Last Saturday was InfoCamp Berkeley, an unconference organized by myself and fellow students in my graduate program at UC Berkeley School of Information. What sets an unconference apart from a regular conference is that the content is primarily provided by attendees (we did have a great keynote to kick things off, the brilliant Dave Hogue, who I had the privilege of studying with a few years ago). When participants arrive they “stake their claim” on the schedule in one of the open rooms and time slots with topics they want to talk about (generally something they have some knowledge in). They present what they know about the subject and then open it up for discussion with the other attendees. It’s more about having a dialogue about a topic that everybody there is interested in than learning from an expert (so a refreshing change from grad school!). 

I did a presentation on designing for behavior change, BJ Fogg style. He’s the Stanford professor who (literally) wrote the book on persuasive technology, and his Capotology Lab continues to do ground-breaking research into what works in behavior change. I was lucky enough to attend his Mobile Health conference last year, where I heard some of the ways his research was being applied to inspire health-related behavior change. Many of his ideas have cross pollinated into the Quantified Self movement (people who track some aspect of their daily lives and analyze the data for the purpose of better understanding some aspect of themselves), which I’ve been active in as well, so I’ve heard about his work from numerous sources. 

What made me confident that I could explain BJ Fogg’s work is that it’s so simple and logical. In a nutshell, there are 3 things you need to consider when trying to inspire behavior change: triggers, ability and motivation. Triggers are things that get you to engage in a behavior right away (your phone rings, or you get a Facebook notification that a friend has tagged you in a photo). Ability is how easy it is for you to accomplish that task (your phone is in your pocket, not in a bag in the back seat of your car; you only have to click on a link to see the photo). Motivation is your desire to accomplish that behavior (it’s your best friend calling, so you answer it; you want to make sure it’s not an embarrassing photo, so you click on it). If you have high motivation and high ability, then you just need an effective trigger to inspire that behavior. Conversely if motivation and ability are low, an effective trigger isn’t going to make a difference. Obviously there’s much more than can be said about it, but in general it’s pretty straightforward, right? 

I also talked about his newest project, Tiny Habits. He asserts that the most effective way to develop a new habit is to break it down into ridiculously small bite size pieces (something that takes less than 30 seconds a day), anchor that to an existing behavior, and don’t concern yourself with expanding that behavior until it’s a established habit (meaning you engage in that behavior automatically). The example he often uses is to floss ONE tooth, anchoring it to brushing your teeth. It does seem silly at first, but he is having incredible success with it (he offers a free online course at tinyhabits.com, and thousands of people have participated, so he’s collected a significant amount of data about it’s effectiveness) and people are reporting that once they do establish that tiny habit, they can expand it until it’s a significantly embedded behavior.

My favorite moment during the presentation was when one participant said “But that’s useless, there’s no health benefit in exercising just 30 seconds a day, you can’t even get your heart rate elevated!” to which I replied “EXACTLY! The duration of the initial behavior truly doesn’t matter, the point is to make it as easy as possible, develop it into a habit first, and then grow it into a more significant behavior.” We are so used to thinking of behavior change as only being accomplished through a single big leap that tiny changes seems pointless at first; at least, until we realize how often big leaps fail to endure and open ourselves to alternate ways of getting there. 

Another benefit of unconferences is that they give people an opportunity to practice public speaking which, I’m starting to see, takes practice, practice and more practice (I also did my first presentation at a QS meetup last month, so I’m getting plenty of it lately). One thing I learned yesterday is that you need to plan for various scenarios regarding what kind of audience you’ll be addressing. I’d envisioned this being in a small classroom where about 15-20 of us sat around a table and after I presented my slides, it would became an informal dialogue. However when over 80 people showed up we moved it to the larger room and that format wasn’t possible. In hindsight It would have been a good opportunity to break into smaller groups and present a problem to apply these methodologies to so people could have had more casual discussions about it, but standing in front of that many people looking expectantly at you isn’t a situation that inspires improvisation; at least it wasn’t for me. But I learned a lot, and was gratified when a number of people came up to me later and thanked me for introducing them to the work of BJ Fogg, so apparently I wasn’t the only one that learned something. 

To find out more about BJ Fogg’s work, check out: www.behaviormodel.org, www.tinyhabits.com, or www.captology.stanford.edu. You can find him on twitter at @bjfogg. To learn more about InfoCamp Berkeley, check out www.berkeley.infocamp.org

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Interesting article from one of my favorite design/product development blogs: FastCo.Design. It’s about the simplest way to introduce usability testing to a company, which is asking customers “On a scale of 1 to 10, how confident do you feel using this system?” As general as it is, it gives them something to quantify and starts them down the path of getting user feedback. 

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I was honored to be able to help with a flash usability test of ranked choice voting in San Francisco recently, organized by the amazing Dana Chisnell (who’s not only co-author of the Handbook of Usability Testing, but one of the foremost experts on ballot usability in the country). I was working on a team with 2 others, and we were charged with finding and interviewing people willing to spend 15 minutes filling out two different ballot designs and telling us what they thought of them. 

While it was challenging to find registered voters willing to spare the time, we were delighted that our first willing participants were a couple dressed in matching Santa costumes (yes, it happened to be SantaCon that day! If you don’t know what SantaCon is, check this out)

Here's a link to Dana’s initial observations about ranked choice voting and a gratuitous picture of SantaCon for good measure. 

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I'm posting this picture in honor of the start of my second semester in grad school, which means, among other things, getting back on my bike and riding to BART for the cross-bay leg of my journey to Berkeley. One of the things I love about riding my bike is that by the time I arrive at my destination I’m invariably in a better mood than when I left, so I missed that part of my commute.

The photo was taken for one of my favorite design projects: a t-shirt for the San Francisco Bike Coalition, one of the largest bicycle advocacy groups in the country. I wanted to celebrate the incredible diversity of cyclists in the city, so took pictures of about two dozen cyclists at a bicycle festival to use as silhouettes (see below for the final design). 

Looking back, I think it's also appropriately symbolic of my current transformation from designer to researcher. This project was user research, starting with having to recruit the participants myself. While the end goal was taking a photo of them on their bike, the process of building trust with them turned into interviews. I found out about their cycling habits, why they ride, and documented a very personal moment when I photographed them on their bike. I also muddled my way through numerous unpredictable and awkward moments, such as realizing how difficult it was for many of them to stay upright and motionless on a bike without something to hold onto. Overall, however, it was an incredibly fun and inspiring day. 

Then I went home and started the next phase: reviewing, analyzing and organizing the data until I felt is was an appropriate representation. But I ended up with one of the most honest designs I'd ever made: a t-shirt that was literally of and for San Francisco cyclists. 

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I drink about a gallon of water a day, so the first 2 things I learn out about most buildings I go in are where the bathrooms are and if there’s a water fountain. I was delighted to find this innovative water fountain in UC Berkeley’s Tang Student Health Center last month. It has an unobtrusive platform for a water bottle in the back; when a bottle is placed on it the sensor is triggered and water flows until the bottle is removed. It’s easy to figure out, fun to use, and even has a counter in the upper right which tracks the number of bottles it’s filled, reinforcing the idea that we’re contributing to a greater good while staying hydrated. Having carried around my own water bottle for years, I can usually manage to fill it at a spigot intended for a human mouth but it’s less than ideal. This solution not only solves that problem but is an open invitation for others to get in on the fun too. 

There is considerable evidence that even the smallest of reminders to recycle, reduce or or reuse can inspire people to take the extra bit of effort necessary to do the right thing, but my own experience is that many of the messages we get are redundant and trite. This fountain reminds me how much potential there is for fresh, playful and smart innovations that can inspire people to adopt better sustainability practices. No doubt there are plenty in the pipeline which just haven’t found commercial success yet, so kudos to the Tang Health Center for being an early adapter.

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I just came across this photo I took last summer after I started reading "The Design of Everyday Things," which I discussed in my last post. One of the things I love about the book is how clearly it explains the ways in which a design fails when someone has difficulty using a product.

This image is from a multi-load washing machine at my local laundrymat. After I got over my confusion over where to put the detergent in this machine, I was delighted by what a perfect example of unnatural mapping it was. If there's anything that lends itself to clear and simple mapping, this would be it. In particular, I find it interesting how the diagram on top suggests that the detergent and bleach go into separate bins, yet there is no divider in the actual device (or maybe I guessed wrong after all...).

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You can probably name a handful of books that have had a profound impact on you. I recently finished one such book for me, “The Design of Everyday Things,” by Donald Norman. This is a seminal book about usability in design, and despite being more than 20 years old is still incredibly relevant and a thorough education in how to assess (and improve) the usability of anything humans interact with. The book’s perspective is that humans are intelligent and highly adaptable so if we have difficulty using something, the fault most likely falls on the design of that object.

I started reading it last summer before beginning grad school in information management. Since I was planning on transitioning into user experience and usability after many years as a practicing designer, it had been on my reading list for some time, but had fallen more in the "should read" than "can't wait to read" category. I was surprised at how fascinating I found it; in particular, I found his analysis of the kinds of errors humans make, their cause and the design principles which could reduce them absolutely fascinating (he was originally a cognitive scientist specializing in human error). Not to mention that the accuracy of  many of his predictions are spot on (“Some [useful] aids are yet to come: the pocket computer with a powerful display, which will keep our notes, remind us of our appointments, and smooth our passage through the schedules and interactions of life”). 

Like any great book I was sorry to find myself at the last page, but since it’s such a dense book it invites careful re-reading. I’m happy to report that I’m already enjoying the preface again, and when I'm done with the second read I can always move onto his other books. 

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Legos just introduced a new line of dolls geared towards girls called Lego Friends. I found out about it from a twitter post which denounced it as sexist, but was curious if that was really the case so read the Bloomberg Businessweek article it linked to. 

I was impressed to learn that they spent years doing anthropological research into how girls from various cultures play and how their play is different from boys before designing the line. Here's a quote about their findings: "Whereas boys tend to be “linear”—building rapidly, even against the clock, to finish a kit so it looks just like what’s on the box—girls prefer stops along the way, and to begin storytelling and rearranging." 

I think the trouble is there's lots of pink and purple in this new line (not to mention a Beauty Salon) and we're used to those things being the exclusive signifier that a product is for girls, but in this case they didn't stop there. As with regular Legos, building it is an important part of the play, but there is an incredible amount of detail in the other elements which invite complex stories to be created once it's put together. For instance they found that girls prefer to play with figures that can function as avatars, so they often don't like the existing boxy Lego figures. As a solution these new figures look much more girl-like, yet since they're just a tad larger than the existing figures they'll integrate with other Lego products. 

While I cringe at the thought of future generations of girls pleading for their very own Lego Beauty Salon (there is also a tree house, design studio and veterinary clinic), I  admit my own childhood doll-playing narratives often revolved around hair styles, outfit changes and dating (thanks to the unauthorized use of my brother’s GI Joe). In hindsight we were relishing the ability to create and control our own worlds. Similarly, Lego has created an opportunity for girls to be in complete control of environments they’re interested in, weaving rich narratives and developing relationships while doing so. And I don’t think there’s anything sexist about that. 

Here's a link to the Businessweek article: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/lego-is-for-girls-12142011.html

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