$30 off During Our Annual Pro Sale. View Details »

More Than Usable

Matthew Reidsma
December 06, 2018

More Than Usable

As Experience designers, we're interested in more than just products, services, and websites. But our toolkit looks remarkably like the toolkit product designers use: design for tasks, hope emotions will follow. But experience is big, and emotions aren't just the outputs from using something. We're going to need more than science to explain experience--we'll need philosophy, literature, poetry, and more.

In this talk, I explore how phenomenology (the branch of philosophy that deals with experience), metaphor, and frozen space urine can help us design better experiences for our library users by putting people and experiences first.

(This talk was the opening keynote at MD Tech Connect at the Universities at Shady Grove, Rockland, MD on December 6, 2018.)

Matthew Reidsma

December 06, 2018
Tweet

More Decks by Matthew Reidsma

Other Decks in Design

Transcript

  1. MORE THAN
    USABLE
    LIBRARY SERVICES
    FOR HUMANS
    MATTHEW REIDSMA
    GRAND VALLEY STATE UNIVERSITY

    View Slide

  2. Photo: NASA

    View Slide

  3. Photo, Audio NASA

    View Slide

  4. Photo, Audio NASA
    A MYRIAD
    OF STARS

    View Slide

  5. View Slide

  6. View Slide

  7. TASKS
    EXPERIENCE

    View Slide

  8. Names of the Sea, p.233
    The stories told by numbers and
    research are quite different from the
    stories we tell ourselves and each
    other. This is not to say that either is
    wrong.

    Sarah Moss

    View Slide

  9. We tend to talk about
    transportation as if the ultimate
    goal were mere movement,
    measured in speed, time and
    capacity.

    Emily Badger
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/04/29/cutting-edge-transportation-maps-will-change-how-we-understand-and-plan-cities/

    View Slide

  10. The ultimate goal of
    transportation, though, isn't
    really to move us. It's to
    connect us -- to jobs, to
    schools, to the supermarket.

    Emily Badger
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/04/29/cutting-edge-transportation-maps-will-change-how-we-understand-and-plan-cities/

    View Slide

  11. Your members don’t come to
    the library to find books, or
    magazines, journals, films or
    musical recordings.

    Hugh Rundle
    http://hughrundle.net/2012/04/04/libraries-as-software-dematerialising-platforms-and-returning-to-first-principles/

    View Slide

  12. They come to hide from reality
    or understand its true nature.
    They come to find solace or
    excitement, companionship or
    solitude.

    Hugh Rundle
    http://hughrundle.net/2012/04/04/libraries-as-software-dematerialising-platforms-and-returning-to-first-principles/

    View Slide

  13. [Libraries] let people transform
    themselves through access to
    information and one another.

    Andromeda Yelton
    andromedayelton.com/blog/2015/02/16/c4l15-keynote-transcript/ Photo: Molly Tomlinson photoclave.com/

    View Slide

  14. PEOPLE
    YOUR LIBRARY IS

    View Slide

  15. TASKS
    EXPERIENCE

    View Slide

  16. Photo: Minneapolis Star Tribine, http://www.startribune.com/local/west/265401331.html

    View Slide

  17. http://www.uscis.gov/mye-verify/self-check

    View Slide

  18. Usability

    View Slide

  19. Usability

    View Slide

  20. Reducing friction is a noble aim. But
    remember that without friction, we
    wouldn’t have heat, speed, or sex.

    Cennydd Bowles
    Twitter, March 28, 2012

    View Slide

  21. We just don’t know if [our designs]
    work or not until we evaluate the
    subjective experience of the people
    using them.

    Victor Lombardi
    Why We Fail, p. 10

    View Slide

  22. No one should be interested in the
    design of bridges. They should be
    concerned with how to get to the
    other side.

    Cedric Price
    Price, Cedric, “On safety pins and other magnificent designs,” Pegasus, London, Mobil Oil company, UK, Spring, 1972.

    View Slide

  23. View Slide

  24. View Slide

  25. TECHNOLOGY
    AS TOOL

    View Slide

  26. TECHNOLOGY
    AS ECOLOGY

    View Slide

  27. A good science fiction story
    should be able to predict not the
    automobile, but the traffic jam.

    Frederik Pohl

    View Slide

  28. View Slide

  29. View Slide

  30. BEING-IN-THE-
    WORLD

    View Slide

  31. Instead of asking, “How can we
    know about the world?” Heidegger
    asked, “How does the world reveal
    itself to us through our encounters
    with it?”

    Paul Dourish
    Where the action is: the foundations of embodied interaction. MIT Press: 2004.

    View Slide

  32. Meaning provides a facet of usability
    that forces designers to think past
    function into the domains of culture,
    language, and everyday practice.

    Thomas Wendt
    Design for Dasein: Understanding the Desgin of Experiences, p.36

    View Slide

  33. When our tools are broken, we
    feel broken. And when
    somebody fixes one, we feel a
    tiny bit more whole.

    Lev Grossman
    qtd. in Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs, p. 473-74.

    View Slide

  34. PRESENT-AT-HAND
    READY-TO-HAND

    View Slide

  35. qtd. in Dourish, Paul. Where the action is: the foundations of embodied interaction. MIT Press: 2004.
    As we act through technology that
    has become ready-to-hand, the
    technology itself disappears from our
    immediate concerns. We are caught
    up in the performance of the work.

    Martin Heidegger

    View Slide

  36. BREAKDOWN

    View Slide

  37. There is a constant movement
    between present-at-hand and ready-
    to-hand in everyday life, and
    designing with that movement in
    mind is the job of experience
    designers.

    Thomas Wendt
    Design for Dasein: Understanding the Desgin of Experiences, p.155

    View Slide

  38. User-friendliness is not merely an
    issue of the number of errors made
    per unit of time. It is rooted in the
    confidence of being able to handle
    disruptions.

    Klaus Krippendorff
    The Semantic Turn: A new foundation for design.

    View Slide

  39. View Slide

  40. View Slide

  41. Technology is a branch of
    moral philosophy, not of
    science.

    Paul Goodman
    Goodman, P. (1969). Can Technology Be Humane? New York Review of Books, Nov. 20, 1969

    View Slide

  42. Glitches are the unintentional
    exposure of values.

    Angela Galvan
    From The Revolution Will Not Be Standardized

    View Slide

  43. https://twitter.com/Nadaleen/status/730116596728012800/photo/1

    View Slide

  44. Brooklyn Public Library Website

    View Slide

  45. Brooklyn Public Library Website

    View Slide

  46. Encore, by III.

    View Slide

  47. Summon

    View Slide

  48. Summon, again.

    View Slide

  49. Again, Summon.

    View Slide

  50. View Slide

  51. View Slide

  52. BEYOND
    TODAY

    View Slide

  53. 1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    PEOPLE OVER PROCESS

    View Slide

  54. RETHINK USABILITY
    1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    PEOPLE OVER PROCESS

    View Slide

  55. RETHINK USABILITY
    1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    PEOPLE OVER PROCESS
    TEST TO LEARN, NOT PERFECT

    View Slide

  56. RETHINK USABILITY
    1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    PEOPLE OVER PROCESS
    TEST TO LEARN, NOT PERFECT
    DESIGN FOR BREAKDOWNS

    View Slide

  57. RETHINK USABILITY
    1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    PEOPLE OVER PROCESS
    TEST TO LEARN, NOT PERFECT
    DESIGN FOR BREAKDOWNS
    KNOW YOUR VALUES

    View Slide

  58. “The Space Between You and Me,” The Manual, Issue #1, 2012.
    Good technology makes us feel
    like we are inching closer to
    who we truly want to be.

    Frank Chimero

    View Slide

  59. Junod, Tom. “Can You Say...Hero?” Esquire. November, 1998.
    We make so many connections
    here on earth. Look at us—I’ve
    just met you, but I’m investing in
    who you are, and who you will
    be, and I can’t help it.

    Fred Rogers

    View Slide

  60. THANKYOU

    View Slide

  61. THANKYOU

    View Slide