Design Critique

Timothy Keirnan interviews Gerry McGovern at User Interface 12 on November 5th, 2007, immediately after Gerry's all-day seminar called How To Design A Task-Based Information Architecture: Essential Tips For Creating Customer-Centric Websites.

Points discussed include:

* "Words drive behavior." Getting the right words is crucial to developing good Web content.

* Task-centric is customer-centric. Correct wording is essential to being customer-centric.

* The opposite of customer-centric is organization-centric. Organization-centric websites are not very helpful to customers.

* People often come to the Web to learn or to do something. So, design for impatience. Are your customers able to quickly and simply complete their tasks?

* Advertising often treats customers like Pavlov's dogs. Many Web users see through manipulative ads and instead want useful knowledge that conveys something authentic about the good or service they're after. Most ads are not perceived as authentically representing a good or service.

NOTE: When Tim says "marketing" in this interview, he should have said "advertising". It was a terrific but long day :-)

You can find Gerry's website at
www.gerrymcgovern.com

Gerry's most recent book is Killer Web Content at
www.gerrymcgovern.com/killer-web-content.htm

Special thanks to User Interface Engineering (www.uie.com) for making this episode possible by sponsoring Design Critique at UI12.

Tim interviews Mike Beasley, President of the Usability Professionals Association Michigan chapter, about the upcoming World Usability Day 2007. Also, UIE's User Interface 12 conference is rapidly approaching and Tim will be there. Finally, the MSU School of Packaging answers listener Tom's question about episode 35.

World Usability Day's URL is
www.worldusabilityday.org

UIE's User Interface 12 Conference URL is
www.uie.com/events/uiconf/2007

House Band Peter Grey sings Nothing. (Which is exactly what we have left as far as songs from Peter for future episodes.)

Tim interviews David Chmura, Chief Instigator of Humble Daisy, Inc., about the design of both Humble Daisy (the company) and ProfCast (the application). This episode has three parts:
1. HumbleDaisy's vision, structure, and culture as a truly user-centered company.
2. ProfCast, the presentation recording application.
3. The design process Humble Daisy used to create ProfCast.

See ProfCast at www.ProfCast.com
See HumbleDaisy at www.HumbleDaisy.com

The book Getting Real that Tim refers to is at
http://gettingreal.37signals.com/

Listener Rachel mentioned Beau Brummel in her email to the show.

We close with a brief discussion of the band XTC, source of both Humble Daisy's name and a lot of good music. Tim's favorite XTC songs are Knuckle Down and Snowman, both from English Settlement. Dave loves the band too much to have a favorite song, but prefers their Skylarking album above most of the others. What is your favorite XTC song? Email the show from the designcritique.net home page and tell us. See XTC's website at
www.xtcidearecords.co.uk

Peter Grey, where are you? Our house band seems to have disappeared.

Virtually all products,  from food to electronics,  come in some type of packaging. Who designs the customer experience of packaging and how? Join Tim on his visit to the Michigan State University School of Packaging.

The school's website is www.packaging.msu.edu.

Addresses for Dr. Bix, Joe, and Javier are as follows (remove spaces and exchange AT for @ before sending):
Dr. Bix: bixlaura AT msu.edu
Javier: cjd AT msu.edu
Joe: fairjose AT msu.edu

Rousseau is a psychologist who does warning research. A citation
for one of his publications is:
Rousseau, G. K., N. Lamson, et al. (1998). "Designing Warnings to Compensate for Age-Related Changes in Perceptual and Cognitive Abilities." Psychology & Marketing 15(7): 643-662.

Kea told us about the MX East conference in Philadelphia this October:
http://adaptivepath.com/events/2007/oct

Serendipity strikes! Fast Company magazine's article on the new Barbie packaging is here:
http://www.fastcompany.com/multimedia/slideshows/content/mattels-123-barbie.html

Tim and Tom are joined by returning guest Serena Rosenhan for a critique of Panasonic's NI-553R clothes iron. What did people in olden times use for ironing and how does the design of the modern-day NI-553R support the task? The gang discusses the merits of the design as well as problems found during its use, and reflects on the classic trade-off of convenience versus safety.

Also, email messages from Jorg and from house band Peter Grey, plus a startling revelation from Tom. We close with an absurd Bea Arthur song (Good Night, But Not Goodbye) from the infamous 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special, wherein she sang it to the cantina patrons (Peter Grey, please send us some more music so we aren't tempted to do this again). Listeners will understand the relevance, such as it is.

Photos of the iron's user interface can be viewed at www.designcritique.net. The album art for the actual MP3 file of this episode has a different photo we hope you will enjoy. You may want to extract the photo file from the MP3 to see it clearly, print it, put it on your refrigerator, etc.

For Design Critique's 2nd anniversary episode, Tim and Tom are joined by Jared Spool from User Interface Engineering. Jared shares some of UIE's recent research such as:
 + How UIE thinks user researchers should hold back on giving recommendations, but instead share the observations with the team and let them generate their own recommendations.
+ How UIE thinks user research is an important skill, but usability professionals are not necessary.
+ How UIE thinks usability labs are a senseless waste of glass and wood, instead preferring any ole' conference room.

Tim and Tom share insights from their own experience regarding Jared's points, and numerous similes and metaphors abound. A certain amount of whackiness ensues.

Rolf Molich, whom Jared mentions, can be found at www.dialogdesign.dk/cue.html.

Lisa Battle, whom Tim mentions, can be found at www.designforcontext.com.

User Interface Engineering is at www.uie.com.

It's been a great two years! Tim and Tom would like to thank all the listeners for downloading the episodes, telling others about Design Critique, and sending us such fascinating feedback.

In a special episode recorded on location, Tom Diab, proprietor of the Gourmet Chocolate Cafe in Chelsea, Michigan, shares his ideas on customer experience design for cafes. Through a bonanza of entertaining storytelling, Tom, a former schoolteacher and drug rep for Pfizer, tells Tim and guest cohost Chris how he and his wife decided to open a cafe, how they found a location, the design choices they made for the physical spaces and menus and goods offered, and why small businesses can innovate better than corporate competitors.

Some of Tom's ideas include: Design for your customers, not yourself; test your designs with customers before implementing; creatively balance the needs of child-free patrons with parent patrons to provide an ambience for all; co-advertise with competitors; organic design iteration is good; invest in your customers' community and you will be rewarded in the long term. You'll hear conceptual references to field research, usability testing, and participatory design throughout Tom's narrative.

The website for the Gourmet Chocolate Cafe may be found at www.gourmetchocolatecafe.com, but this episode is not about websites--it's about the brick and mortar experience of cafes. Tim is a "power user" of the Gourmet Chocolate Cafe and Chris provided the "newbie" perspective. Make sure you watch the video tour in Design Critique episode 32a to see the design features we discuss in this interview.

This episode's content has been certified 100 percent iPhone-free by the Design Critique Anti-Hype League of America.

Before you listen to episode 32b, which is an interview with the Gourmet Chocolate Cafe's designer and proprietor, please watch this ten-minute video tour of the cafe. Tim points out key features of the cafe that are discussed during the following interview about the customer experience design of the cafe.

The following free software can play this MPEG-4 video file.
 
VLC Media Player for Macintosh, Windows, and Linux:
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

QuickTime Player for Macintosh and Windows:
http://www.quicktime.com

Folks, here is the new email address you can use to send us feedback. Besides typing the address into your email client, you can also click the "Send email to Tim & Tom!" link in the upper left corner of the www.designcritique.net blog page. As of this posting, the old email address for Design Critique is defunct. Outta here. Gone with the wind. You get the picture.

Tim and Tom catch up on email sent by listeners over the past ten months. Thanks to everyone who wrote in with kind words or questions or observations, whether we read them on air or not.

Jason's link to the atomic time watch:
www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/watches/8765

John's response to our Information Architecture wordcast:
www.smorgasbord-design.blogspot.com/2007/01/
information-architecting-coffee-shop.html

Ben's designs for rice cookers in response to our rice cooker critique:
www.benarent.co.uk/bog/bens-blub/solution-for-tim-tom-rice-cookers

Colin's designs for airport seating:
www.finkle.ca/major_01.htm

Andy's mention of the 2007 dConstruct conference happening in September:
www.2007.dconstruct.org

Tim's mention of the soon-to-be-happening international UPA conference:
www.usabilityprofessionals.org/conference/2007

And Mark sent a link to his free text-to-speech converter website that Tim checked
out and liked:
www.spokentext.net
Tim also liked Mark's interview on WebAxe this past March:
www.checkengineusa.com/web_axe_podcast/audio/web_axe_episode_42.mp3

Watch Tim and Tom at World Usability Day 2006 on the campus of Michigan State University. In part 2 of 2, Tom concludes his discussion on the usability and accessibility of podcasts. Then the guys answer questions from the audience.

The following free software can play this MPEG-4 video file.
 
VLC Media Player for Macintosh, Windows, and Linux:
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

QuickTime Player for Macintosh and Windows:
http://www.quicktime.com

Watch Tim and Tom at World Usability Day 2006 on the campus of Michigan State University. In part 1 of 2, Tim relates Design Critique's origin and purpose, and issues a call for more user experience-related podcasts. Tom begins his discussion on the usability and accessibility of podcasts themselves. Part 2 should be up in another day or so.

The following free software can play this MPEG-4 video file.
 
VLC Media Player for Macintosh, Windows, and Linux:
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

QuickTime Player for Macintosh and Windows:
http://www.quicktime.com

Tech stuff: We got a miniDV copy from the original DVCAM master and have tried to balance resolution (which was a bit grainy from our miniDV copy) with file size constraints. And Tim's eight hours per one hour of Design Critique ratio includes all aspects of production, including photography and music file preparation as well as editing down the raw recording, plus test listens.

Incoming! This is our introduction to Episode 30, which is going to be a video episode that we publish in two parts to try and keep file sizes down. Expect it over the next couple days. If your podcatcher is set to automatically download new Design Critique episodes, and if you don't want two 80MB files coming down whatever Internet connection you use, now is your chance to reset your download preferences for this show. Thanks for listening (and, in this case, watching).

Tim and Tom

Tim and Tom discuss the Speaking of Software project at Michigan Tech and interview professors Chuck Wallace, Bob Johnson, and Ann Brady about improving the training of software engineers at the undergraduate level. If you're an educator or industry professional curious about innovations in teaching software engineering, this episode is for you.

Before you listen to the interview, we encourage you to read the article as published in Technical Communication, Volume 53, Number 3, August 2006, pp. 317-325. Unfortunately, the Society for Technical Communication does not sell this article online. If you do not subscribe to the journal, check a local college library or read the draft at
http://www.cs.mtu.edu/~wallace/research/papers/TCRevision_3-27.pdf

Ann, Bob, and Chuck would like to hear from you. Replace [AT] with the @ sign (and eliminate spaces on either side) to send them email at the addresses below.
Ann: mabrady [AT] mtu.edu
Bob: rrjohnso [AT] mtu.edu
Chuck: wallace [AT] mtu.edu

The project's website (and this summer's Chautauqua invitation) is at
http://www.speaksoft.mtu.edu/

Read some history of the Chautauqua Movement at
http://members.aol.com/alphachautauquan/what.html

Read Tim's original interview with Bob at the start of the Speaking of Software project two years ago: http://www.miupa.org/bjohnson_interview.html

House band Peter Grey sings "This One" to round things out.

Tim and Tom critique rice cooker designs. Cookers from Oster, Aroma, and Panasonic are discussed. As always, you can find pictures of the user interfaces critiqued at www.designcritique.net (as well as in the artwork for this MP3 file).

Jen's "InTheNo" podcast can be found at 1000TimesNo.net. Everybody head over there pronto to hear one of the best new podcasts ever. In her own words, "...we speak with people whose experiences give them an interesting perspective on what happens, and what to do, when life confronts you with 'No.' As many of our guests will tell you, 'No' is often just the beginning of the story."

Cashew the Clown can be found at www.cashewtheclown.com.

House band Peter Grey sings "Without My Girl".

What happens when a secondary function of a product is so good that it becomes the primary reason for purchase among a customer demographic? Tim is joined by special guests Mike and Keith for a discussion of iRiver's IFP-800 (top of photo) and IFP-700 series (bottom) of digital audio players/recorders. iRiver designed the MP3 recording for these units so well that many people use them purely as portable MP3 recorders, not players.

iRiver also created two form factors for one product with the IFP series, so we discuss each industrial designs' relative merits. As always, you can find pictures of the designs discussed at
www.designcritique.net (Note: the wide angle lens made the 700 look wider than the 800. It isn't.)

Colorado Video Impressions is at www.coloradovid.com.
Mystic River is at www.misticriver.net.
Hydrogen Audio is at www.hydrogenaudio.org.