Take a tour of Google NYC Usability lab
The crew of Information Week visited Google recently and got an exclusive sneak preview of the redesign of the Google Docs editors that was launched today. They concluded that Google Docs is now ready to Take Microsoft Office Head On.
(You can find much more information and cool videos on Information Week’s special page on Google Docs)
During their visit, David Berlind took some time to visit the usability lab and to discuss with me how User Research helps shape Google products. Take a look!
Happy right now!
I’m looking out of the window at a bright blue sky and the naked tree branches of the end of winter, with new buds waiting for the spring a few weeks away, shivering in the loud wind. For a moment, just a moment, I feel at peace. Just looking out of my window and listening to the wind, there is nothing missing from this moment. I feel, I dare to say, happy like Louis Armstrong in my favorite song of all times.
I’m aware that this state of mind is fragile. In a minute, I will be thinking of what I need to do today, tomorrow, and in the far future. I will start worrying about the pile of todos in my GTD system that I don’t have time to finish, the difficult discussion with my boss that is waiting for me this afternoon and that I’m rehearsing obsessively, the feeling of my own inadequacy, and I’ll be back to my familiar state of hectic anxiety.
I wonder: do we really want to be happy? I look at myself and most of the people I know, and I notice our remarkable gift for postponing happiness and justify why we couldn’t possibly be happy now. An old boyfriend of mine was certain (and tried to persuade me) that we could not be happy until the inevitable proletarian revolution would take place. His belief was the marxist version of my Catholic Sunday school’s teachings: life is a bitch, but if you don’t sin and/or if ask for forgiveness when you do, when you die you’ll end up in Heaven and then you’ll be happy. I give credit to my boyfriend for believing that happiness was possible in this life.
Raise your hand if you think you’ll be happy when life finally gives you a more satisfying job (or, in this economic situation, just a job), or a better relationship, nice warm weather, more money in your 401(k); you’ll be happy when you retire, when you get the money to buy a Kindle, the new MacBook Pro, or a shine motorcycle, that beautiful pair of shoes, or that fancy new table for the dining room. Perhaps you’ll be happy when you move to the West Coast, or to the East Coast, or to that tropical paradise you’ve visited once. You’ll be happy tomorrow. Today is for making your life better.
I thought so. We all hold our breath and wait for the wave to pass, for the rain to stop, and the sun to shine again.
But why? What is preventing us to be happy right here, right now?
A few days ago, while reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Heart of the Buddha’s Teachings for a class that I’m taking at the Interdependence Project, I found this paragraph on aimlessness:
“If we think we have twenty-four hours to achieve a certain purpose, today will become a means to obtain an end. The moment of chopping wood and carrying water is the moment of happiness. We do not need for these chores to be done to be happy. To have happiness in this moment is the spirit of aimlessness. Otherwise, we will run in circles for the rest of our life. We have everything we need to make the present moment the happiest in our life, even if we have a cold or a headache. We don’t have to wait until we get over our cold to be happy. Having a cold is a part of life.
(…) We don’t need to become anything else. We don’t need to perform some particular act. We only need to be happy in the present moment, and we can be of service to those we love and to our whole society. Aimlessness is stopping and realizing the happiness that is already available. If someone asks us how long he has to practice in order to be happy, we can tell him that he can be happy right now!
(…) I’m happy in the present moment, I do not ask for anything else. I do not expect any additional happiness or conditions that will bring about more happiness. The most important practice is aimlessness, not running after things, not grasping.”
This quote hit me directly between the eyes. If you have run into Thich Nhat Hanh in person or in writing you know that, other than having a lot of Hs in his name, he is a delightful, sweet vietnamese zen monk that writes poetry and knows how to speak to your heart. This book is on the foundations of Buddhism, and as other books on the subject, it has important insights, many numbered lists, and practices to perform. But that quote spoke to me directly.
I could see Thich Nhat Hanh looking right in my eyes and saying: please stop using any possible excuse to avoid to be happy now. Don’t tell yourself that you are not wise enough, that you don’t meditate enough, that you don’t have enough money to retire, that your coworker just yelled at you, that your friend just yelled at your, that the sky is not blue, your mom didn’t love you enough as a child, or that you are socially awkward. Take responsibility for what you are doing to yourself day after day, moment after moment: not paying attention to what can make the present moment the happiest in your life and obsessing about the things that make yourself feel miserable.
Dear friend, continues Thich Nhat Hanh, there is nothing in the future that will bring you happiness if you are not willing to listen to your happiness right now. Some of us are in really ugly situations, it’s true, but even that is not a good excuse to deny ourself the happiness that we could experience if we just paid attention to what is here now.
Perhaps we are afraid of happiness. Perhaps we are just used to be worried and busy, as if our worrying could save us from danger or improve our situation in the future. Perhaps this particular state of peaceful and fulfilled happiness is unfamiliar to us and we don’t recognize it as a useful state of mind. Whatever the reason that makes us focus more on what is missing than on what is there, we should think of the price we pay for procrastinating happiness.
But, I hear you and myself say, how can anybody be happy with all that is happening in the world, the people who are killed, the kids that are dying of hunger or preventable disease right now, the economic crisis that is hurting so many? The old Thay replies:
Yes, there is tremendous suffering all over the world but knowing this need not paralyze us. (…) Worrying does not accomplish anything. Even if you worry twenty times more, it will not change the situation in the world. In fact, your anxiety will only make things worse. (…) If we don’t know how to breathe, smile, and live every moment of your life deeply, we will never be able to help anyone.”
So, ask yourself, do you really think that something outside of yourself will bring you happiness? Something that may or may not come, that may or may not stay, that may or may not be the way you expect it to be? And how can you be sure that even if this mysterious and elusive thing exists, you would recognize that it’s arrived if you don’t paying attention?
So, I realize, happiness takes responsibility and commitment. Believing that what I’m not yet or I don’t have yet will bring me happiness is such a hurtful illusion. There is no great next thing I’ll be able to buy, achieve, possess, obtain, that will bring me happiness. Deep inside, I’ve always known it. And I know you’ve always known it darn well too.
An almost love letter to Haruki Murakami
Dear Mr. Murakami,
the first time we met, I was very angry at you. I had just finished reading the Wind-up Bird Chronicle, which I had received as a Christmas gift. I’m a slow reader in English, but a mysterious force pushed me to go through the 607 pages of the Vintage International paperback edition like a maniac, turning page after page as if a gang of rabid dogs were chasing me, making me forget about my family, my work, and the dirty dishes in the kitchen sink. And here I find myself, on the last page, out of breath, exhausted, sweat on my forehead and eyebrows. I’m puzzled. I look for the missing pages. Where are the answers to all my questions? What about of all those lose ends that I hoped to see neatly tied up?
“Who do you think you are, Mr. Murakami?” I cry. “What am I supposed to do now? Chase you in Tokyo to ask you what happened?” (I’m not the only one to feel this way, Mr. Murakami) This is it, I tell myself. The end. No more Murakami. Ever.
A couple of years later, my sister read Dance Dance Dance, and fell in love with your books. She even created a website for you. Then one day, I walked in a bookstore, I saw Dance Dance Dance, and I bought a copy. It was winter; a cold, dark, rainy, and unforgiving New York winter day. I found myself reading the book and sipping hot black tea in a coffee shop in the West Village. The handsome young man sitting at the next tiny table noticed the book and said: “I read all Murakami’s books. Dance Dance Dance was the last one. It’s different from the others, almost hopeful.”
I had my laptop with me and I showed him the site that my sister had created for you. He smiled. “It’s fate,” he said. “You had to read this book.”
“People fall hopelessly in love with you, Mr. Murakami,” I thought. They don’t just read your books, they spend hours and hours with you. There is something in the atmosphere you conjure in your books that captures us and keeps us prisoners. There is something in your characters that we want to keep with us. We love their company.
Get real: How to design for the life of others?
In Getting Real, Jason Fried writes: “design for yourself.” The first time I read it, I cringed. People who design using themselves as the only audience—this is how a lot of bad software is created. But then I thought more about it, and realized that Jason was just stating a truth. You may well disagree with him, but this is exactly what happens. We can only design for ourselves. And to be fair, great products have been created by people who uncompromisingly designed for themselves.
This is one of the genial intuitions of Alan Cooper. We do design for ourselves, so why don’t we create alternative personalities—the personas—that can expand our “ourselveness” to encompass new dimensions and reveal new perspectives?
Usability folks point at usability testing as a way, among other things, to become aware of other perspectives on a design or a product. Ethnographers and contextual designers swear by their site visits. Others propose behavioral interviews, listening labs, and other methods that can shed light on other people’s experiences.
I’m always amazed at how good people can be at role playing. You tell this 25-yearl old guy that he is an older woman trying to do X, and they will be able to make some good predictions of how they would behave in that situation.
The limit of role-playing, though, is that we can only identify with what we know. If my mom resembles the woman in the scenario, I may be able to identify with her and predict how she would behave in that situation. But if I don’t know anybody like that woman, it’s going to be hard for me to understand what means to be her.
Some time ago I talked to Casey Malcolm (now at Refinery) about teaching usability to designers. She pointed out how important is to make designers experience what it’s like to be their users. To teach them how to design usable products for an older population, for example, don’t tell designers to take in account seniors’ lower visual acuity and decreased motor control. Let young designers wear glasses that impair their visual acuity. Tie two of their fingers together, to mimic what it means to have arthritis or lower motor control. Then put them in front of a computer and a mouse. Only after going through this experience they could start understanding what it means to be 70 and use the web application they have designed.
So, perhaps Jason Fried is completely on target. We can only design for ourselves. Being aware of it, making it explicit can make us find creative ways of designing for people who are different from us. Perhaps we need to hire people like the ones we are designing for, so we can continue to design for ourselves and still create a great products. Perhaps we need to create experience labs, so that for a while we can live the life of the people we are designing for.
As an added bonus, being in the skin of others for some time will probably make us better people. Definitely a win-win…
[About Getting Real: Jason Fried preaches what he practices. The book is never boring and sports an essential, fast writing style modeled on the "Elements of style." It's opinionated and at times dogmatic, but always interesting and thought-provoking. As all 37Signals products, Getting Real leave us wishing for something more: more examples, more stories from the trenches, more how to, more insights. I'm sure that Jason is fine with it: better let your users/readers craving for more than getting bored or overwhelmed.
On the Getting Real website you can read a free HTML version, download a PDF version ($19), or buy a paperback self-published version ($29). ]
Update 4/20/07
- After reading “The art of the start” I think that Jason Fried should have called his book “Everything I know I learned from Guy Kawasaki, then I tried it out and it worked.”
- In his latest post, Andrew Hinton suggests to think of personas as a mindset, not as a methodology.
What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas
I’ve just arrived in the city of “Lost Wages” (Southwest airline humor) for the IA Summit. I’ve been here only one hour and I already love it!
Pure wild entertainment without the annoying burden of culture and history. Visit Paris without having to go to the Louvre! Visit Rome without the interminable Vatican Museums!
I know that Andrew, Richard, Patrick, and Jared are here. Perhaps Eddie is here. New Yorkers? Everybody? Let me know if you are here too.
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