From The Information Diet

“It is easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent… like thinking. And it is also easy to do little things we know we can do, than to start on big things that we are not so sure about”

People just simply hate using products that make no sense for them.

No one should need to “force get” anything. Whether it is being unable to open a bag of chips; having trouble browsing a website; figuring out a game; using a phone. We’re not meant to, nor should, spend a lot of time to understand or learn something that should fulfill a basic need. And every product has a basic need that it fulfills.

Yet, a lot of people drive the development of their products without paying attention to this basic understanding. Companies care more about trends than scrapping out all the bullshit that lies on top to get to the the core of simplicity and clarity.

Products should be copacetic. Sharp. And companies should aim for that, always.

So instead of paying attention to just outside factors, look at the driving-force behind a product: customers.

It’s not a simple task. You are not your user and never will be.

When you are that involved with something day-to-day, it makes it really hard to see what can be confusing people. And this will not be a moment of eureka unless you observe, gather and process information directly form your users.

- Justin Rosenstein (read the rest here)

“If we are honest, we must admit that one aspect of the technium is to make holes in our heart. One day recently we decided that we cannot live another day unless we have a smart phone, when a dozen years earlier this need would have dumbfounded us. Now we get angry if the network is slow, but before, when we were innocent, we had no thoughts of the network at all. Now we crave the instant connection of friends, whereas before we were content with weekly, or daily, connections. But we keep inventing new things that make new desires, new longings, new wants, new holes that must be filled.

Yes, this is what technology does to us. Some people are furious that our hearts are pierced this way by the things we make. They see this ever-neediness as a debasement, a lowering of human nobility, the source of our continuous discontentment. I agree that it is the source. New technology forces us to be always chasing the new, which is always disappearing under the next new, a salvation always receding from our grasp.

But I celebrate the never-ending discontentment that the technium brings. Most of what we like about being human is invented. We are different from our animal ancestors in that we are not content to merely survive, but have been incredibly busy making up new itches which we have to scratch, digging extra holes that we have to fill, creating new desires we’ve never had before.”

Read the ending of this amazing article HERE

via b-sides

Much of the tension in product development and interface design comes from trying to balance the obvious, the easy, and the possible. Figuring out which things go in which bucket is critical to fully understanding how to make something useful.

Shouldn’t everything be obvious? Unless you’re making a product that just does one thing – like a paperclip, for example – everything won’t be obvious. You have to make tough calls about what needs to be obvious, what should be easy, and what should be possible. The more things something (a product, a feature, a screen, etc) does, the more calls you have to make.

This isn’t the same as prioritizing things. High, medium, low priority doesn’t tell you enough about the problem. “What needs to be obvious?” is a better question to ask than “What’s high priority?” Further, priority doesn’t tell you anything about cost. And the first thing to internalize is that everything has a cost.

Making something obvious has a cost. You can’t make everything obvious because you have limited resources. I’m not talking money—although that may be part of it too. I’m primarily talking screen real estate, attention span, comprehension, etc.

Making something obvious is expensive because it often means you have to a whole bunch of other things less obvious. Obvious dominates and only one thing can truly dominate at a time. It may be worth it to make that one thing completely obvious, but it’s still expensive.

Obvious is all about always. The thing(s) people do all the time, the always stuff, should be obvious. The core, the epicenter, the essence of the product should be obvious.

Beyond obvious, you’ll find easy. The things that should be easy are the things that people do frequently, but not always. It all depends on your product, and your customer, but when you build a product you should know the difference between the things people do all the time and the things they do often. This can be hard, and will often lead to the most internal debates, but it’s important to think deeply about the difference between always and often so you get this right.

And finally are the things that are possible. These are things people do sometimes. Rarely, even. So they don’t need to be front and center, but they need to be possible.

Possible is usually the trickiest category because the realistic list of things that should be possible will often be significantly longer than the list of things that should be obvious or easy. That means that some things on the possible list might be better off off the list completely. Instead of making them possible, maybe not making them at all is the right call.

Coming to know the difference between obvious, easy, and possible takes a lot of practice, deep thinking, critical analysis, and, often, debate. It’s a constant learning process. It helps you figure out what really matters.

But once you’re able to see the buckets clearly, and you begin to think about things in terms of obvious, easy, and possible instead of high, medium, and low priority, you’re on your way to building better products.

Today was the last day of talks at the Future of Web Design (FOWD) conference in New York. It is amazing to be back in NY especially at an event like this. Some talks really aggregated much value to my ideas and perspective.

I strongly believe (and practice) the notion that ideas come from gathering info that is all around, processing and linking them to existing observations and conclusions which have already been internalized.

Here are some high points:

Elisabeth Hubert’s (follow her @lishubert) talk on Web App UX had some solid points, especially the fact that she believes (and I agree) where we are in terms of web maturity. She talked about Instructional Scaffolding, which means we have been following learning levels from (1) building functional sites, to (2) getting them online, (3) making them more usable and how now (4) we are prepared to focus on the actual user experience – which involves psychology and influencing behavior and not just making a site usable. We should not just make sites or apps that are useful but we should make them desirable and delightful. For that, we need to understand behavior, looking at both quantitative and qualitative data.

Tina Roth Eisenberg (follow her at @swissmiss and check out the blog) gave a very inspiring talk on The Power of Side Projects and Eccentric Aunts. I will leave you with some advice directly from her:

1- Love what you do
2- Trust your intuition
3- If an opportunity scares you, you need to take it
4- Don’t be a complainer: make things better or quit them
5- Make time for side projects
6- Surround yourself with likeminded people
7- Ignore haters
8- Seek to inspire others

(The Eccentric Aunts was a personal story, but you are all encouraged to have one as well which will encourage everything)

Whitney Hess spoke on the Philosophy of UX (follow her @whitneyhess), in which she gave some very pragmatic advices that are simple to follow, yet many people tend to ignore. They are:

- Stay out of people’s way, do not create obstacles. Pave the road for an easy ride with intentional and obvious paths
- Create a hierarchy that matches people’s needs
- Make the most crucial elements more prominent (prioritization matching the user)
- Focus on one task at hand
- Provide strong information scent
- Provide signposts and cues
- Never let people get lost
- Context sets the stage for a better experience
- Make actions reversible (an example is the “undo” button)
- Provide feedback
- Make a good first impression (First time user experience)

By looking at these, as obvious as they may seem, one can easily find a handful of improvements to add to a product.

In addition, she spoke on how companies and products should have strong principles. It is clear that product development cannot be carried in a scalable manner without principles as pillars.

Steve Fisher (follow him @hellofisher) spoke on the Future of Mobile UX. Fisher pointed out how we are experiencing a device shifting and how the web is not fixed width anymore – meaning people shift from a site to an app and that interaction is focused on the content, not the media/device.

He makes a strong point on how it is all about content (“create once, publish everywhere”) and not really the device (site, app, etc). Content should be well structured in interactions that matter to the user so that it can impact behavior and perception.

Aaron Weyenberg’s (follow him @aweyenberg talk on Responsive Web Design and Embracing the Unknown complemented Fisher’s talk perfectly.

When we are facing a shift where the focus is (or should be) much more on content, design/development should respond accordingly. Responsive Web Design (RWB) follows this thought. It adapts content to multiple devices via CSS3, which can check media conditions and adapt layouts and grids. That way you get one URL viewable in multiple devices (approachable via desktop down, mobile up or ranged media queries).

To top the cake with a nice yummy icing, this all becomes even more relevant to me since it gives me more time to plan, test and prepare the products we are running in the Brazilian market (the device shifting is not really happening so strongly in Brazil).

The future? Unknown… but definitely centered on content. Therefore Responsive Design is a wonderful way to scale and center the product on content across multiple platforms.

– Steve Jobs, Wired, February, 1995