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I came to this presentation from Google on their Quality Score measure because someone referred to it by saying “Quality Score is a measure of user experience”. It obviously peaked my interest because it is precisely the qualitative characteristic of user experience that makes it hard to measure.

When you get to slide 4 you realize that Google knows better and defines Quality Score as “an automated measure of how relevant each of your keywords is to your ad text and to a user’s search query.”

It has nothing to do with measuring users’ experiences with anything whatsoever. I realize it sounds naive to be cranky about attention-grabbing people but it baffles me that people do this: misuse the notion of user experience to mean anything at all that they want. It is such a coward move. Be bold, say what you want to say!

More than that, I worry that people just have no clue what they are talking about. Because it that is the case, it is even more worrisome. If people engaged at this level of discussion (i.e.: what measures to use) don’t understand a basic thing such as what user experience means (at its most basic what PEOPLE experience when they INTERACT with something), then we’re all very far from being able to have progress in advancing the conversation about measuring success in the context of user experience.

If we agree that quantifiable data, specifically the ever popular web analytics, provide you with rich detail to tell you WHAT is happening, it is comforting to realize that it is the type of data gathering that we already do – design research – that provides the qualitative color to answer WHY said things are happening.

What I am finding, however, is that it is more valuable to START with the quantitative work and get to the WHATs and ask WHYs based on those findings, rather than trying to figure out WHYs in exploratory mode (even if the WHAT’s are going to emerge at one point or another in this quest).

My point is that it’s not sustainable as an approach. It’s inneficient to start digging deeper to answer the WHY questions if you don’t have a baseline of WHATs identified.

The problem is that it is not intuitive for designers to start where they are uncomfortable. We are super comfortable with qualitative approaches – they are our go-to tools because that’s what makes sense for design research. However, quantitative research instruments really help narrow stuff down, but they do require you to understand those pesky numbers in order to a) dig in and get to concrete answers and b) understand what it’s saying so you can ask “why”.

In short, WHATs before WHYs are more efficient than WHYs before WHATs, but that requires designers to start with unfamiliar tools to then apply familiar tools. If it was the other way around I think it would be much easier for designers to bridge both approaches and come out the other end with more useful insights.

In other words, since we don’t particularly feel an attraction to numbers (to put it lightly), why would we start there? It’s such a leap from how we think about problems that it is counter intuitive. I don’t believe designers reject the notion of starting with Quant approaches (WHATS) to expand with Qual approaches (WHYs), but it’s inherently counter-intuitive to think that way.

How can I help designers do this when it goes against their nature? That’s what I’m working on right now. More on this later.

[I'll update this with a link once it's published]

My question is an old concern about how new practitioners are being introduced to User Experience Design and Research practices by being fed a multitude of methods and not given much support about how to decide the right circumstances to use them.

It is not sufficient just to know how a certain method works. It is also not sufficient having used that method once or twice. What is it about our experience as practitioners that makes us better or worse decision makers? How do we choose to dedicate time and money to an 8-week long project to produce personas instead of a different approach?

What distinguishes the practitioners that not only choose methods and know how to apply them, but choose the methods that are most effective for a given problem?

A few years ago, Jared himself told me a story about an experiment where two distinct research teams (unaware of each other I believe) were given the exact same research goal and employed the same methodology to achieve it, and came up with different results and findings.

When that sort of thing happens, I wonder: Can we really trust our methods? But more importantly, if we accept that our methods are not really scientific and that we can’t really have a high level of confidence about the results we end up with, how do we choose one over another?

Somehow we just do. But some do better than others. Some do MUCH better than MANY others. If you have the opportunity to work with practitioners with enough experience and knowledge, you see excellent arguments for why to do A versus B for a given set of circumstances. So yes, only experience will help one make better choices, but everyone’s experiences are different. As a way to try to educate new practitioners we coach and mentor by teaching the methods and also giving advice such as “be flexible” and “don’t marry a particular process” and “figure out what kind of problem you are trying to solve first”, which are all excellent advice, but not strategic enough and often not practical enough that it can really help someone make a decision when they are faced with a new challenge.

Jared’s opinion is that our field is still too young and we haven’t yet been able to articulate the criteria we use in that decision-making process. I agree, however, it worries me that many think they are advancing in their practice because they know more, when in fact, they just learned new methods, but don’t really have the skills to assess risks, and benefits, between choosing one over another.

Being a runner gets you to the finish line, knowing which way to run wins the race. I really hope we become better equipped to pass on knowledge about how we make choices and why because, paraphrasing Jared, knowing a lot of recipes a restauranteur does not make.

It’s bad. I have used a number of different services and they are all bad. So when my friend Kit Seeborg told me about her new start-up, BumperTunes, I thought, they could definitely help with the lousy quality music these services have to offer!

So, in the spirit of encouragement for Kit & team, who are really focused on the podcasting market rather than conference calling, I just wanted to share what I have to listen to between 5 to 10 times a week (sometimes multiple times in a day):

please-help-my-poor-corporate-ears.wav

Update: If you have other examples, please record and post here! It’s easy. On Windows, just go to Programs > Accessories > Entertainment > Sound Recorder (fire up your lovely conference call tune and hit record)

Since I listed my number of my chi.mp profile it’s been receiving the most ridiculous calls. Like the one above. Where do we go from here?

The list software we use is Mailman, which is extremely popular and very good at one thing: delivering mail. I guess they chose a pretty appropriate name for it. Other than that, it’s pretty sucky.

My intention when I started to take a look at our discussion lists was to understand how extensible our technology was to support any future plans (indexing archives, subscribing to threads, integration list subscription with membership profile, RSS subscription, etc). What I’ve found is a messy legacy that needs to be at least normalized before we can think of expanding its capabilities.

Here’s a list of all the discussion lists we have:

From this list it should be easy to tell that we (the IA Institute) have not been big on naming conventions. I created some of these lists at one point or another as I volunteered in different initiatives, but I didn’t even know all of them were out there. I would love to be able to go to the IAI website and just know what’s available (right now the site shows a partial list).

Some of these lists, I am sure, are dead. But somebody forgot to pull the plug. Also, between managing subscribers and moderating discussions, there is this horrible thing called the discussion list interface. Mailman as I said before is good at one thing and that’s not its user interface. It’s impressively adequate in terms of multi-lingual support and is flexible enough that you can customize presentation to fit your website (We have tried before), but if you don’t have a standard way to to do in an organization with such high volume, this mess is inevitable.

If it’s not clear from the rant above, many lists still have our old organization name (Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture) and are hosted at ibiblio.org, which provides free discussion lists. Another issue: We host our site and systems on Dreamhost. Their Mailman implementation doesn’t allow me to go directly and finagle with the lists directly (like merge archives or modify the code) so I have to ask them to do it, which means any changes may take a while.

Now that I’ve bitched about the current situation, here’s what I believe needs to happen:

Do you have experience with discussion lists? Drop me a note if you have any advice or suggestions. I’m particularly interested in systems that have discussion lists associated with member/profile management associated with other services. Anyone has experience with Drupal; any Drupal modules for discussion lists?

In an attempt to resolve the issue, I’m trying to figure out ways to encourage my illogical brain to get rid of some of them. I did a major clean up last year before I moved to the new house where I gave away 22+ pairs of shoes, but big events like moving to a new place don’t happen everyday. This time I’m attempting something new: I’m taking a picture and writing a blurb about each one of them. Then they can go on their merry way and I’ll have a memento if I ever miss them (which rarely happens, but I suspect is one of the reasons why this is challenging).

So here goes (a lot!):

The Cruella DeVils – You always got all the attention you wanted. I will miss you my beauties, but you have seen more glamorous days and I’m just not as evil as I once was. Besides, I have cats now, it wouldn’t work.

The 375s – In these days of over saturation an 80’s/90’s revival, nobody can really comprehend the awesomeness of owning your first pair of red shoes. I think you came with me to every concert I attended for a full decade. We danced like crazy. You rock.

The Militant – You were always too large for me, but that didn’t stop us from being chased down by cops down rua Maria Antonia on my college days. We’ve been to raves together — and every time I wondered why I was wearing heels in a pasture in the middle of nowhere.

The MoMAs – You were once an exhibit at the NY MoMA, not the most common thing in the life of a pair of sneakers. My obsession with Acupuncture shoes started with you (and I’ve enjoyed every one of your brothers as well). Every single time I wore you somebody complimented me on your beauty. Thank you for the good times.

The Informals – We’ve been together for 15 years. That’s crazy. You need to move on. I need to move on. Don’t worry, I’ll never forget you. Every time I see a pair of shoes with spool heels in voluptuous dark green suede I’ll think of you.

The Yellow Adidas – Your yellow lip really annoys me. Goodbye.

The #1 Open Toes – I have always hated open toe shoes, until you came along. You opened the world to me for new possibilities and I thank you for that. But you are literally falling apart. I’m sending you to a shoe farm upstate where you’ll be very happy.

The Futsal - None are as hard to say goodbye then you my dearest. We scored together many a game, but it’s time I face the truth: I haven’t played in over 10 years and I don’t know that I have ever seen a futsal court in the US.

The Workaholics – The most comfortable heels of all time. I have worked you hard — I’m surprised you still look this decent — Going from meeting to meeting. running across buildings. In the rain even! You made me look good never reminding me I was wearing you.

The Lacostes – You are so frigging comfortable I am having a really hard time letting you go, but I’ve beat you up real bad lately. Besides, you’re really short and makes me drag my jeans to the floor. Not cool.

The Others – Let’s face it: I never really liked you. When I’m with you it’s like I’m trying to be somebody else. This is what’s best for both of us. I am sure somebody will love you very much.

The Roos – You are pretty and light as a feather but what was I thinking? You’re half a size too small. Of course, I only remember that after we’ve been walking for two hours so I curse you every time. Sorry about that.

The Ice Princess – How cool is it to have ice-colored shoes? Very, I say. Your amazing height made my legs look fantastic. My wife thanks you very much.

The Black Adidas – I think I’m so fly wearing skater shoes. The truth is, I just look silly. You are not comfortable and I don’t look good on you. You are not helping me grow up either. One of us needs to go.

The Faux Maga Patologica - I bought you and your brother black on the same day. He reminded me of the shoes Magica De Spell (Maga Patologica in Brazil) wore in DuckTales. You never lived up to it (though you were always super comfortable).

The Red Adidas – I have to share a secret: I only bought you so the 375s wouldn’t get old too quickly. I know, I’m sorry. But you know what, you don’t get old! I have taken you off road and into the water and look at you! Unfortunately I can’t remember the last time we were together and I really need the closet space.

The Workaholics #2: Your beauty faded as fast as I walked on you. Sorry for the abuse.

Now to visit Goodwill… Goodbye all of you!

Today I received an email from Dani Malik asking for suggestions for women to speak at conferences. I provided suggestions and then proceeded to spam every woman I know professionally in my address book with the same request (sorry ladies… not really though). Regardless of putting a list together, I received some AMAZING responses, from testimonials, to references to anecdotes about being a woman and how that impacts their lives professionally, including speaking at conferences.

I’m still frustrated that I don’t have an identifiable “thing” that I feel I can do to affect this. Trying to tackle this issue is hard not because it’s just a hard issue, but it’s part of a more complex problem, which is women and career issues in general. Or women issues in general. It can be very easy to get stuck with paralysis by analysis – specially for me, the over-thinker.

I am not comfortable addressing feminist questions. Or discussing feminism. I suppose because I am part of a small elite and have been shielded from most of these issues. Maybe because I was brought up by a mother who told me constantly and repeatedly that I could do anything, a grandmother that would play ‘president’ with me (where I was president of Brazil and she was my second-in-command) and a grandfather who challenged my intellect at every opportunity. Or maybe because I really didn’t care about what other people had to say about roles. Or maybe because I was always a big sports jock and I firmly believe that being involved in sports, specially in leadership roles, make a big difference in how you face other non-sport situations. Who knows, whatever the reason, I have not experienced or never felt strongly that I was discriminated or been presented with barriers that were that different from what my male counterparts were presented with.

Or maybe not, maybe I’m just kick-ass talented and know how to overcome such barriers — but even writing that makes me feel self conscious (very likely the reflex of being brought up ‘as a woman’, where regardless of your cultural background and upbringing, will likely assume modesty as positive trait). Still, whatever the genesis, I don’t feel knowledgeable enough to discuss bigger feminist issues, so I’ll try and stay away from that (while probably very relevant and likely an influencer on the issue of speaking at conferences).

So ladies, what is up with us? I don’t want to ask why are we not speaking at conferences anymore, but what can we do, what can I do, to encourage and support you to do it? What’s missing? Where’s the tipping point? Are we missing tools? Understanding of the ROI? Time? Motivation? Peer pressure?

What would help you? I want to hear it – I’m very interested in doing something about it.

The most recurring note that I found, from different contexts and conversation, was ‘why aren’t more women presenting at conferences?’ I don’t have an answer for that and don’t really know what I can do about it. I’m forcing myself to deal with everything in this pile so I figured writing about it would help me think through that issue.

I truthfully never really cared about that. In the past I was usually so amped that I got to go to a conference or talk that I didn’t much mind who was talking. I notice though that almost every time I return from a conference, someone I know will ask that question. Living in the US has also heightened my perception of that fact. I don’t think I experienced an unbalanced ratio of women speaking in public back in Brazil.

I was discussing this with Kit the other day and she made an observation about seeing presentations that make her go “I can do that!”. I feel that way all the time. But I don’t really present much. Why is that? I know I procrastinate a lot, but I actually do enjoy presenting things to people — but I can’t remember when was the last time I gave a public presentation.

Last year I remember reading Kottke’s post on this topic and his conclusion “[these] concerns are not getting through to conference organizers or that gender diversity doesn’t matter as much to conference organizers as they publicly say it does.” I think that’s partially true; I believe we haven’t gone from ‘aware of the issue’ to ‘acting on it’. And that’s probably because it’s not clear what can be done.

So what can be done? It’s easy to blame conferences, but I’ve been part of conference committees and I really don’t know what we could have done differently to address the issue. I’m hoping to ask that question to more of my peeps and see if I can get some ideas, but I have a hypothesis. When these issues come up, we usually try to look for the root cause (and that’s a lot of effort in itself), so we never really spend the energy working on a solution.

While that makes people aware of origins of the problem, still doesn’t help anyone much. We learn that women typically have family commitments that take precedence over career building activities like public speaking, that some have high standards for what they would talk about and feel like they don’t know enough so they don’t present, etc, etc, etc…

That reminds me of what Jesse said at five-minute madness during the last IA Summit when he was disappointed that new people didn’t come up to the microphone: most folks presenting are making it up as they go. It’s entirely true. And that’s not a negative thing, it’s just a fact. But I do know that myself and other women I know feel strongly that just making something up to talk seems wrong in some way. Why? No real reason I can think of – even if you’re presenting something very rough, putting it out in the world allows that thinking to evolve. Presenting is not regurgitating wisdom, it’s about initiating conversations.

I’m starting to think we’re mistaking facts of life with empty excuses. For example, I have a tendency to over-think things. I can come up with every edge case and scenario you can think of for a given situation, which makes me a good information architect, but a very frustrated person. So it’s easy to think of reasons why I shouldn’t bother to make professional public speaking happen.

But deep down I know it’s important. It’s important because it brings diversity to the conversations that people get exposed to, it’s important because it gives me professional visibility, it’s important because of a number of other things. It’s important — when something is important you just make the time, you make it happen. I am pretty sure that most women know that this is important.

There is nothing at all preventing more women from engaging in professional public speaking. Let me propose an approach then:

If every woman I know professionally today makes a pledge to speak in at least one conference in 2008, I am confident we can make a difference in presenter diversity issue from previous years.

I may not be famous, but I know a lot of people professionally. A lot of them are women. What do you say, shall we?