 Okay, just by show of hands. How many of you are here because this is the coolest room in the building? And if that's the only reason just try to keep your disruptions to a minimum and I just like to point out that I'm already married, so I can't have a proposal during my presentation However for to keep the engagement high at the end of the presentation after the questions angel and I will fight to the death Okay So so we're here for To talk about constraints and capabilities systems thinking and idealized design If you are going to tweet about this in an affirmative way, please use sys think if you're going to say something negative just use somebody else's hashtag and The thing I wanted to start off with is This photograph here, which I don't know how many of you how many people here are London London area Okay, have you seen this before? It's familiar. So why why did I put this photograph up here? Does anybody have care to venture a guess? Okay, I didn't think you'd know that's why I wrote notes up here So this is a cleanup crew here that organized themselves Using Twitter to go and clean up One of the tube stations. I believe it was clapping one of the clapping stations there several and organize themselves over Twitter and The thing about this that I found somewhat interesting was you see that none of these is wearing the that lovely reflective jersey That indicates that it's their job to do so What they did was they brought their capabilities into a system that was not functioning well right because of the riots there were not enough people on staff to do these various things and They went beyond The artificial constraints that said you're not responsible for cleaning up the tube station and They went ahead and did it anyway, and they made the system, which is the society Work better so that's kind of the idea that we're going to talk about here But we are going to try and make it somewhat applicable to the world of Drupal. I Just wanted to make a link with what we heard this morning We were talking about a system a design system and the ingredients of that were a grid a Typography a hierarchy, but what we're going to talk about today. We're user experience people and We exist because it's not just about flat design. The web is transactional. So there's more to it That's not enough. That's not going to get you to good design There's a whole band of activities and research stuff that you have to do beforehand To allow you to plan the journeys to plan the functional needs and to get people to their destinations And that's where user experience people come in like us Okay, well, I'm I'm Angel Brown and I'm you extractor at Digitas Health. I've been there since January I've been involved in web design since pages were gray Thousands of years ago. I remember finding out tables. That's how we can do things I mean, that's a long time ago, but I'm I'm really a designer, but I'm a geek as well to a certain extent I had my own agency for 10 years and I had to run all the tech teams So when they couldn't solve problems, I had to do it because the buck buck stopped with me So I'm pretty savvy and I like looking at code I like understanding how things work and I particularly like Drupal Digitas does a lot in Drupal and I've been working on it since I joined and it's gonna talk a bit more about how we relate systems thinking to Drupal And my name is Dante Murphy My primary professional achievement has been being smart enough to hire Angel as As the leader of the global experience capability I tend more to think sort of conceptually and try to establish frameworks So all of the high-minded things that are going to be said today are are probably going to be said by me And an angel is going to help give you guys some context for how to use them But together I think that we're coming from the same the same perspective. I was a I was a coder before the web Yeah, my my first program that I worked on was actually written before I was born in 1964 It was written on punch cards In in cobalt anybody here a cobalt programmer Love for you back there love Okay, so yeah, and I haven't written a line of code since then And and I I don't miss it a lot Design is where I belong so Moving on so what all right, so how many people in this room are our designers? Lovely lovely. How many people are developers? How many people raise their both their hands both times You are the most wonderful people in the world because you understand it You understand that that development is a design activity and I think that's that's why you're in this session probably What what is it that we strive for in design who would like to just call out some things that we strive for in design? Simplicity, okay, that's great. What's another one? Organization, okay What'd you say? Beauty, okay, it's good clarity over here clarity excellent Usability good one. Yes Functionality is important as well. Yes Yeah, one what he said Delight, yes Yes, okay, so now you're geeking out a little bit Well, I'm glad to hear that that several of the concepts that we're going to talk about are included Specifically well these first two were definitely mentioned. So do we have anything else to add on this slide? Well, we were going to talk about it. So oh the it's all right. So does everybody yeah, that's what this is Who drives one? I didn't think so. So I won't offend anybody This is one of the most epic failures of design and one of the reasons for that was There was a lot of design energy that went into it. It wasn't for lack of trying It was for lack of vision and a lot of the decisions that were made that that went into this car some technological advances that were They were quite revolutionary like putting The controls for the the gearbox in the center of the steering column. No one had ever done that before Probably because it wasn't a very good idea, but they went ahead and did that And there were a variety of other things adjustable brakes and the way this pedometer worked and this hideous orifice here in the front and A lot of it they just did it because they could and they didn't have a sense of things like Simplicity and and beauty and well, maybe they were thinking beauty Don't want to know what they were thinking when they put that on there So some of these ideas came from a perspective of just well we can so let's and And I think that in the immature days of technology. We've seen a lot of that I mean who's plugged in a module just to see what it would do Right. I'll put my hand up to Yeah, so so we've all kind of done that, but I think that we're starting to learn a little better So one of the first things that we talk about is function has anyone read this book Sign of everything's or any any of Don Norman's books Actually, if you read his books in order you get to see an interesting evolution of design principles So it's it's really important that a Thing not only has the attributes of functionality such as a handle and a spout and a lid Would anybody care to pour this cup of tea? Look carefully right, you know, not unless you were wearing a Nomek suit They have to work together it has to be a considered effort towards design in some cases Especially when technology products are immature the functions become the design in that sense Applying focus to the functionality helps the products mature and become more meaningful to their users I think we all know about form versus function the design principle Everybody man on the street knows about it. Obviously here, you know, these things aren't going to work What do you would have been great? Show somebody else mentioned simplicity has who's read this one? laws of simplicity It's okay. I don't know that I give it a glowing endorsement conceptually. I love the idea The specific laws of simplicity that that might have uses here are okay Would anybody care to tell me what simplicity means? Who said simplicity when somebody called that out? So tell me what you meant by simplicity Including the smallest amount of things on the screen to get done what you need to do Right, so it was it was what you need to do Does anyone think that simplicity means unsophisticated for that was a leading question wasn't it? Yeah, it's It's subtraction might have says it's subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful and there's a reason why that quote is up there but it's it's putting in the things that are necessary or Evocative or exude one of those affirmative principles that you guys talked about like beauty and delight other, you know other words for engagement Usability often means taking things away And that's what we're striving for when we're talking about simplicity Another key and I didn't hear anybody say it specifically, but I'm sure that You'll all agree when we're when we're designing is we're thinking about efficiency How can we get done the most? with the least effort not necessarily because We don't want to put the effort in is anybody in here lazy besides me that is oh my goodness too honest But it's but but realistically I think what we're we're trying to do is we're trying to get the most done on this Initiative or project or product so that we can move on to the next one so that we can continue to do great things or make great money or whatever it is that we want to do and When we're thinking about efficiency one of the ways as said in the quote here is That you use the things that are around you the things that are available rather than creating things of your own I think in many ways. That's the essence of Drupal, right? So that you have a framework that does a lot of the heavy lifting for you And then you can apply the unique aspects of your design as you go forward So we want to talk a little bit about how these attributes of design these affirmative attributes of design are also ways of describing a System because that's what we're talking about today systems thinking and it's difficult to characterize one part of a website We're talking perhaps a block as efficient if the navigation is incomprehensible or the login is unresponsive We're talking we need to think about it holistically Therefore we want the system to express those desired attributes of of being navigation to be Comprehensible and the response of the login to be responsive So but within the domain of systems thinking we need to explore this a little bit. What is a system? So what are some kinds of systems that we work on? Let's hear them You don't have to believe that one out We are experiencing technical difficulties. Yeah Please stand by I think this is yeah, okay So who would like to call out a system besides the system of swearing into a microphone that I've just so ably demonstrated What kinds of systems? public transport Nicely read anyone else Operating systems, right? So that's a framework for technology. Yeah design system. We had There there are political systems. There are economic systems. They're ecological systems. They're all different kinds And I think that in the Drupal context yet Well, we can think about it in terms of the technology itself. We've got our core. We've got our modules We've got our themes, etc But you can also think about it in terms of the system being the project that Takes a group of people and a technology through the process to the end So therefore all the moving parts are made up of subsystems And that's the systems thinking way of looking at it with information flowing in between the subsystems And they're all of those kinds of systems are very complex Many moving parts many dependencies When we're talking about something as finite as a project or something as broad as a government Yeah, or a client, you know, the client wanting it to be blue. This is something that's significant There is nothing nothing more complex and more of a moving part than a client. Yeah, okay So here we have an example of Thinking about the functions What is the function of this system? Which many of you are familiar? What is the function? What does it do? So moving people move but not just moving people like you can move somebody from here to there This system doesn't allow you to move somebody from here to there So why is that important because the the limits of the limits of the technology? The technology is limited in what it can do this System that we are able to create and control is limited in what it can do thinking about in the broader context If I want to go to a theater over here I can get off this system and apply my own capability of Walking there and I can get there in that manner or having someone fetch me at the station or taking a bus or Whatever else and part of that is understanding what the relationships are within the capabilities that we control So these help us to understand what's possible at any given moment the relationships between these capabilities And we were talking about simplicity earlier from a UX perspective each block each thing you put on the page Communicate something to the users and in my own experience. I've had evidence where users sat and saw oh There's a login there in a prominent position. Ah, I'm not going to go to this site because it's a community I don't want to invest time in this. I don't want to have to build Profile etc. So just by making it there in the default spot It's communicating something if you move it to the top small link. Ah, maybe I'll engage with the content Ah, okay. This is the type of site for me. I will make the investment then these are small things But every everything is significant and they all contribute to an efficiency Right so achieving your goal without having to put all those extra things on or putting them in the correct context There's also external influences that control the way a system functions such as an Industrial action anybody here not from the UK or not from Europe Okay, I Love the term industrial action because it sounds so positive Like I wish that in the States we had industrial action I would feel so much better about it and then I find out what it is and I'm not so chipper about it But this is one one of many ways that external factors can influence how this system behaves and the system has to be Designed to account for that what happens when there's heavy snow what happens when there's an industrial action What happens when there's a bus strike and there's an added amount of people onto it These are the things that we have to account for Another factor is what else does the product do so if I'm thinking about designing a train station well, what do I need there I need some track and you know a roof would be nice and Perhaps some signs that tell me which train is where But wouldn't be nice if there was a place to go and get a nice fish and chips Also, and why would I want that? Has anybody here ever purchased food in the train station? Come on has anybody here ever purchased food in the train station? All right, so it's not because you thought The the the pinnacle of Oat cuisine is going to be at Waterloo station No, that's not what you were thinking. It's that it was convenient because it was part of some other activity I just wanted to talk a little bit about simplicity again and avoiding bloatware as techies We all know performance is a key aspect What we would try and think about when we're making a decision to put another module in what does it bring with it? How much is this going to slow it down? But what the way I like to think about the users and in terms of their attention being almost like a performance metric So if you've got lots of things on the page their attention, then it's difficult for them It takes too much effort too much cognitive effort. It's a bit like don't make me think So you find that these features can create barriers and they get exhausted and they leave consider the first the first Mobile phone you had that had a camera in it I Don't know how many of you thought that that was a wonderful idea at the time or if it was just like well It's there or if that's the reason you went out and got that specific phone But at the time it was an option. It was a feature. It was something that not many people opted for now My neighbor works For an aerospace company where you're not permitted to have a camera on the premises So he had to go and find a mobile phone without one as Difficult as it was to find one with one 15 years ago And that ancillary features now become a de facto requirement, but it's taken time It took time for the context of use to demand That it was that that was something that users expected He keeps talking as he resets the presentation There are also emotional drivers now I don't know how many of you would choose which tube station you get on based upon the quality of the musician who's playing in the hallway You would have to be either fantastically good or completely awful and I've experienced both in my life But we can think about this also in a digital services context how does Emotion play a part in decision-making or in workflow and sometimes it's relevant And things that you wouldn't expect such as a banking site We were talking earlier about mint and just the way that you use it it actually get we're thinking of gamification Aspects of that. It's actually fun to use fun And even in a context of say a banking site or maybe a news site It's it's not something you would normally put at the top of your priority list However, it drives the engagement Who here has heard of gamification before? Quite a few of you. How can anybody think of an example that that they have used where gamification Has has played a part in in their decision. Yes, sir You're linked in profile the more the more you complete the more full it puts a bar at the top of your profile And it keeps that profile that bar there percentage bar until it's got you to fill Everything in and then it'll vanish. You don't have to fill everything in but you log in and see it Feel compelled to do it It's passive-aggressive It's slightly irritating but it depends on how obsessive-compulsive you are For those who are not necessarily obsessive-compulsive, is there anyone who can think of something that's fun. It's fun That's functional. Yes achievements on websites and point systems. So where as you've completed your profile, for instance Proceed to be aggressive The four-square badge concept. Yeah, that's one. There's a reputation points on boxes and arrows who's old enough to remember that I didn't turn around because I don't want to know So that's that's one of them You said you're a bit I did yes, I talked about emotional factors. We're on the next side So we already talked quickly about the idea of offline capabilities You know, we could have that tube map actually go everywhere But that would require not only a lot of digging But it would also slow that system down because the tube would have to stop every hundred meters Instead we have a system that's designed for long-range transport Let's see. Can you remember how to do this? All right? I'm teaching a skill here today as well. So we've got the tube system is designed for longer distances and then we have an Ancillary function or a related system a parallel system of buses that are designed for shorter journeys Yeah, and you know, we're talking about blows again Another key factor to think about is the environment in which your device or system is going to be used In some cases that environment is physical in some cases that environment might be service oriented How does your tablet device work when it's not connected to a network or a projector much like our Device is not working right now Or or how how does it relate to noise levels? Or your emotional anxiety that you may be that you may be undergoing One of the things that that we deal with a lot in ours in our work is people who are getting bad news about their health and It's very important that somebody understands the implications and the options when they hear the word cancer But when you say the word cancer The next 50 things that you say to that person. They don't hear Because they're playing a movie of their life in their head. They're either playing the movie of what's happened Or what's going to happen and That's a reality. So when you design your system of communication Understanding the environment in which that communication is going to take That cognitive environment is extraordinarily important Because you can't assume that they're going to remember anything that you've said Another critical factor is time now clearly on the tubes Time is very important so you know when the trains are coming and how long it takes to get from one place to another It's possible that your system Is not necessarily as time sensitive as a transit system But one thing I can bet you is that the people who are using it are time sensitive No matter what it is they're doing whether they're doing a sudoku puzzle on their on their phone Or whether they are filling out some sort of they're booking a holiday They've got other demands on their time So we have to be sensitive to that and thinking about all of these things as functions that we need to account for in Achieving that simplicity and that efficiency that makes our design good And the last thing is appearance so we know that appearance Whether it be you know something grid based and typography based or whether it just be the way It's presented around other things can trigger trigger a functional reaction when they established when they Sorry What they see first establishes a context of their experience the example that you were giving about the login blocks That becomes the appearance of the site the meant the mental model the way that somebody pictures something and it impacts how they use it I just wanted to talk about that historically people used to say Drupal sites all look the same I think we've changed that a lot. It was because people would just do out of the box. Okay, there we go Let's theme it. We're not going to think about design. We're just going to theme it But it's different now theming is not the same as designing If you look at Drupal museum calm I had a look at it the other day and I thought it's we've come a long way The sites are looking fantastic these days and designers are obviously involved UX people are involved So but taking mental models as a starting point we use I'm going to tell you a bit about how we do this now We use constructs like experience principles So we come up with a set of ideas that define the experience how we want it to look how we want it to feel and We share this with the project team with the client. Do we all agree? These are the principles for the for the design of this system Can I do it on my own as well as Dante? No, I can't We get there. Okay rich user profiles. What do we do? We build personas. You've heard of these things They need to contain the detail that allow us to make a decision on should we add a gamification Attribute here. It's got to have we've got to ask those questions when we're going out to research They need to be rich. They can't just be this user is this age and you know uses a mobile phone Sometimes we need the detail there mood boards benchmarking. These are things you as designers will know But these are tools that we do we use and we're going to show you something about mental models in a minute But we need the developers at the table because they provide the constraints and I'm working very closely with with my Lead developer on the project right now and I say give me give me the model Give me show it show it to me in action Then I'll go away and I'll work out what we need to hide or how we need to change it Fasted search search for example is one we just did the other day I was thinking I don't like the usability of how you add your facets and remove them on that example What are the constraints? How far can I go with this? Could it be a checkbox? These are the conversations we have and this is what makes all the difference I think because it's not that accessible to us as Designers to know what the modules will necessarily put on the page. It's not these often have have examples But not always this is something I really struggle with and then we need to work together Right and one thing that I want to point out is when Angel said the word constraints What was what was somebody who who considers himself primarily a developer? What was your reaction when you heard the word constraint anyone? What'd you think about that? Did it feel like that was a good thing or a bad thing? Good Are you saying that you're just guessing? It's a good thing. Tell me why I Did not pay him to say that Nor will I but that's right. That's or at least that's my opinion and I have the microphone so each system Each of these system elements becomes an attribute of the customer's mental model all the things that we talked about Functions appearance time all of these things play a part How many are you familiar with mental models? Has anybody heard that term before? Yes, okay. Does anybody want to explain? Lucky you. Yeah, here we go. Here's an example. This is from a site. We did Epilepsy epilepsy advocate. So what we do here? I mean this is complex stuff trying to understand a mental map of the way someone Understands the situation But what we do is we break it down into areas get support from others like me at the green at the top there Express my thoughts and share my experiences Participate or host an event. These are the types of things we get this out of the research These are the key areas. They're almost like if you're used to working in agile epics, perhaps Okay, then underneath that. Let's see. What are the key tasks now? I'm starting to think about the journeys that I can map out which then I can test on the site Connect with others like me find a friend can talk to about epilepsy feel like someone knows how I feel I mean this is kind of an intangible thing, but it's significant feel like I'm not alone be inspired by others like me Read about someone who has also as epilepsy. I'm not going to read the whole slide But I think you're starting to get the idea. This is how we break them down and provide a vocabulary and start a starting point for scenarios and user journeys and At the bottom we also put down things around content. So we're starting a content strategy at the same time It's a map. It's quite easy to do and the reason why you would document it is to get the project team around it signed off Okay, this is the next block. Let's move ahead Easy to do is probably a relative term It it's there's nothing about it that any of you can't do it does take effort The process is generally that you look at what people's tasks or goals are you can get this through Ethnographic study basically following them around another word for it is stalking That's the creepy word Or you or you can just ask them straight up to tell you tell you what they're interested in It depends on whether or not you think they're going to give you the real answer Because people don't always know how to answer questions truthfully and then down here. That's that's a research truth Down here. We have content where we're talking about content. We're not always talking about Articles or words that people are going to read or things that they're going to consume We're also talking about tools that they might use and in some cases. This is color-coded It's a bit washed out for you But there are some things here that we're saying that we're gonna do and there are some things that we're saying We're not gonna do and we're gonna explain why about that in a few moments When we're applying the mental model to our project What we're trying to do is we're coming up with both functional and experiential requirements so One of the one of the goals that our customer Put in there a person suffering from epilepsy was I want people to understand me Well, that's awfully difficult to do Functionally we have to do that experientially so that's one of the things that that we tried to use as a basis for creating our system and We can have these things as These can become the targets that we designed for it's almost like a requirements document. That's not technology based It's people based and part of this is mapping capabilities to the documented customer tasks and goals essentially so The next step then is yeah Very much so very much so and if you have an opportunity to see Indy speak Lovely person and you know you'll book her for a half hour and she'll stay for three days So very accessible if you have a chance to see her speak. I recommend it highly It's a very fast read to and what you'll find I'll caution anybody who reads the book You'll read the first chapter when you go. I'm done. You're not Keep going keep going all the way through because it's the iteration and the unfolding of the process. It's not Cognitively complex But actually doing it and reinforcing the concepts. It's not It's not that familiar to everybody so I would encourage you to to read to get it and to read it and certainly to read the whole thing So when we're talking about this what we want to do is think about all of those things in the mental model in terms of How can we how can we create? enable or activate capabilities that will help Our customers achieve their goal It's not just about what our system is going to do it's about what's going to happen within the environment So what can the product or service do for its users? We've got these enormous wheels There's a reason for those as they they go and they do these games and it's part of the engagement of it There's a reason why they're big. They're not functionally because it goes faster What can they do for themselves in the context of Drupal what we're talking about functions themes content in the data model essentially What is inherent in Drupal that that delivers before we start layering on? functionality map to the users needs right and it includes the things that are go around it like the governance model and the partnerships and When we talk about community, we're not just talking about the technology component But what are the people doing offline? We're you know in the meat space and and what are the regulations that are that are in some ways Constraining what we're able to do how we're able to communicate something that we feel very dearly in health care And then of course one of the most important things is what customers will do for themselves Because they want to What this often becomes is a dichotomy or a conflict between what customers want and what the business wants? The trick is finding the confluence in the overlap So I don't necessarily want to spend a lot of time talking about the capabilities of the product that we create Because I think that you guys all know enough about how to do that You know how to take a requirements document or a creative brief and turn it into a product What what we want to talk about is what users can and will do for themselves and why? Think about something that a machine could do for you, but you choose to do on your own Anybody think of things like that just raise your hand. Can you think of stuff that? You could you could buy it pre-made, but you make it yourself Like food like you can get food out of a machine. Do people here cook? You cook okay, right? Does anybody here have a bike? Okay, can those of you have a bike. Can you afford a car? Yes or no some some can I don't want to denigrate anybody who can't That's fine, but there are reasons why you have these things. What are some of the the reasons that we might? Have these these objects or these things do things for ourselves That we don't have to do for ourselves. Anybody call one out What was it? Health or health benefits true. Yes sense of achievement great higher quality and Tribal associations, okay. All right. That's not how I would have said it. Thank you for explaining it Tribal associations mean something else to me Joy right, okay, so I'll read my list which overlaps. I think you know expression oh Like painting you know you could go and buy art at the posters shop or you could paint your own That's your way of expressing yourself Personalization is making it your own Right, so you could you could get the the fish and chips down at the pub and carry out or you can make it your own way With your own spices and things Pride sense of achievement. I heard challenge cost availability of resources innovation So it doesn't exist The way you want it These are all different things that that make us want to do things on our own And it's no easy task to to get from there to deciding what blocks are we going to put on the page? But that that is what we do So if we think about High-rise office building, why are there stairs in it? Well clearly there's a fire code That requires that they're there And it's a redundant design in case the lift is broken but there's also They're also faster than waiting for the lift especially if you work on the 48th floor of a building Which I don't anymore, but I have and Or perhaps as somebody said earlier, you just want to stretch your legs. You want to get some exercise So there's a sense of self-sufficiency. I don't want to rely upon other things. I want to be able to do it myself There's also collectivism people coming together to do things For instance In the Amish community raising a barn so the whole village comes together to build a barn now one person could certainly not do this themselves they could of course go and buy one But that's not something that that they do. It's part of creating and building and energizing the community And as web designers the pool of functions and features is often the same I want to talk about social for a moment We've seen with privacy things, you know Google fell foul with Buzz last year or two years ago Was it now but in my own experience with health? We build trackers so that people can track for example I have all sort of colitis and I want to track how many good days I've had so I can then have a relationship with or to send this information to my doctor I also might want to be involved in a community, but do I want them to see how many good days? I've had mmm, maybe not But maybe I could surface the goal that I set to give the sense of a shared purpose in the community These are these are decisions we have to make on the other hand another project I was involved in London cycle challenge people going out cycling on the weekend. Yes I've done 50 miles. That is definitely something that I want to share in the community I want people to see my achievement badge and I want to tweet it out to Twitter subtle distinctions here Complex world, but but the the end game is great if you can build community through the use of these tools and for those of you who May not believe in the value of community in a business context Just keep in mind that earlier this year Google floated ten billion dollars towards Twitter billion Another thing that that people do for themselves is try to change the world Right, so when we think about what is the confluence between self-sufficiency? Wanting to do things for yourself and coming together as a community what we have is activism. I Don't know how many of you are students of the American civil rights movement. I'm not sure what the corollary is here in Europe But I like to think how would this have changed with Google plus? All right, to me it's a fascinating experiment just to to envision that know who's where what their capabilities are being able to organize on the fly respond instantaneously It's a fascinating mental exercise for me and hopefully for you as well So we talked a moment ago about constraints and how these are a good thing understand the capabilities That exists beyond the the product boundary Whether those are real or perceived can both create and destroy constraints. We can create constraints that give us clarity and This becomes part of our focus for design efforts and resources. We can also Eradicate constraints by thinking about what are the alternatives when we think about what people are capable or willing to do for themselves So how do constraints help us when we think about answering this question? The first thing we want to do is identify. What are the self-imposed constraints? I can't do that and Get rid of them right because you can You can do it. You just may have to think about doing it a different way If if we think about who can think can anyone think of an example of a self-imposed constraint artificial constraint that you've overcome in your own experience Anyone self-imposed deadline Right. Well, I mean that can be motivating though sometimes What about? Thinking like there there is no module for that Is that a self-imposed constraint? Can has anyone in here ever ever contributed to or created a? Module or a theme? Yeah, okay, so you could just as easily have said well, there's no theme for that Would and that would not have been a great outcome, right? So I think that hopefully hopefully you're getting what I'm saying here If a constraint is not helping you By giving you focus or helping you to identify an alternative Go right through it Just get around it some way so either identify actively identify an alternative or remove it Eradicate that constraint So if we take the example of a camera you are trying to reduce the cost of taking photographs The natural assumption would be to reduce the price of the camera or perhaps the film But if you challenge the assumption that there even has to be film Then you can eliminate it and you can eliminate a major recurring cost Then all you have to do is the relatively trivial task of inventing the digital camera, right? That was straightforward wasn't it? so I think we've covered most of this here the constraints give us focus and the next artificial constraint is That cameras can only take still images So if you're looking at something and you want to see it not moving Have you ever had a situation where you thought to yourself? Gosh, I wish I could see that moving Like your kid is doing something adorable and sure it'd be great to get the snapshot But really what's adorable about it is how they're stacking things together or how they're playing with the cat So anybody here have kids or cats? You must know what I'm talking about, right? If you have kids and cats you definitely get it. So so now you can get a camera that looks like this But takes video. Does anyone have one? Okay, a couple couples and that's an evolving capability beyond the artificial constraint How many people have a camera and a separate video camera? Don't don't be ashamed All right, your dinosaurs soon It's going to happen right because when when you're going to be someplace where you're like I only want video Unless you're a professional videographer, it's pretty unlikely So we think about that and then we think about what's another constraint in Order to take pictures. I need a camera No, I don't In my case in order to take good pictures. I need a camera because this is a blackberry But you don't you don't need a dedicated camera device in order to take pictures This illuminates one of the unspoken nagging problems of agile that is always additive one of the most important things a designer can do and I think we've We've talked about this a bit and by extension the developer that instantiates the design is to take things away So take away all those devices By activating the capabilities of other things What this can help us to do is to prioritize So if we introduce certain constraints that give us focus on who we're designing for Are we designing a camera for professional photographers or for hobbyists and people who have cats or children or both? That gives us an opportunity to really focus our design Can we simplify some of the features and functionality maybe reduce the quality of the image but enable things like video? Or make it so that it's fits into your pocket These are the things that that are really important and this provides the focus Which is one of the key attributes of successful systems Has anybody here ever heard the concept of a flow the psychological concept of flow flow Anyone wow you guys are smart All right, can anybody here pronounce the guy's name? His name is completely unpronounceable if you want to know it just email me and I'll send it to you I wouldn't even know how to start Some sort of Slavic thing with lots of shapes and letters He has this theory about flow being this mental state that you enter where you are completely Focused on what you're doing because it's both enjoyable and challenging What is the challenge doing? Activating your capabilities so here it's activating your capabilities of attention and reflex It would be much easier of course to have a nice big sedan with You know cruise control and and power brakes and steering But I can tell you that this person would not enjoy that as much Right part of it part of the thing that makes this process of getting from point a to point b is The journey the flow state that this person is in while they're doing it And it's a way of embracing the constraints of what a motorcycle can do and making them a Positive attribute of the design so all of these things that we think about when we think about what the the the idea of Constraints and capabilities and systems thinking all of these things if we bring it together Enable the concept of idealized design has anyone here ever heard that the the the term idealized design before? No, I stumped you finally okay, they're There there was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania named Ray Ackoff ac ko ff I'll post that on our site too Who has advocated? Idealized design. He's written a book about it It's a bit dry, but it's a great read because it gives you a vocabulary for understanding the different types of Design that you can apply to any sort of problem The first one is to say Not my problem Who's who's ever heard that I won't ask you to say who said it, but who's ever heard not my problem? Only there's anybody here who's not heard that Okay, just nudge the person next to you if they're not if they're sleeping That's absolution someone else will solve this I'm the developer. I can't be bothered with design. I'm the designer I can't be bothered with technology There's trash on the sidewalk someone should really pick that up One of the reasons that we culturally abhor laziness is Because it represents a failure to make an affirmative change beyond what you're expected to do And instead activating what you're able to do Now there might be a Marxist undertone to that and we'll talk about that on the break, but but the idea is When we talk about well, I'll let you say this Well, the successes of a society depends on people solving problems beyond their assigned role like we saw at the very first slide Beyond their own self-interest That's why we applaud grassroots volunteer efforts because they demonstrate the triumph of capabilities over Self-imposed constraints to achieve a common goal, right and not my job is one of the one of the most insipid Self-imposed constraints if you find yourself saying it, please check and make sure if there's a way you can get beyond That self-imposed constraint the next the next highest order of dealing with the problem is resolution And it's a common way and the most obvious way to attack a problem is to deal with the symptoms but focusing on the symptoms only Neglects an opportunity to address the underlying cause So in here, we've got the problem is how do we ride a scooter in the rain? And so that the answer they've come up with is to carry an umbrella But maybe riding the bus would have been a better better idea as we eliminate the constraint that says oh We have to do it on a scooter We can propose then that the customer might buy a car if they have the money or go on the bus So we're not only solving the immediate problem, but making it impossible for the problem to re recur Right which brings us to the next level which is kind of a root cause thing which is solution What my many designers strive for is the opportunity to understand the cause of a problem and address it before the problem can manifest So this this requires an understanding of how a product or a service is used and we've talked about ways to understand this through research through the ethnography We might have a study of reported defects and some creative problem solving and how to avoid Recurring situations the investment is worth it if you look at it in terms of differentiating from Competitors or delivering a more efficient operation. You've got your bottom line at stake here So if we take a look at this railroad crossing, it's we can definitely understand how there might be The possibility of a collision occurring There's no no blinking lights. There's no gate that will come down And we could put those things in there and treat the symptoms, but is there a better solution? Can anyone think of one yes a Bridge right what if the what if the tracks and the road did not have to intersect? If there was some way to do that So looking at the root cause that these two pathways intersect in an uncontrolled manner and then addressing that and Many of us feel or many of us have not experienced a higher order of problem-solving than Solution so absolution resolution is treating the symptoms Solution is going to root cause Dissolution is the highest order way of doing it and this is thinking about how can we change the entire system What if we were to create? Society in which there were no cars then we'd never have to worry about Trains and cars colliding So it this requires pulling the camera back and looking at the larger scene Not just looking as a railway operator at okay I'll elevate my tracks at this point But thinking about how can I create a railway system within the city that never crosses a road? That never encounters this this but still meets the needs of people Is there a is there a different way and? Looking and addressing it systemically in web development. I just wanted to talk about agile. How many of you are working within a agile? Half I've spent last year working in agile and as a UX person. It's very difficult because I found I was always a sprint ahead of the developers the developers would put in time based on the things They had to deliver and they would say sorry I've got no time to think about these sort of holistic System-wide sort of things that you're thinking about I wanted to solve the problem once so then the user doesn't have to Readdress the same problem in different ways But I couldn't get their time and this is common with user experience So but I like the idea of agile There are problems with thinking about it in a waterfall way up front and trying to specify the whole system Produce lots of documentation that immediately goes out of date No, it can't be that way, but we have to reconcile these two I'm calling out to you because you need to help We we need to do this together. We need to build an agile way But we need to be able to think system-wide as we go Maybe it's as simple as just building in time in a sprint to consider something. I Know it's always very tight. You've got to deliver something as well, but this is the way it has to be And one of the other things that we're talking about and the graphic here you probably can't see the line This is a set piece right so Corner kick Is that you can operate within the flow of the game and and try to do the best that you can But when you have some guiding principles When you have some ways that you know that you want to try to Achieve your end goal in the larger context it gives you the capability to work within an agile framework so that understanding as Some of you as developers as designers how to work together within a sprint, but with a systems view Thinking about things like constraints and capabilities Simplicity efficiency focus when we think about those concepts in everything we do and apply them as guiding principles Then we're doing a better job of Idealized design. We're not thinking about some pie-in-the-sky notion that well maybe in phase 4.7 we'll get around to that and the budget never comes. Does anybody here believe in phase 4? Anybody? I didn't think so. You're all too smart for that. So What we have to do instead is we have to focus on the near-term win, but not disable the long-term achievements So using these principles that we've been giving you Are meant to enable you to do that to achieve idealized design within short-term bursts Because you have an understanding of how to how to think about the system and the activate the external capabilities and energize your users and respect what it is that they want to do for themselves If you think about something like a marathon, there's no perfect run No matter what you do whether you win or not Some day some young buck is going to come along and do it faster But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't try your best, right? It doesn't mean that you can't do something great The tool these the tools that we've given you today are meant to help you win each marathon that you run Even though they're called sprints. They ever feel like a marathon Sort of like getting through this presentation without the slides cutting out So we're back. Okay So you may not come close. You may come close to perfection. You may never achieve it. It's like a vacuum Something like that But you can certainly get a lot closer than you would if you just focused on the near-term and focused on the symptoms and Focused only within the boundary of your system and the technology that you had So that's that's really the lesson for today is thinking about the constraints letting them give you focus focusing on the capabilities of people outside and Using them to achieve these goals That's it. Okay ready Thank you So we've we've got a couple of minutes again if you want to tweet about us We hope you will sys think are there any questions questions anyone? Yes in the back you have to speak into the microphone because they're taping it I'm maybe went over this side a little bit late from above but you spoke about doing research from users and What they say they want or how they express, you know, they're their goals Maybe you do observational, you know, some type of different research methods What people say they want and what they what they actually do ends up being different. I mean, how do you differentiate between those two things? Okay, that's a much bigger question to answer I'll give you the short version is I don't ask them I put them in situations and watch them and I try to make those situations as realistic as possible Most of what I do these days is I primarily do activity oriented research So if you want to stick around for a few minutes, I'll fill your ear until your head explodes, but That's basically the idea is there are certain things you can trust people and ask them You can ask a commercial airline pilot Whether he would like to have the altimeter here or there and he will give you an honest and trustworthy answer Because it is his profession and he's trained in that skill and he has thousands of hours of time invested in it As a parent of a teenager, can you ask a teenager anything and get a straight answer? No, I know this so you have to know what kind of research you're doing when you're talking about people who are casual users of things people in social networks or People who intermittently use systems you can ask them things and be like yeah, yeah, I'd use that Sure, I would go to a bank that offered foot rubs Like but would they really you know, it sounds great you go to the bank you get your feet rubbed But nobody when they go to the bank they don't have time for that they need to get on to the next thing They're there on their lunch hour or whatever it is And maybe the guy at the bank kind of looks a little weird and you don't want his hands on your feet I don't even know why I'm talking about this, but you have to understand what kind of things what kind of questions You're asking and what kind of audience you're observing Okay, does that answer your question? anybody else I'm just thinking in terms of constraints and capabilities The the point of view that with Drupal You know, you'd often think almost everything is possible given sufficient amount of time Resources so the constraints very often in a Drupal project budgetary So I'm just wondering whether you can give us any examples of how that constraint can be Positive in any way because it's sometimes difficult to see how it could be I Can answer this well, I Think that comes down to the prioritization process. So we've built our mental model We understand what's most important to the users. We've also we've got a business here who's got some needs It's got to deliver something we match those two together and we often Collaboratively with the client because the client has clear ideas about what they want come up with a scope and and at that point We have to all agree and it's it's got to be, you know It's goes without saying we can't have everything we already know the scope of what they would want I don't know Give an answer that's a little closer to home and it's I'm somewhat fictionalizing here to protect the innocent Suppose you work for a company that creates diabetes medications and the audience is for that There are physicians who treat diabetic patients and there's many of them There are diabetic patients themselves and there's many of those Then there's a smaller group and a very focused group dieticians or diabetes educators people who are not doctors but are Educated in ways to help diabetic patients Control their diet in such a way that they don't make their disease worse If we have a small budget on a project from our diabetes Manufacturing client we might say well we can do something and you know maybe Move the needle so much if we go after one of those large audiences or we can go after this small audience Really focus on them so that same 30,000 pounds or whatever it is that we would spend doing doing something sort of ineffectual and You know half good With with the physicians we can really focus on this audience and maybe go to the conference of diabetes educators and augment it Through an offline thing and then an online channel that are integrated now. We're doing a system-wide Idealized solution on a narrow audience Now will your clients say yes to that that I can't promise you but it but it gives you a framework for saying I can either use constraints That diminish the quality of my project or I can apply those same constraints in such a way that I can do the better project Right does that answer your question? Do we have time for one more? One more anyone? No, all right. Well, thank you very much for coming. Hope you had fun