Design Critique: Products for People

Charlotte Purvis joins Timothy Keirnan for a discussion about ensuring good user experience with customer service professionals. When we call an organization for help with a product or service, these people are on the front line of customer interaction. How well they assist us will impact our perceptions of a product and the brand of the company that sold it. Charlotte's new book is The Customer Communication Formula: How to Communicate with your Customers and Boost your Customer Service Brand. She talks with Tim for 40 minutes about how she created her customer communication formula, how she coaches customer service professionals in call centers, and the importance of having a professional physical environment for people to do their best work in the office or at home. You can find Charlotte at her website

www.charlottepurvis.com

The Librem 5 is Purism's re-envisioning what a smartphone could be and should be. It runs on Purism's own Linux distribution PureOS, which is certified by the Free Software Foundation to be free of non-transparent, proprietary code such as many commercial products use.

The "Evergreen" batch of Librem 5 phones is the first official production model, and possesses unique qualities not found in most smart phones:
* Hardware switches to turn on/off camera, microphone, WiFi, Bluetooth, and cellular connection.
* Easily removeable battery for easy replacement.
* Easy access to replace the cellular modem and the WiFi/Bluetooth circuitry
* Updates to the PureOS operating system for the long term, not just a few years.
* Connection via USB-C to an external monitor.
* Does not inherently track customers' usage of the phone and apps.

As of December 2020, this "Evergreen" batch of phones does not have a sleep function, so battery life is very short. The microphone of this particular Librem 5 is described as sounding "muffled" and "under water" compared to other smart phones. Purism promises continuous improvements to both the phone's operating system and the Linux kernel that interacts with this promising hardware. At this time, the phone is not usable as a "daily driver".

Useful links about the Librem 5 including video tours:

https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

https://puri.sm/posts/why-fsf-endorsing-pureos-matters/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaRf8JBL7tE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aQp3twe7D4

Susan Weinschenk joins Tim Keirnan to discuss the second edition of her wonderfully useful and usable book 100 Things Every Designer Should Know About People. First published in 2011, 100 Things... has helped many kinds of professionals and students learn to be better designers.
https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/100-things-every/9780136746959/

Visit Susan's company at
https://theteamw.com/

Susan has been on the show multiple times over our 15 years and you may enjoy hearing these older episodes with her:
http://www.designcritique.net/podcasts/interview-neuro-web-design-with-dr-susan-weinschenk/

http://www.designcritique.net/podcasts/6th-anniversary-episode-with-dr-susan-weinschenk-on-100-things-every-designer-needs-to-know-about-people/

http://www.designcritique.net/podcasts/panel-the-state-of-the-internet-user-experience-in-2011/

We're 15 years old! Tim Keirnan is joined by show co-founder Tom Brinck plus UX legend Stephanie Rosenbaum for a celebration of the show's 15th anniversary. From July 2005 to October 2020, we've kept going when other shows faded away. Where did the time go? But time discussing product and service design is always well spent.

Tom and Stephanie continue our discussion series on the buzzwordification of UX--the good and the bad of our terminology becoming popular in the past five years--and memories from 15 years of doing the show.

Thanks everyone who listened, wrote, and guested on the show. We're proud of 15 years of commercial-free discussions on design.

Tim and Tom

This is a short episode on the dark pattern of not allowing a customer to leave a service without unnecessary effort.
The Sunday Times website does not allow users to cancel their digital subscription on the site. It took a 15 minus chat online to accomplish what should take one minute and a couple clicks. Hear all about it and think about what decisions like this mean to an organization hell-bent on annoying customers.

The Dark Patterns website referred to in this episode is at
https://darkpatterns.org

They do a really good job writing about and classifying dark patterns. Thank-you, Harry Brignull and Alexander Darlington.

The Sunday Times article on the French philosopher Levy is at
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bernard-henri-levy-interview-coronavirus-has-sent-the-world-into-psychotic-delirium-lz5sn8gnn

Kelly Goto, owner and principal of gotomedia and gotoresearch, joins Timothy Keirnan for a discussion about universal design and related topics. Dave M-R and Tim discussed Kelly's excellent 2018 article about professional terminology in episode 135 last year. Now she is on the show herself to cover a fun range of topics, including

• Universal Design,
• Inclusive Design,
• Accessibilty,
• Japanese design, and
• Designing for an aging population

It's 45 minutes of serious discussion that doesn't take itself too seriously. Kelly provided the following links to continue the learning after you're done listening:

https://www.gotoresearch.com/2020/02/27/the-era-of-adaptive-experiences-rethinking-universal-and-inclusive-design/

http://www.universaldesign.com/
(great story about Target in there -- it is a "design for all" store.

http://www.inclusivedesigntoolkit.com/

https://www.service-design-network.org/

https://www.ageinplacetech.com/
( a tech blog run by a friend / colleague of mine)

Larry Rusinsky returns to the show to help Tim critique the Bose QuietComfort 25 acoustic noise canceling headphones. The links referred to in the episode include:

How Noise Canceling Headphones Work

Comparison of the Bose QuietComfort 25 with the 35

Bose: Why Audiophiles Should Stop the Hate

Bose Store Locator

Chief Phillips of the Plymouth Township Fire Department has the mind of a firefighter and the heart of a User Experience designer. Join him and Tim Keirnan for a sequel to our pumper truck design episode, this time to discuss the design of our township's new ladder truck.

How does the purpose of a ladder truck differ from a pumper truck? What did the fire department learn from ordering and using the pumper truck that improved their design of the new ladder truck? How is the human machine interface (HMI) of the ladder truck made to be as easy as possible for firefighters, including controlling the ladder and hoses and foam generator?

Our discussion lasts 60 minutes and covers a wide range of anecdotes, from the scenes of emergency incidents, to the design specification reviews, to the shop floor of the Pierce factory where our truck was built.

Tesla Model 3 owners Ryan Malcolm and Syed Ibrahim join Tim Keirnan for a thorough critique of their cars while Tim moderates this ad-free, in-depth discussion. We follow the show's Critique by Values model to learn how Ryan and Syed experienced each of the phases of product experience:
Encounter
Decision
Purchase
Initial Use
Longitudinal Use

This is not a review of the car as much as it is a conversation about people's transportation needs and how the Model 3 fit into their current lives. Of course, aspects of the car are discussed throughout. As usual, we leave no stone unturned in a detailed, people-centered discussion unhindered by commercials.

You can find Ryan at his YouTube channel, which includes track day footage of his Model 3:
https://www.youtube.com/user/Ryephile/featured

You can find Syed at his website at:
https://www.syedibrahim.me/

Dr. Rebecca Grier joins Tim Keirnan for a wordcast episode about Fitts' Law and Fitts' List. Who was Paul Fitts and how did this legendary psychologist impact our design professions to this day?

In a beautiful bit of synchronicity, Wired magazine published this excellent article about Fitts and Chapanis solving a design problem on the B-17 Flying Fortress during WWII.:
https://www.wired.com/story/how-dumb-design-wwii-plane-led-macintosh/

Dr. Grier recommends the following links to use in our understanding of Fitts' work:
https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/fitts-law-tracking-users-clicks

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-information-capacity-of-the-human-motor-system-Fitts/634c9fde5f1c411e4487658ac738dcf18d98ea8d

https://fampeople.com/cat-paul-fitts

https://psychology.wikia.org/wiki/Paul_Fitts

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10111-011-0188-1

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2351978915006423

https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/wiley/paul-m-fitts-XSLBZF59k5

You can find Dr. Grier at https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-grier-ux/