I’ve been asked about the meaning behind this site’s title enough to finally give it more explanation.

I’ve always been interested in cognitive and behavioral psychology. In particular, how technology and human interaction with computers is influencing how humans think and behave. I think it’s safe to say our everyday behaviors are a collection of our many experiences. This includes experiences that we recall, experiences we can’t remember no matter how hard we try, and experiences we don’t even recall having. When deciding what to name this blog I thought about the writings of several psychological theorists. There were many but the three that stood out at the time were Noel Burch,  Christopher Bollas and Jean Piaget.

Noel Burch

In the 1970′s Burch talked about The Flexibility of the Four Stages of Competence. This theory essentially states there are four stages of understanding between ignorance and mastery. Below I’ve given a brief, high-level view of Burch’s competency model.

1. Unconscious Incompetence describes someone who has a deficit and doesn’t know it.

 

2. Conscious Incompetence describes someone who has a deficit and knows it.

 

3. Conscious Competence describes someone who is competent and has to be thoughtful when demonstrating this competence.

 

4. Unconscious Competence describes someone who is competent and can demonstrate the competence without deliberate thought. That is the competence has become “second nature”.

Jared Spool has recently written about Burch’s theory, For some reason he suggest this theory has been “lost for decades”.  Psychologist and sales professionals have been actively using these concepts for many years.

Christopher Bollas and Jean Piaget

Bollas coined the phrase “the unthought known”. In part, Bollas’ theory states that as infants our actions play a larger role in our unconscious than simply thinking about an action. That is to say, our unconscious and ultimately our future actions, are shaped by our experiences at an early age. The unthought known is something we “know” but would have a difficult time explaining why it is that we know it. Jean Piaget had a very similar thought in regards to human learning when he defined his theory on Constructivist Learning. Constructivism being the idea that humans, at any age, create meaning via the interaction between experiences and ideas. In Constructivism, empirical experience is the key factor in how and how much we learn.

Influence on My Design

Burch, Bollas and Piaget have influenced how I approach design. The first step for me was to understand that behavior is heavily influenced by the unconscious mind. Next, it was important to recognize that human behavior with technology is no different. That is, often we simply aren’t thinking critically about our actions. We’re just going with the flow and mindlessly completing tasks. To me, the unconscious mind should be a foundational affordance in all of our designs.

Making our way across the GWB during the east coast leg of yet another research trip.

A rare, quiet moment in LA. Headed up from underground parking for early morning research.

We’re hip. We’re in. People like us. It feels good, right? We’ve spent years banging our heads against the corporate wall and desperately evangelizing UX to anyone that would listen. All this effort feels like it has finally paid off. I can’t walk down the street or flip through my inbox without running into a UX recruiter. The BBC is spreading the word. Hell, Google hires User Experience Designers, what else does a business need to know? It feels like we’re witnessing a UX Gold Rush. They “need” us and they need us now. Damn it feels good to be a UX gangsta.

Here’s the Problem

Like so many trends, fads, and can’t miss ideas that have come before us we are in a dangerous arena. UX is quickly becoming the latest and greatest buzzword in business. You know it too. Think about the meetings you’ve attended where the focus is UX. These are meetings you almost don’t have to prepare for. You know UX methods, success stories, and can detail the benefits in your sleep. Then the decision maker tells you, “We need better user experience. Make our website have better user experience. I like how Apple’s website looks – do that.” This isn’t really new, we’ve always had these conversations. What’s different now is that the org believes they know what they’re talking about. What’s scary is they are less interested in your expertise and more interested in saying they’ve “done the user experience thing.”

What Becoming a Buzzword Means

New business methods come and go. When something is hot for one company, others trend towards this idea. Picture a pee-wee league soccer game. The kids rarely score a goal. The ball gets kicked a few feet and the group gathers around it. It’s kicked again and the group follows. Rinse and repeat. It’s entertaining when it’s a group of children. When it’s a company trying to turn a profit, well, that’s just depressing.

By far the biggest danger of becoming a buzzword is that decision makers will see UX as a trend. Remember what we tell our clients, “If a user has a bad experience with your company (be it the interface, the customer service, or the advertising) they’ll drop you and go to your competitor.” UX is no different. If a company has a bad experience with UX (or a UX practitioner), for whatever reason, they’re likely to see it as a failed experiment and move their group to wherever the soccer ball is now.

Here’s the Solution

Do it right. It’s our job as practitioners to ensure when we deliver that we deliver well. There are pioneers in every field. For us it’s the Normans, Nielsens, Spools and Brenda Laurels of the world. I won’t say that because we’re UX practitioners right now that we’re necessarily the next wave of pioneers. I will say we are in an era where the business world is beginning to look our way. The spotlight is moving in our direction. We’ve been evangelizing UX for years. We’ve been decrying those who refuse to listen to what we have say. It’s time to go beyond evangelizing and move to demonstrating. We know UX is bigger than a buzzword. Now it’s on us to show it.

Beyond my work with the Human Factors team at Qwest, I teach a graduate class at the University of Denver. Regularly our class engages in conversations around Don Norman’s Action Cycle. Recently, Interaction-Design.org posted a video of Norman from the early 90’s. It seemed timely, for me anyway, so I thought I’d post an illustration I created of the Action Cycle.

Norman’s Action Cycle describes how humans interact with computer systems. Think about how we as humans interact with various interfaces (such as a website, a smart phone, an ATM machine, etc).

The illustration I’ve created (below) helps me to visualize the Action Cycle process. I’ve represent the cycle as a circle. The thought being users may have to repeat the cycle for the same action. This illustration also affords the user the ability to move out of one action cycle and onto the next. That is, to begin another action. See how Norman illustrated the Action Cycle in his book here. Below, I’ve listed the steps of the Action Cycle and included the example scenario Norman uses in his book The Design of Everyday Things.

Norman’s Scenario: A person wants to read a book

Forming a Goal
I can’t read my book because the room is dimly lit. I need more light in order to read my book.
Intention to Act
There is a light next to my chair. Turning on the light would allow me to read my book.
Planning the Action
I need to reach over and turn on the light.
Executing the Action
I reach over to turn on the light.
Feedback from the Action
The light turns on.
Interpret the Feedback
I am now able to see the text and can read my book.
Evaluate the Outcome
Positive – I’m able to read my book. No further action is needed.
Negative – The light doesn’t work. The Action Cycle is either repeated or a new goal is formed.

In terms of human-computer interaction, the desired scenario for a well-designed product is for a user to complete the Action Cycle a single time for a single action. If the user is required to repeat the Action Cycle multiple times for a single action, the result is pain and frustration.

Gulf of Execution and Evaluation

Norman goes on to describe two areas where poor design fails to support the user’s expectations.

Gulf of Execution
The Gulf of Execution exists when a user is having difficulties determining how to execute a goal. Let’s say a user is attempting to purchase an item from an online store. She sees an item she’d like to purchase and wants to put the item in her shopping cart. Unfortunately there is seemingly no interface element (e.g. a button, icon, checkbox, etc) which allows her to execute the action of adding the item to her cart. Having an online store where users have difficulty adding items to their shopping cart is clearly a failure in the interface and detrimental to the company’s goal of selling products.

Gulf of Evaluation
The Gulf of Evaluation occurs when a user has trouble assessing the state of the system. Simply put, the user is expecting feedback from an action and not receiving (at best) what they expected or (at worst) nothing at all. A simple example:

• Add an item to your online shopping cart
• Press the “Checkout” button
• Wait …
• Press the “Checkout” button again
• Wait again …
• Begin to scan the page to see if anything is happening …
• The user experiences pain and frustration
• The system has failed

Above, I’ve detailed fairly simple examples. There’s certainly much more that can be said, studied and learned from Norman’s Action Cycle. Should you be interested in learning more I’d suggest beginning with Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things.