“If you really don’t want to share….DONT PUT IT ON THE NET!”

I am not a technological determinist, but we are crazy if we don’t realize that there is a lot of pressure to put things on the Internet. And we can’t just blame people for being uninformed. People do it because they don’t feel like they have much of a choice due to the impending social pressures of being “on Facebook.” Of course they do have a choice, just like how we have a choice not to fill out every single field when we create one of our hundreds of profiles in the digital sphere. But there are a lot of people who happily fill out every single field, unknowingly giving away lots of information that they don’t have to, because that is what the interface is telling them that it wants. Of course we should try to inform ourselves about these things, but we can’t really expect every person to become “Facebook literate.”

Think back to filling out doctor’s forms when they used to be on paper. Their officialness and connection to our personal health told us that we should fill out every box and not skip anything. In remediating the fill-in-the-blank form onto the computer screen, many people still feel the same way when they are presented with things to fill out on profiles. I can’t tell you how many people I have seen fill out every field when they created a profile for Skype, MySpace, Facebook, etc. Sometimes they go back and eliminate things from the profile, paring it down because they wished they hadn’t included some of that information, but not everyone does this and sometimes it is too late anyway.

We should stop blaming people for being “stupid enough to put things on the Internet that they don’t want known” and acknowledge the role that the design of the interaction itself plays in this. We have finally gotten away from interactions that force people to provide information by at least allowing people to opt out (even if this is still poorly done with an asterisk or a buried drop-down menu somewhere). However, interactions as simple as filling out fields in profiles or engaging with a variety of interactions on Facebook are still telling people that they should provide the information. As designers it is our responsibility to critique and question this status quo – and stop assuming that filling that database with as much discreet information as possible is in some way adding value to how people experience technology.

Ultimately, the profile fill-in-the-blanks is just one example out of many where we blame users for making bad decisions, when the design itself was telling them that it was ok to do so. It is like putting an “OPEN” sign on a locked door, and then blaming the person after they bumped into it when it didn’t open.

It has taken me a long time to figure out what I think about Facebook, and I have read enough articles to make me yearn for a nice 20-page End User License Agreement. In this post I will respond to the Schrage article from my perspective as a human-centered designer, in the hopes of shining a light on why Facebook never seems to get it right.

For many people, Facebook represents the way they define their lives, and I mean that to be as profound as it sounds. Because of this, Facebook should seek to cultivate a better understanding of society and culture – Facebook as a social space in 2010 is a far cry from its origins in 2003′s Facemash. I may be wrong, but it seems that Facebook understands people and culture with all the nuance of a 19 year-old Mark Zuckerberg illegally accessing student information and photos in order to evaluate students based on if they were “good-looking.”

I don’t mean to suggest that Mark or Facebook haven’t matured since then, but I do think that Schrage’s response conveys a Facebook that doesn’t acknowledge its social and civic responsibility. It is absolutely true that Facebook has created a social space that adds a lot of value to people lives, but it is clear that the service and company still have a lot of growing up to do. One might make the case that Facebook has no responsibility to “do the right thing,” however that is not the message that Schrage delivered. Not to mention that a non-attempt to do the “right thing” is essentially a conscious choice to do the wrong thing.

I think the first step is to stop assuming so many things about people based on “user data” and “user activity.” It is good that they care about their users, but they seem to only see them as “users of Facebook” instead of individual people. No amount of digital data in the world will tell you why someone “liked” something, it will only tell you that they clicked a button. No amount of options, drop-down menus, or “Facebook Site Governance Pages” will provide the transparency and user-centeredness that Schrage claims to have.

Here are a few suggestions that I think would work, although this is hardly an all-encompassing solution. They should 1) bring in some designers who are trained in real empathic research methods (not just developers and graphic designers), 2) allow them to carry out qualitative and quantitative research about users, culture, and society, and 3) actually incorporate the findings about what people as a culture (not just users) care about into a long-term plan to make Facebook a social space that enhances our lives instead of complicating them.

“If you consider Human Computer Interaction Design to be “designing the relationship between humans and technology, then to do it well you need nothing less than an understanding of the depths and expanses of the human condition, and the ability to work in situations of co-creation. To understand the human condition you need to understand experience, language, culture, and emotion. To understand co-creation you have to understand how to enable, educate, and empower others to design.”

“When attempting to teach someone something new, it is better to say “We aren’t here to change you, but to challenge you.”

“The principles of design thinking are the keys to organizations solving problems that arise from disruptions.”

Interaction Design is about:

• thinking critically
• making something from nothing
• getting stakeholders to evaluate their own risks and goals
• focusing on people, understanding them while you navigate the process and learn how to listen
• knowing your process, making it transparent, and creating a situation in which everyone takes part
• designing for the user to promote inward-facing dialog in the organization

Here are 3 different levels of what human-centered design could mean, each of which is important:

• looking to the user for inspiration of design instead of the technology
• looking to the user for the evaluation of good design, usability, and “rightness”
• cultural theory and cultural critique methods to “humanize” the process

“HCI/d relies on understanding people. You can’t design or do anything of value unless you understand people first. Get the right design before you get the design right.”

That was actually quite enlightening for me to put all that here. I think I actually synthesized a bit for myself. And I got some Twitter fodder.

It also seems to me that speaking of design as a shaper of behavior or rhetoric puts the emphasis on the wrong place for most practical industrial or interaction design work. I guess I align more with Christopher Alexander’s approach in Notes on the Synthesis of Form and A Timeless Way of Building–that what we design should fit, not so much change or shape, the way people already behave or want to behave, and it should only be rhetorical if put to ends that align with the good of those being designed for.

Thank you J. Ambrose Little.  People come first.  Our values as designers will undoubtedly manifest themselves in our work, but we design things, not behavior.  We can only design for behavior.  Now I gotta go read Jon’s book.

In making my thoughts and assumptions explicit, I have very strong opinions about how World of Warcraft favors certain playstyles over others.  I feel that the design and “loudest” player groups have created a game culture that favors ambition, aggressiveness, and a focus on certain achievements over others.  (Warning: The following sentence might be highly subjective or half-baked).  High level or “epic/elite” activities, raiding, or player vs. player are seen as “better” than any-level activities like exploration, pet collection, or crafting.  While these any-level activities are not seen as unimportant, they don’t have near the prestige of the other activities, and are often treated as a means to an end.

After my first attempt at doing a semiotic reading of the FigurePrints service, I have a vague sense of a thesis.  This is something along the lines of: The FigurePrints interaction favors dominant, aggressive, and high-level players over players that are low-level or less concerned with aggressive or competitive play.

I begin with a statement about what the figure itself represents.  It is a text that represents the player’s time investment, their attachment to the character and the character’s place in the history of the game lore, the character’s (and player’s) growth over time, the character (and player’s) growth in a larger social context of friends and other players in the game, and on and on.  It is a text of rich and personal meaning, and the choices that FigurePrints provides limit players to only certain kinds of meaning.  I will illustrate this with a syntagmatic and paradigmatic analysis of the choices provided to players in the creation of the figure.

Syntagmatically-speaking, the creation of the FigurePrints statue consists of choosing from a Pose, a Base, and a set of Armor.

I think I need to explore the importance of limiting players to these 3 choices, but as of yet I haven’t analyzed it that much.  However, I currently can adequately speak about what each of these paradigms represent and what choices are given.

Pose as a representation of body language

Players can choose from 44 different poses, 33 of which involve the use of a weapon and depict the character in battle.  This leaves 11 poses that could reflect the character out of battle.  Of these 11 poses, 5 are gestures that depict behavior that is aggressive or negative in the culture of World of Warcraft.  There are the character poses of yell, chicken (taunt), rude (making an obscene gesture), train (a gesture that represents a despised activity in which a player or players, on purpose or on accident, lead a large group of monsters to another player resulting in chaos, game lag, and death), and beg (perhaps an even more despised behavior than a monster train).

The remaining 6 poses are stand, walk, wave, kiss, kneel, and sit.  Out of 44 possible representations of body language, this seems to be a very limited range of choices for creating a character figure that is NOT fighting or calling attention to the negative cultural aspects of the game.  Granted, the game is called World of WARcraft, not the World of Politeness and Compromise.  However, there is much more to a player’s character and gameplay than fighting.  Players engage in arguably more social/helpful scenarios than they do in fighting, and they collect plants, mine for metals, go fishing, craft items, and engage with storylines.  But there are no poses for any of these.

Base as a representation of [something]. < I don’t know what to put here yet.  It is a symbol of elevated status, of standing on top of something, of being built upon something.  I don’t know.  Anyway:

There are 4 choices of statue bases:

Marbled Floor: The “plainest” of all the bases, but represents a material of luxury and importance.

Horned Stand: Horns are aggressive, bestial, and associated with violence

Gold Mound: wealth, greed, achievement

Onyxia Base: This one is interesting in that it cost an extra $10, perhaps due to printing constraints.  However, more cost is usually associated with a “premium” or “superior” product, which in this case is the base that represents a large, epic battle against a dragon.  This particular battle is a well-known (relatively-speaking) raid in World of Warcraft, and is sort of a rite of passage for players that begin raiding.  Here the “premium” product is reserved for players concerned with raiding.

What is missing from this assortment of bases is the choice to have your character standing in a meadow, or at a crafting station, or near a fishing hole, all of which are places that exist in the game and can have very special meanings for players.

Armor as a representation of fashion and achievement

Choices of armor are limited to the armor you have actually collected in the game.  In the analysis I did, a level 80 character that has done many raids and player vs. player fights has 10 armor options as opposed to a level 20 character who has 3.  Additionally, 2 of these options are for Christmas outfits that every player has access to.  If you remove those options the armor choices are 8 to 1 in favor of the player that engages with game activities that reward players with special armor.

As I mentioned before, there are an incredible amount of activities that players can engage with.  Players can follow the storyline, harvest materials, craft items, play the stock-market on the auction house, explore the game world, collect pets, teach other players how to play, help out other players with difficult situations, make new friends, and on and on.  However, these activities in themselves are not rewarded with special sets of armor.  Special sets of armor are reserved for players that engage with high-level game content, and are successful in killing “epic” monsters, or defeating other players in tournaments.

Since FigurePrints only allows players to “dress” their character in the armor they have acquired in the game, this places a much higher value on high-level players concerned with raids and player vs. player activities.  This is most evident in the words used in the instructions:

These are the instructions shown to all players, regardless of if they have 8 sets of high-level armor to choose from or 1 low-level set of armor.

Any player without high-level armor could be described as either not interested in those aspects of the game that provide the armor, or as not “advanced” enough to have acquired it.  By not providing this player with as many options to “dress” the character, the player is limited in the ways he or she can create a meaningful representation of his or her character.

FigurePrints situated amongst other texts

And then I can also talk about FigurePrints as a creative activity concerned with creating an artifact that represents the player’s character.  In seeing FigurePrints as this, I can compare it to many other artifacts that are created to represent the character:  costumes, drawings, forum signatures, fan fiction, and the WoW Armory just to name a few.  In exploring these artifacts, I have seen an interesting occurrence: artifacts that are created from scratch by players have very different qualities than artifacts that are generated using information from the game.

Some future design implications?

Namely, game-generated artifacts seem to focus on achievements, statistics, armor, and items.  Player-generated artifacts seem to focus on personal stories and social elements.  Some of this is discussed by Silvia Lindtner, Bonnie Nardi, and Fernanda Viégas.  This will be more important in the future as representations based on digital data become a source for decision-making.  If social spaces like World of Warcraft use their digital data to reduce the rich experience down to statistics and equipment, what implications does that have for the ways in which we value others and ourselves?
EDIT: January 4, 2010.  Since first posting this, I have developed these thoughts more and have written several drafts of this paper.  It is currently a work in progress.

I tend to think of incentives as “the path of least resistance,” and these incentives are key when thinking about design, especially the design of sustainable systems. I will use an example from my own life: recycling.

I want to recycle everything. However, I don’t consider myself to be a “green” person, and I am not really motivated out of guilt or because I want to save the planet. I want to recycle because it makes sense. I tend to be motivated by logic and waste isn’t logical to me. However I am also motivated by efficiency, the same as many people in American culture these days.

But the apartments I live in don’t have recycling bins anywhere. If I want to recycle, I have to separate all my trash in my apartment. I don’t have a vehicle, so my options are to get a friend to let me pile up all my garbage in their car and take it to the recycling center across town. With this system in place, there is no incentive (path of least resistance) for me to recycle.

Conversely, when I am at school I recycle every can and every piece of paper because there are recycling bins everywhere. Since I find it illogical to not recycle, the path of least resistance at school is to recycle. The recycling bin is located right next to the trash. There is no reason why I wouldn’t recycle it.

Then back at home everything goes into the garbage. This is because there is no incentive for me to go through all the trouble to recycle outside of my own altruism. And sadly altruism is not the best incentive for most people.

I feel that design for sustainable systems suffers from not understanding this. Many projects and ideas that I have been presented with since I have been studying human-computer interaction design have focused on raising awareness. The assumption is that if we design systems that make the amount of waste visible, people will be more aware and will waste less. While this will certainly make a difference, it is not the answer that is going to help change an inherently wasteful culture.

For certain the tone in our culture is shifting, and being “un-green” will exude a poor public image. Perhaps there will come a time when being seen as “un-green” will carry such a bad connotation that the path of least resistance is to do the eco-friendly thing. But we aren’t there yet. That is why we need to understand that for most people, the path of least resistance is to toss everything in the trash.

Maybe we could focus on changing the system based on incentives. My current system has no incentive for me to recycle, and I actually want to. This could be solved by any number of recycling programs (bins, more recycling centers, recycling pickup, etc.), and eventually they will be implemented. When thought of from the point of incentives, or the path of least resistance, there is no way I can be expected to recycle within my current system. The same could be said for many others within many other systems, and a deeper understanding and appreciation of incentives may be key to designing better systems in the future.

From a truly human-centered design perspective, that is, taking core human values into consideration when designing and implementing technology, MMORPGs have many great things to offer. I will give an example from my own experiences to elaborate on some of them.

My example is from back when I was playing Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. I ended up in an awesome guild with some great players and great leadership. I had been in guilds in other games such as Star Wars Galaxies and Final Fantasy XI, but it wasn’t until Vanguard that I got into one with exceptional organization and leadership. After about a month of playing with my guild, getting to know them using Ventrilo chat software and doing a bunch of quests, I found out one of the leaders of the guild was disabled and was confined to a wheelchair and could not work.

It became immediately apparent to me how valuable MMORPGs can be. It wasn’t just some silly computer game that I could play to entertain myself. It was a wonderful example of how technology can bridge gaps and imbue life with meaning for some people. This woman whose disability prevented her from working or going out was able to organize events and help out other players who couldn’t put in as much time in the game as she could. The game took on a new meaning for me when I learned about her disability. Whenever I couldn’t play I knew that she would be playing, organizing events for our guild, doing quests, crafting items for us, and doing many more things to make the game more enjoyable for our guild. And when I logged on I knew she would be there waiting to help out.

I hope the point of that story is an obvious one. It may not be “PC” to say this, but it is not a secret that so-called “nerds” or people that are disabled, crippled, or handicapped can have difficulties making friends and interacting in diverse social circles. I can honestly say that I probably would not have been friends with my guild leader in real life. It is sad, but it is the truth. And she might have been too nervous or self-conscious to try talking with me on the street. MMORPGs are not simply mindless fun, but can serve social and cultural needs as well. (Also economic if you count the people that sell MMORPG currency,) While sometimes it may seem that technology has dehumanized us and stripped away human-to-human interaction, some technologies are making great strides toward bridging communication gaps by evening the playing field and giving roles and opportunities to the underrepresented.

I will continue to write on this topic as I continue my studies.

It is my hope that the field of HCI can take some cues from video games to build more enjoyable and meaningful interactions. My story is just one example of why I think this is true.

Take for example a “user experience” (UX) design team creating new machines and software for bank tellers. A user-centered approach would do task-flow analysis, maybe participatory design, and various other design methods. Then it would be on to the prototyping and usability testing with the users. The design team does a terrific job and the new system makes the bank tellers more efficient and the bank cuts down on errors, saving the bank tons of cash.

However, settling for this user-centered approach is shortsighted and is just a piece of what good HCI designers can potentially offer. If we take the broader view of experience and human-centered design, then we could make those bank tellers jobs more meaningful, or create valuable experiences for the workers and for the bank’s customers. The bank teller will give a good potion of his or her life to that job. If a bank teller has to spend 40+ hours a week at the bank and 5-10 more hours commuting and getting ready for the job, then it is the designer’s duty to design more than just efficiencies. The designer’s responsibility is to improve quality of life by improving the quality of the work experience.

User-centered vs. Human-centered:

User-centered design is just what it implies: designing for a user. There has been much debate about the word “user” and if it is even the appropriate word for us to be using. However I can make my point without having to go deep into that argument, and offer up a simplified definition here. It seems to me that the word “user” tends to define people as a part of the system instead of as the reason for the system. If people are merely part of the system then they might not receive the appropriate amount of attention in comparison to the technology. The problem here is that “users” end up serving as justification and measuring tools in the design process.

To me, human-centered differs from user-centered in that it takes a broader view of the design of technology. We don’t just “use” technology. We live with technology, experience it, love it, and hate it. In the past few years the world has changed substantially due to the introduction of new technology and cultures can be transformed almost overnight. Designers of technology wield considerable power that I feel is not completely understood. In the words of Peter Parker’s uncle, “With great power come great responsibility.” In the broad view, the “user-base” that I am designing for, my “demographic” is the population of planet Earth. I owe it to that population to apply ethics and morality to my design decisions. That is what “human-centered design” means to me.

I feel that buying into the “my OS can beat up your OS” mentality hurts everyone. Instead of critiquing a piece of technology on its individual merits and shortcomings, we now must choose sides in order to function or converse in the technological world. Thanks greatly to Apple’s successful marketing, we have reduced our technology down to political alignment. To me this is scary stuff. It is exactly what politicians do in order to make voters forget about their shortcomings, and instead focus on identifying with a set of values. The image and branding of Apple and Microsoft have become more crucial to the success of the technology than its actual usefulness, usability, and accessibility. This is why politics never changes, and if technology continues to adopt this philosophy I fear it will stifle creativity.

This leads me to my second point, which is that the OS-Battle Royale prevents us from asking the simple questions. Why do we have to choose an OS? Why does my machine need an OS? Why should I care about this OS? Or for many computer users, what the hell is an OS? Surely, from a programming or engineering perspective these questions sound nearly sacrilegious. But why? If we want to be truly human-centered then why should anyone care at all what an OS is, who made it, or what values they might convey by choosing one over another? We should be trying to figure out what is wrong with all OS’s, not picking and choosing the most tolerable. If we only critique based on comparison we are blinded to what could be possible outside the confines of the argument.

The third point is that most technological conversation is saturated with condescension against anyone without the appropriate disclaimer and use of techno-jargon. People who wish to state their opinion must include some statement about their experience with all the OS’s in various situations in order to legitimize their opinions. Then they must speak the appropriate language If they don’t want to get sidelined or flamed for not being “computer-literate” enough.

This is wrong. It is that type of thinking that Alan Cooper addresses in his book The Inmates Are Running the Asylum. Our technology is not as good as it could be because the only opinions that get heard or taken seriously are the opinions given by “experts.” In this instance “experts” are those that are “tech-savvy,” “computer-literate,” and the like. This leaves out the older generation or anyone else that doesn’t want to spend their lives learning techno-speak, even though their opinion of technology is of equal value.

I pose this question: Who is more of an expert about whether something is usable, or more importantly useful, than the person using it? I don’t care if that someone explains their opinion in jargon, plain English, or pictures drawn in crayon. Anyone, no matter their amount of experience or grasp of technology acronyms and language, is an expert when it comes to their own individual experience. It is my job as a designer to develop the skills and aptitude to understand that experience and make it better. This is what being human-centered is all about.