Design Thinking

Design Thinking vs. Hybrid Thinking – Do They Differ?

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In the last post I wrote about the relationship between UX and CX. Next up, what’s the relationship between design thinking and hybrid thinking? Are they one and the same? Is it just a matter of phrasing, semantics or preferences? In a post I wrote a few weeks back I mentioned an article about the Arum Engineering firm, and in that article a member of the firm makes a very clear distinction about hybrid thinking as a better way of describing Arum’s innovation process. Beyond a hint of what hybrid thinking is, and that it’s not the same as design thinking, the article says little about the difference between the two.

Then I came across an article about hybrid thinking in which the IT consulting firm, Gartner, discussed why they believe hybrid thinking will be of value in enterprise architecture. This one provides a fuller description of hybrid thinking:

Nicholas Gall, VP and distinguished analyst at Gartner said, hybrid thinking is the concept of melding design, IT and business thinking to produce strategic changes. “We are seeing several leading companies combining design and other thinking methods, including more traditional approaches, to drive transformative, innovative and strategic change…By integrating design thinking, which is already very popular in business circles but is virtually unknown in IT circles, enterprise architects can focus on the right tempo of operations, enabling them to centre their outcomes on influencing people, rather than systems.”

Based on this quote, hybrid thinking is something broader than design thinking – and it has a specific, intended outcome – strategic change. I would say that design thinking could result in strategic change, but that it more broadly provides a process for approaching problems and creating thoughtful solutions, strategic or otherwise. Also, hybrid thinking appears to have more of an IT component, although it’s not exactly clear how essential that is to a hybrid thinker.

Then I came across this Fast Company design blog post on hybrid thinking as the logical progression to the “next new thing”. In his essay “Beyond Design Thinking” Gadi Amit’s discusses why design thinking may not be enough, and how hybrid thinking improves upon it by doing more than just providing a process for idea generation and innovation. According to Amit, “Having a great idea is a nice first step; making the idea a reality is better and ultimately, making an idea successful in the marketplace is the pinnacle achievement of any designer.” He goes on to say that “hybrid design” is to design what “design thinking” was to “innovation.” While I can’t say Amit provides the accepted definition and perspective on hybrid thinking, it certainly adds to the conversation.

One thing that these articles appear to want to suggest is that design thinking is nice, but that there’s more to design than just the thinking and that hybrid thinking focuses on actually creating something. That leads me to question if those talking about hybrid thinking are missing something about design thinking. Based on my reading about it (starting with Tom Kelley’s seminal book on design thinking, “The Art of Innovation”) the “thinking” in design thinking is but one stage of what I might refer to as the IDEO approach to design thinking. It really encompasses five stages: understand the user, identify the problem, deep dive, prototype, implement. I think it would be difficult to make a case that design thinking doesn’t lead to actual products, when IDEO and other design firms are contributing to the product development process as an essential part of their business. That’s what the implement stage is all about. Hybrid thinking calls to mind the Roger Martin school of thought on design thinking, and his integrative thinking model. Hybrid means combining different people, different ideas, different talents – and merging them to produce something that’s better than the any of the components.

What’s next? How about design thinking and future thinking. That, I think, will need to be a topic for a future column.

User Experiences

The Relationship Between User Experience And Customer Experience

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In the past I’ve heard talks or read articles where user experience (UX) and customer experience (CX) are used interchangeably to describe some process of designing and implementing an enhanced service environment for the end user/customer/community member. I don’t think there is anything wrong with using them interchangeably for most audiences, but it may be informative for our own understanding to get a sense of how they are differentiated and how they relate to each other. Perhaps we can to establish the uniqueness of each term, although some of you may decide it’s just a matter of semantics. Read up on and it and come to your own conclusions.

A good starting point is this interview with Samantha Starmer, Manager, eCommerce Experience at REI published at UX Magazine. You can read the transcript or watch a video of the interview. The interviewer asks an interesting question of Starmer: How does REI define ‘user experience’ and its relationship to customer experience (CX)? Here is Starmer’s response:

I think that it’s an interesting question, when you talk about user experience and customer experience. User experience, in general, we’re thinking about people using something, people interacting with something. Right now, most specifically, that’s the website and any mobile applications or mobile sites, but that’s really part of a larger umbrella around the full customer experience, which would include interactions with a store employee, using the product, using our services, taking a class, that kind of thing.

Seems fairly clear. UX is a subset of CX. You want to design a good user experience for the library catalog, or what happens at the reference or circulation desk of your library. Each one of these can be thought of as a unique experience that requires its own design – and thinking about what we want that experience to be about and then put into place the elements that facilitate that experience (e.g., expedient; product excellence; accurate one-stop problem resolution, etc). Taken together these unique and somewhat different experiences create the total experience for the community member. That requires us to create the UX with the overall CX in mind, and then make sure the organization consistently achieves the UX at all possible touchpoints. If we do that well, we’ve created a better library experience. You can read an additional interview in which UX and CX are discussed, also from UX Magazine, with Harley Manning, Vice President, Research Director for Customer Experince at Forrester Research. Manning also points to CX as a broader set of concerns, while UX is described as “focusing on narrow concerns.”

I suppose the term that I’ve been using for CX is “totality“. Again, what we call it may not be as critical as making it happen – and making it happen is a challenge. That’s one of the messages in this good post, also about customer experience. Over at the blog The Conversation, Adam Richardson has started a series of posts about customer experience. In this first one he explains what customer experience is (and much of will sound familiar to those with an understanding of user experience). He finds it hard to define:

How we can really improve something if we can’t even define it? This is the first in a series of posts looking at customer experience — what it encompasses, how to structure it, how to approach and improve it.

But he comes to the conclusion that:

It is the sum-totality of how customers engage with your company and brand, not just in a snapshot in time, but throughout the entire arc of being a customer.

I think that comment does a great job of pointing out to those of us in the library field that our interaction with members of the user community is more than just a single transaction at a service desk. We need to be thinking in terms of the customer experience, and what’s happening at every touchpoint during that person’s journey through the library experience we deliver. For more of Richardson’s posts on customer experience see this one that’s all about touchpoints.

So, have these customer experience readings changed my own perspectives on UX and CX? I think so. Moving forward I will still use the term user experience to refer to that total library experience we want to design and deliver. In my presentations on UX I would be more likely to introduce the term “customer experience” and point out how each term adds to our knowledge about and conversation on designing better libraries.

Design Thinking

Two New Reads For Design Thinkers

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I recently came across two worthwhile readings to share on the subject of design thinking.

The first is an interview with Tim Brown, the CEO of IDEO. While I wouldn’t necessarily agree with one of the commentors who stated that the interview is “a great overview of design thinking”, I do believe that those exploring the field would gain something from Brown’s comments about design in general and design thinking specifically to help them shape their perspective on what design thinking is and how it could be of help to a librarian. Brown, as always, shares a few good insights on design thinking. I particularly like his perspective on design being about “big” ideas and the importance of totality:

When Brown talks about ‘big’, he isn’t talking about size, or scale, or depth. It’s the totality of experiences that he—and ‘design thinking’—refers to…it’s “much more complex thing than any single object”, Brown insists. It’s about solving the problem of distributing clean water in poor countries, coming up with more efficient ways to direct human traffic in buildings, realizing untapped channels of communication in trade. Design is huge.

That gives you a taste of what you’ll find in this interview – and it’s a fairly fast read as well. Take a look.

Then I came across this other interesting post titled “Learning How to Use Design Thinking.” It appeared at InnovationManagement, and reports on a workshop that took place in Sweden in which 70 attendees learned how to apply design thinking to specific problems. This is more of an overview, as Dan Buzzini, Design Director at IDEO, explains how design thinking is an innovation tool. Two things to look for in this summary of the workshop are the reflections of the workshop participants – interesting to read what they thought was the most valuable part of the learning experience – and the link to a good video that demonstrates how IDEO helped a bank improve a self-service experience. It’s definitely worth watching.

Finally, here’s a link to an article about the engineering firm Arup. Titled “Working on Tomorrow’s World” it describes how Arup tackles incredibly difficult challenges related to designing and building future cities and their related structures. It’s a good read about a firm that has developed a successful approach to innovation. What caught my attention was the part about “hybrid thinking”. It’s described as:

Quite often, problem-solving innovation is created by “happy” clashes between different disciplines. Arup is a firm of engineers, designers, accountants, architects, marketing professionals and graphic designers. Engineers tackle architectural problems, designers try to answer engineering questions and technologists join forces with mathematicians to enable new angles to be explored. It’s what’s known as hybrid thinking.

Is it the same as design thinking? Despite some similarities (e.g., bringing together teams of diverse individuals to “deep dive” problems) Arup sees it as being slightly different:

Young doesn’t like to call it design thinking, a label that, he says, is simply “a discussion of semantics, a bit of a distraction”, but it’s clear Arup is infected with a childlike questioning of the status quo. It’s what drives creativity right to the edges of the company.

Perhaps it is just a case of semantics. What’s important is that both approaches start with the essential step of asking the right questions:

Arup’s culture is about stepping back, he says, and asking, “Is that the right question?” It’s not a case of “What are we building?”, but “What are we building it for?” He adds: “Out of that tension something else often pops out that wasn’t considered.” Innovation starts with a question.

If you come across a good read on design thinking I hope you’ll share it with me, and I’ll share it with DBL readers.

User Experiences

The Link Between Storytelling And UX

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Listening to a professional storyteller really had quite an impact on me. It made me realize, and I wrote about it here, that storytelling presents an entirely different way to make a presentation – or enhance a presentation. Since then I’ve made an effort to do some storytelling in my own presentations, either at the start or the end. In between I’ve made more use of videos that help to tell the story. My other visuals, as much as possible, serve more as supplements or backdrop to the larger story I’m trying to tell. Personal experiences are a good source of stories, and I’ve crafted them with tales about an old family car or the time my family raised a chicken (or so we thought) in our house. I’ve also used some of my camping trip experiences to make a point. I’ve also experimented with shooting short videos, using my Flip, of librarians responding to a question or sharing a thought, and weaving an edited version into the story line. The challenge is making it relevant to the main theme of the presentation – as a lead in or to bring it all to a close. If the story is completely disconnected then it makes little sense. By no means would I describe myself as a good storyteller, but I’m trying to get better each time I try it.

One thing I’ve found helpful is to better understand the fundamentals of storytelling – knowing the elements of a story and how to present it in a way that will have the best effect on the audience. I recently discovered some good reading for those of you who want to be better storytellers or give it a try. What I also learned is that storytelling can help more than presentations. It can be essential to designing a good user experience. I started my discovery with a post called “Juicy Stories Sell Ideas” by Whitney Quesenbery and Kevin Brooks. But I didn’t realize these co-authors also have authored a book titled “Storytelling for User Experience: Crafting Stories for Better Design” until I read about it here – where they were interviewed. My library did not have a copy, so I thought I’d see if interlibrary loan might help. I was amazed to discover that not a single U.S. academic or public library has purchased this book (according to Worldcat). Perhaps the other countries where the book is found know something we don’t. Anyway, these new discoveries lead me back to the “Juicy Stories” post, and there I found some additional links with one to a post at Smashing Magazine titled “Better User Experience with Storytelling”.

I really enjoyed this post’s breakdown of the of the elements of the story. The key points are:
* good stories have a specific design to them
* stories need to create an emotional connection with the audience
* the story arc explains the structure of a story (e.g., beginning, middle, end – but with more detail)
* every story ever created/told uses the same basic formula (a chart explains it using contemporary films)
* storytelling can help in designing user experiences.

One challenge to creating a library user experience is that some library workers may resist the idea. They will make the point that the people who come to the library are not really interested in having some sort of experience. What these library users really want is to complete a transaction or make use of the space – and then be on their way. If libraries offers those things so that the user accomplishes what he or she wants, with nothing beyond the bare basics, then it can be described as a good experience. None of that is unreasonable. Yes, things must work right so that the user gets what he or she wants in an efficient way. If our library is unable to provide that simple “it works” experience, then we must figure out what is broken and fix things so that we at least deliver a baseline acceptable experience. Perhaps we can aspire to do more by taking into consideration the entire experience the library delivers, not simply what any one worker sees from his or her own vantage point in the library?

Let’s use storytelling to reflect on the value of the user experience. Consider the following scenario:

John is a sophomore at a large public research university. During his freshman year, a librarian came to John’s class and explained how to do the research for his introductory writing course. John never needed to actually go to the library though, he found all the resources needed from websites and one of the library’s article search engines. This semester however, the instructor specified that two reference books had to be consulted for the project, and both were only available in print in the library. So after his morning marketing course, John walked over to the campus library. Upon entering the building a security guard stopped John and asked him to show his campus ID card; that made him feel a little uneasy. Wasn’t he a student here and was this the way to welcome him to the library? The first thing he noticed was the smell – not a good one either. Maybe something moldy or perhaps some food another student left in the trash a few days ago? Either way, not pleasant. No matter, John would just find the book he needed, make a few copies and get to lunch. But there was just one problem. John had no idea where to find the book, and he saw nothing in the way of a sign that he could use to get started. So lacking a sign he decided to walk into the first stairwell he saw, figuring the reference books would be on the next level up. The stairwell looked like it could use a fresh coat of paint and there was some graffiti on the wall. On the next level there were lots of computers, but John looked around and didn’t see any books at all. There were still no signs to provide an overview of the layout of the building. Fortunately John saw a desk and thought he could get some help. It turned out the desk was mostly for help with computers and printers, but the student sitting at the desk was able to look up the call number for the reference book John needed. John found out he needed to get to the lower level. Once there he struggled to get to the right call number location – again – no helpful signage. Finally, he figured out the way the numbers worked and managed to get to the right spot, but only to find that only one of the books he needed was there, but with no sign of the other one. John figured someone else in the class may have gotten there before him and taken the book away. This should have been simple, he thought. It was anything but simple. After finally finding out where the copiers were, he found out the copiers only worked with campus cards and he didn’t have funds on his card. One copier accepted change, but John only had a $20 bill. Since he only needed two copies John managed to find a friend who gave him the twenty cents he needed to make the copies. Then he left, and decided he’d do anything he could to avoid coming back.

While our character John satisfied, at least partially, his need can we say this is a good experience. Other than the lack of good signage, nothing was really broken. It’s just a matter of having to deal with the library and figure things out. You could easily re-write this story to vastly improve the experience (e.g., the smell of fresh coffee coming from the cafe, a well-designed interior, a greeter at the door welcoming you and getting you off in the right direction, etc). Yes, many people come to libraries to accomplish something specific, such as finding a reference book for an assignment, viewing a DVD or even asking for help with a research project. But in accomplishing those things the experience each person has could make the difference between never coming back again or wanting to become a regular user of the library. Which do you and your colleagues prefer to offer? If you want to find more examples of how storytelling can be used as a planning device, look no further than ARL’s recently published “ARL’s 2030 Scenarios“. Each scenario is built around a story about a researcher. It helps the reader to imagine a different future for the large research library. The point of the “Better UX With Storytelling” post is that we can work with our colleagues to develop stories like this one about John to help us think through the type of experience we are giving community members, as well as the one we’d ideally like them to have at our library.

Whether it’s integrating a new dimension into your presentations or sitting down with your colleagues to craft stories that can help all to understand the type of experience the library offers. and to think through the desired experience, storytelling can be a powerful tool for designing a better experience. You should take a look at the post “Better User Experience with Storytelling” for two reasons. First, it (along with the other posts mentioned above) will help you to become a better storyteller if that’s a skill area where you’d like to improve. Second, it will help you to better grasp the power that stories can have in creating emotional connections. As DBL posts have state previously, a great user experience provides more than just a transaction, it provides meaning for its users. Every library worker has, at one time or another, engaged with a community member who experienced the library at far more than a transactional level. The challenge we face is how to build meaning and emotion connections into all the touchpoints where the user community interacts with the library. Developing stories may help us overcome that challenge.

Late addition: another blog post on using storytelling as part of the design process

Books, Creativity & Innovation

You Know How To Capture Your Good Ideas But How Do You Get Others To Support Them

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Seems like there’s a lot being written about good ideas these days. If you follow what’s been written here in the past about design thinking, creativity, innovation – and capturing your good ideas when they come – chances are you are already improving at coming up with good ideas and capturing them as well. But just coming up with good ideas isn’t enough. How do you get others – mostly your work colleagues – to buy into your good idea? That’s where most of our ideas tend to run into the proverbial brick wall.

Consider this example based on a rather simple idea – a good one on the surface – that a library worker developed that he thought would make a small, but noticeable difference for some members of the library community. What I like about this idea is that it provides a great example of how we can come up with a good idea by keeping our antennae up so that we more acutely observe and listen in our library environment for ways to design a better library. The staff member noticed that in this one part of the library where there was nothing particular going on, students would gather in small groups to study. They would sit on the floor or pull some chairs together. They might make some noise. The staff member thought the library could do better for these students, but knew the library needed great flexibility to make the most of every piece of real estate. The simple observation lead to a new idea for a better library – create a flexible study space by installing a set of folding room dividers. Not only would it give the students more privacy, cut down on noise and make for a better study space, but it could be enhanced with a flat panel monitor on the wall for collaborative work. Great idea, right. Well you know what happened next. Of course, lots of reasons why that’s a bad idea. Too much foot traffic in that area already. Students who like the current setting will complain. The reference desk will be swamped with students asking how to use the monitor. When the walls are closed we won’t know what the students are doing in there…and so on. Certainly the project will require some funding, but it’s hardly what Jim Collins would refer to as an “above the waterline risk”, not to mention that if any of the imagined problems actually surface the room dividers can easily be removed. Still, there is opposition to the idea. Why does this happen and what can we do about it?

First though, back to the matter of more being written about good ideas. Seems there are two new books driving this conversation. I previously mentioned one of them, Steven Johnson’s new book about where good ideas come from. I noticed that Profhacker also had a post about Johnson’s book (if you aren’t reading Profhacker – sign up today). I also noted that Profhacker has a good post, along with comments, about capturing your good ideas – something I wrote about a while back. But there’s another book about good ideas you may want to read. This one, by John Kotter, isn’t about coming up with ideas and capturing them, it’s about the problem described above – how can you come up with simple ways to defend your ideas against the critics so that they have the best chance of surviving and actually getting implemented?

Kotter’s book is appropriately titled “Buy-In: Saving Your Good Idea from Getting Shot Down“, and I’ll share a few ideas from the book here. You can also read about it here, and there’s a good interview with Kotter in which he shares his ideas from the book in the October 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review (p. 129-132). Here is a brief summary of some of the key points that Kotter shares that explain why new ideas are attacked and how to instead gain support for an idea. Perhaps the most important thing you can do is to anticipate that your idea will be attacked. Kotter says the attack response is murky mix of human nature and group dynamics. His research showed that the most successful idea champions didn’t respond by trying to put down or marginalize their opposition. Instead they did what Kotter calls “inviting in the lions”. These folks embraced those criticizing their ideas, and invited their opinions. One of the biggest problems in getting support is information overload. Rather than give time and attention to a new idea, co-workers find it faster to just write it off and hope it will go away, thus giving them attention for other projects. Inviting their participation by engaging their attention – even if it is negative – is a good start. Then what?

Of course, there’s more. You need to know the four common attacks and how to avoid them. In fact there are up to 24 attacks (everything from “why change” to “we can’t afford it”) that Kotter and his fellow researchers identified. By being more familiar with what they are, Kotter says you can be prepared to respond – what you don’t want to do is respond by winging it. That usually ends up badly. So where do you learn all this? From the book. If you’re not sure if you should read it, here’s a ten-minute video interview with Kotter that should give you a better idea of what to expect from the book. I’ll be taking a closer look. Good ideas are hard to come by. When I get one, I want to give it the best chance possible of making it past the idea stage.

User Experiences

If Your Library Closed Tomorrow Would Anyone Miss It

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There’s a clever Cronk of Higher Education post that pokes fun at how all of us working in higher education think of ourselves as being indispensable. Surely our students and faculty, not to mention our institutions, have no hope of surviving without us. Wrong. As the post suggests, in a humorous way, our institutions would probably get along just fine without is.

And some communities are learning to live without their library. Libraries are closing all the time. Not so much academic libraries, but branch libraries, school libraries and sometimes even entire library systems are closed for good – with the one in Camden, New Jersey among the most recently threatened with closure (fortunately given a reprieve) for now. In the world of consumer goods there are also products and entire businesses that disappear forever from the landscape. A blog post from a Harvard Business Review blogger raised a good question that we should all be asking ourselves on a regular basis. If our library closed tomorrow would anyone miss it? More importantly perhaps, what would they miss and why? Would what is missed reflect the business we think we are in.

When many branch libraries were about to close in Philadelphia, neighborhood residents protested. Even when there was a library branch within two to four miles from their own branch, they still insisted on keeping the library open (and many are despite greatly reduced hours and staff). But many residents wanted the library open because they needed a place for their children to go after school. Sounds like it was more about child care than connecting people with information. That may be presumputous because the afterschool activities could involve homework research, learning how to use resources or technology – not just babysitting. Nowhere did I hear or read anything to suggest the library workers at these branches would be missed – though that doesn’t necessarily mean that the neighborhood residents weren’t concerned about the plight of the staff members.

For whatever the reasons might be, those neighborhood residents felt loyal enough to their library to get out in the street to protest the plan to close it – and that’s the type of loyalty we’d like to instill in all of our community members. We want them to feel that their library is indispensable to the community. In an age when those same community members could get their information just as easily from other resources, how do librarians go about creating loyal community members? In a blog post about developing customer loyalty Joseph Michelli, user experience consultant and author of books about organizations such as Starbucks and the Ritz-Carlton, describes the customer engagement ladder. The bottom rung on the ladder is customer satisfaction. The highest rung on the ladder is “sense of loss” if the brand were to cease to exist. In this post Michelli discusses a recent study by Epsilon that revealed some interesting findings about industries that are moving customers up or down that ladder. The report indicates that consumers are primarily non-loyal to brands, and that they’ll jump ship readily with some products (e.g., credit cards) but will be more loyal to others (e.g., auto insurance). Given these realities Michelli asks, “So are your marketing and customer experience strategies resulting in something up the food chain from simple satisfaction.” How would we move our libraries up the ladder from good customer service to would they miss us if we ceased to exist?

If you think about it for a minute, you can probably come up with some product that you were quite loyal to which suddenly ceased being available for purchase. Just recently my local supermarket stopped selling a brand of pasta that was my favorite. Why? Just the usual competition for shelf space, and while I really liked that product apparently not many others did – so it became expendable. Then there was a brand of men’s clothing that I really liked, and there was a retail store in my community. But it just up and closed one day as the retailer went out of business – not even a web presence was maintained. We encounter these experiences from time to time when our favorites brand that have earned our loyalty just disappear. We may miss them, but eventually we just move on to other brands or give up on those products all together.

I imagine that’s what happens when our libraries close. The community just finds some other place to get their books, DVDs and articles. It might be a library farther away, it may be they depend more on their social network or they may make heavier use of Google, Wikipedia and Netflix. For me, the takeaway from Michelli’s post is that we need to be thinking about getting to a place beyond customer satisfaction on the ladder of customer engagement. Yes, customer satisfaction is good. We want them to be satisfied. But a satisfied customer, given the findings of the Epsilon study, isn’t necessarily a loyal customer. What we want, is the type of customer who would really miss us if we ceased to exist. Those are the library community users who will fight to make sure that never happens.

Articles, Experience Design, User Experiences

McDonald’s, Good Ideas and Experience Design – Recommended Reads

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Unfortunately I have less time right now than I’d like to write at greater length about each of these three items I’ve recently read. I think each is worth taking the time to read so I’m recommending them here with just a few quick thoughts.

It’s “Masters of Design” special issue time again over at Fast Company. One of the articles was a standout for me – the one about the big McMakeover at McDonald’s. A few years back it seemed the trend was to apply the term “mcdonaldization” to suggest that a fast food model was taking over a particular process, organization or industry. It was a put down, meaning that creativity and innovation were replaced by rote, soulless routines that reduced the quality of service in favor of speed, efficiency and convenience. I even recall an article from College & Research Libraries, the peer-reviewed library journal, that used the term in its title, and it’s been used fairly regularly in higher education to refer to the big business approach taken by for-profit online higher education programs. What’s interesting about all this is that the Fast Company article is high praise for how McDonald’s is using design to re-invent itself – and be anything but McDonaldized (Ok, they’re not exactly breaking the fast food mold). The article highlights the work of Denis Weil, the designer leading the makeover, who says that “Design is doing something with intent.” The article inspires me to think that when it comes to re-invention and mass change, if McDonald’s can do it, why can’t libraries. Well, if we had a designer like Denis Weil (and some of McDonald’s cash), I think we could.

Just yesterday I downloaded Steven Johnson’s TED Talk on “good ideas”, and I’m looking forward to watching it soon. (NOTE: if you weren’t aware of how easy it is to download a selected TT to iTunes – it is easy – give it a try). So today I came across a WSJ article written by Johnson about the origins of good ideas and the importance of being a tinkerer. I now realize he is coming out with a new book on this exact topic. The article provides a taste of the book, which makes the point that real innovation isn’t the work of a lone creative genius sitting alone in a room when a light-bulb idea pops out. That may happen occasionally, but Johnson uses real world examples to demonstrate that good ideas emerge when different ideas, products or processes that already exist come together in new or different ways. In the past much innovation has happened in closed environments, such as corporate R&D shops, and intellectual property laws have kept it competitive and private. Johnson believes that open innovation may create an environment in which many more good ideas can emerge. Read the article, watch the TT – and perhaps you may be inspired to be the “tinkerer” for your library.

From the “user experience backlash” department – sort of – comes this blog post titled “Can Experience be Designed?” from Oliver Reichenstein at iA. While the language suggests that Reichenstein has a problem with the validity of user experience designers, what he basically asks is if the idea of experience design is bullshit. Can you really design an experience for people when everyone achieves a slightly different experience from any particular design which he or she encounters? He asks “Do experience designers shape how users feel or do they shape with respect to how users feel?” Can an architect design a house that delivers a certain type of experience or does the house’s design lead to a spectrum of experiences – based on the lives of the inhabitants and what they bring to the experience? Reichenstein then proceeds to give the reader much to think about the concept and practice of user experience design. I like these types of articles because they force me to question some of my beliefs about design thinking and user experiences. It also helps me to clarify what, in a library, can be improved through user experience design, and how it might be accomplished. I’ll be further reflecting on this one.

Higher Education, User Experiences

Designing The Campus Tour

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Academic libraries make a great stop on the campus tour for prospective students. If nothing else it gives the student tour leaders an opportunity to throw some challenges out to the prospective students and their parents. “Guess how many books there are here?” is a pretty common one. Whatever the tour leaders say about the library it’s usually enough to make most librarians within hearing range cringe with fear. As might be expected, most academic librarians have a student tour story to tell, be it humorous or just plain ugly.

There are good reasons to include the library on the campus tour. For one thing it reminds us academic librarians that the admissions office still considers the library an important place for prospective students to visit. What we need to understand about the campus tour is that increasingly it is the outcome of a design process where little is random or left to chance. In fact, more institutions are paying consulting firms to design the campus tour and media related to the tour. This shift in campus tour design was profiled in a Washington Monthly article titled “Campus Tours Go Disney“. It relates how more institutions are moving away from a drab, walk-a-bout the campus affair, and doing more to add sizzle to the tour:

Many colleges have turned the traditional tour into a more intimate, more elaborate event. Some colleges have full-time “visit coordinators” who preside over tours with personalized touches, quirky diversions, choreographed “signature moments,” and even souvenirs—the stuff of theme parks. Such changes have made tours more fun and engaging, and families tend to get multiple options for who to meet and what to see during their visits… when prospective students visit colleges, they’re not just seeking information about outcomes; they want to know what it would be like to eat, sleep, and socialize at a school for four or more years. So tours designed to convey that “experience” provide something consumers want.

The article profiles Jeff Kallay, a pioneer of campus tour design who “encourages colleges to tell stories that will distinguish them from competitors, to engineer an experience that will stick in consumers’ minds.” Kallay is taking cues from masters of user experience design, such as Disney theme parks, and helping colleges and universities apply the concepts to wow prospective students and their parents – to create something different and much more memorable than other tours they’ll take. One piece of advice that Kallay gives institutions that resonates with me – and which makes me feel vindicated about something I’ve been telling admissions folks for years – is the importance of emphasizing stories and human interaction during the tour:

Listening and eye contact matter more than climbing walls and glitzy dorms, he told his clients. He encouraged security guards to wave, secretaries to smile, and tour guides to ask open-ended questions (and to stop walking backward). In presentations, he has even suggested that tours should deemphasize their facilities, even if it means skipping the library. “Everyone’s got one,” he says.

I’ve advised those who plan the campus tour to stop having student guides regurgitate canned talks about the number of books, the number of databases, and that the library can get any book you need when you need it. As Kallay points out, students probably hear this at every library they visit. Instead, as I’ve recommended, have the students relate a personal success story about using the library for their research and to try to weave into that story the difference an academic librarian makes. According to Kallay, those personalized stories have far greater impact than just talking about the facility and content. Nor would it hurt to have an actual librarian say a few words to tour groups – even if it’s just a “hello – we’re here to help you” statement. If more academic librarians sought to create change in the traditional library tour, perhaps we wouldn’t be having Kallay advising his clients to take the library off the tour because it’s so mundane that it adds nothing unique to the tour experience.

I recommend this article to those who want to better understand why designing a user experience is important in higher education institutions, be it the campus tour or the library experience. If our institutions are bringing in consultants to design a better campus tour, why wouldn’t we want to demonstrate how we are working to design a better library experience for students and faculty. And after you finish reading it – share the link with your campus tour coordinator, and add a note that reads “Let’s talk about the library tour”.

User Experiences

The Future Of The Library Is Not The Apple Store

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I tuned in to a recorded archive of a program about the future of the academic library. One participant described as a “no brainer” the idea that the library of the future should be something modeled on the Apple Store. I can see the appeal because Apple Stores are really happening places. When you go there (at least on the weekend) the place is packed, and there’s a waiting list to talk to a “genius” at the genius bar. It is an engaging experience because the wares are right out there, not behind glass cases. The products are loaded with software and apps so you can feel them, interact with them, listen to them – it’s all part of a unique experience. And on top of all that, the geniuses and customer representatives are quite knowledgeable and appear to truly enjoy their work. It all adds up to a great user experience. Some would say that Google’s home page is a masterwork of simplicity and execution. But I don’t see much advocating for it to be the model for the future of the library home page – and a few libraries that have tried it have since given up on it.

What’s not to like about the idea of the library replicating the Apple Store? Why wouldn’t we want lots of loyal, passionate people milling about just waiting to ask a question or find out how to use a resource? Hands down the Apple Store is a much cooler and more fun place to spend some time because there are plenty of gadgets to explore. Libraries have computers and many are adding devices like kindles, iPads, GPS and digital cameras. So libraries have gadgets too, but we ask – in most cases – the user community members to check them out. We could, but do not put gadgets on display for play. But I’ve not heard of an Apple Store that lets you borrow the gadgets to take home – at no cost. Still, few folks would likely rate the library experience as highly as the Apple Store experience – even if the library does have experts who will answer any questions.

My main reason for arguing why we should avoid modeling future libraries on Apple Stores is that the whole point of designing a user experience is to create something unique and fun for your local user community – and which is based on the needs of the local community. Apple Stores have the luxury of being somewhat cookie cutter in how they are modeled. The Apple Store in Manhattan, while larger than the one in my own vicinity, is pretty much the same Apple Store that I would go to at the mega-mall. It has a brand identity to uphold across the globe. Your library may have a brand identity as well, but likely only within your own local community. Rather than working to re-invent our libraries in the mold of the Apple Store we should invest time and effort in understanding the community, and then designing a unique experience that delivers on and exceeds their library expectations. In designing that experience we may find an idea or two to borrow from the Apple Store and other retailers that deliver great user experiences. That’s why we need to pay attention to these retailers – and I think that is what the presenter probably intended. But whatever we borrow should be mixed and re-formulated as the library experience – not merely a copy of the Apple Store concept.

Creativity & Innovation, User Experiences

More On Meaning And Creative Showering

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No, this isn’t a post about how you get meaning from your creative showering. I want to just follow up on two different posts with some new thoughts and links for you.

My most recent post shared some insights from the retreat I attended along with my colleagues in our public services units. In that post I talked about a conversation I had with my co-worker about meaning, and how an article I later came across shared research that indicated that people derive more meaning and happiness from experiences than they do from material objects. Then I came across this NYT article on virtually the same topic discussing similar research that documents that individuals derive more happiness from experiences than material objects:

Current research suggests that, unlike consumption of material goods, spending on leisure and services typically strengthens social bonds, which in turn helps amplify happiness. (Academics are already in broad agreement that there is a strong correlation between the quality of people’s relationships and their happiness; hence, anything that promotes stronger social bonds has a good chance of making us feel all warm and fuzzy.)

So with all the research pointing to the connection between meaning and happiness/satisfaction, that further reinforces that we can offer our user community members something of value whenever we deliver a great library experience.

Further back I wrote about the importance of capturing your good ideas – even when they come in the shower (and yes, there’s a special notebook for that). I mentioned that some research did show there is something to be said for showers as a creative place. For some reason, many individuals will indicate they came up with a good idea in the shower. Over at the Heart of Innovation blog, you’ll find a list of 20 reasons why people get their best ideas in the shower. Some make a lot of sense, and others are questionable – but intriguing – like showering with a partner and turning the shower into a brainstorming session. But I think it still comes down to reason number 20: Showering is easy. Not a lot of thinking is required to make it happen, which frees your mind to think about other things.