Recently I came across what will likely become the new elevator experience. I was downtown for some training and had pulled into an underground car park for the day. After I parked my car, I went to the elevator and was faced with a keypad. There was a G on it, so I pushed it, assuming that it was for Ground floor. Before I got into the elevator car, I took note of the fact …
Even though many of us are familiar with the term, I am willing to bet there is still a lot of confusion as to what it means or where it applies.
Recently, I watched a TED talk by Daniele Quercia titled “Happy Maps“, in which he encouraged all of us to take a chance sometimes and take the road less travelled, rather than the most efficient. As he put it, you can likely have a more enjoyable experience by eschewing the world that is “fabricated for efficiency” and look for something that is perhaps, quieter, greener, and more beautiful.
Has this ever happened to you? You walk into a restroom and you put your hand under the tap, only to realize after 5 seconds of performing hand gestures under it that it is a manual tap? Then, you go to the paper towel dispenser and look for the lever to press, only to realize after another five seconds of basically reenacting the monolith scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey, that it’s an automated one?
People’s paths can sometimes tell us a lot. Whether we actually do what we say we do or not, one of the more interesting aspects about human behaviour in places, is that we tend to leave evidence of our actions behind for analysis. In urban planning they call this concept desire lines. They are the organic emergence of where people want to go versus where we plan for them to go. Have you ever seen …
Reading a recent interview with Ellen Langer on “Complexity in the Age of Mindfulness” in HBR, it got me to thinking about the importance of process in UX. Whenever we see a headline that someone has a new process for doing something, our ears perk up. Why? I would argue that it is because not unlike technology, we believe that processes will allow us to automate work in way that provides consistent outputs.
As I walked past a restroom recently, in a building I was visiting, I came across a bathroom door that used a more conceptual symbol to identify the intended gender for the room. Next to that sign, stuck on the door with tape, was another photocopied sign with a more conventional image and text. I walked around until I found the men’s restroom and saw that it had been temporarily re-signed the same way.
An old art professor of mine used to tell us that when an artist makes a piece of art, they are responsible for the whole canvas, regardless of whether they put anything on it or not. As UX designers, we are responsible for the whole experience, whether it is part of what we are designing or not. Now, this does not mean that we must account for and mitigate every conceivable point of interaction. It …
