However, where I think Mr. Gruber gets it wrong is the value to the internal design team. The Apple Knowledge Navigator created a ton of discussion internally and set the company off on a 23-year journey that now brings us some amazing technology, which was impossible to imagine back in 1987 when the video first came out.

When an experience vision, like the Knowledge Navigator video, works, it gives the teams a chance to ask the question, “Am I getting closer to that design?” with every decision they make. It helps the team, as a whole, understand where it’s trying to go.

When teams don’t have a vision like that, each person is walking around with a different understanding of what the end of the journey should look like. When there’s no common understanding on what that end point looks like, each decisions is evaluated on a different criteria and the resulting products end up looking like crap.

I think the Microsoft and RIM videos are interesting. However, there’s too much in there. Apple’s Knowledge Navigator was simple in its delivery, covering only a few concepts. There are so many concepts in each of these new videos that I find it hard to believe the design teams can talk about what they are really trying to say.

I’m also betting that Microsoft and RIM have made classic mistakes: the visions represented in these videos are not put together by the teams that will be working towards them. They were likely created by marketing folks (and, even more likely, by outside agencies with no connection to the internal product development and design teams). It’s possible that the developers and designers at these companies saw the videos at the same time we did.

Unless the design and development teams have a voice in what their future is, they are unlikely to buy into it and will probably take their designs in a different direction. Team collaboration on the vision is critical for success.

I don’t think these visions need to be publicized to be useful. And, as Mr. Gruber asserts, it’s brings into focus the failings of the current products when they do.

However, there is real gold in having a solid vision and these videos can be a great way to represent that vision within the organization.

But something is still missing. Though we are making progress and laying groundwork in large organizations, many UX teams still struggle with getting the necessary time and resources to do their jobs as effectively as possible. To continue growing our profession in both influence and in number of good designers, we need to find a sense of leadership.

In today’s UIEtips, we’re reprinting a fabulous UX Magazine article by one of our favorite people, Kim Goodwin. The difference between management and leadership is a great one. Kim believes that UX leadership should contain things such as mentoring and providing vision. Leadership itself is a skill that should be grown along with UX expertise.

Read the article, On UX Leadership.

In addition to her full-day workshop at User Interface 16, Kim will be giving a 90-minute talk, Experience Leadership. Kim will explore how we develop a broad view of what a UX leader is and how we develop both practice leadership and change leadership skills. Join us for UI16, November 7-9 in Boston. You won’t want to miss it!

Back in 1987, Apple (under the direction of John Sculley, not Steve Jobs), released a video of what Apple products could be like in the future. Called the Knowledge Navigator, it showed a sci-fi mythical tablet computer from 23 years in the future (yup, 2010) that the user talks with to get things done.

Fast forward 24 years and Apple releases Siri with the new iPhone 4S. Siri is an assistant that takes voice commands and acts on them. If you haven’t seen Siri, here’s a demo.

Now, as far as I know, Siri is only available on the iPhone 4S. However, that’s likely temporary, as I don’t believe there’s anything that prevents it from showing up on other platforms, like the iPad.

And once it shows up on the iPad, Apple will have fulfilled it’s 1987 quest. All the components of the original Knowledge Navigator are now available and for less than $500.

In ’87 — when we all used big, boxy CRTs on bulky, loud, slow desktop processors without any notion of communications beyond 9,600 baud (14.4 came in 1991) — there was no way you could have a small, tablet computer to do all the things in that video. Knowledge Navigator was complete science fiction to everyone at that point. Computers couldn’t speak. You couldn’t imagine face-to-face video conferencing across the planet, let alone collaborative workspaces. None of that had been invented yet, except as sci fi.

Yet, if we look close, it’s the path Apple has been on for 24 years. We’ve seen the baby steps. With the introduction of the Mac Book, then the iPhone, followed by the iPad, we got our table. The interwebs provided the connectivity, where Apple focused on its Airport wireless products to get the components tiny. Innovations like built-in cameras and Facetime made the video conferencing a reality.

And now Siri completes the journey. Siri isn’t quite the bow-tied dude who can order a cake for your mother’s birthday party, but it’s damn close. (And I’m not convinced we need avatars to believe the computer is speaking. I think Second-Life ruined avatars for everyone, except those who enjoy online virtual sex.)

In 1987, when Apple first released the video, they received a fax (!) with a purchase order for the Knowledge Navigator. Now they can finally fill the order.

So much of a project’s success is determined at its start. If the team comes together and sets the stage properly, everything works out smoothly. People end up with a great vision and solid understanding of how the design should turn out.

Yet, a project that doesn’t get off to the right start will often struggle. The team will find themselves in conflict, important requirements often emerge too late, and good ideas get left on the cutting room floor. Unfortunately, in my work, I see too many projects that have gone down this road and find themselves trying hard to get back on track.

A few years back, I was lucky enough to see Kevin Hoffman present his workshop technique for kicking off projects. It was a completely different approach than any I’d seen before. He showed us how interactive exercises, brainstorming games, and collaborative sketching techniques surfaced important details about the project, while elliciting innovative ideas from everyone on the team.

Since then, he’s had the opportunity to refine his methods in his projects at Happy Cog, a leading web design firm. Happy Cog’s clients have been so impressed, they’ve asked him to teach them his techniques so they can kickoff their other projects successfully.

I’m really pleased that we can have Kevin as part of the User Interface 16 Conference program. As we’ve been working on the plans for his full-day workshop, I’ve gotten a glimpse of just how much fun this day will be. Kevin knows his stuff and has packed the day full of both solid theory and practical exercises. It’s almost criminal that something this fun is a critical work skill.

See the other UI16 Spotlights:

You can catch the sneak preview of UI16 at uiconf.com. (And there’s still a few of the sneak preview $1,349 registrations left. Snag one while they are still available.)

Blogger Pam Rodriguez has done a tremendous job summarizing the first day’s sessions. You can read them here:

• My talk: Mobilism & UX: Inside the Eye of the Perfect Storm
• Bill Scott’s talk: Designing for Mice and Men
• Josh Clark’s talk: Mobile Apps: Native or Web-Based?
• Noah Iliinsky’s talk: The Steps to Beautiful Visualizations
• Julie Zhuo’s talk: Facebook: Data-Informed vs. Data-Driven Design Decisions

Our own Web App Master, Luke Wroblewski, also has some great summaries:

• My talk: Mobilism & UX: Inside the Eye of the Perfect Storm
• Bill Scott’s talk: Designing for Mice and Men
• Josh Clark’s talk: Mobile Apps: Native or Web-Based?
• Noah Iliinsky’s talk: The Steps to Beautiful Visualizations
• Julie Zhuo’s talk: Facebook: Data-Informed vs. Data-Driven Design Decisions

Thanks to Pam and Luke for taking such great notes.

You can follow along with the second day by following the #UIEWAMT hashtag or the UIE Web App Tour attendee and speaker Twitter list.

UIE Web App Masters Tour:
Get $100 off the Minneapolis Masters Tour with the promotion code BLOG.
Seattle · Minneapolis

I am looking for suggestions of sites that offer good educated guesses about websites / web interactions in the future. We’re working on our five-year plan at our university.

Keep up the great work – your presentations are always informative, feature great web talent, and I always walk away feeling like I’ve learned something!

Hi Jon,

Predicting the future is hard. I suggest you focus on the experience of the users and not the specific design solutions that’ll be five years out.

These could help:

The 3 Steps for Creating an Experience Vision

Knowledge Navigator Deconstructed: Building an Envisionment

Keep those cards and letters coming.

Thankfully, Dan Rubin can show you the simple steps to create solid visual design. Dan is a talented designer in his own right, but has a special knack for teaching visual design for people without an artistic background. That’s why we’ve asked him to present our next UIE Virtual Seminar, Visual Design Essentials for Non-Designers, on May 13, 2010. He’ll teach you how to recognize common design mistakes and effective ways to make your site look good, whether you’re a natural artist or not.

Register with the promotion code BRAINSPARKS and get lifetime access to the recording of this seminar at no extra cost. Anyone in your organization can watch it whenever they want, as often as they want.

How do you create a visual design that matches your great ideas? When you look at a web page, and something isn’t quite right, how do you know what to do about it? We’d love to hear your thoughts on this. What tips or tricks can you share that have helped you improve your visual design?

(Oh, and by the way, our last event sold out, so you’ll want to Register your team early!)

When you spend time with your customers, it’s an opportunity to learn how to move your design forward. You don’t want to leave important information “on the table”—information that can give you a more complete understanding of how to move your vision forward. You might act on incomplete detail that creates risk when it forces you to guess what the users need. Worse, the partial insight you have may take your design team in the wrong direction.

User research is an expensive endeavor. Make sure you’re prepared to get the most out of every minute that you’re with your users. Come home with a deep insight into their thinking, their lives, and how you can change their experience for the better.

Steve Portigal will show your team the art of asking the question. You might visit the user in their office or home, have them come to you for a usability test, or even have a chance encounter at a trade show or while waiting for an airplane. Do you know what to ask? Do you know what to listen for, to extract the critical detail of what they can tell you about your design?

Steve will help you prepare your team for any opportunity, be it formal user research or less structured, ad-hoc research. He’ll also give you tips on how to work with your stakeholders and executives, who may also be meeting potential customers and users, so they know what to ask and how to listen—integrating their efforts into the research team. (Wouldn’t it be great if they understood why you’re doing what you’re doing?)

Get your team asking good questions, the right questions, with this fantastic seminar. Honing this skill will be a great addition to their Toolbox. Register your team before January 19, with the promotion code TOOLBOX, and I’ll also send you the link to a fabulous webinar Kate Gomoll did for us, Field Studies: The Ultimate Tool in Your Usability Toolbox.

Are you prepared for meeting someone who could be using your next design? How do you make sure you get into their head, learn what their life is all about, and get the information you need to build something truly innovative and delightful? We’d love to hear your ideas and about your experiences below.

Interaction with a product is more than how it’s used or how it behaves. It’s about a connection between two sides. One side is the customer, but the other side is much more than a product or service. To many people, the character and essence of a product and its company are identical. So, what is the essence of your product?

When your product behaves like a machine, your company is perceived to be a machine. It’s just another company – rigid, mechanical, and cold. Yet when your product displays a bit of humanity, your company gains a face and becomes another human.

In this webinar, you’ll see examples of how humanity exists in the design of products and services through humor, personality, and emotion. You’ll explore how just a little extra design effort and thought beyond functional needs can enrich the experience, reveal the company behind the product, and forge enduring connections with customers.

This presentation generated quite a buzz at Web App 2009. It’s a talk that’s sure to get you thinking
about your products, and how you foster the connection between your products and your customers.

In advance of the presentation, we’d love to hear from you. How do you gain an edge with your products? How does your organization show its humanity? Share your thoughts, questions, and concerns below.

Subscribe to our podcast via

Userability is the show that answers your vexing UX questions with irreverence and useful advice. Remember, Userability is 100% Soylent, which means it’s made of people—Err—people’s questions. Please send your deep thoughts to us at userability@uie.com.

This week we continue the international flare with a call from Shanghai, China. Daniel Szuc, of ApogeeHK had a question that stopped Jared and Robert in their tracks,

If there was ONE thing you would want an organization to take on board immediately to help UX in that organization, what would it be and why?

Tune in to hear what Robert and Jared would tell your executives if pressed. How would you have answered? Let us know in the comments!

Naturally, our clients’ teams start by focusing on their direct audience. They look to make the best experience for these folks, to make creations come to life quickly and effectively.

It doesn’t take long, once they start researching how their direct users are taking advantage of these tools, to see that not every creation represents the tool well. Quickly, the goal of the team becomes to expand the scope to enhance the lives of what we call the downstream users.

In moving the design focus from the direct audience to the downstream users, we’ve found having robust personas and scenarios helps tremendously. The field research behind the personas involves both the direct users and the downstream users. Scenarios are often interconnected between personas, since the stories describe the direct user’s relationship with their downstream users.

The most successful of our clients in this endeavor have had great luck when they’ve put together a solid vision of what key downstream users experience, then talk about the idealized vision for the direct customers’ development process to reach that experience. The combination of the two viewpoints becomes very powerful.