We have been partner of various TEDx programmes for many years. This year, we sponsored TEDx events in Bern, Fribourg and are about to go to Geneva. TEDx is a forum for ‘ideas worth spreading’. It consists of self-organised events in various cities. As part of last year’s ‘Destination Tomorrow’ TEDx event at HSG in St. Gallen, we wanted to show how innovation and digitalisation could be combined.
The wish tree
We worked on visions of the future with around 400 participants across seven lecture halls at HSG. The focal point of the event was our wish tree. A wish tree is a living tree, either indoors or outdoors, onto which wishes are hung. The wishes symbolically grow towards the sky with the tree, and so are incorporated into the greater whole. Participants at the event could write down one or more wishes and attach them to our wish tree. There was the possibility to send us the wishes online too: https://makeawish.liip.ch/ We looked through all the wishes, and were astonished by what we found!

Young people wished for world peace and sustainability – and a relationship.

The majority of the wishes were about the well-being of humans and nature. ‘World peace’ and ‘green technologies for all’ made an appearance. Most young people and participants wished for a more peaceful world and for sustainability. We thought this was remarkable! Of course, there were also personal wishes such as successfully completing a university degree, which is of course perfectly OK. One wish particularly caught our eye: ‘I wish for a girlfriend’. He hung his number on the wish tree. Hats off for audacity! Although we could not couple him up, we gave him a cool present for his pluckiness.

Outlook for TEDx events

There are will be more TEDx events for us to come in 2019. The wishes collected at the TEDx in St. Gallen touched us, so we are making another wish tree in Geneva. This will follow the same concept but be in a different format. Do French-speaking Swiss people have different wishes? We will find out on 7 November. Les Jours qui viennent – TEDx Geneva. We are once again organising a Liip bar. Meet us there! Or send us your wish online: https://makeawish.liip.ch/

Getting the chance to start from scratch designing a new and effective service, together with a team is something I like best in my job as Service Designer at Liip. Immersing myself in customers’ needs, developing great new ideas, making them tangible with prototypes and getting stimulating feedbacks. These parts are definitely the most inspiring and fun of service design projects.

But the delivery can be a really hard landing.

When working on service design projects, we break open existing silos. We align all the different parts involved in the service to create a better and more efficient service experience. For the delivery of the new service, that can also entail a high degree of complexity. In addition to the hard work of developing concrete solutions, we also have to deal with other challenges. For example, changing the habits and behavior of people or clarifying organizational uncertainties. The search for the right decision-makers and sponsors between the different parts of the company and technical restrictions as further examples. After the thrill of the first creative phases, delivery can mean a really hard landing.

Combining service design with agile methods helps facing the challenges of delivering.

Having worked in both Service Designer and Scrum Master roles in recent years, I tried several ways of combining Service Design with Scrum. My goal is to combine the best of the two ways of working to make this hard landing a little softer. Here are 6 learnings that proved to be very helpful:

1. Use epics and user stories to split the service into more “digestible” pieces.

Everyone probably knows the feeling of not seeing the wood for the trees when you’re standing in front of a wall full of sketches and stickies with ideas. Then it’s very helpful to create a list of epics. In the Scrum world, epics are “a large body of work that can be broken down into a number of smaller stories” (see Atlassian). In Service Design, epics can help dividing the entire service into smaller pieces. This reduces complexity, and allows dealing within specific and limited challenges of a single epic, rather than the whole. Also, the ability to clarify one epic gives good clues where to start with this big mountain of work.

2. Use the service blueprint as the master to create the backlog.

In software projects we often use user story maps to create epics and user stories. In service design projects, the service blueprint is a very powerful alternative to do user story mapping. Service blueprints help mapping and defining all aspects of the future service - from the targeted experience to internal processes, systems, people, tools, etc involved. This contains a lot of useful information for user stories e.g.

• The actors involved, eg. the different types of users (as personas), different staff people, systems, tools, etc.
• The required functions, as each step of a service blueprint usually contains a number of functions that will be written in the different user stories.
• The purpose of the function, as you can read from each part of the blueprint what is triggered by this step.

After a first version of the user story backlog is created, you can reassign the user stories to the service blueprint. Mapping all the written stories to the blueprint is also great to determine if some user stories have been forgotten. This helps a lot to have a better overview of what to do and how it affects the service experience in the end.

3. Do technical spikes in an early stage of the project in order to make your service more feasible.

If the service contains digital parts, it’s highly recommended to face the technical crack nuts in the project as soon as possible. Scrum provides us with the so called technical spikes - a great chance to dive deeper into different possibilities of solving technical issues of the new service. Strictly timeboxed, they allow developers to explore different technical solutions and suggest the one that fits best. Furthermore the team can discuss the consequences and adapt the service. In order to still create a great experience but also find a feasible way of delivering it.

4. Estimate the business value of the different aspects of the service.

In Scrum, we use business value poker to prioritize user stories. A business value is a relative comparison of the value of different user stories. It helps to prioritize the delivery and to show where the most time and money needs to be invested. This process is also very healthy (and tough!) for service ideas. Knowing how much value each part of the service brings to the whole service vision is very valuable and allows the team focus on what really matters.

You can also do business value poker in combination with an adaption of the six thinking hats method, e.g. one of the team estimates the business value in the hat of the user, one in the hat of the top manager interested in return on investment, and one in the hat of the staff member interested in delivering a service experience that doesn’t mean additional work.

5. Deliver a “Minimum Viable Service” (MVS) before taking care of the rest.

Once we have the user story backlog rooted in the service blueprint and we know which story brings most value to our service vision, we start step by step to deliver the service. In agile software projects, the team starts by producing the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Which means, delivering the smallest amount of features necessary in order to create a valuable, reduced product to users. For services, we are doing the same - creating a “Minimum Viable Service” (MVS). This allows the team developing a first basic version of the service in a short time to market. Delivering results in a early stage of the project is not only motivating the team but also allows continuous learning, adapting and evolving of the service.

6. Work in cross functional, self organised and fully empowered teams.

Scrum teams are self organised and include all skills needed. Without having a hierarchy based system. In a service design setting, many different fields of a company are involved and it’s hard to specify decision makers and people responsible. But that’s the key. Including each and every stakeholder of a whole service in the project is never ending and rarely contributing. Therefore dedicate a small and powerful team of experts involved, give them the full competence to decide and to organise themselves but also the responsibility to deliver value.

Scrum provides great ways to deliver complex service projects.

This blogpost highlights a few aspects of how we manage the challenges of delivering a complex service project. By combining service design with scrum - from the the tools and artifacts to the mindset and the way how teams work together.

Yet, also when following all these aspects, delivering a complex service remains a hard piece of work. But definitely an easier one to handle with the structured and well working delivery methods to bring our ideas to life. Step by step - sprint by sprint.

We have the ambition to create a tool that provides micro-learning to train cognitive biaises. Today we have a prototype. Last spring, we had only a vision to lead us. As told in a previous post, one of my colleague detected a need in an industry and an opportunity for us to create a new tool. He gathered a small team and invited us for a kickoff meeting. We were all motivated. How could we proceed?

During the kickoff, we jolted ideas around, and used sticky notes to draw the project. It was important that we all had a common understanding of the tool we wanted to create. This kickoff meeting was also the moment when we created a team spirit and built personal commitment.

Ownership, responsibility and role

As motivated as I was to play my part, I needed to understand how I could contribute to the project and how much time it would involve. We started by writing down the outputs we expected from the meeting. The expectations were various.

Our expectations for the kickoff meeting

Kevin expected us to take ownership. The initial idea came to him and he wrote a paper about it. He expected us to work as a team and take ownership. This is what he means by ‘Co-sign Whitepaper'.

To me ownership meant responsibility. The moment I commit to a project means that I stop saying ‘Kevin's idea' or ‘Kevin decided' or ‘Kevin meant'. I start saying ‘we think', ‘we decided'. It also means that I committed myself to play my part, make time to work on the project.

I needed to understand, the role that I would play, in other words how, with my competences I would contribute to the project. This is expressed as ‘Where do I position myself?' From the beginning we are a multidisciplinary team. We have learnt to contribute with our respective skills. Understanding my role leads to better planning. If I understand my tasks and how I relate to the other team members, I can organise my agenda and be available when I am needed.

During this meeting we also decided how we would communicate about the project to our stakeholders', which at this point, were internal. We finally defined the next steps and decided the content of the next workshop.

Map the idea – understanding with drawing

We were sitting down, listening to Kevin. Sitting around a table is so limiting! Ideas cannot express themselves, they keep eluding and the energy slowly runs low. We couldn't see what Kevin was explaining. After a moment of deep concentration, I tend to relax a bit, which means that I am not being this concentrated. At some point, we were all running low on energy. Thus we started drawing.

White walls are a blessing. Someone starts drawing and you can add up your idea, then everyone can see and add his/hers.

It started with a sketch, and step by step it became like a map. A map of the idea, where we could navigate, see the stakeholders, start apprehending who we needed to talk to, what we needed to understand, what remains unclear, what is our role, our strengths and weaknesses.

Let your team take ownership by drawing together the idea.

It very much looks like this: drawing, talking and gesturing. When you stand, the flow of ideas wraps you up and before you realize it, you are ‘in it', you take ownership and you belong. You stand and draw together. It has nothing to do with sitting and looking at someone talking, you are part of it.

Our drawing got more complex while our understanding of the situation got clearer.

Be kind to your blue side and deal with uncertainties

Have you ever heard of the DISC assessment? That test attributes colors to people after a test. I never took it myself, but I often heard some friends refer jokingly to it. When they refer to the ‘blue colleague', they talk about his preciseness, attention to detail and his capacity to be systematic. As I started this project, I realised that part of me, that I will call my ‘blue side' backed off, because it was unconvinced. My blue part tends to refrain the overly enthusiastic and risky part (I don't know the color of this side yet ;-)

In other words, during this meeting, my blue side realized that there is a huge part of unknown in this project. When you start an innovation project, you have to be aware of the fact that some uncertainty and risk will always be present. During my studies and work life, I have been trained to try to avoid mistakes and evaluate risk. I usually try to have a fairly good idea of the success I expect  from my actions before I perform them. Starting an innovation process is the contrary of this. It is jumping in the unknown and imagining something that does not exist… yet. You need to be open-minded and accept the risk and unknown.

To conclude: we mapped the project and I accepted the probability to fail

It was time for me to accept that mistakes are part of the game and to come to terms with the probability of failing. An innovation process is made of ups and downs, test, success, mistakes and iteration. The risk is part of the game.

During this first meeting, we mapped the project and the stakeholders It gave us the necessary common grounds to start working together. To draw the project allowed us to clearly see the expertise we needed. We planned the next steps and organized the first workshop where we would invite other experts. The project had officially started.

How to be open to innovation?

You have to be open to new challenges, which is difficult even close to impossible if you are stressed out or under tight deadlines for example. During my first year at Liip (2016), I undertook many projects that had started before I had arrived. As a result, I had little time for planning or strategies, I undertook what was already started. During this first year, everything was new, I was in the turmoil of an event, or in a middle of a project, my whole energy was focused on current tasks.

Before Christmas 2016, my knowledge of the enterprise and the field had exponentially expanded. It allowed me to grasp the necessary bigger picture of my enterprise's needs and challenges. Simultaneously, many projects came to an end, as a result, I was not under tight deadlines. In other words, I was open to new challenges and ideas. I had cognitive capacity to take on new challenges. When Kevin, a colleague I barely knew, approached me, I welcomed his project with an open mind.

Sorry, we have no time to innovate!

An idea that takes 30 minutes to explain but a clear call to action

I do not recall the exact situation of our first actual discussion. We were probably in the open space we call arena. He most probably caught me on my way to the cafeteria.

Note to self: grab people when on their way to the cafeteria, when they are neither in a hurry for a meeting, nor in deep concentration.

Sorry Kevin, the first time you explained I did not understand your idea. It took about 30 minutes of explanation for me to understand that it was about learning, innovation, banking and compliance. It probably did not help that I had no prior knowledge of these fields.

At this point, what Kevin expected was clear ‘come to a workshop'. As I had no urgent deadlines at the time, I accepted. I assumed that I would understand the idea at the some point.

The importance of the team and the setting

At Liip, we have the possibility to undertake innovation projects when we see a business opportunity. Nothing forces us to join or undertake one. I could have decided to perform other tasks that I saw more fitting

Why did I accept to join the workshop? Three important factors simultaneously played a role there:

• Firstly, I had an open mind, I was cognitively open to something new.
• The second thing that convinced me then was Kevin's enthusiasm: he had a vision and he convinced me. I saw potential in this project.
• Thirdly, I felt valued and trusted that my competences were needed. Honestly, this is flattering and energizing. Who is not appealed to have the possibility to make an impact?

Additionnally, I also not only got along, but liked the other colleagues invited to the workshop. In such an innovation process, trust and kindness are necessary. The team is meant to go through uncertainties. Though the vision is clear, the way to reach it is not. The composition of the team is important and this fact should not be underestimated.

Note to self: notice the importance of a vision in the very first step of an innovation project. Someone has to have an idea, and has to be able to share this vision with others to onboard them.

The next steps: the initial workshop

As planned by Kevin, the next step was to organise a workshop, where we would meet and test the idea. I expect it was a vulnerable moment for him. As long as you think something for yourself and plan it in your head, it is all fine. The day you open your mouth, it is for the worse or the better. After this workshop we could have all backed off and turned to other projects. It was a turning point.

To conclude, you guessed already?

It turned out well for Kevin's idea, in the sense that we shared his enthusiasm and we saw business potential in his idea. In other words, the story was just starting. At this very early stage of the innovation process, my ability to be open-minded to something completely new and the fact that we saw business potential in the idea mattered most . The fact that Liip provides an environnement prone to innovation is also highly relevant. As a team, we know, we are supported to dedicate time to investigate new opportunities.

And yes, I take notes to myself about what a leader with a vision is, because I think everybody is someone's leader and someone's follower. It is neither good, nor bad, it is just a role, where you have to play your best part. I am learning good practices to be both.

Generally disagreeing about any kind of data sharing, I realized my behavior was mostly based on fear. Fear is a major impediment to anything innovative and to any kind of change. Why did I change my mind about open data? It is about differentiating between public and private data, and about the fact that data made public are first of all edited.

New work – new ideas

In November 2015, I started working at Liip and I had a lot of new projects and inputs. The core of my work is the same, I completely changed field though. I stand now in the middle of a flow of innovative ideas and energy, which is very motivating and helps me be constantly open-minded.

One of my projects, last spring, was the coordination of Liip's involvement at the annual opendata.ch conference. No, I cannot communicate about anything if I don't understand it! Otherwise I would write complete bulls**t, people would notice it and Liip would lose all credibility on the subject. In other words, I had to know what I was talking about in order to be able to talk about it.

Fear & suspicion, people will be stalking me and CFF tickets will get more expensive

I used to completely disagree on any kind of open data. I mean, why, on Earth, would I be okay to share my personal data with the rest of the world?

Seriously, I was sure that, if I collaborate with the CFF surveys, tickets will get more expensive between Geneva and Lausanne, because they will know my commuting habits. I was convinced that Swisscom will soon be selling my personal data to private polls. If I use a MBudget Card, some people will be stalking me as they know that I always go grocery shopping at the same Migros.

Fear brings fear. It is a major impediment to anything innovative and to any kind of change. The first step to any change of perspective was me realizing that my reaction was based on some purely irrational feeling instead of rational information.

Let's get started with some reading!

Knowledge the best enemy of fear: What is actually ‘open data' ?

My education to open data started with learning about the projects that Liip developed (like the open data catalogue of the city of Zurich or the project with the Swiss Federal Archive). I discussed with my colleagues, but the concept of open data remained difficult to grasp.

What is concretely open data?

Step 1: A definition:

The definition of open data as given by the opendefinition.org

“Open data and content can be freely used, modified, and shared by anyone for any purpose”

As it is very general, the full open definition gives a detailed list of attributes. It is a bit of an unfriendly reading, the open data handbook provides a summary of the most important aspects:

“Availability and Access: the data must be available as a whole and at no more than a reasonable reproduction cost, preferably by downloading over the internet. The data must also be available in a convenient and modifiable form.

Re-use and Redistribution: the data must be provided under terms that permit re-use and redistribution including the intermixing with other datasets.

Universal Participation: everyone must be able to use, re-use and redistribute – there should be no discrimination against fields of endeavor or against persons or groups. For example, ‘non-commercial' restrictions that would prevent ‘commercial' use, or restrictions of use for certain purposes (e.g. only in education), are not allowed.”

The important thing to remember is that it is a type of content completely available to anyone – public or private sector or even an anonymous quidam – and for any kind of purpose .

Step 2: Private data is not public data

I find important to differentiate between private and public data. When I heard about open data, I felt my privacy instantly threatened. However, opening public data poses no threat to my privacy.

Take the example of cadastral plans, they are available on request. A formal petition to the right administrative service would provide you the info. Opening cadastral plans merely mean saving people working with it the time necessary for the administrative hurdle.

In other words public data is often already available through an administrative process and in an inconvenient format. Opening public data mostly signifies processing and editing them in a convenient format and leaving them in a digital library. Opening public data is about creating a digital library, allowing people to find them without the administrative process.

Private data is one's individual data, for example, the data-gathered by your period application, your MBudget card, your mobile phone's GPS tracking. This data is usually under confidentiality.

Opening private data, is not only about making it accessible, but also about editing it, to make sure that it cannot be linked to anyone.

What if open data was beneficial to the community?

Commuting to Geneva, I used to be angry with the CFF, because my Intercity Train was poorly connected to my inter-regio train which lead to me losing 15 to 20 minutes twice a day. Spending 2 hours, 2 hours 30 minutes or 3 hours to commute makes a huge difference. What if the CFF knew that a significant amount of commuters take these same trains as I did? They could delay the train 5 minutes and I would be happier everyday because my travel would be shorter! What if a mobile company shared its data about the mobility of people and made these data available to the CFF? What if I answered the poll? Or better, what if, instead of spending money on a poll, the CFF could access data of commuters? The data quality might be higher and more relevant!

Urbanism: Pully as a case study

The city of Pully is pioneering in the domain with its urban project in collaboration with Swisscom. The project team is analysing the traffic – car, public transportation, bike or pedestrian – based on data provided by Swisscom's mobile network. ( More info in French about this project).

The city of Pully saved the investment necessary for a poll and had reliable data available. Processed to be anonymized, this kind of data is not a threat to my privacy. In this case, opening the data is beneficial to the whole community.

The objective of this project is to develop the urbanisation of the city according to people's real needs and not to any lobby. It could result in the creation of bike lanes or an improvement of traffic flows.

Pully – Photo Credit l'Avenue Digital Media

Conclusion : open data supports innovation

Sometimes I hear people disagreeing strongly against the concept of open data. I hear fear and threat. The discussion very often goes towards an emotional level rather than staying pragmatic. I find it difficult to rationally fight against emotional argument. First of all, I wish people against open data could make the difference between public and private data. Opening public data means the digitalisation of an already existing public data, ultimately saving public institution's time.

Secondly, I wish they could realise that sharing information is beneficial to the community. The potential benefit of open data is greater than its threat. Opening data means, processing data, editing and anonymising it to make it available. Open data is the necessary basis of innovation and of a general increase of our quality of life.

At the moment, data can be made available, mostly by investing money (for a poll or negotiating with a company belonging data). In other words, universities, start-ups or associations are restricted to the data they can find or buy. Do we want to live in a world where innovation is driven by companies having the budget to pay for data?

Further Information:

Listen to this podcast, welcoming Pia Waugh, an open data expert and advocate who explains all to Genevieve Jacobs on ABC Radio Canberra.

Die inflationäre Nutzung des Begriffes Design macht es schwer diesen zu fassen. Design scheint alle Themen und Tätigkeiten des Alltags zu beschreiben. Das Schild des „Nail Designers“ um die Ecke und Sätze wie „Everyone is a Designer“ oder „Design your Life“ haben wir vor Augen und in den Ohren.

Das Internet bildet keine Ausnahme: es gibt das Webdesign, das Interaktionsdesign, das User Experience Design, das Visual Design und das Business Design. Ausserdem die Methoden des Design Thinkings und des User Centered Designs und das Responsive Design als eine Art der technischen Umsetzung.

Thesen des guten Designs

Möchte man sich dem Thema digitales Design nähern, sind die „zehn Thesen des guten Designs” __von Dieter Rams gültig und ein guter Ausgangspunkt. (Dieter Rams war Designer bei Braun. Es heisst sein Design hat „damals“ Jon Ive von Apple inspiriert….)

Rams und Ive im Vergleich

Ein weiterer Grundsatz von Rams, der nicht nur auf die physische, sondern auch die digitale Produktwelt anwendbar und gutem Design inhärent ist, ist folgender: „Gutes Design befindet sich in ständiger Weiterentwicklung – genau wie Technologie und Kultur.“

Die Begriffe Design, Technologie und Kultur müssen gemeinsam gedacht werden. Der Grundsatz der stetigen Entwicklung und des gegenseitigen Einflusses ist Grundbedingung soll ein Design gelingen. Und ein weiterer Punkt ist: Design beschränkt sich nicht auf die Oberflächengestaltung.

Die Thesen sind nicht in ihrer ursprünglichen Reihenfolge. Ich habe sie für meine Zwecke zusammengefasst und den Punkt „Gutes Design ist umweltfreundlich“ **** weggelassen.

1 Gutes Design ist innovativ

„Wir möchten innovativ sein oder ein innovatives Produkt haben“, ist eine Forderung, die häufig sowohl Kundenwunsch als auch Anspruch des Entwicklungsteams bei Projektstart widerspiegelt.

Die Schwierigkeit dabei ist: Wie kann ich etwas Innovatives schaffen? Ich schlage vor, innovativ mit „etwas Neuem“ zu ersetzen. Das nimmt dem Begriff seine Gewaltigkeit. Etwas Neues nimmt den Anspruch des „Noch-nie-dagewesen-Seins“. Es erlaubt die Übertragung etwas Bestehenden in einen neuen Kontext oder in eine neuen Branche als innovativ zu betrachten. D.h. die  Anwendung einer neuen Technologie, die Digitalisierung eines Prozesses oder einer Geschäftsidee ist jeweils neu und innovativ in entsprechendem Kontext und Projektumfeld. Der erste Schritt in einem Projekt ist herauszuarbeiten, was das Neue im Projekt ist.

So überlegt, ist Innovation gut greif- und fassbar: Man kann sich über Existierendes, an das Neue herantasten: ein Blueprint der eigenen (Unternehmens-) Aktivitäten stellt das Bekannte dar. Entwicklungstendenzen am Markt, aufkommende Trends in der Branche oder Verschiebungen in diesen Sphären repräsentieren das mögliche Neue. Aber auch die Beobachtungen und Befragung von Nutzern, das Eintauchen in ihre Lebenswelten kann neue Ideen und Ansätze offenbaren.

Gutes Design bezieht sich zunächst auf strategische Überlegungen, konzeptionelle Grundgedanken oder technologisches Setup. Die visuelle Umsetzung unterstreicht und verstärkt den innovativen Charakter.

2 Gutes Design macht ein Produkt brauchbar

Dieser Grundsatz ist bei einem digitalen Produkt Voraussetzung. Das Produkt muss brauchbar und einfach nutzbar sein, sonst hat es keine Daseinsberechtigung. Brauchbarkeit bedeutet, dass ein Produkt die Bedürfnisse der Nutzer bedient und er dieses einfach und intuitiv nutzen kann. Somit ist das nutzerzentrierte Vorgehen, das User Centered Design relevant, um Bedürfnisse, Nutzungsgewohnheiten und Wissensstand der User offen zu legen und das Produkt entlang dieser zu gestalten.

Brauchbarkeit muss auch im Hinblick auf existierende Ausgabegeräte differenziert werden. Die Frage, die sich hier stellt, ist folgende: Wird das Produkt ausschliesslich am Desktop genutzt oder spielen mobile Endgeräte wie Tablet und Mobiltelefon eine Rolle? Der Ansatz des Responsive Design als eine Lösungsmöglichkeit stellt sicher, dass ein digitales Produkt auf unterschiedlichen Ausgabegeräten (Desktop, Tablet, Mobile) gleichermassen nutz- und bedienbar ist.

3 Gutes Design ist ästhetisch | 4 Gutes Design ist ehrlich.

Ästhetisch beschreibt das visuelle Erscheinungsbild eines Produktes. Auch bei der Gestaltung im Internet gelten Gestaltungsregeln in Bezug auf Schriften, Farben und Proportionen. Zu kleine Schrift ist nicht lesbar, eine zu grelle Farbwahl unangenehm fürs Auge – um zwei einfache Grundsätze zu nennen.

Das übergeordnete Ziel ist, eine dem Unternehmen oder Anbieter angemessene visuelle Umsetzung zu schaffen, die dessen Werte und Grundsätze mediengerecht umsetzt. Die Darstellung und Präsentation der Inhalte, die als passend und State of the Art gelten, ist stark vom Stand der Technik und mit dieser verbundenen visuellen Trends abhängig.

Ehrlich bezieht sich auf die Inhalte, die einen authentischen Dialog zwischen User und Absender ermöglichen. Funktionalitäten, Prozesse und Abläufe müssen transparent gestaltet werden. D.h. der Dialog mit dem User ist offen, ehrlich und vertrauensbildend.

5 Gutes Design macht ein Produkt verständlich.

Verständlich bezieht sich auf die Usability, die Nutzbarkeit eines Produktes. Die Informationsarchitektur, Prozessdefinitionen und das Interaktionsdesign müssen selbsterklärend funktionieren. Die Grundsätze der Dialoggestaltung können herangezogen werden, um zu überprüfen, ob der Nutzer ein Produkt versteht oder nicht. Oberstes Ziel ist eine intuitive Nutzung des Produkts und absolute Transparenz von Prozessen, Funktionalitäten und deren Bedeutung. Der Nutzer muss jederzeit die Kontrolle über sein Tun haben.

6 Gutes Design ist konsequent bis ins letzte Detail.

Damit ein Produkt verständlich ist, muss das Design, im Sinne des visuellen Designs und des Interaktionsdesigns konsequent gestaltet sein. D.h. um Verständlichkeit zu schaffen, werden Design Patterns definiert werden: Auszeichnungen sind einheitlich gestaltet und ähnliche Inhalte oder Inhaltseinheiten im gleichen Stil präsentiert. Gleiches gilt für unterschiedliche Angebote eines Unternehmens. Gleichgültig ob BtoB oder BtoC, das visuelle Design soll Wiedererkennbarkeit und einfache Orientierung sicherstellen.

7 Gutes Design ist unaufdringlich | 8 Gutes Design ist so wenig Design wie möglich.

Diese These lässt sich mit Louis Sullivans „Form follows function“, erklären: das Design richtet sich nach den Funktionen und Prozessen und unterstützt diese optimal. Es ordnet sich unter, unterstreicht und unterstützt. Dies bedeutet nicht, dass es unbedeutend oder vernachlässigbar ist. Um diesen Gedanken bildlich zu illustrieren: das visuelle Design hat nicht die „Form“ eines Sotsass Regals (hier gibt es Ausnahmen! Denken wir bspw. an Spiele), sondern eines Rams Regals.

Sottsass‘ Carlton bookcase, 1981, Rams Regalsystem „606“, 1960

Dem Zitat von Sullivan fehlt der Hinweis auf den Nutzer und seine Bedürfnisse. Daher schlage ich folgende Erweiterung vor: „Form follows function follows needs.“ Die visuelle Gestaltung soll den Nutzer unterstützen und intuitiv leiten. Dies bedeutet, dass dessen Bedürfnisse und Fähigkeiten bekannt sind und berücksichtigt werden.

9 Gutes Design ist langlebig.

Das Prinzip der Langlebigkeit ist nicht in Jahrzehnten zu denken, sondern in Form von Ausbau- und Entwicklungsfähigkeit. Ausbauphasen sind sowohl auf technischer Ebene als auch konzeptionell in Funktionen gedacht möglich. Sie zahlen in die Produkt- oder Digitalstrategie eines Unternehmens ein. Daher ist es vor jedem Projekt sinnvoll zu definieren, welche Bedeutung das Produkt im Bezug auf definierte Ziele und die digitale Strategie hat. Wie das Zusammenspiel mit anderen Touchpoints zum Nutzer funktioniert und wie es sich über Zeit entwickeln wird oder könnte.

Gute Massnahmen, um eine gezielte Weiterentwicklung zu ermöglichen, sind das Sammeln von Daten oder das Testen mit Nutzern. So wird deutlich, ob die Bedürfnisse der Nutzer optimal bedient werden.

Gutes Design im virtuellen Raum

Design ist das Erkennen des Kontextes & die richtige Interpretation

Diese Ausführungen in Anlehnung an die Thesen von Dieter Rams machen deutlich, dass das Design eines digitalen Produktes vielschichtig und vor allem strategisch ist. Dies machen die Punkte „Gutes Design ist innovativ“ und „Gutes Design ist langlebig“ deutlich:

Altes und Neues muss erkannt und in den Projektkontext gesetzt werden. Aus unternehmerischer Sicht bedeutet dies: Positionierung und Ausrichtung eines Unternehmens/Produktes, Wettbewerb und mögliche Branchen-Verschiebungen müssen bekannt sein, um etwas Neues zu fassen und formulieren zu können. Technologie, kulturelles und unternehmerisches Umfeld sind die entscheidenden Einflussfaktoren, die eine Produktentwicklung beeinflussen.

Ist das Neue greifbar, Ziele gesetzt und die Strategie formuliert, münden die Erkenntnisse in passende digitale Prozesse und Funktionen. Diese sind brauchbar, ästhetisch, ehrlich, verständlich, konsequent und unaufdringlich. Nach dem Launch des Produktes gilt es, Ziele und Nutzerbedürfnisse im Auge zu behalten, um sicherzustellen, dass es diese auch nach dem Launch zuverlässig bedient.

Schaffhauser Kantonalbank, Der Nutzer im Zentrum

Betrachtet man Design ganzheitlich – ich hoffe dies wurde deutlich – ist gutes Design nicht die Aufgabe des Designers sondern eines interdisziplinären Teams. Dieses setzt sich bspw. aus Strategen, Ökonomen, User Experience Designern, Interaktionsdesignern, visuellen Designern, Frontenddesignern und Entwicklern zusammen, die eng mit dem Kunden, den Branchenexperten, und zukünftigen Nutzern zusammenarbeiten.

Business Strategy und User Experience sind zwei Seiten einer Medaille und spiegeln sich ineinander. Sie werden technisch interpretiert, als Prozesse und Funktionen konzipiert und visuell gestaltet.

Betrachtungen und Erkenntnisse aus allen Bereichen sind die Grundlage, damit das Design eines Produkts gut wird: Es dem Leitsatz „Gutes Design ist innovativ“ gerecht werden kann. Daher gilt für Projektteams tatsächlich der Grundsatz, den ich im Alltag so nicht unterschreiben möchte: „Everybody is a designer“.

Andy Yen of Geneva (and San Francisco) based ProtonMail gave a very encouraging speech about how to present one's company and products in a different market like the U.S. – it's basically all about being way more bold than we are used in Swiss culture, embracing risk, and seeking to fail as fast as possible. By investing in sales in the U.S., ProtonMail actually “got the rest of the world for free”. My question, if ProtonMail is also active in other domains of myData than e-mail, or considering to move into that direction, Andy answered in the affarmative. I am very much looking forward to what's coming there in the future. Thanks, Andy, for your great insights!

(no picture)

I would have liked to post a picture of one of Andy's slides here, but it's written “confidential” on them – don't know, how serious he is about that.

Bertrand Piccard – on the big stage – managed to catch the attention of the audience masterly. A psychiatrist by formation, and a leader by talent he inspired my thoughts throughout his speech. Betrand advocated for always changing one's altitude to be able to find solutions. Surrounding oneself with less of the same, more divers people surely is supporting that. To be innovative and creative, one has to drop ballast – one's beliefs, certitudes – and try the opposite. Erradicating emotions and applying a pragmatic attitude can help. Being innovative is not tied to achieving something spectacular, but allowing and fostering to think in other directions. “If one accepts a crisis, it becomes an adventure – if one does not, it stays a crisis”. Life is less about what I know, but more about my doubts and being able to ask questions.

Betrand ended with asking the audiance: “What story do you want to tell? What's your dream?” I bet everyone in the room was thinking about what ballast one could drop to reach one's dream. Listening to critical voices helps you in answering that decisive question. Thanks, Bertrand, for your continuous engagement in making our world more energy efficient!

Image: swissICT/Jonas Weibel

In my last blog post, we realized that companies are faced with an ambiguous situation, between innovation and users loyalty. Meanwhile users want  cutting the edge experiences and dislike learning news things.

1: Deal with these bad feelings concerning change in companies

I have bad news. If your company is struggling at innovating, maybe it is because it is excellent at killing good innovation ideas. Big companies are expected to innovate, but managing people in such companies just freak out at the simple idea of dealing with edgy ideas. Nobody wants to be the ones who brought a massive failure in the history of the product, or worse, in the collective memory of people about the company. Managing people are often more afraid of the negative consequences of their actions than interested by the very exciting potential behind this very original idea. Innovation seems risky, and can lead to failures.

No matter how careful you act, you never know how your new product will be received. There is always a risk and failure is an option.The risk shouldn't prevent you from innovating. Remember, only the companies that innovate survive. There is more to lose at doing nothing than at failing. Ask Kodak if they would still do the same if they were given a second chance to survive.

Help your decision takers with an environment where they can actually be aware of the whole uncertainty of each proposition. Put them in a danger free environment and allow them to be comfortable with uncertainty and to tolerate the unknown that comes with creative ideas, as it's a trainable skill, and a mandatory one to success.

Create an environment prone to innovation

Invite the management to test these ideas, and assure them that they can safely try and fail until they succeed. And invite them to fail as fast as possible. After each failure, analyze what you have, be it data, testimonials, learn from it, adapt, and iterate on your product, and fail again, and learn and modify and fail again and again.

Thomas Edison tested 6 000 different natural substances to create his first electric light bulb. He failed thousands of times at finding the proper elements to build his light bulb. How many times did you fail?

Failing helps getting closer, little by little.

As long as a company does not accept the risk of failing, it will miss the benefits of succeeding. Once your company is really ok with taking those risks, and once you provide a favorable environment to innovation to your teams, then you can go to the next step and ask user's participation.

2. Learn about your users and their resistance to changes

As human beings, your users have a set of characteristics commonly shared, no matter where they come from in the world, no matter why they use your product, no matter which language they speak. They can have feelings, and they also have memory. This sounds dramatic I know…

Understand the global cognitive economy of the human being

Learning costs (a lot of) energy. You have to actively put your attention into something new, and try to understand how it works, what you have to do and when you have to do it. We do this to be able to react quickly during the following exposure “ ok to launch the song I just have to tap here once”

What happens when we suddenly realize that what we learned _the hard way _is not working anymore? The connexions that occurred in our brains are obsolete, and the whole energy invested in this old wiring is wasted. We have to learn a know how again. Either we accept it, either we struggle.

When a feature is abandoned, or modified, in a software, the users have to readapt to it, or find alternative ways, or worse, alternative softwares to be able to do it the old way. Some will shout at you on social networks, and will spend X times the amount of energy that would have been sufficient to learn the new way, just not to adapt. And sometimes features are abandoned because of new innovative features, or just because they are almost never used.

Unfortunately, we tend to minimize energy expenses, and we try to save our energy. If we have to learn something new, a new way to do, then we basically will behave as if we were suddenly endangered. Change is a very good reason to freak out for many persons. May it be for silly things or for deep moves, users will complain , this is called resistance to change.

Habits have a tough life. You won't let users abandon easily their habits, just because you suggest them to do so with a new feature. If you want massive adoption of your product / feature / service by the users, you have to prove them that it it worth changing. Why would they abandon their beloved product for yours?

Time is counted, and so is everyone's attention span. If you cannot demonstrate the benefits of this new product / feature simply, in just one minute, then the risk is high that your whole product or feature will be ignored.

3. Innovate with your users thanks to Design Thinking.

As mentioned, users know parts or even your whole product, and know things you should improve. It's a pretty good start. But it's not enough. You should gather your users' opinion.

Question your users

Put them together in groups, in a cool and calm place, and invite them to solve your design problems. “How might we __ “ or  “How can we become the best at  __ “  “How might we onboard new users so they feel part of our community” “How might we remove any frustration on our customer's side”…

Make as many groups of users as you want and let them choose a design challenge. Be sure there are some challenges left, so that they feel in control, and not forced to deal with something they did not choose.

Invite them to throw a lot of ideas, without any judgement on quality. Focus on quantity first. Once you have one hundred ideas, abandon the ones you really dislike (not financially healthy, or damaging for the company's reputation), cluster the ideas into themes, and ask your groups to select one theme they want to pitch to the other groups.

100 Post-it challenge

Start prototyping

Once the theme is selected, and the feedbacks from other groups are taken into account, start prototyping! Give them big paper leaves, post its, ropes, legos, cutters, wooden sticks, wool, duct tape, corks, anything that can help building something quickly.

Even very abstract prototypes can help you communicate your ideas to innovate.

Listen to your users' ideas

Let them express all the crazy ideas they have in their theme, and then let them pitch, take feedback, iterate, and slowly evolve to something more feasible.

And Voilà!! you get brilliant ideas on different subjects for your product, almost all feasible now. You still have to prioritize, begin fine tuning design, do user testing sessions, develop, do user testing sessions again on the ready to go live product / feature / service.

Take feedback and adapt

When arriving at this point, you minimize your risks, and only propose the new features / products to a limited and representative sample of your users. You take feedbacks, adapt, retest, and then only you push it to the masses.

To conclude

UX can support changes with in three main way:

• Give the companies the “Fail Fast” attitude / environment they need to dare to innovate
• Learn from your users, why they refuse change, what would motivate them to follow you
• Involve you users in your innovation process thanks to Design Thinking activities

Once you have followed these advices, my final tip is to invest even more effort on User's onboarding for the new product / feature. Remember, if the user doesn't get it in one minute, he will leave and nobody wants this to happen!

Let's innovate while keeping users happy ! But how?

Innovation: Risky but necessary

Innovation is everywhere! Is every existing thing not good enough and has to be improved? As if we required on a daily basis cutting the edge and exciting experiences! May it be only for pouring coffee in our mugs, or for giving feedbacks to developers who implemented what we co-designed with a client, or for completing a survey, booking a room, making a conference call…

The users of a product know what's wrong with a product, what is not working properly, what takes too much time. In other words, they know what could be improved. It might be risky  for a company to take the leap, because end users might dislike the change.

An example: Instagram's new logo

The Instagram app icon redesign made a real (bad?)buzz, because many people complained about not finding their app icon easily, even if the app didn't move from their phone screen / home screen for years. In the meantime, the algorithm that composes the user's main feed in the app was rebuilt. THE core feature that brings new and unpredictable contents to the users and keeps them hooked to the app was redesigned , and only a bunch of power users realized they were shown old posts mixed with fresh ones in a weird way… The most important technical change on the most crucial feature of the product was just invisible, compared to the noise made by an icon redesign.

As a result, sometimes companies fear about change, because they are so popular, that no matter what direction they take, they get serious complaints. And even with a strong knowledge of their customers, they hardly can predict what will be accepted and what will be rejected. This is basically resistance to change. People would totally accept putting energy in a virulent discussion to avoid change, rather than learning a new way of doing.

Let's ask the users what they want!

Unfortunately, users are not so good at expressing their needs. Some people tried. Brilliant ones. Still, they face difficulties…

Like I said earlier, users are able to tell you what is wrong, what should be improved or go faster. But when it comes to think about new features, new activities, new usages, it gets really harder. But it is still possible. Sometimes hard, but possible…

But in the end, for something this complicated, it's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them. From Steve Jobs, in BusinessWeek 25 mai 1998.

To summarize: An ambiguous situation

Companies want innovation, because only innovative companies last, but they fear reject at the same time.

Users want to have cutting the edge experiences because it is more interesting than boring ones, but they hate learning new ways to do things, and will struggle for a Status-Quo.

To be continued: How can a UXer support change ?

These quotes may look very negative towards people, but I have to admit that they carry truth to my UX Designer life. Innovating is hard and this is totally ok if end users cannot do it themselves, as it is our job to find solutions to these pain points.

Fortuitously, as a UXer we can also come up with solutions! We can help entreprise by dealing with bad feeling and user test

… read more in my next blog post!

The Era of Specialization

During his talk, Johnny Lee was mentioning that we are facing a change of the technological paradigm. Firstly we had an «Era of Conversion» when we tried to combine multiple functions into one device, like for example our mobile phones. But now with the cost drop of multiple devices people can afford to buy the best product for each use case. Let's say people prefer to buy a GoPro camera than to film with their mobile phone, they prefer to read a book through Kindle than through a regular tablet and so on. We are entering into an «Era of Specialization». Products are there to serve only a few use cases, though these have to have a good hardware, software and User Experience Design, otherwise they won't succeed in the market.

The Foggy Cloud

The talk of Johnny Lee made me think about my personal experience with «new» technologies which lack a good User Experience and don't match society's current needs. Then I thought about the first time I came across iCloud. Although I consider myself almost a digital native, I never trusted this «cloudy» invention. Maybe because I still remember writing letters to my friends, which means I'm not that much of a digital native. Or could it be because I wasn't properly introduced to it? I felt like digging deeper into this subject and began to research about other users' opinions, until I realized that I wasn't the only one feeling lost when getting in touch with iCloud for the first time – there was for sure an overall User Experience problem.

If I remember well I suddenly was asked to register to this iCloud and to upload all my personal data to «Apple's Heaven». The «Apple Angels» would then synchronize all my Apple devices and I would never have to worry again. Of course I felt insecure and dissatisfied! What the hell? I want to be able to control what I want to synchronize and to backup. Like I did before with iTunes. But they didn't let me stay with the old way. There were always some warnings telling me to login to iCloud and that if I didn't do so something bad would happen. At least this was how I and several other users felt.

Here is one of many examples which prove the overall users dissatisfaction – « Why is iCloud Contact Sync such a terrible mess?» by Cfacc, Apple Communities. If you click on the link you will see the comment underneath about a user complaint. It perfectly illustrates how I felt the first time I had to deal with iCloud.

«I don't use iCloud and using it for contact and calendar sync is something I will not do. Mavericks has messed up my whole workflow and I'm extremely ** off and there is no way in **** I'm ever buying anything from apple again if this is the road they want to force us users down.

My iPhone is now a piece of worthless junk without calendar syncing. I want my money back… to buy hardware and software that works and doesn't blackmail me into your foggy cloud with an open backdoor to anyone who feels like they need to take a peek into other people's lives.

An extremely ** off user of your overpriced junk which is progressively degenerating with every update.»

I found this comment extremely useful for my further research and of course I couldn't help but laugh, even knowing how frustrating it was for me as well when I first got in touch with iCloud.

Moreover, analyzing this User Experience problem through Don Norman's, director of The Design Lab at University of California and co-founder of Nielsen Norman Group, Human Action Cycle, made me realize what went wrong. The interaction process missed the first three phases: «Goal Formation», «Intent to Act» and «Planning the Act». Instead the interaction starts immediately with the «Execution of the Act». Well, this only could go wrong, because the user has no control nor freedom.

Human-machine interaction steps according to the Norman's theory.

Golden Rules for a Good User Experience Design

Besides not following the whole Human Action Cycle, it doesn't accomplish several golden rules for a good User Experience Design. Going back to Johnny Lee's talk – a product only succeeds if it has a good software, hardware and a good User Experience. In my opinion iCloud lacks the last one. At least seven of Jakob Nielsen's ,web usability consultant and co-founder of the usability consulting company Nielsen Norman Group, ten Usability Heuristics weren't followed.

Missing Usability Heuristics:

Usability Heuristic 1 – Visibility of system status

Users weren't being informed about what was going on, for example what, when and where something was being backed up or synchronized.

Usability Heuristic 2: Match between system and the real world There was never a clear and easy explanation about how Cloud Computing works. This may be obvious for a programmer, but for a non-specialist person it's something obscure and scary.

Usability Heuristic 3: User control and freedom This best practice was completely ignored because there was no introduction and users were more or less forced to use it. Besides that I never had the feeling I was in control, for example: I often felt like if I press «that» button there is no way back and that I could never get rid of the reminders and warnings about me not being a «well behaved» iCloud user.

Usability Heuristic 4: Consistency and standards The wording wasn't clear. For example I was never sure if «iCloud Drive» was the same as «iCloud» – the icon was the same but the name different. There are also different ways to access iCloud throughout the various devices and some visual inconsistency, which makes everything even more confusing.   

Usability Heuristic 5 and 9: Error prevention and help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors Due to unclear wording and lack of explanations, accidents like the one described on the user's complaint above occurred. Personally, as I have no patience to get informed about something that I was obliged to use, I just never dared to truly use iCloud's full potential. I didn't want to risk losing data or have it stolen – there is indeed only one password which prevents a hacker from stealing all my information.

Usability Heuristic 7: Flexibility and efficiency of use Using iCloud requires reading many warnings and going through steps which are confusing. Like using email accounts which I never created: xxx@me.com, xxx@icloud.com or xxx@mac.com. Even my Facebook account and my Apple-ID are somehow involved, no clue how. Furthermore I never recall how I have to access iCloud: Is it through the website www.icloud.com? Or through my phone? But on my phone it's integrated under «utilities» and it has a different interface design, etc.

Graphical representation of the Usability Heuristics relevance and relation in iCloud.

The User Need First

The iCloud example is just one of many new technologies which do not achieve their full potential and popularity, because they aren't aligned with the user need and habits yet. The same happened for example with the Google Glass and the Apple Watch, which turned out to be just gadgets for a minority of technology enthusiasts. These kinds of business failures surely result from a partial or even total lack of user research. That's why Human Computer Interaction Design plays a crucial role in the process of creating a new product.

Apple should have made a much smoother introduction and transition to iCloud, e.g. through:

• Doing honest user research – more research about the user need before launch ;
• Launching one feature at a time and testing its acceptance – more user testing (before and after launching);
• Making sure that people understand what iCloud is, so that they can rely on this technology – more user support ;
• Giving users the option to decide whether they want to use iTunes, iCloud or a mix of both – more user control and freedom .

In my opinion, these are the four most relevant aspects which Apple failed to achieve.

In conclusion, users should always come before the aspect of technical innovation. There is no benefit for users if an innovative solution or product exceeds their needs. An innovation only gains real value if it is employed in a useful way. That's why there are in fact many «Interface Technologies That Have Not Yet Left the Lab». In fact, the majority of new consumer tech is «old tech» for which the time is NOW ripe.