Front to back

Choose a better tool than email for some of your communication jobs.

Mark Hurst has been blogging about email bankruptcy a fair amount recently - the idea that overwhelmed executives sometimes feel there's no option but to delete their inboxes and start again. With estimates saying that the average knowledge worker will send/receive 199 corporate emails per day by 2010, it's clear that something is very wrong.

Mark lambastes a number of people for asking for a technological solution to the problem. He also advocates a change in behaviour - his "bit literacy" approach. All sensible enough - but then I noted that there already is a technological solution the problem. Sort of.

But first you have to reframe the question. Intead of "how can I get through email with less pain?" try this one: "How can I optimise the way I communicate overall?"

My colleague Kelsey Smith has been working on a project for a global organisation that makes it money handing information. His experience there showed him an organisation thriving by using a range of different communications media:

"Email is a blunt knife. So they use multiple channels, each with different properties and used in different scenarios. Email is a data flow - a continuous stream of low-urgency background conversations happening on various lists. Blogs and Twitter fulfil a similar purpose: context. Instant messaging is used for near-synchronous conversations without being as intrusive as a phone call. And face-to-face conversation is used for urgent and complex subjects that require focus and nuance."

So - the best solution to email overload comes from selecting the right medium for each conversation you want to have.

Try an experiment. Find a contact or colleague who is already a happy to use IM. Next time you want to sort something out with them, force yourself to use IM instead of email. See if you get better results with less effort. It worked for me.

I could be way off, of course. Jakob Nielsen classified IM as "information pollution" back in 2004. And Linda Stone reminds us that monitoring too many information channels at once can be very stressful.

On the other hand, Facebook has just introduced chat, and GMail has had built-in chat for several years. And plenty of younger users dismiss email as too much bother. (If you are going to use email, here as some good tips from a 19-year-old).

We have a landscape of communication tools - including blogs, wikis, twitter IM and email. Using them right, can help stave off email bankruptcy.

This diagram shows a patent application recently filed by Apple for an OS X gesturing control panel.

Thanks to macRumours.com

Apple are leading the pack in gestural interface design at the moment, with iPhone, iPod and Macbook Air. (But synaptics, who make most of the the worlds touchpads, are in hot pursuit. They say they expect that "80 to 90 percent of consumer notebooks will have these new multigestures by the end of the year.")

I've found myself sitting at my desk "trying out" these gestures. Would the three-finger paste gesture, above, be easier than the gesture I already use for pasting - Ctrl-V? Note that typing Ctrl-V is a gesture in itself. And when you're well trained using a QWERTY keyboard it's pretty easy to remember and perform.

Try it yourself. Tap on the desk. What do you think?

I wasn't sure at first, but on balance, I think Apple's gesture for paste is better than Ctrl-V.

Designing the right gesture

What makes touchpad gestures better than key combinations?

• The most valuable gestures seem to encompass "degree" - not just "zoom in" but "zoom in this much".
• But even for a binary operation like paste or cut, a gesture can be simpler, more comfortable and slightly more memorable than a keyboard shortcut, if it's chosen to match an analogous real-world action. It will be easier to use if it's closer to what our caveman brains evolved to cope with.
• The position of the touchpad itself might also play an important role. I find myself wanting to throw out my mouse but keep a modified the mouse mat - a multitouch version connected to my computer. With my left hand on the keyboard and my right hand on the mat, I could mix keystrokes and gestures very comfortably.

New book on gestures

Dan Saffer of Adaptive Path is working on a book called "Interactive gestures: Designing gestural interfaces." He points out the importance of well-designed gestures. They must be comfortable to perform once or several times. And they mustn't embarrass the gesturer, or inconvenience people nearby.

The first chapter is available for free and is a good read. There's also a blog and a wiki.

As remote controls and mobile phones become increasingly baroque in their complexity, more and more of us find ourselves pressing the wrong buttons at the wrong times. I press the wrong button three times a day on my K800i.

But Grandma has an extra problem: she worries that by pressing the wrong button she will break things or hurt herself.

Big picture here at Book of Joe. And you can buy the cartoon from the New Yorker.

Designing to overcome that is a major challenge. But if you can do it, the magic part is that millions of other people who thought they were more sophisticated than grandma will suddenly love your product too. Because it's simple and supportive.

There was an interesting online tussle recently between 37 Signals, creators of online collaboration applications, and Donald Norman, revered usability expert. Is designing products to suit yourself a good idea or not?

In a recent Wired article, David Heinemeier Hansson of 37 Signals said,

I'm not designing software for other people, I'm designing it for me.

In response, Norman said,

If you want a hobby, fine, indulge yourself. If you are running a business, then the needs of your customers come first. This means understanding them, understanding the activities they do, designing for them. [...] To say 'I’m not designing .. for other people,' is an attitude that will not only lead to failure, it is one that deserves to fail.

It's great when your users are just like you

This can't be disputed: to design a successful interactive product you have to understand your users' needs, behaviours and motivations. But getting right to the bottom of what people need and want can be time-consuming and difficult. In the dot.com world, time scales and budgets can be tight and launching your product often changes the very user behaviour you're designing for.

But sometimes, just sometimes, you get lucky: You find you're designing for people who are just like you.

Some great inventions have occurred when designers just designed for themselves. Scott Berkun, quotes two in "the Myths of Innovation": Craigslist.com and the MacDonalds' fast food production system.

I think Hansson is talking about just that. He designs apps for intelligent, pro-technology users just like himself, who need to collaborate on projects fairly similar to the kind of project he works on. And, because he's got a nice tight design brief, 100% in-depth access to the psyche of his user and a very large marketplace he delivers a very popular and successful product.

Designer expertise counts

Both Norman and Hansson agree on one thing: user involvement alone is not enough. Designer vision, expertise and discipline is a vital part of successful innovation.

Norman:

It does not mean throwing features together haphazardly. It does not mean doing everything customers request. It still means being disciplined, having a clear conceptual model of the product, and sticking to that model.

37 Signals:

If some customers tell us to add bananas to our lasagna, we’re not going to make them happy at the expense of ruining the dish for everyone else. [...] That’s why it’s our job to be editors. [...] To pick out the ideas that will benefit the most people and disappoint the least people. And sometimes that means doing nothing at all.

Designing exactly what customers ask for is usually disastrous.

And while we're at it, Steve Jobs:

We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do.

A designer's vision, often informed by personal beliefs or needs, has got everything to do with the design process. Market-beating results don't usually come from just listening to users. As Henry Ford said, "If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse."

Lessons in successful design

Every time we have this debate at Flow, we conclude pretty much the same thing...

• Understand user needs, abilities and motivations.
• Follow a disciplined design process, inspired by user research.
• But don't just do what the users tell you. You need personal inspiration and vision as well as skill and hard work.
• So for best results, design something you believe in.