Engineering Difficulty

Is it time we started making things harder on purpose?

I broke my iPhone before I left for my honeymoon and a friend was kind enough to lend me an old unlocked Nokia. The phone worked out fine and not having access to all the iPhone holds was probably a bit of a blessing (though I'm pretty seriously missing it now that I'm back home and can't get my hands on a 4G).

Anyway, as part of having a phone with a keypad (not even keyboard) I went back to T9 (you remember it, predictive type for SMS messages).¹ The struggle to send a simple message made me think about how we are likely going to need to start add elements to our interfaces that actually make tasks harder, not easier. Imagine how many fewer emails you'd write on your iPhone if you were forced to use T9 for instance.

While it's not the perfect parallel, something like WriteRoom lets you block out everything else when you're trying to write (Pages now has a full screen option as well, actually) and I remember hearing about an application from a few years ago that turned off your WiFi until you restarted the computer so you could get something done. It's funny to think that we've reached a point where things are so easy that we need to start making them hard again.

[PS: I'm married, honeymooned, done with Cannes and back in NYC.]

¹ As a side note, the guy who invented T9 has a new text input method for touchscreens called Swype. ↩

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Tags: design, interface

Turtling (AKA an Interview About the Ergonomics of Notebooks)

Talking to an ergnomics expert about how not to destroy yourself while using a notebook.

Over the last few months I've been testing out the new Embody chair from Herman Miller. The folks over there sent me one to try out and offered me access to anyone I wanted to speak to should I be interested in writing about my experience. (Just to clear everything up, they sent me a chair, I was not paid anything and not required to post anything.)

The chair's arrival happened to coincide with a bit of shoulder/neck pain, I'm pretty sure it was mostly from laying on the couch and generally terrible posture while using my laptop. So, I took them up on their access and asked to speak to someone on their ergonomics team not just about the chair, but about how to set up a desk for optimal ergonomics. They put me in touch with Gretchen Gscheidle, who led ergonomics-related research on the Embody. Below are my questions and her answers (with a bit of commentary from me in brackets).

Hope this brings everyone a little less pain in their back, shoulders and neck.

Noah: So lots of people have told me the height of my chair needs to leave my feet flat on the floor, but what about the height of my desk? Where should that be?

Gretchen: There are a couple steps to this set up process.

1. Start with your feet flat on the floor, and yourself sitting upright.
2. With your upper arm resting at your side, bend your elbow to 90 degrees. Your surface, and in particular your keyboard home row, should be at approximately that height, some advocate a little lower, but no more than an inch. Similarly, some advocate a little higher, but again no more than an inch. Depending on how you're proportioned (lower leg length + heel height, torso length, and upper leg length combined) this measurement for the North American and European population ranges between 22" and 32" off the floor.

Without seeing your particular desk, I'm guessting that the sore neck/ shoulders you describe are a function of you "scrunching" your shoulders, i.e. your surface is too high, which is understandable given that 29" and 30" are "standard" desk heights. Really, it endorses the adjustabile height approach that is part and parcel to systems furniture. If, however, you work at a conventional desk, or say have a filing cabinet under your systems work surface, then you should put your keyboard on a supplemental surface that is at the right height for your body.

Noah: How about the computer monitor? Where should that be?

Gretchen: This is a little bit trickier, because of the effects of corrective vision, like bifocals, that some people require or will likely require as they age and sizes of displays. The rough rules of thumb are:

1. The display should be about an outstretched, arm's length (or approximately 24") away from your eyes, and
2. The vertical center of the display should be 10-15 degrees below an imaginary horizontal line projecting out from your eyes. Both conditions presume starting again from the upright seated position. [Holy crap, I have never even come close to this (especially with my laptop).]

Noah: How have laptops effected posture and ergonomics? I feel like my laptop leaves me constantly hunched over. [I was probably most interested in this one. It's really a terrible thing when you look around and see people scrunched up in a ball using their computers and it can't be good for our bodies. Laptops seem to encourage this bad behavior as we are always looking down at them.]

Gretchen: First off, I'd encourage you to refer to them as "notebooks"--the folks in the tech industry get a little jittery with the term "laptops." There was at least one lawsuit somewhere down the line where a person fell asleep with a powered-up notebook computer on his bare-skinned lap and suffered some serious burns as a result. The lawsuit came about because of the laptop term. But, I digress.

Notebook computers are a significant wrench in the ergonomic rules of thumb because the display and keyboard connection. For the display to be in the right location for the eyes, the keyboard needs to be in a location that is not ideal for keyboarding. The reverse can also be true: keyboard in the right place, display in the wrong place.

You can certainly chalk up that "hunched over" feel to your use of a notebook, but frankly, we see it in desktop configurations too. Herman Miller Research conducted video observation in a range of office settings with a range of office workers in the early 2000s. There were some notebook users in the study, but the majority were desktop users. Subjects' gross torso postures were measured as being upright or forward--including hunched over--some 75 percent of all time that they were seated at the computer. That is something that really caught the attention of Bill Stumpf and Jeff Weber, our designers, in the early days of development for the Embody chair. One of our regular ergonomics consultants has the theory that "the eyes always win." In other words, we will contort the rest of our bodies into awkward, even unhealthy postures as we work, unknowingly, even if it means allowing our eyes to get in the right spot to see most effectively. We chalk it up as well to the seductiveness of what is on your computer display. The thing is, we're not the only ones who've taken note of these hunched over postures. I have counterparts at HP who call these postures "turtling."

Noah: What's the ideal ergonomic desk setup?

Gretchen: It is as simple as our ergonomic mantra: fit the user, fit the task, allow postural change and movement. So, fitting the user as I've outlined above. Fitting the task is taking into account all that you're doing with your computer--notebook or otherwise--and/or paper-based or other tasks. If you're doing a lot of visually-intensive work, you're going to benefit from a larger display, which almost always implies a wider and/or deeper surface. If you're doing keyboard intensive work, it's a good idea to use a full-size keyboard, rather than the built-in. Similar story with pointing tasks--opt for a mouse if it's intensive use, as opposed to a touch pad or such. If you work with paper, make sure there's sufficient space for that too, and also consider the frequency with which you access paper files or other non-computer reference materials. If it's frequent, keep it in your near reach zone--basically your arms extended and waved in a 3D arc. If it's less frequent, you can keep it farther away from you. Allowing postural change and movement, at the very least, you want to sit in something that allows you to sit upright or reclined--the changes in posture are very healthy. If you're all but tethered to your "workstation"--something that is also height adjustable to a standing posture delivers another degree of freedom.

Noah: Did you think about laptops when designing the Embody?

Gretchen Yes, although I would characterize it more broadly than that, and say that we thought about the pervasiveness of technology--notebook or desktop usage--in some cases multiples of that technology. I would also point out that the Embody chair has evolved from what began as a holistic look at the user/ technology interface or something that we call "the two hemispheres of work." Herman Miller plans to unveil the second half of that equation in June.

Noah: I'd like to turn this post into something that generally outlines best practices for working with laptops for long periods.

Gretchen: What I've discussed here addresses those best practices in terms of a "conventional" setup of user/ chair/ technology/ desk. Recognize that there are a whole slew of other postural opportunities that notebook computers allow. I'm not advocating any of them, but lying face down on the floor, sofa, or bed while "working" on a notebook are all feasible. Herman Miller belongs to a non-profit research organization, the Office Ergonomics Research Committee, that is starting to study such in the hopes of developing some recommendations or best practices for those situations as well.

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That's Not Really [INSERT ART FORM HERE]

Someone doesn't want to admit you're a designer/journalist/musician/artist.

By Noah Brier and Charles Gallant

Rock and roll is not music. How could it be? You've got a bunch of kids with shaggy hair playing instruments with no real musical knowledge. They don't even know scales! Hell, most of them probably can't read music! They're making noise, not music.

Or so the story goes.

Now let's try it from the design perspective:

The consequence of your design democracy is an ugly spectacle of deep purples and electric organges. It's a culture of me-me-me: my hideously personalized car, my hideously personalized sofa, my hideously personalized house. If we care about maintaining an aesthetic of public space, design should be left to professionals. Let people pour their uniqueness inwardly -- but don't let them clutter up the physical world.

That's straight out of Fast Company.

Pardon my French, but it all sounds like a bunch of elitist bullshit. Today everyone's got access to the tools that before only a select few could play with. Anyone can be a designer, a musician or an astronaut.

That scares and angers professionals.

Think about it. How would you feel if you went through four years of intense musical training and the people getting the fame and money spent all that time smoking pot and drinking Jack Daniels.

There's never been a time in history when it was easier to just hack something together. (I think that's paraphrasing something Henry Jenkins said.) Calling design 'bad' or music 'crappy' is a subjective judgement. 'Bad' design can be good. Just look at the filmmakers behind lonelygirl15: When it was time to build a Myspace page for their faux-15-year-old they intentionally gave it a 'Myspace' look. They knew their context and built something that could really have been produced by a 15-year-old girl in her bedroom.

The design represents the content. It presents the content. It is the content. If I'm a 9-year-old with a 'crappy' website, my design will probably scream "A 9-year-Old made this!!!" What those pompous musicians/designers need to get over is that some people are actually looking for a 9-year-old's content. They'd prefer a universe where people wanted things that looked pretty, but sometimes people just want something that 'is what it is.' Something accessible. Something that's all there on the table. Easy to swallow.

Design is a communication tool. Getting your point across should always be the ultimate goal. Sure I can make comments on the how much something adheres to traditional design rules. But at the end of the day it sure sounds like a bunch of classically trained musicians with their tux stuck up their ass complaining about the kids and their rock and roll.

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Usability and Design

Why do you think that usability and visual design aren't often associated with each other?

Over at Bokardo, Joshua Porter asks, "Why do you think that usability and visual design aren’t often associated with each other?" The answer he includes from Luke Wroblewski is this: "Well Curt Cloninger once wrote that usability experts are from Mars and graphic designers are from Venus, so it could be that. But truthfully, I think it stems from the fact that many people aren’t versed in what determines how we make sense of what we see."

My take on this problem is that the worlds are not intertwined. Too many designers are not versed in coding and usability and vice versa. In too many cases the process is incredibly fragmented. Information architects go away and work on architecture which a designer receives and then passes on final design to coders. I'm not saying that everyone needs to be able to do each other's job, but they should at least be versed in all facets of the process. I've met web designers with no coding experience. That's all well and good, but if a web designer doesn't understand some of the basic limitations of the web its going to create serious issues.

On a deeper level, though, I think this is a problem with people's definition of design. Everything that goes into the final user experience should fall under a 'design' umbrella. If you want to call it something else, that's fine, but the point is that it's a unified process. Usability/visuals/architecture/code all should act together to create something that a user walks away from feeling satisfied. Luke explains it like this: "the two disciplines of visual design and usability don’t have an opportunity to develop a shared language about the way they are communicating concepts to end users. Were more of those conversations to happen, I think you’d see more of a convergence between the two."

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The Puma/Jordan Connection

Ever noticed the similarity between a certain cat and a bald man who dunks from foul lines?

I'm not sure when I started noticing this, but have you seen the Puma and the Jordan logos? I'm sure you have, but just in case, here they are for your viewing pleasure.

Now I've seen both these logos for quite sometime, but something recently sparked me to look at them a little differently. All of a sudden I started to imagine what would happen if you reflected the Puma logo horizontally and then rotated it about 90 degrees. All of a sudden Puma's cat would look like he was about to dunk from the foul line too. Check it out:

Kind of crazy, huh? Two very different logos, yet strangely similar. Here's one more closer look:

Coincidence?

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The Questioner

Why more people need to think like information architects.

Information architecture is a fascinating thing. Thinking through a user experience and trying to understand exactly how they interact with a site requires a special kind of thinking. It requires a certain critical detachment: An information architect needs to understand the user in an unbiased way in order to best plan their experience.

It's exciting to be in a room listening to the questions an information architect asks. They force people to step back from what their doing, start at the beginning and examine their own work in an honest way. Are you doing this for you/client or are you doing it for the user? What are the goals? Why is the user coming to the site? What do they want to get out of their experience? How do you define success? How do they define success? Those are just a few of the many questions that an IA might ask.

Because of the functionality of the internet we've accepted the role of the information architect as disrupter. They're allowed to ask the tough questions without pissing anyone off. It's a bit harder to do that in other types of projects.

The questioner is the role I like to take. I try not to play 'devil's advocate' and inject my own opinion cloaked as a question. Instead, I try to ask the things that seem most basic. Who? What? When? Where? Why? (How comes later.) Understanding as much of the background as possible before moving to the foreground is very important. That's what lays the base for a successful project.

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The Oneness of Content and Context

To understand both media and design you must understand that the medium is the message.

Last night over drinks I got into a fairly interesting discussion about my feelings on design. I don't really feel like going into the whole thing because it sat on the edge of the "art vs. design" debate as well as the "what is design" question. But I did come to one conclusion that I found very interesting.

Eventually the conversation led to The Huffington Post and specifically the blog entry George Clooney posted, that turned out to actually be a bunch of quotes of his stuck together by Huffington. When people got upset, Huffington responded that "the medium isn't the message; the message is the message." Obviously I completely disagree with this and, to give her the benefit of the doubt, she later backed down from the statement and apologized.

In the case of Clooney's fake blog entry, you can't separate the content from the context. Yes, everything in the entry was really said by him, but not at once, not in a blog entry and not on the Huffington Post. All of that matters. Clooney saw the distinction, saying, "These are not my writings, they are answers to questions and there is a huge difference."

The reason there's a huge difference is because the medium is the message. The context around the information is equally important to the information it conveys. That's why I think I'm so drawn to design. It's the same idea. You are providing the context for the content and in the best case scenario, the two live together in a way that cannot be undone.

I don't think design is theoretical, I'm not all that interested in designers perspectives. Design, to me, is all about the user/reader/viewer/whateverer. Whatever they walk away with is what's been designed. If it's successful they walk away with your message and more. If it's not, they leave with a different impression than the one you may have hoped for. Neither content or context holds more weight at that point, all that matters is what's inside that person's head.

Does that make sense?

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More Connections Lead to Better Work

Design is not about 'design,' it's about whatever it is you're designing for.

I know I've been talking about design a lot lately, but it's a subject I can't get off my mind. Beyond just dealing with it on a daily basis at work, by opening my eyes to it, I notice it in every aspect of my life. I like to think I don't approach design like most people, though. I think of it as a holistic process, not a prettying device. I know I must be starting to sound like a broken record on this, but it's a point I feel so certain about I feel like repeating it over and over again.

This time, though, the repetition is going to come in someone else's voice. On Design Observer, Michael Bierut wrote about not writing about design on a design blog. I know it sounds awfully meta and geeky, but his point is one that needs to be made and I think extends well past just design. He wrote:

The great thing about graphic design is that it is almost always about something else. Corporate law. Professional football. Art. Politics. Robert Wilson. And if I can't get excited about whatever that something else is, I really have trouble doing good work as a designer. To me, the conclusion is inescapable: the more things you're interested in, the better your work will be.

I think that lesson is relevant whatever it is you do. The real visionaries and brilliant minds in this world are able to connect seemingly disparate topics with ease. The biggest innovations often come from finding meaning in what may at first look like a meaningless connection.

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The Beauty of Moleskine

What makes a Moleskine great is that it makes you feel like it deserves great ideas. That's design at its finest.

Today I was having a conversation with a fellow Moleskine fan and we got on the topic of why we liked the notebooks so much. It's not so much the toughness, or the pocket in the back, but rather it's that it feels like a notebook that important ideas should go in. There's no one piece of its design that leads to that conclusion, yet he agreed with me wholeheartedly. When you open the pages of a Moleskine you write more neatly and think more clearly. You feel as though you must give it the thoughts and words that its pages deserve.

Tonight as I was clicking around, I landed on Joshua Porter's site where he had linked to an essay by Joel Splosky on design. Josh pulled out this quote specifically to discuss the essay: "If you have been thinking that there is anything whatsoever in design that requires artistic skill, well, banish the thought. Immediately, swiftly, and promptly. Art can enhance design but the design itself is strictly an engineering problem."

Josh and Joel are both trying to get to the point that there's more to design than just the visuals, and I could agree more, but that's not to say you can't leave them out. Now I have great respect for both Josh and Joel (and have even talked at some length about how much I respect Joel's design take, but it takes more than just 'engineering' to give someone the feeling I described about the Moleskine. That's engineering, art, science, psychology and just about any other discipline you can think of converging together to create something beautiful.

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Design IS NOT Rounded Corners

Be prepared for a bit of a rant about what really matters in design and what doesn't.

No matter what anyone says, it's my goal to make people believe that design is not something to be taken lightly.

At Sony, we assume all products of our compeititors will have basically the same technology, price, performance, and features. Design is the only thing that differentiates one product from another in the marketplace.

- Norio Ohga, Honorary Chairman, Sony (via Influx Insights Thought Pack Volume 1)

Look, this is not true in every category across the board, but it does speak to the overall importance of design. When people think of design they tend to think of over-design. When you talk about web 2.0 design, you think of rounded corners and gradients. But guess what? It's bullshit! That's not design, that's meaningless. Design doesn't have time to worry about rounded corner's it's got bigger fish to fry.

When I read the very popular Current style in web design, I cringed. Everything looks the same! (No offense to any of the mentioned sites, I happen to think the choices are all quite nice, however, they all fall in same category.) Where is the diversity in design? How about the experimentation?

Recently, in an entry discussing MakeUpAlley and why geeks need to get their heads out of their asses (which I agree with), Umair Haque wrote, "It doesn't have Ajax, it doesn't have gradients, it doesn't have a clever name, it doesn't even have anything resembling a design (the horror)." I was a little surprised by the contempt in Umair's voice when discussing design, although his bigger point is that those other things don't matter as much as MakeupAllley's "deep understanding of what consumers in it's vertical value, how to connect them into a coherent community, how to manage and regulate this community, and how to translate those connections into deep and shallow value creation."

On this point I'm right with Umair, and I think his point is a valuable one: You shouldn't be designing before you have an idea. You shouldn't have decided how something will look before you know what it does. You shouldn't know what language to script in before you decide what you need to code. Over at PingMag (a Tokyo-based magazine about "Design and Making Things" Jon writes that Web 2.0 is not about AJAX and visual effects, but rather "has much more to do with the human and social aspect of the internet. There is much more call for interaction between users and more importantly, much more willingness to interact."

With all this said, though, design is not something that should be forgotten. There's been some talk recently that design on the web doesn't matter. It uses Myspace, eBay, Google as examples. Recently Andy Rutledge called this idea out for what it is: BULLSHIT! "Bad design harms business, it does not help it," Andy writes. "Websites like Boingboing, Google and eBay are successful in spite of their poorly designed sites, not because of them." As I've mentioned numerous times in the past, though, design is more than just the look. Design is the information architecture and it's the copy too, amongst lots of other factors. One of the things that drives me nuts about blog design, beyond the fact that almost no one does anything interesting, is that the architecture sucks. Who thought it was a good idea to make the archives a giant list? How is that helpful to anyone? (Full disclosure: The archive architecture on this site sucks too.)

I guess my point is that when people discuss design it's important to separate the superficial from the important. I'm pretty sure this is what people mean when they compare design with Design (note capital versus lower case . . . something I've always found a bit bizarre). It all comes down to this: If you're using rounded corners for no reason, it's not design. If you're using rounded corners because you're trying to communicate a softness to your design which reflects your product, fine. In design, you need thought behind all your actions. Things don't just happen, nothing is just placed somewhere because that seemed like a good place for it.

Sorry if this seemed preachy, but I'm passionate about this stuff.

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