Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

I had lots of fun at the 2008 Triangle Area Addy Awards in Durham last Friday night. Thanks to all the people that worked to make it a success. But I'd like to offer up some comments to the Ad Club for the 2009 show.

Make it shorter. Three hours is just too long. By the end people were getting bored. And it's not fair to the award winners at the end to have a bored, tired audience.

Give fewer prizes. Limit the number of golds and silvers that you give out. It'll heighten the meaning of each award and make it shorter at the same time.

Limit the number of times that you can enter one project. It's not fun to see the same company win five awards for the same project. 

I love books. No, I really love books. Books can transport us to any time, place, or moment with the turn of a page and the swipe of our debit cards at Barnes and Noble. On one of my recent excursions to the mothership (B&N) I had a serious epiphany. Right there between The New Yorker and "Skinny Bitch" I noticed a section that I usually just pass over. Classics. How could I forget the Classics? As a book nerd and devoted student I've already read most of these books probably more times than I'd like to count. There's The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises, Pride and Prejudice, Alice in Wonderland. Wait. Alice in Wonderland? How could I have always overlooked this timeless classic? I used to be obessed with this story. It was one of my favorites. Well, the Disney movie was one of my favorites. The actual chapter book, not so much.

So now adult Amy must read this classic story. And no, I refuse to believe this book is about drug use. (And any other self-respecting literature nerd will agree).

It's so strange/refreshing/hilarious/sad to read children's classics as an adult. (Please note however, that I am using the term adult very loosely here as I'm not sure anyone really is one). There were so many things people were trying to tell us when we growing up. Alice grows and shrinks after she drinks the potion. When I was seven I thought this was funny. But now I get that Carroll was trying to show the complexities of falling in and out of adulthood as we grow up. Sometimes full grown sometimes not. All the characters in Wonderland are total nutjobs. Alice seems like an adult compared to Mad Hatter. However, it's through the nonsensical children's games that Alice evolves and becomes an adult.

Peter Pan was full of this stuff too. Captain Hook is scared to death of the crocodile with the ticking clock. Seven year old me that this was just nonsense. But adult me gets that time is chasing after us every single day. No one wants to grow up and leave Neverland.

I think that everyone should take an occasional  jump down the rabbit hole. When we were children we didn't always understand these references or appreciate the beauty of the story. So once in awhile pour yourself a bowl of Trixx and learn some valuable life lessons from the classics. (Please also note: Trixx aren't just for kids).

It's Friday, which means I'm debating the usefulness of wireframes again. Wireframes, for the new and uninitiated, are like "stick-figures" of a website. They indicate importance, organization and functionality of a UI but do so in a way that tries not to be too descriptive of the design. There's a certain amount of layout and organization that is implied, but we try to make sure that we don't tie designers' hands too much.

And it doesn't always work.

At capstrat , our designers and developers do some really powerful work. What's more, they get user experience and usability. So as a UX designer here, I'm in a position where steely control over the design isn't always necessary. In many cases, it's not appropriate since it impinges on designers' and developers' abilities to better deliver a product. Wireframes, unfortunately, can be seen as very prescriptive. Using them can minimize the contributions and expertise of people whose experience is essential to the design.

So, where does that leave us? Well, there are alternatives - page description diagrams being one. I won't go into them too deep here (you can read for yourself here), but suffice it to say that I'm underwhelmed with them. Mostly, they seem to be too vague. They're too prone to error and misinterpretation and are uneven on detail. What's more, they lack the basic information to communicate page-level organization and choreography. As a UX designer, I feel that page description diagrams simply abdicate way too much of what is my responsibility.

But wireframes are also good. They set boundaries of expectations to clients and are concrete in a way that prosaic descriptions can't match.

So, is there a middle ground? I think so, and here's an idea I've been banging around. I call it Pidgin.

Pidgineering

Pidgin dialects arise as a common ground between speakers of different languages. They mix terms from both and create a hybrid. I'm extending the analogy to UX deliverables. In this case, I'm interested in finding a common ground between designers, UXDers and developers. The goal is to create a vocabulary that conveys capability and choreography but is less prescriptive of the design. For the impatient, here's what it looks like:

Essentially, Pidgin is based upon three concepts: blocks, relationships and views. Here's the legend:

Blocks

The idea is to identify meaningful blocks of content and function, and show how they relate to one another. What's a block? Well, that's up to you, but essentially it's a distinct piece of function or content that can be usefully separated. A block is somewhere in the middle. So, a textfield probably wouldn't be a block, but a collection of fields and the submission button would be.

Relationships

Blocks relate to each other through relationships, which are...wait for it...lines. With arrows! Arrows describe the relationship; the pointy end shows what the block belongs to. By default, a single arrow means that the block will only occur one time for the other block.

There can be double arrows too. These indicate multiplicity: that a block can occur many times within another. In an article listing, for example, an article block might appear many times.

The lines themselves are either solid or dashed, indicating the block is required or optional respectively. If you want to get all crazy with it, you can use an open ended arrow to indicate multiple states of an object. Personally, I would discourage this except for trivial states of change. You're better off showing the default state and creating a storyboard for the block that shows how it acts in other situations.

Views

Remember when I said that content blocks related to one another? You might be thinking: but to what do they eventually relate? Views. A view is your page. It can inherit from more basic pages if you want, but that's not necessary. For example, you might abstract the global navigation and relate it to a more generic view. This is shown in the diagram above. Overall, though, a view aligns to an entry on your sitemap.

Is there a catch? There's gotta be a catch.

Yes, Virginia and it's something I'm wrestling with. Pidgins aren't testable-at least, not testable in a conventional sense. You could place this in front of a user and ask them to complete a task, but the results wouldn't be valid in the final design. You could get an idea of gaps and missing functionality, but not a whole lot more. You might be able to test each block, but that's really not useful either since it doesn't test the choreography, which is critical. As a tool to engage both development and design, however, pidgins seem useful in the early stages of the design lifecycle.

Thoughts?

Geo tagging is one of my favorite Web 2.0 trends. With the proliferation of APIs from google and others, the mashup world of geo based tools and enterainment has taken off. Not sure what I am talking about? Here are a few examples:

•  Mappr -combines user contributed photos with location data (a la Flickr) with a map so that you can see user provided snapshots from a specific location in the world.
  
• Chicago Crime - mashes crime stats and info from the Chicago Police Department with geo data so you can virtually explore neighborhood crime using an online map interface. 
  
• Doolittle on MySpace - idoler Melinda Doolittle's MySpace page includes a map-based fan book that incorporate fan messages, their localities and photos.
  

The real question is if this Web trend will impact how we view our communitiies and how we interact with others in the physical world. The potential is certainly there and in some cases its already happening. 

For instance, assume I, by happenstance, find photos of a neighbor's backyard landscaping project posted online. Since they've opened this up to the "world" online by posting the image, I assume they're somewhat approachable and go meet them and check it out. A friendship is born.

Or imagine how geo based content could identify opportunities for special interest groups or even new business opportunities. 

What's your favorite geo based Web experience and does it compel to you behave any differently in the real world? 

The OGG hit us with Neologism. That's a new fangled word constructed from the mash up of two words. For instance internet etiquette turns into "netiquette." Ronald Reagan's economic policy became "Reaganomics." You get the idea.

Neologisms occur more often in cultures where language rapidly changes and pop culture thrives. I illustrated slack academics to yield "slackademics." Hey, I went to art school. I get this meaning.