I gave him an answer I thought was close enough. He pondered, then said something like “Yeah…but no on really knows what it is, and wherever you end up working, that company will think it’s something else.”

Okay, so I pondered that for a long time, and for the most part it’s true. UX, IX, Industrial Designers, information architects etc., all have something to do with user experience design. UX designers for the most part go to school to study human computer interaction (HCI), or Psychology, or end up spending $5k to take some classes for a week, take a test, and then end up with a piece of paper saying they’re a UX designer.

Then there are the people who never took classes, or spent $5k for a certificate. They just are almost naturally. And interestingly enough, there’s the off-chance that they have some background in filmmaking. Okay, so I happen to have been and still am at heart, a filmmaker. So I’m going to correlate  how closely UX design and filmmaking are almost the same thing. This is my opinion, which pretty means nothing. And you can argue points in this if you wish, tell me I’m wrong, or agree with me.

I’m not going to go all out on this, and will be somewhat brief, so bear with me and try to have an open mind. I’ll list something in UX terms, and then relate after how filmmaking is pretty much the same. Here we go…

UX Design Practice 1. Ethnographic Research

Ethnographic research in the terms of UX design simply put is studying a group of people, who are of some ethnic background, for months. You learn about them, interview them, spend time with them, get to know them well enough that you can make an informed study and thesis on them so when you go back to design something, it fits in with who the target users are. You understand them enough that you can now make a case study on that group and how to make your product work best for that group.

Filmmaking Version: 

As a storyteller or even documentary filmmaker, you spend months or even years interviewing, filming and learning about your subjects. You become part of them and considered to be one of them as you eat with them, share, and learn all you can so when you go back to edit your film, it best represents those people or group.

User Experience Practice 2: Creating Personas

Creating personas is the art of creating a fictitious person or character, including gender, general age, hobbies or interests and so on that would be the type of person who would use your app, or website, or product. Who they are, what they typically like to do, what drives them. It gives the illusion of a real live person that would for one reason or another want to use what you are designing.

Filmmaking Version: Character Development

As a storyteller, you create characters (personas) for your story, who they are, general age, gender, what drives them, and so on. You give an insight to them so they have depth when the story is written and then filmed.

User Experience Practice 3: Creating User Scenarios

Creating user scenarios for what you are designing towards is simply creating a story of a person (from a persona most likely), a problem they have, and how that problem gets solved ultimately by the app or website or product you are going to design. Example: Bob is a dad who’s busy all day at work, but needs to get things together for his family vacation with his wife and two kids. They’ve all decided on going on an Adventure by Disney to Europe, but he doesn’t have enough time at the office to make the reservations, his boss keeps piling on more work, and Bob is swamped with meetings and phone calls. So he grabs his smartphone while at lunch, goes to the Disney mobile travel guide, and within minutes he’s chosen the destination and booked the trip with a few clicks. When he gets home, he finds his trip confirmation on his HP web enabled printer at home.

Filmmaking Version: Writing the story

You write a story with a beginning, middle and end, add your protagonist (Bob), a seemingly insurmountable problem, give Bob a way to solve the problem, add some drama or some humor to the dialog, make it seem like he’ll never be able to accomplish his mission, add in an antagonist (his boss), but in the end he does and you wrap it up with a happy ending…or he gets home to find his printer is out of ink, added with the “…to be continued” tagline.

These are only a few examples of how user experience design is very similar to filmmaking.  If you have some, please share them. I’d go on, but I think I’ve given enough examples for now.

Greg

For an individual, I think, it’s looking at what others have done in the areas of interest where one wants to do better, grow and ultimately succeed,  and how they succeeded, where their accomplishments were, or where they failed miserably and learned from it, refined themselves and then eventually became something to model one’s self after. Along the way, to become a best in class employee, we make mistakes, learn, improve, and go on to do great things – eventually.

It takes time, patience and humility to become a best in class employee. You have to know your faults, except them, and learn how to overcome them in order to grow as a person in general, and eventually helps you become the model employee all companies seek.  EVERYONE, I believe, has the potential to be a best in class employee. The problem is sometimes people are too lazy, feel unappreciated, and lack direction to get there.

So we have that established. Of course there’s more I can add, but let’s move on to how a company (in my opinion) can become “Best in Class”.

A company that wants to be in that category needs to hire talent (of course), what they deem, to quote Zeb from “Men in Black” – “We need the best of the best of the best.” So the recruiters scan the interweb to find potential talent to help them become best in class. And when they go through all the process of interviews, recommendations and references, they hire someone.   So far so good.

But what happens after that seems to get lost to become a best in class organization. Think of it this way. If you’re going to make a really good soup, you look for a good recipe, and it helps to know how to cook.  You may watch what other top chefs or cooks are doing that are great at making soup, so you can get to where they are and to learn from their mistakes and successes.

You need good, fresh ingredients (employees/talent). You then need a really good recipe that tells you how to put it all together and how much of each ingredient is needed, and when to put it in (direction). You then need time to let it simmer so all the ingredients can combine to make an outstanding soup. If something seems to be missing, you add some extra ingredients to make it more flavorful and robust.

You don’t suddenly pull things out of it or dump the whole thing down the drain when you’re almost there. With time and patience it becomes a great soup.

So, any company can become a best in class organization. But they need to see what others are doing and what they’ve done to get there. Best in Class though starts at the top (the chef), and then filters down to management (assistant chefs) so they can then guide and direct their employees (the ingredients) so they can be best in class themselves. Without good leadership and direction that goes throughout the company, then things fall apart.

You can’t hire great talent, sit them at a desk, and say “get to work” without giving them good goals to achieve. Everyone needs good solid goals and needs to know what’s expected of them. More importantly, they need to be given the means through assignments, direction and leadership to achieve those goals. Without them, they become a great ingredient that becomes stale because they’re not being used to their full potential.

So, end of year comes, reviews are meeting expectations (or less because of the lack of good leadership), and the company decides to dump a good part of it down the drain. To save face, the chef says “I just had bad ingredients.”  But the real issue is not that those ingredients weren’t great (they had to be since they were hand selected by the chef’s team) – it’s the chef who didn’t have a great recipe and some practical training to be a chef. And to add to that, his assistant chefs never got proper training either.

This leads to some ingredients weren’t put in the pot until the last minute (new hires or people who were never given goals before their review), or stirred (given direction), or time to simmer (time to learn more, grow, take initiative). So when the chef sees his soup isn’t doing so well, he throws it out and tries again by adding more ingredients. But his soup will never be what he wants it to because he lacks a good recipe and training for success.

If the chef had a great recipe and great assistant chefs who are trained in culinary arts, so they could get those ingredients to realize their full potential, then he’d have a best in class soup.

People need great leadership, great direction, clear goals, the means and time to achieve those goals, time to learn more and bring those things back to work to make it a better company, room to grow, opportunities to lead, given chances for initiative and then rewarded for their hard work. Those are things that lead to a best in class organization.

Throwing away the great ingredients because there was no recipe does not.

However, this question was posed to me by a past boss (well, he was the manager of the department I worked for when contracting with HP, so he was kind of a boss for me). His question was “What is User Experience Design?”, to which I gave him some pat answer about how UX folks look at software (which I was doing at that time) and figure out how to make it a more engaging and user-centered or user-friendly experience, whether it was a website or mobile app, or software you use on your computer.

His response – user experience design is much more than that, and it mean something different to different people. The problem is I gave him the answer I thought he wanted to hear, since I was hired to do software design (both interaction design and user experience design), and wanted to show I knew what I was doing. However, my mind and heart always believed it went way beyond that.

There’s been a lot of talk or words thrown about in regards to user experience design, or even user-centered design. And as I mentioned earlier, most people think it falls into software or web design. To some degree, that’s where it is needed a lot — there are too many websites and apps that just don’t work. Not just little small company sites, but huge sites that belong to mega-corporations.

But I believe that UX touches everything we do, or at least it should. When people say to me “A what?”, my answer is that we, as user experience designers, find ways to make the things people use everyday easier, simpler, and more engaging. That can be an app, a website, a device, a product, theme park attractions (and even the theme park itself, which is the main attraction), vehicles, a coffee cup, luggage for your motorcycle (I mention this because I designed aerodynamic luggage for motorcycles), and other everyday things we encounter and use all the time.

I believe in all that. My desire is to be doing any of those whenever and wherever needed. My brain is always on go, thinking of the next cool thing or how something can be made better, whether it’s something as simple as a stapler, to something as big as an attraction at Disneyland. I want to be known as an Experience Inventor.

The problem is people see my resumé, or my profile on LinkedIn, and peg me as someone with a lot of IT experience and think my goal is to be a user experience designer in IT/apps/software. And to be honest, there have been a number of jobs I’ve had that are IT based. But there’s also film work and video production which were my first loves, but I had a knack to change with the times as interactive multimedia and then the web surfaced, and I survived and adapted.

Yes, I know IT pretty well. I like working in IT, and doing user experience design in app development. The majority of my friends I have known for a long time all think  I should be an Imagineer – they’ve seen the entertainment robot I built when I was 15 (and had a pretty good business running at Sea World, local malls, and parties in La Jolla), my video and animation work, my photography, graphic design work, and currently my full-size interactive replica of R2D2 that I’m working on.

The bible says “I can do all things through Him.”  To me that has always been true. I have no other way to explain how I’ve been able to learn things quickly, adapt to jobs I’ve never done, succeed in everything I’ve attempted when I probably should have never attempted things in the first place. I’m an inventor, creator, designer, entrepreneur, problem-solver and more.

I’m Greg Schumsky- Experience Designer  Inventor.

And thank you for taking time to read this post.

But I do right now, because my wife showed me an ad in Better Homes and Gardens for some very cool outdoor fireplaces from Modfire.com. Being that we’re both into mid-century modern and the whole aesthetic of it, and are working on turning our 1958 California Ranch into what’s called and Atomic Ranch but with updated materials and construction techniques, one of these would go very well in our outdoor patio:

So what do you do? Interestingly enough, I’m currently in this predicament-though I don’t have a niPod nano. I love watches, but don’t want to spend a ton of money on one, and also, don’t want a watch like everyone else has. I want a watch that has a nice design aspect to it, from the look as well as the overall function of the watch.

So, this morning I happened to read about a website called Kickstarter, where people with creative ideas can fund their projects. One such project is for the Lunatik and TikTok watch kits that turn your new iPod Nano into a wristwatch.

That is a very cool idea.

Being that my background covers photography, architecture, CGI and film-making (and all professionally at one time or other in my life) this film is a great example of how the 4 can be combined nicely and artistically.

Enjoy.

To go back some time before that, I was unfortunate enough to see the most beautiful street motorcycle I had ever laid eyes on — The Honda Rune. The problem: If I got one I had to make it functional in that on nice days it would be my main mode of transportation, so I had to be able to carry my messenger bag, lunch, some dress shoes, slacks in case of meetings, and other stuff. Also, room for a passenger helmet would be nice too.

The Need: A nicely designed motorcycle bag that wasn’t square, was designed to look like it was a natural part of the Rune, fit a full size helmet,  needed to be aerodynamic, and wasn’t ugly.

The Problem: There are only 3,300 Runes. At best 1% of the owners would buy these. There were a lot of other after market manufacturers that made motorcycle bags, BUT only one who was going to make them for the Rune. So, I had to contend with some of those buyers would get theirs. On a side note, I ended up selling 10 units, in about the same time frame as the other maker sold theirs and about the same amount.

The solution: Something organic looking, fiberglass, lightweight, can be easily taken off when needed, and lots of room inside. I started with a Photoshop mockup which I then showed to other Rune owners. This was the first mockup:

Everyone thought they looked cool. So I designed about 5 different iterations in illustrator  and ended up with this:

Then for fun I did some 3D modeling, though the Illustrator art was used for the models:

Then came the fun part- making the model! We did this using the templates from Illustrator and good old modeling foam.

After a few mods, tweaks, shavings, etc., molds were made and the first bags were pulled:

They looked great!

And fit a full size helmet without being too bulky:

One thing I did as a backup: Make the design work so someday we could pull bags for the Honda VTX from the same mold, using plugs for Rune specific features. What the bags would look like:

Today I stopped at my local AM/PM to get gas — $3.17 a gallon for Premium. Not bad. Not great, but not bad. As I slipped my ATM card into the pump’s interface, it asked if I agreed to the .45 cent charge. On the keypad next to the flat (i.e. not raised like the rest of the keypad) green “okay” label is the actual key with the number 1 on it. So I hit it and it took me to the next screen – “Do you want to buy a carwash”. Next to the flat red “No” is the number 4 on the keypad. So, being that the 1 on the keypad worked, naturally the 4 should as well.

As computer users, and just users of technology devices that have contextual menus, the keypad could either be used to enter one’s PIN or ZIP code, or in this case, act as the yes and no keys, as well as cancel (which was a flat yellow label next to the physical “Clear” button). So I pressed the number 4, or what I assumed to be NO…and pressed, and pressed. Nothing happened. “Do you want to buy a car wash” was still on screen, as though the pump had a camera, some for of AI, and saw my dirty yellow car (I live on a dirt road, so, well, you get the picture).

So I go in the store. “You have to touch the ‘No” button” the attendant informs me. So I go back out. Hmm, no “No” button. What if..? So I insert my card, this time trying the green label– AHA! It’s a membrane button. Same with the No button. Okay. So I get that they wanted separate  buttons for these actions. Good idea, bad follow through. Below is a graphic I put together of what they have and what I think they should have instead..

Put the buttons somewhere else

Of course there are other ways to do this and this is only one of many solutions. Whoever designed the current implementation should not be working as a designer, and most likely they aren’t anyway.

So next time you get gas, check to see if what looks like a label is actually a button.

Blogs are interesting in that they can cover myriad subjects (and for those who graduated from high school with a 3.o or better average, that’s how it’s supposed to be written, not “a myriad of subjects”… I don’t know why but them’s are the rules  ; ) ). Off-subject: I really hate going to online forums where the people participating, who are adults, most likely over 40, and can’t spell or bother to even right -click on a word when it’s underlined with presumably the incorrect spelling. That’s just lazy.

To be honest, I like to blog about design, whether good or bad, and sometimes about other things that may not seem design related, but in most cases are in some odd way. My blog about LinkedIn, though some considered it just your everyday rant, was in some ways a social commentary about that site and Social Media/Social Networking sites in general, and well, how they are designed.

I commented on how I have this huge “network” and how it really did nothing to help in my job seeking activities when I was out of work. I’d send resumés and “in” messages to recruiters who were in my first degree of contacts, with zero response back. The job I have now I never applied for, sent my resumé to, “in” mailed anyone — it just happened. To be honest, I attribute it fully to God.

Not that I’m saying linkedIn is all bad. I do get emails once in a while from people I haven’t talked to in a while, and see what past co-workers and or friends and colleagues are up to lately. So, in that sense linkedIn is pretty cool. As a job finding, getting in the door tool, mmm, not so much from my experience.  And as I said in my last post regarding linkedIn and social networking in general, I’d like to be proven wrong.

We have all this technology at our fingertips designed to make our lives easier and more productive. Before “social media”, people used to network by attending meetings, user groups, industry gatherings, etc. And from those in the past, I was able to get job offers all the time. But then people got to know me face to face, see my work, watch me present at times, and the rest all kind of fell into place.

But now with that layer removed, I don’t know how technology in this sense really helps. And I don’t think anyone else, if they really thought about it really truly knows. Also, I may just be writing to a blog that no one really reads, and in a sense just talking to my own self.

That took me on and off about 20 minutes to make this post, in between meetings and work. So, I guess there is some time here and there to blog. Did I talk about design? Kind of. Not so much the visual design of social networking sites like LinkedIn, but this was more about the actual user experience design, and I think there’s a lot more that can be done to make a site like that use the technology more efficiently so it becomes a tool for professionals to find that perfect and or illusive job, especially in today’s economy and job market.

Your comments are more than welcome on this of course. And I do dare anyone to prove otherwise that LinkedIn really doesn’t help open the doors to that perfect job.

25 minutes…

Actually, I’m currently doing interaction design and eventually some prototyping in Flash for what I think is one of HP’s coolest products – the web enabled Photosmart Premium TouchSmart Web printer. The kicker is after working in film, television, animation, graphic design, multimedia production, and then the web, I never saw this coming.

I have always loved good product design and industrial design to some degree, and know it takes a team of people to make a product go from concept to completion.

That’s a process that has always intrigued me, and I even had some experiences on my own with it on a very small level – one in developing a licensed consumer video game for Mac and Windows, which was basically me at the helm (with TONS of God’s grace), and a few friends to help out; and the other with the motorcycle fiberglass luggage I designed, developed, and had manufactured.

So, I guess I can say that even though I have had some experience to some degree in product development (and no where near what HP does…), I never saw myself as a software design engineer, or interaction designer, or prototyper, though in my past various jobs and own projects, I have been all of those at one point or another, but I never held the title of any of those, nor thought that was part of my career path.

My point is it’s amazing what one sees as their profession or career path, yet never sees all the job possibilities that can and do happen during that when we’re so focused on just doing our job that we were hired for, or working on some sort of hobby, learning new skills without even realizing it until someone else sees that in us, and sometimes just letting God be the one to direct us as to where we need to go next.

I am so blessed…