The most important UX tool

As a part of our practice, it seems that a lot of us love to talk about tools and labels. This makes sense: IA work, and UX work in the broad, deals with these things. I know that I love it too, and so when I'm asked about what tools I use my mind tends to go straight to technology.

Technology isn't the biggest tool we have. It's not even close. The biggest tool we have as UX people is the ability to listen. It can happen in many forms.

If we can hear, it can be the sounds other people are making, analyzing them, and understanding them. We can pick up on tones in conversation. We can notice how fast or slow people are talking. We can notice patterns, extract possible emotions, and then probe on those emotions. We can also just shut up and take it all in, a powerful technique.

If we can not hear, that listening may happen with the other senses: touch, vision, smell. Observation of others is a form of listening, and it leads to empathy and understanding.

Observation of ourselves is also form of listening. We live with ourselves every day, and how much listening to ourselves do we do? Listen to your body. What's it telling you? Are you in pain? Hungry? Full? Calm? Anxious? Happy? How is your physical state impacting the way you feel? Where are you right now? Take a moment to observe and listen to yourself.

This capability, this tool, is something that we all possess and we can all get better at doing.

"Listen. Don't wait. Don't wait."

Go where you're wanted

Once upon a time, my job decided to reorganize the department I was in. In fact, it reorganized me right out of my job. I went from having a team with a clear plan for the coming year to having no direct reports and poorly-defined "dotted line" relationships. 

I felt incredible shock when it happened (it was a sudden change, at least to me). More challenging was that my responsibilities were changing, but my title and pay were not. So I had to pretend I was still in management even though I wasn't.

I sat down with my new boss at the time and talked with him about the change. To be fair, he had heard about this change just two hours before I had, suggesting it was a poorly-designed decision. He was familiar with all of my work: building out a competency, setting personal and team goals, developing a UX roadmap, and helping create a product strategy. And then he said something profound, something that only solidified my already-present feelings on leaving.

He said, "It's great that you have all of these skills, but we just don't need them." 

A couple of things crystallized for me at that moment. One was that my job was no longer going to challenge me in any deep nor meaningful way. Two was that in his eyes, I was a resource - nothing more.  

The path

To be fair, the path to that moment was not completely unexpected. Tensions had run deep as I put forth my agenda and mission for my team and myself, as it made some people uncomfortable. "People are afraid UX is going to take over the company," my former boss had said to me. I told him, "I don't want to take over the company. I just want us to have that fabled seat at the table." (This was coded talk for, "Shit's fucked up , yo.")

As my team and I started questioning things, the questions started to grow in scale. We moved from, "Why is this page so shitty?" to, "Well, why do  we price products this way?" to, "Why are we making this product?" We asked more and more questions and faced more and more pushback (in part because some of the questions had no answers). People were uncomfortable.

This discomfort and fear was what followed me around every day, and I let it get to me. I had to fight and fight and fight. I had to fight for my team. I had to fight for my job. I had to fight for market pay. I had to fight for org structures that made sense. Hell, I had to fight to get a part-timer converted to full-time. But by the end of it I was truly tired of fighting. It took away much of my passion, much of my drive, and much of my energy.

And, well, being in that position and then having your boss say your skills aren't needed? A clarion call.

The exit

I was and am fortunate to be in a place where I can choose to leave a job and take a new one. I do have a family and financial responsibilities, and I wasn't in a position to go freelance nor do I feel that's right for me (even now). But the number of privileges I had was astounding: I didn't need that job; they needed me - until they truly didn't, anymore; I got to hire my replacement; I got to find a job where I was challenged. 

Most importantly though, I didn't need to fight those battles. I didn't need to fight for UX, my team, my respect, my pay, or anything like that. I was able to instead focus on my work, fight for way more interesting things, and help that company do its very best.

To me, that is extremely valuable. In that job, I was wanted - and it made a world of difference.


Designing for the change

 This entry was updated 11.8.13 to reflect Apple's knowledge base article on iWork.

 Once I wrote:

Cars, computers, UIs... these are things we make and may change rather quickly. In order to highlight the change, we tend to incorporate visual design to signify the change. "This is different!" we're saying. It's pretty amazing that we have design to help us communicate change.

If it's so amazing, why is it trivial to come up with examples of when it doesn't happen?

I'm thinking of Apple here, in part because they're so big, but it applies to just about any redesign rollout ever. Consider this: Apple has rolled out new versions of all of their apps - including Keynote and GarageBand, two I use - and features have been removed. Arguably significant features, too - per Matt Haughey, GarageBand has lost nearly all of its podcast-specific tools (!)

There was a good discussion about why  this may have happened on a recent episode of The Talk Show. If I may paraphrase John Gruber and Dan Frommer, there was a word of caution conveyed: if you use Apple's apps, be prepared for features to go away in the future.

The idea of removing features is not flawed, although it's questionable.  My bugaboo is with the fact that Apple did not communicate these changes in advance or during the change. Instead in the case of the iWork apps (Pages, Numbers, Keynote), Apple released a knowledge base article stating what was coming. While there's a vague laundry list of upcoming stuff, they say:

In rewriting these applications, some features from iWork ’09 were not available for the initial release. We plan to reintroduce some of these features in the next few releases and will continue to add brand new features on an ongoing basis.

Mind you, Apple designed the change, but they did a poor job of designing for the change itself; this knowledge base article came out over a week after the apps did. The way it goes down, there is a massive amount of work that goes into designing the change, and then a switch is flipped. All done, and maybe a note about things later. But it's not enough.

Poof! 

Consider this quite realistic scenario. You use Keynote all the time. It's your go-to. You have automatic app updates enabled because, well, you're advised that it's easier to do so (and it is, arguably). A "stunning" new update is installed overnight and the next morning when you open the app, not only does it look different but some of the features you use are gone.

There is a moment there, a key one, that Apple is ignoring. It's ironic, because it's a very human moment: it's one that can be loaded with confusion, comfort, reassurance, understanding, concern, hate, or love. Apple bets hard on the beauty of its tools, and attempts to provide some reassurance through tutorials - but nothing so hand holding as to say, "Here's what's gone and here's why."

The week-later article is an attempt to assuage these concerns, but consider this: one would only find this article if she actively sought it out. Apple didn't make this a big deal. It smacks of a reaction, and isn't proactive in the slightest.

Christina Wodtke's piece on change, which I will reference again and again and again because it is damn good, applies here.  In talking about Twitter's UI changes for conversations - those infamous blue lines - she said:

Perhaps [Twitter] didn’t spend enough time hypnotizing the users that the blue line is beautiful. Or perhaps they just didn’t warn people change was coming....

I would estimate both are true. There's the hypnotizing part (which I bet Kathy Sierra would rightfully take to task) and there's also the warning part. The change, again, was simply put out there even though Twitter knew about it for probably a long time .

How inhumane is that? 

There's a degree of arrogance at play here, a degree in which companies like this are expressing their superiority when it comes to knowledge of the people using their services and products. Sometimes they're right, and they make tons of money and have happy fans. Sometimes they're wrong, and they still make tons of money and piss off everyone.

It's particularly egregious of Apple to behave this way, because of their heretofore stance as advocates for people. We've seen it in the past: Human Interface Guidelines. Computing for the rest of us. I'm not thrilled in part because I do like beautiful objects - who doesn't? - but don't want to sacrifice ability  for aesthetics  and may have no realistic alternatives. (I mean, a Samsung phone and Android? Really?)

I digress. 

Like anything else in life, not choosing to do something is actually a choice. Thus, it is essential for designers to stand up for their users and design for the act of changing, and not just the change itself. Not doing so is irresponsible, disrespectful, and arrogant.

Chief Wireframe Officer

I was interviewing for a job earlier this year with what I thought was a pretty great sounding place. The CEO had a solid reputation for good work, and some of my former colleagues had worked with him. They called me and wanted to know if I wanted to interview for a Chief Design Officer position.

CDO. 

Let me tell you, the part of me that loves titles... was on board . That part of me saw this as a huge jump, a prestigious one. It sounded great (still does!) And the interview process started off really strongly, too. A couple of phone conversations, sharing my portfolio, and then I was talking with the fellow's executive assistant (who mattered in this case) and an HR person.

The conversation started out strong, speaking about strategy and the role of design in this organization. I spoke about how design has to align with business goals, and how obvious it was that this company got it  because they saw design as a core competency. And they nodded and smiled. Then they asked me a question.

"So, what tool do you use for wireframes?" 

They explained a little more about the job: the CEO would come up with ideas (requirements) and need someone to make wireframes to handoff to development. There were other designers on this team too, so there was a management component, but nothing terribly formal.

My heart sunk. This? This was a CDO?

I did answer, of course, that I could make wireframes in whatever tool, who really gives a fuck. (I didn't say "fuck", but maybe I should have.) I went on to add, "But that doesn't touch on what all of design can or should do. Wireframes are a tiny aspect of it, and sure they're important, but I would be loathe to make something without proper user research." 

"Oh." 

It was clear what this company wanted. But it was equally clear, maybe even moreso, that I knew what I wanted. It was a job where design and research are taken seriously, and where everyone on the team gets it - no fighting nor multiple-year-long campaigns to "fight for UX" involved. 

At that job, I would have had to do that every day. It would have bored me to tears and not challenged me at all. 

I did not hear from that company after our talk, but I didn't mind it in the least.

They wanted a CDO who wasn't really a C, a D, or an O. They wanted a person to make wireframes. 

totally biased

For a very long time, I thought that one needed to be balanced and unbiased in all things at all times. This, interestingly enough, is in and of itself unbalanced and biased!

Consider journalists for a moment. In the not-too-distant past we looked to newspapers to bring the facts and leave opinions to the editorial pages. Today, we tend to align ourselves to newspapers and media outlets that reflect on us. We want opinions and we want points of view. We want the facts, but only when they fit our worldview, our reality.

Maybe this is because no one can be truly unbiased. We are all biased by our very being.

Culturally Bankrupt

Preface: I am writing this from a place of white male privilege.

We, as a society, have put a lot of credit in business metrics that are aligned with profitability. We talk about it, we have a stock market, we analyze and try to predict the future based on numbers.

Business Insider, by the numbers, appears to be an endeavor headed towards profitability. And yet the Pax Dickinson debacle demonstrates something greater: the company's priorities do not include fostering a positive, diverse, inclusive culture. They are not built that way, or else this would not have happened.

Similarly, TechCrunch's willingness to allow an astoundingly misogynistic exercise masquerading as a technological advancement into their conference demonstrates what their values are.

It is not enough for TechCrunch to say, well, hey, we'll try better next time. It is not enough for Business Insider to fire Pax. We now must determine if these organizations are actually learning and changing from these grave errors or if they're just placating their critics. They are, essentially, on probation.

It is not an HR nor PR exercise. Things like sexual harassment training and the Mad Libs "This doesn't represent our values!" press release tick the boxes to make things appear better. Maybe a trainer will come in and tell people for an hour on how not to be an asshole at work. Maybe there will be a company-wide email or two. These actions are truly the least these companies can do.

It's about what happens in the hallways, in the emails, in the conversations. It's about the things we can't see.

Until we have a universal and simple way to measure the internal culture and societal impact of an organization - one that coexists and maybe supersedes financial performance - we can only look to their external interactions and publicly call them out.

Now is as good a time as any for these companies to build true strategies and visions on how to become welcoming and inclusive workplaces while stewarding social responsibility. Not everyone is in a position of privilege to vocalize their concerns about these issues. That is precisely why it is on those of us who are to call out terrible behaviors and, more importantly, empower people who are not privileged.

It's sad to read of the ignorance in the tech community and it's frustrating to see big personalities demonstrate their stubbornness, causing suffering. There are people who have been fighting against it far, far longer than you or I. But we must fight against it, we must speak out against it, and we must fight together, because it is right.

The Constant

Writing is the thread that has been a part of my life, always. I've taken it for granted.

I really took a knack to writing when I was in grammar school. I wrote a book for a Scholastic Book Fair contest called What Year is This?  Of course it involved time travel. The lead character went back in time, met her own mother, and then the space-time continuum went kablooey. Happens!

Later still in grammar school, I was the creator and writer of a series of magazines over a 3 year run. These were paper magazines, ones I put together by myself initially and later with a staff. My best friend Greg was on staff, and soon I had a good third of my class on staff with me. We published something like 200 issues, nearly every week.  

I wrote for Loadstar 64  and Loadstar 128  - reviews of computer software. The young geek in me wanted to get published in COMPUTE!'s Gazette  or Ahoy!  or RUN . That never happened.

In high school and college, I wrote more things for myself. I wrote tons of poetry that, I trust, is not that great. I started journaling. 

I journaled on my website, writing nearly every day for years, from 1999 until about 2001. I co-wrote The Daily Ping with my good friend Ryan for 13 years, starting in 2000 - something every other day. I wrote interactive web fiction "exhibits" for several years. 

I continued to write on my website, just not in the same format. I blogged. I LiveJournaled for a short time. I used Vox. I kept trying to find the right way, the best way, to get my words out. You see it today in blogging, and tweeting, and, and, and....

That's irrelevant. The important thing is that I've been writing for almost all of my life, and I have been quick to assume it will always be there for me. Writing has been the skill I have used every day of my life, and it is the skill I will continue to use until I can no longer do it.

But it is a part of me. It's high time I say so. 

I'm a writer. 

Why I Still Love Email

When I was a kid, I loved getting mail. It was exciting for me to think that I could put make a letter, put it in a blue box, and get something back a week later. Magical stuff.

As a young geek I joined a unique Commodore user group: Meeting 64/128 Users Through the Mail. The group's name truly says it all. I loved being a member of that group and, for a while, I was its youngest member. I forged friendships with people all over the US and the world - and man, getting air mail from England? So far away? Exciting!

Between that group, Loadstar, and magazines, the mail connected young me to the world outside my bedroom.

It feels like email

This year after IA Summit, I made a concerted effort to use Twitter much more than I previously had. I followed more people and responded to tweets more often. I dug in. But when I step back and look at the way I use Twitter now, it looks a lot like the way I use email.

I love Inbox Zero, but Inbox One (patent pending) with a fresh message of warm words from a friend? Even better.

But email can hurt too

 Like any medium, though, email isn't necessarily all sunshine and rainbows. I've talked about how I used to lean on email to circumvent face-to-face conversations and that's something Will Sansbury picked up on in a comment on Whitney Hess's blog entry.

In a face-to-face interaction, a request is a negotiation of spoken words and subtle body language, and we don't walk away with the other person holding an improper expectation without allowing it to happen.

Will's point is a very good one. I'd say that for a time I went too far in the other direction and used email and regular ol' mail so much that I saw them as the only ways to communicate with other people. I don't feel that way anymore, but I understand the power in the ability to send a message to anyone - anyone with an email address - and say anything. I mean, I sent Peter Buck a letter telling him I thought a tab for "Feeling Gravitys Pull" I found on rec.music.rem was off by a key, and I thought including a SASE would guarantee a reply. Nope! 35-year-old me wouldn't do that (I'd totally just do a Snapchat) but 14-year-old me definitely did.

Similarly, this is why I do videos for some topics.  It's still a one-way thing, for now, but it also lets you see me and what I'm saying and maybe even I'll make a gesture or three. It's a different medium.

Magic

That all said, I still love email. It is a connection, a relationship, as Whitney said. We often shoo aside email like it's the oldest and worst thing ever. But it has survived and is still here with us, decades since its creation. Its form has changed over time and we've tried to change it (push notifications, DMs, chat) but in the end there is something still magical and powerful about composing a message - composing! - and tapping Send.

 

Video: Be honest

A short story about a moment at IA Summit when I chose to be honest with myself. Awesome people mentioned: https://twitter.com/dafark8 https://twitter.com/Sammaarra https://twitter.com/whitneyhess Visit my site and blog at paulmcaleer.com and follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/paulmcaleer

Transcript

A little story from IA Summit. I was in David Farkas's session on failure, an excellent one, and he talked about how we can see failure as something we ultimately embrace and learn from. One of the activities he had us do was to write down a failure and share it with the person next to us. 

I was in this session and I really thought about it and was sitting there thinking, "What would I be willing to share with someone about failure?" The thing I started with was the whole, "Oh, I rely on email too much" type of thing. And it's true, I do, and I'm still working on it but I'm mostly better at it.

It was time for us to share. I turned to the person next to me - her name was Samara - and I said hello and introduced myself. I started by saying... by looking at that moment and saying, wow, this is not really that much of a failure thing. This is kind of... this isn't terribly interesting either, not even to me. Instead I said, "Listen. I wrote this thing about email and how I use it and how I've relied on it. But the failure I really want to tell you about was last night.

"There was karaoke night at IA Summit and I did not go. And that failure to me was not taking advantage of that opportunity to connect with people and see lots of new people and the like. And part of it was out of a fear of judgment, frankly." As I've written about I haven't seen myself as someone who can sing. So I really took that as something that ultimately kept me in that night. That is what did it, really.

And in that moment when I was sharing it with her it was something that was honest and true and I felt that. The terrible thing is that we ran out of time and I didn't get to hear her [failure] until later! But we did [share it], we did. The best part too is that one part of me also said, "Oh, you can say this to her and you'll probably never see her again so it's all good!"

The next day, I had lunch - Whitney Hess invited me to lunch - and then she brought in some folks and Samara was one of them - which was awesome!

My point of this is to say that being honest with yourself is super important. But also look how it is to be honest with *others*. In this case it gave me something totally unexpected: it let me be in that moment more and let me be honest and true with myself, and as a result I was able to be honest and true with Samara as well. So it was an awesome moment and those are the ones I want to strive for versus not being there, not being present, not being honest with myself and others.

So: accept failure and be honest.