TOTAL EXPERIENCE explores designing for experience: its theory, its practice, and how designing for experiences affects us socially and in our personal lives.
YOUR T.E. CO-AUTHORS:
- Bob Jacobson
- Paula Thornton
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(NOTE: While we read all comments, we do not publish anonymous comments.)
About Your Authors
BOB JACOBSON is fascinated by the experience of experience. A planner and technologist, Bob has a Ph.D. in Urban Planning & Design from UCLA. He's been a policy researcher, technology CEO, science writer, and consultant. As a Fulbright Scholar, he studied cellular telephony's impacts on transborder communities in the Nordic Arctic Circle. Bob edited Information Design (MIT Press 2000) and is now writing a book on the theory and practice of creating edifying, transformative experiences.
( Archive | Contact Bob )
PAULA THORNTON says, "Understanding human behavior and designing interactions for human expectations are the means to achieve strategic differentiation. This is the focus of our discipline. It is not a Œnice to have‚ and is not, like documentation once was, an afterthought. It is the means by which to start a strategic discussion and the means by which to drive a tactical initiative. All design should be evidence-based."
( Archive | Contact Paula )
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EXPERIENCE DESIGN:
THE METAVERSE....
CALENDAR OF EXPERIENCE DESIGN EVENTS
(Courtesy of Mark Vanderbeeken, Experientia SpA, Torino)
Experience Design Websites
Core 77 Website & Forum
Business Week|Innovate
InfoD: Understsanding by Design
The Wayfinding Place
Wayfinding Focus
Design Addict
L-ARCH (Landscape Architecture Mailing List)
DUX 2007 Conference
NetDiver.Net
DesignBoom
Digital Thread
Archinect
Enmeshed, Digital Arts & New Media
Ludology (Game Playing Theory)
Captology, Persuasive Computing
Space and Culture
Raskin Center for Humane Interfaces
timet (acoustical design)
Steve Portigal, Ethnographer
Jane McGonigal's Avant Game
Ted Wells' living : simple
PingMag (Japan)
Experience Design Blogs
Adam Greenfield's Speedbird
Experience Designer Network (Brian Alger)
SmartSpace: Annotated Environments (Scott Smith)
Don Norman
Doors of Perception (John Thackara)
Karl Long's Experience Curve
Work•Play•Experience (Adam Lawrence)
The David Report (David Carlson)
Design & Emotion (Marco van Hout)
Museum 2.0 (Nina Simon)
B J Fogg
Lorenzo Brusci (acoustics)
Cool Town Studios
FutureLab
Steve Portigal
Debbie Millman
MIT Culture Convergence Consortium
Luke Wroblewski, Functioning Form|Interface Design
Adam Richardson
Putting People First (Paul Vanderbeeken/Experientia
Laws of Simplicity (John Maeda)
Challis Hodge's UX Blog
Anne Galloways's Purse Lips Square Jaw
Bruno Giussani's Lunch over IP
Jane McGonigal's Avant-Game
The Future of Work
Experience Design Podcasts
Ted Wells' living : simple Podcast
Design Matters Podcast, Debbie Millman
Icon-o-Cast Podcast, Lunar Design
Experience Design Firms and ED-Oriented Manufacturers
Barry Howard Limited
Hilary Cottam
LRA Worldwide, Inc.
BRC Imagination Arts
Stone Mantel
Experientia s.r.l
Nokia
Herman Miller
Steelcase
IDEO
Cooper Interactive Design
Gensler
Doblin Group
Fitch
Fit Associates
Jump
Strategic Horizons LLC (Joe Pine & Jim Gilmore)
Cheskin Fresh Perspectives
Education and Advocacy
Centre for Design Research, Northumbria University (UK)
Center for Design Research, Stanford University
International Institute of Information Design (IIID)
Design Management Institute
AIGA DUX
Interaction Institute IVREA
Design Research Institute (UK)
UC Berkeley Center for Environmental Design Research
History of Consciousness, UCSC
Design News Magazine
Society for Environmental Graphic Design (SEGD)
Design Museum London
Center for Sustainable Design
Horizon Zero, Digital Arts+Culture in Canada
Design Council UK
First Monday
Total Experience on Technorati
Technorati Profile
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Category Archives
November 8, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 A little over a year ago, I published an entry here, “The (ever more painful) Dow of Experience.” I was critical of the frequently recurring, almost unavoidable repetition of a rising Dow Jones index as a feel-good economic mantra. I wrote:
We take reports of the Dow for granted. They flicker on tickers on during the TV networks' evening newcasts, on CNN, Fox, and Bloomberg, and are part and parcel of almost every radio station's news broadcasts. For a long time, the Dow's ups and downs were taken to be synonymous with the strength of the nation's economy, all boats rising and falling with the Dow.
But investment income and wages have become disconnected, radically. A rising Dow no longer means good times for the working class (which comprises that 80 to 90 percent of the American people who do not receive substantial investment income). Each time Americans hear about the Dow's climb, it reminds them that things are getting worse for the majority in terms of falling purchasing power, rising household indebtness, and a general decline in their quality of life. The American Dream vies with a nightmare reality.
I also wrote,
According to critical theorists, people can indulge in hopeful thinking for only so long before their objective living conditions start to breed intolerable dissonance, dismay, and resentment. That's when societies experience dramatic tensions, often resulting in political upheaval and even revolution.
Now things are different. Today, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress that the economy's rotten and that things are likely to get worse -- much worse -- before they get better. Gas prices will go up. Buying during the all-important Christmas season will go down. More banks will be in distress. More people will lose their homes and their jobs. (Yet, according to a report on public radio's Marketplace business-news show, investors in hedge funds -- the few individuals who are already the richest in our society, those who can afford multi-million-dollar investments -- are doing very well, better than ever before, some earning as much as 10% on their investments.) The last week has been hell for the Dow. But there's not a hint of domestic political upheaval, let alone revolution. People are in shock and denial rather than rebellious. Probably, because they have no past referents.
What's the experience of living in a down economy? Most young adults never had the experience. What's the experience of living in a recession? Only the Boomers remember. What's the experience of living in a depression? I had to ask my Dad, who's in his 80s, to get an answer.
The answer? Harsh. Very, very harsh.
It's difficult for me to understand how people go about their day-to-day lives, minding the store, designing products, innovating ideas, going to conferences, chattering on the Web, watching their iPods and plasma TVs, making love, raising families, commuting to work and (via a corps of official spokespersons) reassuring themselves with forecasts of better times to come and better lives. Few, it seems, are preparing for the coming crisis -- crises -- in any substantial way, except perhaps for the survivalists, who don't look so stupid anymore. Oh yes, and the hedge fund investors, who are sharpening their claws in expectation of fresh meat, dining off the carcasses of dead and dying enterprises and their employees. It's not just an American problem, either, although for many reasons, the consequences of the crises are likely to be felt here first and foremost. It's a world problem. So who's working on preserving global stability? Certainly not the American government, which is out raising havoc and planning for more. Not the United Nations, already wracked and worn by a million demands on its limited resources. The people of the world? You and me?
It's difficult also to escape the impression that we are wearing the sandals of the Romans just before the collapse of their Empire, only this time with universal repercussions. Religious and political mania will no doubt continue to manifest, more severely with time, before reason reasserts itself and solutions are proposed and implemented. So how do people get on? How do they deal with the sense of impending doom, now reinforced for them every time they hear the Dow -- this time, going down, down, down....
How do we live with unremitting crisis, the social equivalent of psychological stress? What are its consequences, personally and collectively? Who's doing research on this most important aspect of our experience? As usual, there are far more questions than answers, though you'd hardly know it from all the smiling faces going places.
(Image: Yahoo! Finance)
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November 5, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 The DUX 2007 conference begins today in Chicago. Thematically, content-wise, and in terms of approach, this is the consummate conference on cutting-edge design. The speakers are top-notch, too. If I could, I'd be there. But ideologically, DUX is discomforting. For all its virtues, DUX embodies a set of values that, while commendable, are incomplete and off-kilter.
Despite its aspiration to be universal, DUX remains user-centric, not human-centric. And experience, inherently and essentially, is human and thus, holistic.
DUX stands for “Designing for User Experience.” It's the "user" part that continues to annoy me, while others seem blithe to its portent. According to Wikipedia, (quoting sage designer Don Norman's 1999 book, Invisible Computer: Why Good Products Can Fail, the Personal Computer Is So Complex and Information Appliances Are the Solution):
"User experience design is a subset of the field of experience design which pertains to the creation of the architecture and interaction models which impact a user's perception of a device or system. 'The scope of the field is directed at affecting all aspects of the user’s interaction with the product: how it is perceived, learned, and used.' "
 Designing for experience is about holism, understanding and working with the totality of human experience. “A user's perception of a device or system” seems a peculiarly narrow niche in which to ply one's experience design skills. Of course, it's important: devices and systems are what drive the machinery of commerce and government, and even how we as consumers conduct ourselves at home and in leisure time. But so mechanistic a conception of the human being is antithetical to our knowledge of how people holistically perceive, think, act, and experience their lives. Maybe that's why Don himself on more than one public occasion has eschewed the term he invented, “user experience design,” advising that we'd be better off without the “user.”
DUX could more realistically portray the challenges facing experience designers, and champion their successes, by replacing “user” with “human” and thereby symbolically and practically opening the conference to a wider audience of designers and composers of experience.
(BTW, I'm not reactive to the use of “user” in all R&D contexts: I'm about to take part in a multiyear, overseas study of “user-driven innovation” that aims to understand and enhance this innate human capacity. In this context, "user-driven" makes sense. Innovation by design is instrumental and goal-oriented. Innovation serves. But experience happens.)
This isn't a trivial matter. Many of the presenters at DUX are willing to generalize beyond the scope of device and system development. This attempt to apply mechanistic theories best suited to things and systems to the larger world of human affairs can and likely will breed skepticism and perhaps even resistance to design for experience. The backlash against “social engineering,” a counterpart to DUX once advocated by structural-functionalist social scientists in the 1950s and 1960s could easily be repeated in our own time, especially since so many designs for experience fail in important settings at crucial moments.
A potential reason why DUX and its organizers and participants haven't grasped this relationship may be that they haven't a long history in the work they do or sufficient familiarity with the scholarly study of experience. Perhaps it's a function of the organizing process, but it appears to me that with only a few exceptions, most of the speakers and workshop leaders -- and I suppose, attendees -- appear to be shy of 40 years of age. That means they would have been born sometime after 1967, when systemic thinking was king and every person was treated as a cog in some larger device; and that they came of age in the mid-80s or later, as information technology was replacing systems as the predominant archetypal metaphor. The inclusion of Harper's and The Huffington Post's Thomas de Zengotita within DUX, as an invited speaker -- a man who wears his years proudly and who's the antithesis of a “user-experience designer” -- is a welcome breath of fresh air. More like him would leaven the persistent technophilia that many other speakers manifest.
It feels to me that the concern for audiences as human beings present in the work of such great designers of the past as, for example, Chermayeff, Bel Geddes, and the Eames, has evaporated in the fiery breath of Moloch aka The Machine (per Lewis Mumford's 1967 Technics and Human Development: The Myth of the Machine). Even those presentations at DUX that sound wonderfully focused on human fancy -- art and dance and travel to strange places -- seem prone to converting that fancy into factors that are part of technical solutions: making products and services. They don't really depict or serve edifying human experiences, although they may well fit the interests of those seeking to exploit experiences. This dog won't hunt.
 Doors of Perception's Designs of the Time (Dott07), a 23-month participatory project that will continue through year's end, is an illustrative counterpoint to DUX. Dott's slogan is, “Why our design festival has no things in it.” Besides being overtly human-centered, Dott's participation ranges more broadly by age and is geographically more diverse. Its participants are as often involved in public as they are in commercial projects. DUX's youthful audience, by contrast, comprises a bucket-load of North Americans, a moderate serving of Brits, and a dash of Dutch and German presenters mostly working in the world of business and academic/brain-trust institutions serving that world. Pragmatic instrumentality, the dominant ideology in North American, British, and Germanic cultures driven by economic, thing-maker philosophy, pervades most of what DUX is about.
Transformation designers tell us that in order to change constituent experiences, one has to first change the constituents themselves. Broadening DUX and its focus requires broadening its base of its participants, and vice versa. Here's my call for “Designing for Human Experience” in 2008. To preserve the delightful waterfowl homonym, use the acronym, DhUX. Or continue to call it DUX -- but for gosh sakes, at least make the "U" mean ... “hUman."
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Posted by Bob Jacobson
I gave this presentation on October 8th by Skype, speaking before the 3rd International Conference on Information Design (ICID) that took place in Curitiba, Brazil, 8-10 October 2007. It sums up well my current thinking about information design, user experience design, designing for experience, and the composition of memorable experiences. My thanks to event organizers Carla Spinelli and Stephania Padovani, and technical helpers Tiago Maia, Re-nato Bertão, and Charles Costa. Your comments are welcome. © Robert Jacobson 2007
 BOM DIA! It’s a pleasure to join you this afternoon, albeit by digital communications and not in person as I would have preferred. Thanks to organizers Carla Spinelli and Stephania Padovani, and media men Tiago, Renato, and Charles, for making this presentation possible. Our plan is to have me make a short presentation and then for us to interact via Skype. You may see me working at the keyboard occasionally, to keep the connection running smoothly. In the film, the Wizard of Oz, the Mighty Oz loudly tells Dorothy, with great blasts of fire, “Ignore the man behind the curtains!” That’s me.
 This is an interesting study in information design. I’m speaking to you from the living room of my home in Tucson, Arizona, in the heart of the Sonora Desert. The video you are watching today was edited in the camera, harkening back to the early days of the 1970s-era, worldwide “Radical Software” movement, when activists around the world used portable video cameras to elicit honest communication in a formerly media-dominated information environment. Theirs was authentic video, without embellishment. So, 35 years later, here is my authentic video, no frills….
 I was invited to speak to you as the editor of the anthology, Information Design, a collection of essays by world-class designers, published by the MIT Press in 1999. In the eight years since, there has been no satisfactory revisiting of the issues we raised in ID – especially the questions: what is information design and what will it become?
Today, I’d like to talk to you about why and how I believe information design will evolve into a new practice, “designing for experience” or, as I prefer to call, it, “composing for experience.”
 Experience is the proper center of the design universe. An environmental outlook comes next. Conventional design in many ways is pre-Copernican in this regard and new approaches to conventional design, like user experience design (about which I’ll speak later), only add more epicycles. I’m optimistic that information design will more quickly adopt the new paradigm.
 In eight years, a lot has changed, not least the quantity and quality of the information environments in which we live and work. Today, technologies of communication and information are abundant, and networking computing is more pervasive than ever – many would say, invasive – changing how we live, work, play, educate, and communicate.
Despite information designers’ high aspirations, the sheer volume of informational activity has nearly overwhelmed their ability to design for it. (Image: Artem)
Our anthology anticipated this future. Our collective concern was not for better construction of representations and artifacts. Instead, unanimously, we called attention to the ever more complex information environments into which people, individually and collectively, are plunged almost at birth and through which they must navigate their entire lives. We agreed, on this if on nothing else, that information design, as it had been practiced for 25 years – rationalizing the presentation of information, usually in graphical form – must grow conceptually as well as technically, even epistemologically: information design must become experientially and environmentally wise.
 Eight years later, the concept of information environments is no longer exotic. We are more cognizant of the systemic relationship between information and the environments – physical, social, and personal – in which information is produced, shared, and acted upon. There is a change in orientation among information designers from the particular to the global, even universal context. (Image: David Armano)
In the name of informational environmental awareness and holism, all sorts of recipes are being promoted for messages that are more easily assimilated.
 Apparent is the intrusion of the market: information is now more often than not treated as a commodity that must be designed for consumption. One narrow but broadly applied variant of information design, perhaps responsible for the majority of information designs these days – on the Web and incorporated in products and services – is called “user experience design” or more baldly, “customer experience design.” Say it loud and say it proud, its practitioners have one purpose: to get people to use things and to buy things.
 Over the last decade, “interaction” has been added to the stew as a necessary element of instrumental design, a way to draw “users” into the purchasing process. Dan Saffer of Adaptive Path in san francisco has written a pretty good how-to book on Interaction Design and IDEO co-founder Bill Moggridge has published a mighty tome of interviews with “interaction designers.”
 BJ Fogg, a professor of design at Stanford, whom I admire, has the gumption to call this branch of information design captology, the science of persuasive technology that captures and keeps an individual’s attention. (Image: Cache Creek Casino)
But technology can’t do the job alone.
 Vast armies of ethnographers, anthropologists who study culture, have been deployed to observe, describe, and annotate the lives of those whom their mainly business and occasional government clients wish to affect via “user experiences.” These costly cultural explorations are justified by the unique insights that ethnographers can supposedly provide to designers. (Image: Business Week)
In these circumstances, however, for these insights to be acted upon, they have to relate to business, and so does the design that results from these insights. Ethnography and design thus form a neat little tautology that offers employment for ethnographers, validation for designers, and comfort to the business executives who pay for each.
What’s remarkable is that the success rate of designed user experiences, even those informed by ethnography, is anecdotally reported to be a sparse five to ten percent. It might even be less. The vast majority of products and services designed according to the tenets of user experience, supported by ethnographic findings, do not achieve their goals.
...continue reading.
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October 2, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 SRI International, for whom I worked as a futurist and commercialization expert in the late 1990s and 2000s, is presenting a "Discipline of Innovation" Express Workshop for the Tampa Bay (FL) Technology Forum in St. Petersberg on October 10, 2007, at the Poynter Institute.
I'm glad to see SRI coming out. SRI, located in Menlo Park, CA, is the original home of scenario planning and the Mother Ship to such better-known spinoffs as the Global Business Network. Long before "innovation" was a household word and "ethnography" the darling of the business set, SRI was plugging along developing tools like the unmatchable VALS (Value & Lifestyles System) and SCAN to track new technology and social trends. Perhaps because it's nonprofit, SRI maintains a relatively low profile -- but its social and technology innovations are impressive. They often get implemented because the organization cultivates a sterling client list of Global 100 corporations and governments, long-time clients here and abroad. When SRI comes up with a good idea, there's money to move the idea forward to prototype and implementation.
Presenting at this event are William W. Wilmot, Co-Creator, SRI Discipline of Innovation Workshop; Co-Author, Innovation: The Five Disciplines for Creating What Customers Want; and Peter Marcotullio, Director, SRI Business Development of Engineering and Systems. Innovation comes to Florida. Sounds tasty.
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September 26, 2007
Posted by Paula Thornton
 As we try to catch Bob up with conversations already going on in the industry, let me illustrate the significance of having Design Thinking conversations by offering notice of an event planned for the DFW area.
For those of you in the area October 19th, plan to join us. For the rest of you, this is an experiment for continuing face-to-face annual events in local venues. The idea being that there is much needed energy bringing local companies together and sharing their stories and progress with others (including the press, academia, and generally interested souls).
Updates will be provided as we see where the conversation goes this first round. Already there are signs of a focus on organizational changes including new roles and new business models, but we wouldn't know these things were happening if we weren't coming together to talk about what we're seeing.
We hope to challenge participants to return to their own circles of influence with actions to influence change, and seed deeper understanding through related programs throughout the following year in existing local professional organization chapter meetings -- e.g. UPA, STC, AIGA, AMA, PMI, etc. (that's the adaptive/integrative gene).
Each year we'll convene to share and talk about our progress -- catalyzing latent Design Thinking DNA already floating in the organizational ether.
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June 28, 2007
Posted by Paula Thornton
While we typically wouldn't blanket copy an email announcement here, I think this one is significant in what it means as to 1) the potential to grow the discipline and 2) that someone can justify offering such courses (e.g. there's enough demand for them -- because there IS!). And Victor Lombardi is just a really sharp industry resource.
If anyone gets a chance to attend, please share your experience!
[Don't miss the discount code...]
What's also interesting is the 2.0 aspect of this. While only for New York City right now, imagine leveraging this 'community' and its infrastructure as a means to offer your own single session/event in your city (e.g. an upscale craigslist for classes/seminars). While we all might not have material to go into training full-time...sharing our own special knowledge for one course a year might be doable.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Smart Experience is a new school in New York City offering
classes for Internet professionals. We intend to cover
state-of-the-art topics taught by the most experienced people in
town. The school is organized as a marketplace, so you can tell
us what classes you want us to offer, and what classes you want
to teach. Learn more... http://smartexperience.org/
Use discount code "Beta" when signing up for 20% off tuition...
* BRAND & USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN
How do you proactively design an experience that expresses your
brand? We will address the complexities of applying traditional
brand guidelines to interactive environments, the relationship
between the traditional brand elements of brand promise, goals,
positioning and how to translate these to interaction and
experience guidelines. Taught by Karen Hembrough who has worked
with AOL, National Geographic, and iXL and just earned her MBA
from Columbia University.
1 two-hour workshop, Thursday, July 12. $70.
http://smartexperience.org/classes/brand-uxdesign/
* USING INTERNET BUSINESS STRATEGY
This class will introduce the topic of business strategy and
illustrate how Internet strategy is practiced by online and
traditional companies. In class we'll discuss how Internet
strategy applies to our particular situations and create our own
fictional business by applying a particular strategic method.
Taught by Victor Lombardi, the Director of Smart Experience, who
also consults on Internet product development and is a leader in
the field of information architecture. 2 two-hour workshops, Tuesdays
7-9pm, July 10 & 17. $140.
http://smartexperience.org/classes/internetbusinessstrategy/
There are more classes on the website, as well as a listing of
the best Internet events in New York city available via iCal,
RSS, or email newsletter...
http://smartexperience.org/
Victor Lombardi
Director, Smart Experience
NYC Internet, mobile, and software education
http://smartexperience.org/
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June 11, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 For those anxiously awaiting my scribblings on spirituality and experience, and for those who wrote so many outstanding Comments regarding past entries (all published this evening), thank you for your patience.
No, I did not have a desert epiphany and get singed by a Burning Bush, ascend to heaven on my steed, or assume a solitary perch atop a column to contemplate the world. (I did have a run-in with a scorpion on the back step, however. Contrary to Carl Stephenson's classic short story, "Leiningen Versus the Ants," in this case the skinny arachnid won, chasing me back indoors.)
The universe intervened, but not in such dramatic fashion. First, I contracted an enormous cold in Santa Monica that fully bloomed only after I landed in Tucson. What an irony, to be sneezing and snuffling in such a sunny place. Then, on leaving the airport, my G4 Powerbook took a tumble and ended up completely whacked. (I'm using a borrowed laptop, a PC [holding nose], to post this entry. It doesn't have Ecto on it and so is unfit for blogging.) Fortunately, I brought along my G3 Powerbook as a precaution. Once new memory for it arrives, giving it the semblance of a modern Mac, I'll share with you the first installment of what is turning out to be a complex and highly entertaining story of humankind, spirituality, soul food -- I mean, food for the soul, and experience. It's more than I bargained for.
In the meantime, my cold's gone, we've had our first seasonal lightning storm -- Tucson is the world's Lightning Capital! -- and I'm thinking seriously about exporting my experience-design practice and me to the Oresund region, where Denmark and Sweden are connected by the new Oresund Bridge. It's like Silicon Valley all over again, only with better food, real seasons, and an information economy at least a generation ahead of "Web 2.0": one based solely on innovation and creativity. Ah yes, and did I remark on the natural beauty of the inhabitants?
All this and more when the chips show up and I return. See you online...!
(Image: Weather Underground)
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May 15, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
My time at Esalen was richly spent, with new and inspiring experiences. One was life-changing.
(It's difficult to imagine how a “user experience” expert could have improved upon them.)
I'll report in full next week....
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May 4, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 I received the following email today from Jane McGonigal, the reigning Queen of In-the-World Game-Based Experiences, now Game Designer at the Institute for the Future. It describes “World Without Oil,” a new alternative-reality game that responds to a very real crisis in our world: Peak Oil, the eventual running out of petroleum in our lifetimes. Get ready for the crisis: follow Jane's instructions. You're in for an entertaining and educational, but excruciatingly real experience -- and one that unfortunately, in the future, will not be a game to play but the reality in which we live...
I have some exciting news: Earlier this week, World Without Oil launched. It’s the first alternate reality game to address a real-world problem: U.S. oil dependency. The official motto: “Play it – before you live it.” And you can play right now!
It takes literally less than 30 seconds to sign up as a game hero. I hope you’ll go sign up right now! Here’s the link.
(Signing up just gives you a unique identity in the alternate reality. It means the game will know who you are if you come back and play. Unlike other ARGs, the game won’t start emailing you or burying things in your backyard.)
Once you’re signed up, there’s lots of fun stuff to check out. The game launched on Monday, and already there are hundreds of player created documents to browse—-not to mention the official “backstory” created by the game’s puppet masters. The latest game updates include video footage of an underground car vandalism effort, instructions for how to throw fuel-free parties, and an eyebrow-raising transcript of the new Secretary of State’s address to the nation.
But most importantly – please take 1 minute today to sign up to play and help make this experimental game project a success!
More information about the project below; email me if you want to hear more.
Best,
Jane McGonigal
Resident Game Designer, Institute for the Future
www.avantgame.com
This press release explains the game:
First Alternate Reality Game To Confront A Major Social Issue: A Worldwide Oil Shock
All Web Users Invited to Witness the Oil Shock, Document Their Experiences, Apply Collective Imagination to Solve a Real World Problem
“Play it – before you live it!”
(San Francisco, CA)—Everyone knows that “someday” the world may face an oil shortage. What if that day was sooner than you thought? How would your life change? On Monday, April 30, ITVS Interactive and Independent Lens will launch WORLD WITHOUT OIL, a live interactive month-long alternate reality event to explore this very real possibility.
Produced by the design team at Writerguy, WORLD WITHOUT OIL is the first alternate reality game to enlist the Internet’s vast collective intelligence and imagination to confront and attempt to solve a real-world problem: what happens when a great economy built entirely on cheap oil begins to run short? This grassroots experience looks at the impact on people's lives—work, social, family and personal—and explores what happens when our thirst for oil begins to exceed supply.
“Alternate reality gaming is emerging as the way for the world to imagine and engineer a best-case-scenario future,” says WORLD WITHOUT OIL’s participation architect, noted futurist Jane McGonigal. “It’s been summed up this way: ‘If you want to change the future, play with it first.’”
Beginning April 30, the nerve center for the realistic oil crisis is at WorldWithoutOil.org, with links to citizen stories in blogs, videos, photos, audio and phone messages posted all over the Internet. At the grassroots website, people will learn the broad brushstrokes of the crisis, such as the current price of a gallon of gas or how widespread shortages are. Players will fill in the details, by creating Web documents that express their own perspectives from within the crisis.
“The ‘alternate reality’ of WORLD WITHOUT OIL is not fantasy, it’s a very real possibility,” says Writerguy Creative Director Ken Eklund. “And the game challenge is one of imagination. No one person or small group can hope to figure out the complex rippling effects of an oil shock, but the collective imagination can. And understanding it is a serious, positive step toward preventing it.”
People of any age or Web ability can participate in the game. Player communities are already forming to prepare for game launch, and pre-game play has started. Use these links:
WORLD WITHOUT OIL is produced by the Writerguy team, presented by ITVS Interactive (Independent Television Service), and funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. An Independent Lens Web-exclusive presentation (PBS), WORLD WITHOUT OIL is an ELECTRIC SHADOWS project (ITVS).
About the Game Creators
The Writerguy team includes some of alternate reality gaming's most experienced “puppetmasters” in addition to a Web producer, designer and outreach manager. Ken Eklund, Writerguy and creative director, has been working as a game writer and designer for 20 years. He is credited on over two dozen games as well as many Internet-based educational projects. Jane McGonigal, participation architect, is currently the resident game designer at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, CA. Previously she was a lead designer at 42 Entertainment, most notably for I Love Bees, an award-winning alternate reality game. In Fall 2006 MIT Technology Review named McGonigal one of the top 35 innovators changing the world through technology.
Electric Shadows and Independent Lens Web-Exclusives
Independent Lens presents interactive features throughout the series website and is proud to be a portal to Electric Shadows projects which feature the unflinching visions of independent media makers via the Web. These award-winning Web-originals invite visitors to interact through non-linear storytelling and social issue games created by independent media makers. Presented by Independent Lens and ITVS Interactive and funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Electric Shadows sites explore the arts, culture and society through innovative forms including nonlinear storytelling and interactive gameplay and meet the ITVS mission of giving voice to underserved communities. Since its inception in 2002, the initiative has funded six online projects. Electric Shadows projects have garnered a People’s Choice Webby Award, two SXSW Web Awards, highlighted as one of Time.com’s “50 Coolest Websites”, Yahoo! Picks, Cool Site of the Day and numerous other accolades. Explore the projects and learn more about Electric Shadows.
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May 2, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 The Third Information Design International Conference -- also known as the 2nd infoDesign Brasil conference -- will take place in Curitiba, Brazil, near Rio, October 8-10, 2007.
It's followed immediately by ivla 2007, the 39th International Visual Literacy Annual Conference, also in Curitiba, October 10-13, 2007. The conferences are separate, but collaborative arrangements have been made for those who attend both.
Their calls for papers have gone out. The Information Design Conference's call has been extended to Monday, May 14 (details here). ivla's window closed on April 30.
These will be this year's two major, relevant Latin American conferences, taking place in South America's (and possibly the Hemisphere's) most dynamic social and cultural milieu. Their respective themes are:
3rd Information Design International Conference
- Education: aspects and issues regarding the role of information design in education. Studies about information design programmes in higher education, educational material, methods and approaches for teaching and learning within an information design perspective
- History and theory: historical and/or theoretical approaches and contributions to information design. Researches on early information design and designers, proposals of taxonomies, frameworks and models
- Technology and society: aspects and issues of information design concerning the use of technology by individuals and/or its effects on society. Researches on topics such as human-computer interaction, hypermedia design, broadcasting design
- Information systems and communication: the effectiveness of information systems in communicating messages. Investigations on instructional design, wayfinding information, sign systems, graphic symbols, and forms design
ivla 2007
- Education, Teaching, and Learning
- Societal and Community Issues
- Cultural Influences, Impacts, and Considerations
- Historic Uses and Approaches
- Research, Theories, and Definitions
- Transformative Functions
- Future Trends and Directions
- Communication and Artistic Expression
- Ethical, Social, and Philosophical Concerns
Unlike designing for experience, which is a discipline still in formation, information design and the study of visual literacy have been around awhile. Their literatures and practices are solid. For practitioners and employers of practitioners, these two conferences offer a rare opportunity to acquire broad state-of-the-art knowledge. BTW, I'll be speaking at the Information Design Conference and attending ivla. And listening to bossa nova whenever I can.
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April 23, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 Professor Edward Castronova has announced Ludium II, a conference built around a game that will examine virtual worlds and possible policy responses. It's part of his continuing groundbreaking work at Indiana University's Synthetic Worlds Initiative.
According to Ed, the reigning sage of online-game economics and policy,
The consensus Platform will emerge from the game CONVENTION that has been designed specifically to help disparate groups of people come to common understandings. The game, designed by Studio Cypher LLC, puts conference attendees in the role of delegates to a political party convention whose objective is to hammer out a common platform. CONVENTION’s incentives will lead the group to a set of policy recommendations believed by most participants to be important, sensible, and feasible.
The rules of the game are available at http://arden.blogs.com/swn/2007/03/ludium_ii_annou.html.
What a great idea! After all, isn't all policymaking a game to win, in real as well as virtual worlds?
The Ludium II conference and game will take place June 22-23 at Indiana University. Registration starts today. For more information and to register, visit The Ludium II website.
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March 15, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 Despite the cellular industry's uninspiring (in fact, sickening) plan to saturate the mobile environment with advertising, hope lives eternal in the hearts of mobile experience designers that there is another way -- in fact, many other ways -- for the medium to develop.
Next week, the Mobile Nation international conference, hosted by the Mobile Digital Commons Network and the Canadian Design Research Network, will offer participants a chance to explore deeply the emerging field of mobile experience design. The conference theme is “Creating Methodologies for Mobile Platforms.”
Participants will share expertise with WiFi, Global Positioning System (GPS), Bluetooth, Radio Frequency ID tags, intelligent garments, ambient media applications, and geo-locative gaming. The conference features keynotes, live demonstrations and hands-on workshops.
It will take more than better platforms to avoid the advertising onslaught, but certainly, better platforms will make possible other uses of mobile technology other than those constrained by arbitrary, self-serving industry limits. And then truly creative design for the mobile experience can take place.
The event takes place at the Ontario College of Art & Design, 100 McCaul Street, in Toronto. The speakers and sessions are knockout. Highly recommended. (Nice website, by the way.)
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March 8, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
  Lest anyone's missed the news, CHI 2007 -- the annual conference of the ACM's Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group, SIGCHI for short -- will take place next month at San Jose University (California). It's a worthwhile event for those who make their livings studying and applying lessons learned about how people connect with technology (and vice versa).
SIGCHI has long been a mainstay for those interested in how computing and information technology generally have altered human experience. Throughout the 1990s, SIGCHI was poor cousin to the more glamorous SIGGRAPH, the SIG devoted to computer graphics and glitzy, entertainment/defense-driven conferences. But SIGCHI's finally come into its own with the recognition that UX (“user experience”) is a central and important factor in the success of online and device-driven environments. Just how important is indicated by CHI 2007's registration fees -- at this point in time, north of $1,000 (not including travel and accommodations) for everyone but students -- and its roster of A-tier corporate sponsors. I suspect that this and the full week required to attend all of the events, including tours of local interaction labs, may discourage many people from attending. But CHI 2007's roster of talks is fascinating, as always, and this is a great opportunity to recruit UX researchers and so forth to keep the wheels of digital commerce turning. Also, day registrations are available. So no doubt the halls will be full.
So which conferences will you attend this year? I count at least 25 that get my attention, with topics ranging from expo design to ethnography to digital technology to landscape architecture; even children's emotional development. If I had a cool $100,000 to invest in my education and edification -- for my readers' and clients' benefit, as well as my own -- where would I best put the money? I hope to read in your Comments good suggestions.
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February 19, 2007
Posted by Paula Thornton
 Leveraging the common model to combine a book with a discussion, Wikinomics claims to focus on how mass collaboration changes everything.
The thoughts framed by this concept were central to the discussions that went on at the recent FASTforward 07 event (which I'm already planning to attend next year). Conversations around the event and the thinking that went on, continue with high energy. Aside from the uniqueness of the event in the pre/post use of the blog which was seeded with some high-energy thinkers in the intranet / Enterprise 2.0 space, the event was unique in that although hosted by a vendor (and sponsored by several others), it was clearly an event to bring together bright minds and allow for deep conversations to go on around the topics and possibilities for this space -- such that the vendor(s) themselves can learn from the discussions as equal participants.
What was refreshing is that principles of Experience Design were front and center in the conversations. It was clearly a 'design thinking' sort of event.
One concept that came out of the discussions, which is reinforced by the Wikinomics artifacts, is that we need to embrace the power of the 'individual as a channel'. Major companies are thinking through new business models to both embrace and capitalize on this reality. Related discussions were quite heady.
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December 13, 2006
Posted by Bob Jacobson
Too few companies get customer experience right. “Customer experience” is a hidden component of experience design, how an organization -- governmental, commercial, or membership -- employs social processes, standards for employee interactions with customers and the like, to enhance and deepen relationships with its customers, constituents, or members. It's common these days for organizations to rely on market researchers, ethnographers, communication experts, and CRM (customer relationship management) technology to develop complex systems for improving the customer experience. But often, a simple phone call or email communication with a customer is more effective and easier to implement on a continuous basis. This simple method requires a motivated staff that knows its customers inside and out.
 But some companies do get it right. A case in point: Time Warner Cable (TWC). In this regard, in the past, large communication companies have been no one's favorites. The The phone companies', TV networks', and early cable TV operators' past poor management of customer experience -- a vice of which cellular phone companies are now most guilty -- has tainted the image of all communication providers. But my recent experience with TWC was definitely heartening.
My lovely city and hometown, Santa Monica -- now often referred to as “Hollywood West,” for all the media that's moved here in the last decade -- used to be served by Adelphia Cable, a company that provided high-quality service for its customers but not enough profits for its shareholders. (Its owners were convicted of various crimes having to do with financial mismanagement.) Adelphia declared bankruptcy. Recently, it was purchased by TWC. According to all accounts, the switchover strained TWC to the limit. The company did well alerting customers to the coming customer handoff, including telling us about future inspections to ensure proper infrastructure. It did less well, however -- in fact, it did terribly -- preparing us for outages and downtime associated with actual technology porting of its cable TV and Internet services. Also, the changeover of billing and service-order methods confused customers who had little or no warning about the changes. Lastly, the cantankerous but user-friendly Moxi boxes provided by Adelphia to cable TV viewers were swapped out for generic Motorola DVRs, with a loss of navigation and content on which Adelphia customers had become accustomed. All of these taken together resulted in a tidal wave of customer inquiries and complaints that even the City of Santa Monica's telecom officers were unable to staunch. The transitional staff's answer: voicemail and endless waits online, which added fuel to the blaze, not just here but in many cities where TWC was assuming ownership of cable TV systems.
Cherie and I were two among thousands of TWC's unhappy new Santa Monica customers, many of whom are media industry influentials. A new California law allows telephone companies to provide video service, and many of us, forgetting our past experiences with the phone companies, were seriously considering them as providers. Imagine customer service so bad that it made TWC's inept phone-industry competitors like AT&T (the former SBC) and Verizon (the former General Telephone) look good!
imagine my pleasure, then, at receiving a personal call from TWC's VP of Community Affairs, Patricia Fregoso-Cox. (The call was arranged by Kate Vernais in Santa Monica's City Manager's Office, to whom I personally complained.) A former Adelphia corporate officer, Patricia told me she was proud of the service Adelphia had maintained despite its stressed financial circumstances and alarmed at the state of affairs as TWC took over. Her answer wasn't to call in consultants. Instead, she seized the bull by the horns and start talking with city officials and their constituents about improving TWC's service in Santa Monica and Southern California generally -- not just the technical service, but the customer experience, too. Patricia told me about TWC's plans to cut response time on the phone and online, explain how the new system works, and even implement a new service that will replace the now-missing navigational assists that Moxi boxes formerly provided for cable TV viewers. Once having done that, it was time to engage technical staff in creating the necessary CRM.
Patricia was even open to discussing an idea I've had for a long time, since my days as a telecom analyst for the California Legislature: to use the company's cable TV and Internet assets to alert consumers of each when one or the other service was going down. An email to cable TV customers or a visual state-of-the-system on a cable TV channel and the TWC website, informing us of planned maintenance and outages, would go a long way toward dampening dischord among customers (now, almost all of us) who rely on their cable TV for entertainment and information, and their Internet service for conducting business. Patricia further referred a specific problem we were having to a task force empowered to deal with problems, all part of TWC's customer-experience learning process.
Everything's not fixed yet, but it's getting better. I suspect that most customers who now know the score, like me, will cut TWC some slack, even look forward to coming service improvements. Thanks, TWC and Patricia.
If you'd like to stay informed of developments in the customer experience arena, check out Karl Long's avant-garde blog on the subject, Experience Curve, and Mark Hurst's always thoughtful Good Experience.
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December 5, 2006
Posted by Bob Jacobson
The importance of information design (ID) as a discipline with much to loan other design disciplines -- especially those that deal with human-human and human-system communication -- was brought home to me by two events.
The first event is happening as I write: a passionate, even fierce conversation taking place online among the practitioners of information architecture (IA), a subset of ID that deals almost exclusively with Web design. (You can read a summary of the argument with numerous comments and links to other blogs on the IA website, Bokardo, “Thoughts on the Impending Death of Information Architecture.”) The IA practitioners tend to agree that the contours of that discipline, all wrapped up with computer interaction, are becoming confining, though they are at odds how to liberate themselves from these strictures: Change the name of the practice? Change the practice? Or give it up entirely for other pursuits?
For a decade, IA eclipsed ID, Web design being a lot more glamorous (and for a time, more lucrative) than designing mundane artifacts like signage or brochures (the ID legacy). Now ID is looking quite attractive as an overarching discipline absolutely relevant to IAs -- and other designers -- pushing the envelope of their professions.
 The second event was receiving an unexpected but welcome invitation from Carla Spinella, an editor of InfoDesign, the journal of the Brazilian Society of Information Design (SBDI) to attend and keynote the Third Information Design International Conference 2007 taking place next year in Curitiba, in the south of Brazil, October 11-13. I presume the invitation honors the contributors to a book I edited, Information Design (MIT Press 2000), who together described the applications of information design principles to fields as varied as exhibition design, the design of learning methodologies, architectural wayfinding, interaction design, book design, media design, and about a dozen others. Information Design sold out and went to a second printing on the basis of audience expectations as much as what it delivered. The Brazilian conference's broad themes -- education, science and technology, cultural effects, etc. -- demonstrate the pervasive influence of ID everywhere in the world.
Two other conferences with long-established traditions complete next year's official ID trilogy. (There are many smaller events, of course. See the excellent InfoDesign website and news digest for a calendar.):
 The Information Design Conference 2007 hosted by the Information Design Association in the UK takes place March 29-30, 2007, in Greenwich, London. “Our overall aim this year,” reports the IDA, the first national information design professional organization, “is to construct an eclectic event, particularly strong on interdisciplinary learning and practice. The purpose, as ever, is to share ideas about how to make information easier to understand, in such diverse fields as..
- Government and administration
- Healthcare and health promotion
- Technical instruction and user guides
- Reference and learning materials
- Transport information and wayfinding/showing
- Forms and transaction interfaces
- Financial and billing information
- Web and interface design
 The IIID Vision Plus 12 Symposium, taking place in Schwarzenberg, Austria, July 5-7, 2007, ”Information Design -- Achieving Measurable Results.“ It's hosted by the International Institute for Information Design. The theme for Vision Plus 12 is ”measurement“: how can we measure and quantify the impact and results of informational communication? This has become a hot topic both in business and academia, a daunting challenge. Vision Plus 12 will explore this controversial question from all sides:
- How and to what extent can we measure the success of a given work?
- How do we quantify the role and impact of intangibles like design?
- What techniques and technologies can be used to get measurable results?
- How are information designers building the necessary metrics into their projects?
The IIID, headquartered in Vienna, is a nonprofit organization partnered with several national ID organizations (in the US, the AIGA). It's also the the driving force behind initiatives to establish an Information Design University under the auspices of UNESCO (similar to the Experience Design Institute championed on this blog). The IIID ID Summer Academy, in the Cape Verde Islands, in August 2007, has as its purposes ” defining the requirements of branding, communication, and related vocational education, enhancing sustainable tourism at the Cape Verde Islands.“
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December 3, 2006
Posted by Bob Jacobson
Via the Experience Design newsgroup, I received the following invitation to the forthcoming Workshop on User Centered Design and International Development, scheduled to take place during CHI 2007 (the annual conference of the ACM special interest group on Computer-Human Interaction). Educated in part as a regional development planner, I found it interesting that interaction researchers and designers feel a need to become involved in international development, a field more commonly occupied by regional planners and economists, politicians, and an infinite number of think-tanks. I asked Susan Dray of Dray & Associates, one of the Workshop organizers who posted the announcement about this. She replied,
We used the term “user centered design” (rather than human centered design, also used in the field) because it is the most common moniker for the computer-human interactions (CHI) audience (and we first had to get the workshop accepted to the conference before inviting others to come.) That said, we think it’s the user-centered/human-centered process that is most critical – not only the interfaces, which are more the norm in the CHI community as the object of interest. Some people and projects do better at this than others in all spheres, from building technology to planning water projects in a village. Interestingly, the original title was “Participatory Design and International Developmen” – but in the CHI community, PD has a specific political meaning (developed by the workplace democracy folks in Scandinavia), so we decided to use the term UCD instead to avoid confusion.
Sounds good to me: I'm a fan of interdisciplinary design whenever it occurs, for any purpose -- especially one with a concrete, global benefit: equitable development.
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
User Centered Design and International Development
A workshop at CHI 2007
Saturday, April 28, 2007
San Jose, California USA
Background
Much work in international economic and community development emphasizes empowering host communities in designing and controlling development projects. Many development projects make use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) as part of their plan. However, there have been few explicit efforts to bring together the international economic and community development, user centered design (UCD) and interaction design communities to find ways of designing more appropriate and effective solutions that truly meet local needs. The aim of this workshop is to initiate such a dialogue.
Specifically, we hope to extend the boundaries of the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) by spurring a discussion on how existing UCD practices can be adapted and modified, and how new practices be developed, to deal with the unique challenges posed by the context of international community and economic development. We call this User Centered Design for Development or UCD4D.
This workshop will provide a space to exchange experiences, explore differences between developed and developing world contexts, to develop new partnerships, and to learn from each other about problems we have encountered, the solutions that we have proposed and ways of working that we have discovered.
Topics that we hope to cover in the workshop include:
- Experiences of interaction design in developing countries or with traditionally underserved populations in developed countries
- Uses and adaptations of participatory methods in economic and community development projects
- Cultural factors in designing for economic and community development
- Innovative techniques for engaging users in developing world contexts
- Examples of solutions that are sustainable in context
We also hope to use this workshop to begin to build an international community of engaged scholars and thoughtful practitioners who understand each other and who can bridge between disciplines and boundaries to create appropriate, effective and sustainable community development solutions.
Expected Outcome of the Workshop
Outcomes from the workshop will be reported in the MIT Press journal, Information Technology and International Development. In addition, based upon submissions and the review process we expect to publish a special issue of the journal on the workshop themes.
Funding
We anticipate obtaining limited funding to allow participation from those in soft-currency economies. If you need financial assistance to attend, please let us know.
More information
Click here for more information on the workshop. Or contact the organizers directly.
Participation
This workshop will be open to anyone with relevant experience or interest in UCD4D and/or ICTs in international economic and community development. To participate, please submit a 2 page position paper describing your experience, findings or interests relevant to the themes of the workshop. Participants will be chosen to represent a good cross section of communities and key themes. Papers should be submitted by email to Andy Dearden. Accepted papers will be posted on the workshop website.
Important dates
January 12th 2007: Submission deadline
February 1st 2007: Notification of acceptance
April 28th 2007: Workshop
Please note: As with all CHI workshops, at least one author of accepted papers needs to register for the Workshop and for one day of the conference itself.
Organizers
Andy Dearden - Sheffield Hallam University, UK
Michael Best - Georgia Tech, USA
Susan Dray - Dray & Associates, Inc., USA
Ann Light - Queen Mary University, UK.
John Thomas - IBM, USA
Celeste Buckhalter - Georgia Tech, USA
Daniel Greenblatt - Georgia Tech, USA
Shanks Krishnan - Georgia Tech, USA
Nithya Sambasivan - Georgia Tech, USA
__,_._,___
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November 25, 2006
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 BRC Imagination Arts, a paragon among visual and experiential exhibition designers, has announced the opening of a new attraction at Chicago's Adler Planetarium, “Shoot for the Moon.” It's a rich experience that showcases BRC's new slogan, “Showmanship Meets Scholarship”TM. BRC's press release describes “Shoot for the Moon,” which includes an interactive theater, interactive displays, galleries of videos and photography, and a collection of artifacts that illustrate “stories told through the firsthand experiences of Captain James A. Lovell, Jr., the Gemini and Apollo astronaut best known for the leadership role he played in transforming the Apollo 13 accident into one of the most successful missions of all time.” BRC describes this as one of its “experience museums,” a 21st-Century approach to presenting educational information.
 Separately, BRC announced that its founder, Bob Rogers, has been awarded the THEA Award for Lifetime Accomplishment by TEA, the non-profit, international organization representing the creators of compelling places and experiences. Rogers joins a remarkable group of previous Lifetime Achievement recipients, experience designers including Harrison “Buzz” Price (1994), the economic feasibility science inventor of the themed entertainment industry; Marty Sklar (1995), the creative head of Walt Disney Imagineering for a quarter century; John Hench (1998), Walt Disney Imagineer and master art director for 65 years; and Yves Pépin (2005), creator of world expositions, special events, and international event spectaculars including the Millennium firework celebration at the Eiffel Tower. (More about TEA in a future entry.)
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November 22, 2006
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, the American harvest festival, rich in traditions...and contradictions. Like most things in life.
Whether you're an American or not, I hope this season that you'll enjoy community, reflection, and liberties that are the American ideal, whatever the reality.
Over the long holiday weekend, I'll be blogging, blogging,and blogging. No. 1 among my pent-up entries:
“If experience design is such a hotbody, why is information design a truer love?”
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Bring in the crops.
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November 16, 2006
Blink ›
[Event] Forrester's Big Idea: Experience-Based Differentiation
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November 8, 2006
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 Americans awoke today to a changing of the guard in the US House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate, followed by the resignation of Iraqi war “strategist” and soon-to-be-former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. People of all political persuasions, here and abroad, are experiencing a sense of new possibilities: The Lifting of a Great Weight. Anxieties about the future haven't yet been assuaged, but the prevailing expectation of change is a pervasive psychological factor, one that may elude traditional market researchers. Experience designers would do well to factor it into their plans.
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November 7, 2006
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 The occasion of mid-term elections in the United States -- a fateful election on which many critical issues turn -- is a fit time to examine the experience of voting.
In California, where I live (and in most other American jurisdictions), elections always happen on the first Tuesday of November, a day hardly conducive to getting working people to the polls. (This election, fewer than 40 percent of eligible voters are expected to cast ballots.) Voting polls, our Shrines to Self-Rule, are tables and booths and boxes stuffed into schools, churches, social clubs, and shopping malls. There's always a big American flag out front, conveying civic sanctity to these otherwise mundane locations. Polls are staffed by volunteer workers, nice people, usually retirees; lightly trained, they may even be paid (though it's likely they're not). As an alternative to voting at the polls, a citizen can choose to submit an "absentee ballot" that's prepared at home and mailed to the County Clerk. Absentee ballots are convenient all right -- I've used them -- but they negate the collective esprit that voting at the polls instills. I guess it depends on how time-pressured or agoraphobic you are, which method of voting you choose. Or like a vast number of cynical or uncaring Americans, neither.
Why is voting such an ambiguous experience? Subjectively, it's lauded as the citizen's highest calling. Objectively, the process is generally taken for granted and underfunded, on top of which we now have to deal with the controversy surrounding expensive, unreliable, and insecure digital voting systems. For months, citizens have been bombarded with political ads, direct mail, and opinions learned and lame, in print and online. From that noise we're expected to distill wise (I hope) choices, little smudges on a ballot.
After all that effort, I'm left with contradictory feelings: “Mission Accomplished!” versus “Is that all there is, my friend?”
The electoral privilege/chore/complicity of voting is the iconic way in which political decisions supposedly are made in democracies. Sometimes they are, sometimes they're not. But standing before the God of Choice is always empowering -- and humbling. The poet Henry David Thore |
