out who you need to meet – without having to rely on someone else to make that introduction.  Utilizing facial recognition technology similar to what Facebook has today, attendees of a conference could be scanned with your phone’s camera and relevant CV data displayed directly on your screen.  You would be able to sort through the attendees’ information and find the ones that mattered to you.  You would even be able to learn a little about them beforehand, allowing for a natural conversation starter.

What was that guy's name?

Facebook's Facial Recognition

Right, I need to talk to him!

So how will we interface with these new products?  The mobile, touch-device platforms seem the most promising.  But it may by a hybrid of Kinect-like spatial sensors combined with touch.  Or even onscreen, composited interactions between the virtual and real objects.  Whichever path, we look forward to the next chance to explore these ideas in greater detail!

It still took us a while to put the thing together, but it was with great pride that we placed and attached the final part and spun the drum. Then I glanced at our staging area and noticed that we had more than a few left over parts. I don’t mean the extra fasteners and tidbits manufacturers sometimes include as an acknowledgement that tiny screws will make the jump to hyperspace and escape the moment you look away from them.

No, rather than courtesy extras, we were left with pieces that looked important to the composter’s structural integrity and operational capacity. I spent a good (well, not exactly “good;” more like “bad”) twenty minutes re-reading the instructions to see if we’d missed a step. Everything checked out, and the bin didn’t feel unstable, so we considered ourselves done with the project.

But every time I’m in my backyard now, I eye the bin with growing suspicion.  I’m convinced that a vigorous spin is going to crack it open and send all the decomposing vegetables, straw, and exotic wildlife tumbling through the air to “top dress” my face and clothing. I can’t help but wonder if I’m simply not as skilled at kit-building as I believe.  I also think there’s functionality that the bin will now be lacking because I didn’t use all of the pieces.

I’ve noticed something similar in many of the applications I use on my computers.  A subset of the available tools permits me to do the many things I need to do, but a non-trivial number of buttons and functions lie there unused. I’m not worried about wireframes and design documents falling apart mid-presentation – although I’m sure many of us have had just that happen.

Instead of structural integrity or lack thereof gnawing at my sense of accomplishment, I feel a nagging doubt that I’m not quite the expert that I think I am with the tools I use to do my job. It’s kind of like the time Emma Frost was trapped in Iceman’s body, and she discovered that, far from being a character of limited worth, he was one of the more powerful mutants in the X-Men; he simply hadn’t been using his powers to their fullest extent. When he regains controls of his body, Iceman is depressed to see how far below his potential he’s been living.

So could I be using Illustrator, for example, to take over the world if I knew more? Maybe. As a designer and sci-fi fan, I’m generally optimistic that the future will bring increases in my power level if I apply myself.  On the other hand, I’m also certain that I don’t want users of anything I design to look at an array of un-clicked buttons and menus and worry that they’d done something wrong or that they hadn’t done as much as they could have.

A prevailing belief in the design industry holds that we should reduce visual noise to help people focus on the things they need to see, and years of experience have shown me the importance of this rule. I now believe there’s an additional emotional dimension that defines this principle as well. Too many buttons and features can make a screen ugly enough to cause a full grown adult to wince; clutter can cause a novice to be put off by perceived complexity; and an abundance of functions can make an expert doubt her level of expertise when components go unused.

As designers, we want all of our users to feel like experts. In an ideal world, every user would have time to play around with an application and explore its full suite of functionality. I trust that while most of us couldn’t point to the ideal world on a map, we know it’s pretty far from our current coordinates. Our challenge, then, is to ensure that our users look at all the pieces in the kit and know exactly where they go and how to use them: we want folks to compost happily without crossing their fingers and preparing themselves physically and emotionally to dodge flying orange peels and anoles (or their respective digital facsimiles).

I’ll keep you posted on how the compost bin fares. Thanks for reading!