Explorable Explanations

Bret Victor / March 10, 2011

What does it mean to be an active reader?

An active reader asks questions, considers alternatives, questions assumptions, and even questions the trustworthiness of the author. An active reader tries to generalize specific examples, and devise specific examples for generalities. An active reader doesn't passively sponge up information, but uses the author's argument as a springboard for critical thought and deep understanding.

Do our reading environments encourage active reading? Or do they utterly oppose it? A typical reading tool, such as a book or website, displays the author's argument, and nothing else. The reader's line of thought remains internal and invisible, vague and speculative. We form questions, but can't answer them. We consider alternatives, but can't explore them. We question assumptions, but can't verify them. And so, in the end, we blindly trust, or blindly don't, and we miss the deep understanding that comes from dialogue and exploration.

Explorable Explanations is my umbrella project for ideas that enable and encourage truly active reading. The goal is to change people's relationship with text. People currently think of text as information to be consumed. I want text to be used as an environment to think in.

This essay presents examples of few initial ideas:

A reactive document allows the reader to play with the author's assumptions and analyses, and see the consquences.

 

An explorable example makes the abstract concrete, and allows the reader to develop an intuition for how a system works.

 

Contextual information allows the reader to learn related material just-in-time, and cross-check the author's claims.

 

An experiment by computer science researchers shows that Perl, a major commercial programming language, is no more intuitive to use than a fake language with a completely random syntax. What gives?

For many digital products, poor user interface design and UX can sink an app's fortunes even if the underlying engineering is powerful and innovative. (Remember Color?) But what about the interfaces behind the interface, the ones that developers spend hundreds or thousands of hours interacting with while they build software for the rest of us?

Yes, I'm talking about programming languages. Unless you've had specialized training, looking at lines of code is like reading hieroglyphs, only less intuitive. According to findings by researchers from Southern Illinois University, this reaction isn't just because you're a n00b: they found that Perl, a major programming language used by untold zillions of developers, is no more intuitive to novices than a language with a randomly generated syntax.

 

Why shouldn't those "interfaces" be humanely designed?

Let that sink in. Programming languages are tools, designed by people for a specific purpose. What this study showed is that the design of this particular tool, Perl, is so ridiculously opaque that, from the perspective of a novice programmer, a string of characters bashed out by a monkey at a keyboard would literally make an equal amount of sense. Ouch. Of course, the researchers didn't set out to take down Perl. They were running experiments to determine the usability of Quorum, a so-called "evidence based programming language" whose design was informed by surveys, usability studies, and field tests. "We have observed that novices learning to program at the university or younger levels can have significant difficulty learning the syntax of general purpose programming languages, which may initially seem arbitrary," the authors write.

 

They created a "placebo language" called Randomo, whose syntax was randomly generated, to use in trials alongside Quorum and Perl. Novice programmers were able to write sample programs more accurately in Quorum versus Perl--an interesting, but not terribly surprising, result. More surprising was how Perl compared to Randomo. To quote the paper: "Perl users were unable to write programs more accurately than those using a language designed by chance."

I asked Andreas Stefik, the paper's lead author, what design attributes an "evidence based programming language" like Quorum had that made it easier for novices to use accurately. He said that their usability testing showed that simply finding natural-language replacements for some of the more abstruse syntax went a long way. For example:

 

integer i = 0
repeat 10 times
i = i + 1
end

 

That still looks mostly like Greek to me, but compare it to this equivalent statement in Perl:

 

for(int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
}

 

That's not Greek, it's Klingon. The Perl version uses fewer characters, which many geeks would no doubt see as more efficient or precise; but Stefik says that the Quorum version accomplishes exactly the same commands. "I think that whenever you make a product design simpler there’s a potential danger of removing features that experts need," he tells Co.Design. "We are trying very hard not to do that."

So why aren't all programming languages designed this way? "I doubt that most language designers meant for their languages to be hard to understand or use," Stefik says. "The problem is that programming languages are created either by committee or by extreme technical wizards with magical math powers. The broad computer science academic community has not paid a tremendous amount of attention to programming language usability. I think that our discipline mostly uses anecdotes to argue about programming languages. As such, it is no wonder that the arguments get heated."

Startups like Codecademy, which aim to teach non-coders how to program, are white hot. Would they be necessary if the programming languages themselves were better-designed? Probably--Python may be considered "easier" to use than Perl, but it still takes some hand-holding to get started with. But evidence based programming languages are a fascinating variation on the traditional practice of UI design. Every piece of software we use was written by other people, slaving away over thousands of lines of code. Why shouldn't those "interfaces" be as humanely designed as the ones we tap and swipe? 

John Pavlus

John Pavlus is a writer and filmmaker focusing on science, tech, and design topics. His writing has appeared in Wired, New York, Scientific American, Technology Review, ... Read more

 

Hi all!

I recently released a tutorial and all the needed code to build an orientation tracker. I first thought about building this tracker when doing a course as a guest a while ago, so now it's coming back.

I think the possibility to sense the orientation of things in real-time opens up a whole new dimension of possibilities in Physical Computing. Even more when it can be done wirelessly.

Tutorial and code is here: http://dev.qu.tu-berlin.de/projects/sf-razor-9dof-ahrs

Hope this will be useful,
Peter

Open source AHRS / head-tracking using SparkFun 9DOF Razor IMU - via USB or Bluetooth from Spatial Audio Research on Vimeo.

Companies should lead their users, not the other way around.

The user is king. It’s a phrase that’s repeated over and over again as a mantra: Companies must become user-centric. But there’s a problem: It doesn’t work. Here’s the truth: Great brands lead users, not the other way around.

The Apple and IKEA way

Take Apple. One evening, well into the night, we asked some of our friends on the Apple design team about their view of user-centric design. Their answer? “It’s all bullshit and hot air created to sell consulting projects and to give insecure managers a false sense of security. At Apple, we don’t waste our time asking users, we build our brand through creating great products we believe people will love."

Another hyper-growth brand, IKEA, has the same belief. One of us had the privilege of working closely with IKEA’s global brand and design leaders; at IKEA the unspoken philosophy is: “We show people the way.” IKEA designers don’t use user studies or user insights to create their products. When I asked them why, they said “We tried and it didn’t work.”

Of course, neither Apple nor IKEA will say this publicly since they are both extremely closed companies and would risk offending users (and the design community) by speaking out against user-centeredness.

And since no one will speak up, the false value of the user-as-leader has spread.

Be a Visionary

If users can’t tell a company what to do, what should companies do instead? The best brands are all guided by a clear vision for the world, a unique set of values, and a culture that makes them truly unique and that no user insights could ever change.

They define their own rules.The vision must come first. This could come from the client, designers, a team, an organization, or a design leader. It needs to be clear and applied consistently over the project.

Create an icon

The same goes for truly extraordinary products, the icons of the world. There are three types of iconic products and none of them are made through user-driven design.

Democratic Icons

These could also be termed “slow” icons. These products take a long time to become icons. They are usually of plain or simple design, created to fulfill a certain function, such as the paper clip, tea bags, potato peelers, and the mailbox, all of which are valued for their functionality, rather than their aesthetics. Over time, users become attached to them and eventually, these products gain so much meaning that they start to gain cultural currency and layers of connotations. These icons are generally easily available.

Design Icons

This is when a familiar product such as a chair or a car whose design is particularly shape-driven will get a makeover, with an innovative design that alters the look of this familiar object. The first reaction of the mass audience is often negative, claiming the object “looks weird.” But over time, the audience adapts to the change and comes to love the product for its personality; it attains cultural relevance and becomes iconic. Hans Wegner's Y-chair and the Aeron chair are typical examples of design classics that were adopted late.

Instant Icons

Instant may be familiar products or offer a familiar function like the design icons, but something about their design that make them essentially new products. They open new markets and create new demand—just think of the Polaroid camera, the Sony Walkman, the Flip Camera, the Blackberry, and the Apple iPod.

Why it’s harmful to listen to the users

But can’t you create radical new products based on what the user wants? Why do the most innovative brands not care about what users want?

Users insights can’t predict future demand

The demand for something fundamentally new is completely unpredictable. Even the users themselves have no idea if they will like an entirely product before they start using it (and maybe, only after years of use). Demand for something new cannot be predicted.

The world is driven forward by improbable, high-impact events, both negative and positive: September 11th, the subprime crisis, or the explosive rise of social media. These events completely changed the world and were difficult to predict—perhaps a few individuals saw a glimpse of the future, but the majority of people were totally unprepared. It’s the same with new products and brands—you can’t foresee what will be successful.

This is a very scary thought for most business leaders, but the good news is that there are ways to deal with it. All creative industries are dependent on the constant launch of radically new products. And the music, movie, publishing, and fashion industries have tried to find stability in a sea of unpredictability by constantly putting out new products and seeing what sticks.

They have learned to hire the best and the most creative people in the world (whether it’s directors, music producers, or authors), worked hard to launch a broad portfolio of products and to speed up the time it takes their products to reach the market.

User-centered processes stifles creativity

Could you imagine Steven Spielberg starting out new film projects with intense user studies and insights? Not really. There is a reason why Spielberg and all other profoundly creative people don’t work in a user-centered way. The user-centered process is created as linear rational process for innovation and that’s why it’s so popular among managers.

But as studies of successful innovations and creativity shows, creating something new is a chaotic, unpredictable, frustrating, and very, very hard process. And most of all, it’s the result of extraordinary efforts and visions of a few extremely talented people. These creative people will feel limited and bored, not inspired, if they have to start out a creative process with a lot of user knowledge. Their inspiration comes from a multiple of sources and is highly individual.

Creating a formula will always be in vain and won’t result in something really new.

User focus makes companies miss out on disruptive innovations

Focusing on users will lead companies to make incremental innovations that typically tend to make the products more expensive and complicated and ironically, in the long run, less competitive.

Radical innovations typically gain traction in the margins of a market and the majority of customers (at least in the beginning) will dislike change. If a company bases their decisions on user studies, they will conclude that most radically new innovations are not rational to pursue. This often means that companies miss out on new growth markets that can end up eventually eliminating their business.

The same logic applies to branding. A company will always go for very small incremental changes in their branding efforts if they base their decision on user input. In the short run, minor changes pleases their users. In the long run, it means the big brand will be run over by bolder, often smaller, and more innovative brands that redefine an industry.

User-led design leads to sameness

Even if user insights were useful, it isn’t a competitive advantage. Even the most advanced users studies are now widely available. Most companies have conducted these studies and they have had the same insights about their users as you have. Therefore, product strategies based on studies will tend to be similar to their competitors. The result is a sea of sameness.

This isn’t a theoretical point—most industries are characterized by very similar products and brand positions, partially because companies have listened too much to their users. Branding is really about differentiation, about standing out. User centeredness leads to the opposite, similarity.

It’s time for brands to step up and trust themselves again.

***

Written by Jens Martin Skibsted and Rasmus Bech Hansen.

Rasmus Bech Hansen is a senior partner at Kontrapunkt, a brand and design consultancy, and a sough-after conference speaker and TV commentator.

Jens Martin Skibsted is founding partner of KiBiSi and Biomega. He is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and Global Agenda Council on Design member, and one of the 40 Under 40 chosen by I.D. Magazine. In 2009, he co-founded the product design group KiBiSi with Lars Holme Larsen and Bjarke Ingels.

[Top image via Flipboard]

Skibsted Ideation

Skibsted Ideation is a design agency created by Jens Martin Skibsted, the founder of bicycle company Biomega. In 2009 he co-founded the product design super-group KiBiSi ... Read more

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Op-Ed: In The Particular Lies The Universal

by James Victore

Artwork by James Victore

It's no coincidence that brilliant creative minds are rarely witnessed. Steve Jobs, Tina Fey, Banksy. Mavericks and renegades — telling their stories, spilling their guts, and divulging themselves for our progress, our enlightenment, and our entertainment. Like us, they feel the heat of failure, defeat, humiliation, and financial ruin, but they do it anyway. They do whatever it takes to put their lives and ideals into their work. They have to. And the world loves them even more for it.Most folks never have a chance of even knowing the power of their talents and gifts. Others lack the confidence, or possibly ignorance, necessary to share their ideas with the world — afraid to stick their heads out of the foxhole for fear of the potshots from naysayers and hole-pokers. We're scared, so we stop trusting ourselves. This creates a bad habit — instead of looking inside for an answer, we ask "What do THEY want?"  Thus, we pander. We regurgitate standard, acceptable levels of crap — mediocrity with a laugh track.

Like individuals, companies are risk averse. It's in their business plan to be so. The commercial world or the larger society generally accepts greatness only AFTER witnessing it in others. One unique voice airs a beautiful work first, then it becomes socially acceptable. Case in point: Anthony Bourdain's bestseller Kitchen Confidential was written purely out of love of his craft. His work was an expression of himself. His business model was, literally, "I don't give a shit."

Bourdain wrote only for cooks, and thought he would be excommunicated from the restaurant business for it. But, because he told the ugly truth, in his own voice, in his own aggressive style — on his subsequent book tour, he was received by cooks and chefs the world over with the phrase, "You wrote my life, man."

We recognize that any truly new idea is met with fear, will never pass "marketing" or the Nielsens or Hollywood or even the Joneses. But the few brave ones, both companies and individuals, who risk comfort and safety for a chance at beauty or being able to move someone — they have a potential to gain so much more. Loyalty, respect, and awe.

And that's why we must push ourselves to ask the harder question. Not "what do THEY want?", but "what do WE have to say?" We must do the work of looking inside ourselves to find what is beautiful and tremendous within us and summon the courage to put this out. As James Joyce said, "in the particular lies the universal."

The meaning of all this is that you, your opinions and intelligence and history matter. But you gotta do the work. To pull from the most personal areas of your life, your opinions, your stories, your experiences — by doing this you create something meaningful not only to yourself but to those who see it. The work, the fear and struggle, the constant worry of whether your gift is good enough, the small critics both inside and out? Fuck 'em. The world awaits your gift. Isn't that what life is all about?