Transcript

TEDxSHEFFIELD - CENNYDD BOWLES - What is UX and why should you care?

[Applause] So, I think the web's underachieving and uh I'm not the only one. Armen Vit, who's a a graphic designer a couple of years ago posted a fairly innocuous seeming blog post entitled uh landmark websites where aren't they? And in this uh Vit contended that as yet we haven't created anything on the web that rivals the the design great from other fields. and it gives the example of the um New York City subway map uh the titles to the film 7 uh the famous Paul Rand IBM logo and so on. Others including Jonathan Harris of we feel fine.org fame um have echoed similar sentiments. There have been no masterpieces on the web. This criticism stung us quite deeply I think as a community. But you know what? I actually agree with it. I think it's it's obvious that the web has shaped generations, but the the the sum is truly greater than its parts. No one site for me stands as a landmark of design. So, let's just look at some of the likely candidates. Google, Amazon, eBay, Facebook. Um, sure, they've all been spectacular successes, but I think, you know, are are they really going to stand the test of time as design classics or or simply as impressive business models? I think we've become very good at making cool, impressive, and useful sites. But I do think that beauty is something that's missing from modern web design, which is a surprise because as Vit points out, we see beauty across many other design fields. We see it in automotive design, uh, beautiful products, cars that arouse passion and extraordinary desire in people. We see it in architecture. We see the the wonderful bird's nest stadium uh, in in Beijing, which spoke volumes about a nation's attitude. It inspired, I think, a city and a watching public in a way that to my mind no website has. We see it in information design, Harry Beck's original 1933 tube map, which personally I I will take over the NYC subway map any day of the week, but it beautifully clarifies the complexity of the underground network through the metaphor of wiring. And I can vouch as an ex Londoner myself that it's become part of the collective consciousness and the emotional fabric of the entire city. And of course, you may have your own favorites, and we'll discuss the eye of the beholder a little bit later. But why am I so focused on beauty anyway? Why does it matter that other design fields lead the way? Well, I think beauty is important because it affects us in profound ways. It directly creates positive emotions within us, however hard we try to resist them. So, studies have shown that we're kinder to beautiful people. We judge their content, their message, what they're trying to say in light of their attractiveness. And this was demonstrated uh very very aly in the 1960s in the presidential debates between Nixon and Kennedy. The radio audience uh judged Nixon to have had the upper hand whereas the watching TV public judge the more attractive Kennedy to have had the better of the debate. Now this bias toward attractive individuals isn't isn't even a learned response. It's a hardwired reaction that's seen even in infants. Beauty also makes things easier to use. And there's a really important distinction here. It's not that we think they're easier to use. They actually are easier to use. This is known as the aesthetic usability effect. And what happens in essence is that our brains react differently uh in front of a beautiful object and they actually bend the way that we approach. We become more flexible in our approaches when using a beautiful object. So trials have shown that not only do people prefer using beautiful objects, but they actually perform tasks better on them, which is a pretty pretty out there thought. As a designer, there's almost an unwritten contract that I have to include an Apple example in in every presentation I do. So, here's my one. Um, Apple know the benefit of the aesthetic usability effect better than pretty much anyone. The color iMac that we see here brought beauty to hardware or commercial hardware um in in you know for the first time really. And I think the the aesthetic appeal of these devices combined with a good user experience offered by the uh the the Mac OS brought unengaged users to computing for the first time. So beauty gives us positive emotions and it helps us use things. But it also it's infectious. Beauty makes us feel good. We want to show it off and share it with others. And this is why we we put art on our walls. It's why we take photos of a beautiful sunset. It allows us and others to relive that experience. Telling others about beautiful things obviously leads us into things like loyalty and advocacy which are uh concepts that are much sought after uh within business. But for me the most powerful and most interesting aspect of beauty is that it can actually change our perspective on the world. Architect and psychologist Brian Lawson calls this a one-way valve to a new way of seeing. So let's think of the power of beauty in our web world. Not only could a beautiful web make our users happy, productive, and more loyal, but I think we could genuinely change the way the world thinks. And sure, you might argue, well, you know, it's not that simple. You know, can the web really even be beautiful? After all, it's impermanent. It's abstract. It's functional. And unlike the previous examples, we can't really examine the artifact of the web in really the same way. So, is is the web really a good place for beauty anyway? I'd like to answer that with a brief diversion into a common vehicle for beauty, which is art. If we head back into Greek and Roman civilization, we find that art and the ideals of beauty that it contains are what what's called mimemetic, which is which is to say that they are intended to mimic and replicate nature. Plato's theory of forms at the time said that uh there exists on a on a heavenly plane that mere mortals can't access one idealized form of everything. the perfect chair, the perfect cow, the perfect grape. And the art of that era was very much an attempt to get close to that ideal. Um, so everything we see from this period is utterly lifelike. Every every literally chiseled jaw is spot on. And it's actually from this era that we get the word art uh at all. It comes from the Greek RS meaning skill. This uh this attitude, this approach was carried through right up until and including the Renaissance. the idea that uh beauty was was held within a heavenly form often a religious uh figure for instance. But from the Renaissance onwards we started to see the early stirrings of humanism and perspective the scientific method and so on. And we started to become comfortable with the idea that beauty could be inherent in things that mankind has created. And as we move forward a couple of centuries uh towards the romantic era, we see a clear change in art. The idea of representation starts to make its mark. The art that we see here, Turner painting from 1839 is certainly beautiful, but it's not literal. It's not accurate. Instead, we find joys in the color and the emotive qualities of the scene. The eye has to fill in some of the detail. Representation and subjective interpretation become critical in appreciating beauty. And as we move into the modern era, we find that anything can be beautiful in the right context. Marcel Duchamp's concept of found objects means that anything can be artistic even even a urinal. Contemporary context uh contemporary conceptual art uh really prioritizes a beautiful thought over execution. So the artifact of art these days can be something utterly benile. Uh Tracy Emmen's tent for instance. The idea is is is paramount. And then we even find that the the artifact itself may not be authentic. So Damian Hurst's diamond encrusted skull which I'm sure many of you are familiar with. He didn't actually make that. He merely project managed interns and various helpers actually created the artifact itself. And then we think of installation art which is designed for a specific space a specific duration. It's temporary. It can be interactive as well. So consider the uh the helter skelter that was installed in the the main turbine hall in tape modern. So art and our understanding of beauty I would contend have shifted substantially from those early days. They become less mimemetic and they become more representational. Beautiful things then can be abstract. They can be temporary. They can be interactive and so is the web. So under these terms I would say our medium is very well placed uh to accommodate our current definitions of beauty. So if the web can be beautiful, how are we going to know it when we see it? And what is beauty anyway? Well, when I think of beauty, I think of three types of beauty. Universal, socioultural, and subjective. Universal beauty is is something that's based on globally accepted principles. And this we see across all all different types of cultures. It's a timeless quality. In humans, we find that the the idea of averess and symmetry are the strongest predictors of beauty across every culture. This is a composite image um made by a company called Face Research, which averages dozens of female faces. And this average woman is certainly more attractive than average. So when we're designing for universal beauty, we we look at concepts such as similarity and harmony and even averess which help us aim for that universal beauty. Social cultural beauty then is governed by the norms uh and the standards of a particular time or a particular place. And this is quite clearly seen in sexual attitudes. Now please forgive the uh the female examples. Um, throughout history, nothing has been studied for its beauty as much as the female form. So, it merely makes for a simple illustration. On the left, we see Reuben's Venus and on the right, a modern uh runway model. There's a clear depiction here of the changing socioultural attitudes to beauty and attractiveness, the body type, the waist to hip ratio and so on. We see more subtle examples of this as well. We see music, fashion, uh even philosophical approaches to the world uh go in and out of fashion in a particular time and a particular culture. Finally, we have subjective beauty, which is the wholly personal encapsulation of one's likes and dislikes. So, if you like big butts and cannot lie, all you're doing is exercising your right to a personal subjective opinion on beauty. Reuben's Venus, for instance, is reflective of the era, but also of Reuben's subjective preference. He simply preferred working with larger models. So, how can we design for these types of beauty? One person who's looked in depth at the role of emotion uh and beauty in design is cognitive scientist Don Norman. And he adapted an old model of cognitive processing and claims that three modes of design dominate and result from these modes. The first is visceral design. A visceral design is something that's aimed at our gut. It's something that we feel without mental processing. When we have a positive feeling towards something, a positive visceral reaction, we call that attraction. And that's what draws bees to flowers or draws babies to reach out to a beautiful face. These visceral reactions are formed extremely quickly. Um something of the order of 50 milliseconds. To design for a visceral response, we have to rely on things like shape, color, and form that don't require cognitive processing that we simply experience. And this was something I think that was quite popular in the early days of the web and is now actually I think uh seeing a little bit of a resurgence with the rise of so-called art directed blog posts uh and things of that ilk. So these these sites tend to be artistic. They tend to be quite attractive, but they also suffer at the next level, the behavioral level. That said, it's easy for us to belittle the visceral layer, I think, as designers. Um, but without success at the visceral level, it's very hard to build on that and to create success at the behavioral level. Um, and the reflective level which come after that said, the clear problem with visceral design is that it rewards instant attraction over usability and I would contend real beauty. So over the last few years, the focus, I think, has shifted somewhat toward more behavioral design. And behavioral design is obviously concerned with use. So does the site work? Does the system perform my tasks in in an appropriate way? And for behavioral design, you'll obviously call up your nearest ergonomist or usability specialist. Now, the web usability movement in particular has been quite successful um at understanding what the user needs to do and designing a system uh that revolves around that. and it's been successful, but it's also the usability movement has been criticized for making the web boring. I'm not sure this is necessarily a fair accusation, but it is definitely true that usability processes when applied poorly can create some horribly mediocre products. At worst, you get a a sort of paint by numbers design, if you pull everyone and try and please everyone, um you get a sort of dreaded design by committee. So, let's look at an example of that. two artists uh by the name of Vitili Kar and Alexander Malamid surveyed the musical preferences of a very wide population of people um looking at things like instrumentation, tempo, subject and so on. And um they assembled these into two songs, the most wanted and the most unwanted songs written off people's uh least favorite and most favorite uh musical preferences. The most wanted song is the kind of soft rock R&B song with very well-established instruments. And just to quote the uh the artists, this creates a musical work that will be unavoidably and uncontrollably liked by 72% of listeners. So let's uh let's have a listen. [Music] It's crap. It's really, really bad music designed to please everyone, but it's certainly nowhere near beautiful. And therefore, is it really surprising when you hear something like the most wanted song that people sometimes equate usability with bland safess? Successful behavioral design then does make usable and profitable sites, but not beautiful ones, I would contend. And for that, we need to aim at the third and the most complex layer of design, which is reflective design. Before we get to that, I obviously have to play you a snippet of the most unwanted song. Um, it's 25 minutes long. It it features the world's most hated instruments, the banjo, the accordion, the tuber, and a rapping operatic soprano. [Music] Enough of that. Reflective design. Then the third mode of design builds on visceral attraction and behavioral usability and it looks at meaning and message. It's design that speaks to us. It asks questions like what are the values that lie behind this object? What does this say about me as an owner or purchaser? Let's look at a personal example. This clock is called the tube clock by a company called NextTime. And it's one of my most treasured possessions. It's less usable than a regular digital watch because it's less accurate. Uh it's also it looks good, but it's not perhaps as elegant as a a sophisticated analog clock. But for me, the beauty lies within the concept. It appeals to me and the values I see in it uh correlate with those of me as a as a designer. It's a conversation starter. So this the tricky thing about reflective design is it's very personal. It's very subjective. Our views will change with experience, with age, with culture and so on. But there are strong benefits to successful reflective design. You when we encounter an object that appeals to us on this level, we want to show it off. We want to repeat the experience and tell others. And I would actually contend that this is the same the same way that we react to a beautiful object. These in fact in fact are one and the same. a a beautiful design is one that appeals at this reflective level. I think the web is only now starting to understand this and that's why it's slowly moving beyond usability to the realm of user experience. And what we're looking at here is what makes people tick, you know, what makes them excited. I think perhaps the lack of focus that we've had in the early days of the web and this in this tier is why we've not created something truly beautiful on the web. But I think we will. So, if beauty resides in reflective design, how exactly do we do this? How can we make the web beautiful? And sure, I think there's a case for saying this is going to happen naturally with time anyway. Maybe I'm being a bit too harsh on a medium that's still very much in its infancy. I mean, the web is only 7,000 days old after all. But the key key to creating the the sort of websites that people love rather than merely like, I think, is to start thinking at that reflective level. So first we need to understand the power of emotion and appeal to it. And this needs us to understand people, real people rather than just their user tasks. So what would they never dream of asking for? How can we improve their life beyond just this one visit? And to do this, we need to recognize that uh experience goes beyond mere usability. I think claiming your website is easy to use is like claiming that your restaurant serves edible food. It's it's not a marketing plus. It should be a given by now. I think this kind of design also relies on designs to take the lead and take charge of the process. The old cliche of when did you see a statue of a committee. The classics of design have typically been created by one person with a strong vision and the skills, the technical and the political skills to execute upon that. And in film, this is known as the altur theory where the director is in charge of the creative vision. Now, of course, I understand that this can be difficult in modern design and if unchecked, can lead to some fairly sort of tricky ego uh ego design situations, but without strong leadership in a clear vision well executed, I think we have no hope of creating anything beautiful. I also think we need to consider long-term seduction. So, how can we maintain interest after that initial lust has worn off? It's quite easy to make something that's viscerally attractive, but how can we maintain that freshness with time? Just as in a romantic relationship, the I think the odd surprise is rewarding. So bringing unexpected joy into a into an experience. Um so varying things to keep them fresh. Even something as small as you know the Google logos, the fuss that was caused by the interactive Google logos the the other day. Um you know it helps keep the effort going to sustain the initial appeal of the system. I think we also need to broaden our horizons. As mentioned earlier, there's beautiful design everywhere. And my mother who's a a teacher told me once of the concept in education called the golden moment. And this the golden moment is is a point you always remember where you suddenly discover something and find your world view subtly shifted. It's that one-way valve to a new way of seeing that we discussed earlier. To create these golden moments, I think you need to recognize them for yourself. So we need to notice the world and the beauty around us. Scanning the horizon, broader design fields than just our limited echo chamber. Finally, I think we have to be brave. Since reflective design is all about meaning and message, we need to make statements. We should stand for something in our work and convey ideals, our own ideals and our clients ideals through our work. I think standing for something is quite quite rare in the web community. Our communities and movements are mostly technique-driven. HTML 5 versus Flash. I'm not interested in that. Why are we not exploring the more important philosophical approach that drives our work? Of course, there are some caveats to these recommendations. You know, like everyone, I work for a real business with real clients and real constraints. So, it may be that this sort of progress is a bit slower than we might hope, but I think given time, we will get there. We're lucky enough to work on the coldface of the most exciting technology of modern times, and I think we're on the brink of some wonderful things. So yes, we have underachieved, but given the evolution of beauty and the tools and attitudes that are now available to us, I do think we're the generation to solve this problem. And I hope in 5 years time that I can look back on this presentation and laugh. I think if we work hard, we focus on this this reflective design and believe in the power of this fantastic thing we call the web, then I guarantee we can create our own beautiful design landmarks. Thank you. [Applause]