Jarrett Interaction Design

I attended and presented at MobileUX Camp DC last Saturday. I went to a number of sessions, the most interesting for me was a one on Mobile UX in Korea. A few items that particularly intrigued me:

• Within 9 months of the introduction of the iPhone, 1/4 of all Koreans had a smart phone. Projected to be 1/2 within one year.
• Naver provides 60-80% of all internet traffice. Daum provides another 20% and is focusing on mobile to take share from Naver.
• Koreans always use the Naver and Daum portals as their entry to the web, rather than an open-ended search engine like Google. Apps and other items that appear on the portals are overwhelmingly adopted. Koreans adopt new technology and apps and throw away old very frequently.
• Android smartphones support the 3×4 keyboard from feature phones which makes Korean very fast to enter (almost never need to double bink a button). The iPhone does not. This has driven adoption of Android smartphones to outstrip the iPhone.
• Daum has a streetview-like capability in their mapping app, and link it to the history of photos of the same place. Thus far, they have 3 years of photos. Imagine being able to look back 10 or 20 years to see what was in a particular place at a particular time.
• On Twitter, 140 characters of Korean allows around three full paragraphs. Twitter is used very conversationally, with long back-and-forths. Often, the form is paragraph 1 is context setting, paragraph 2 is making an argument, and paragraph 3 is asking a question.
• Many cell phones receive broadcast TV. Most Koreans watch TV on their phones, but don’t use digital video as much.
• It is common now to see couples sitting across from each other, each engrossed in their own smartphone. Is this really where we want things to end up?

I ran a session at MobileUX Camp DC on Saturday discussing usage patterns of tablets in the enterprise. Here are a few notes I took during the session:

• In Rhode Island, there are mansion tours that provide an iPad for curation as you move through the mansion, based on your location at any time (manually entered into the iPad for now).
• Marriott has developed an in-room iPad app to provide local attractions and hotel facilities information to replace the paper ones.
• There are interesting elements and ideas in the Microsoft Surface 2.0 Design Guidelines.

My slides are available on SlideShare:

I have worked on enterprise software (stuff behind the firewall) for many years, and whenever I’ve worked on data visualization – especially dashboards – religious arguments about the use of pie charts erupt.

In general, engineers, statisticians, and some designers find them abhorrent, shun them, and ridicule those who use or promote them. Edward Tufte finds them slightly less apocalyptic than PowerPoint, and Stephen Few argues in many articles about how pointless they are. They are difficult to read precisely, difficult to compare, and take up a lot of space for very little information display.

The other camp, generally product managers, marketing, sales folks, executives, analysts, and other business-focused folk request them and like them – sometimes in 3D or spinning. MBA educations, business magazines, analyst reports, and marketing brochures immerse these types of people in pie charts. They are part of the lingua franca of business. They communicate simple proportions of a whole quickly and attractively.

Myself, though I have affection for and intellectually lean toward Tufte and Few, I am a pragmatist and an agnostic when it comes to this choice.  Yes, pie charts have many, many problems. And yes, many people like them.

Above all, I am committed to the UX mantra of “know thy user.” Who is the audience for this chart? Business folks who are extremely familiar and comforted by them? Then use them and prevent the question of “where are they?” Statisticians and scientists? Avoid them or risk having your product be ridiculed or dismissed.

If you find that pie charts are appropriate for your customers and users, then go ahead, toss that pie in Tufte’s face. But, please, if you must use one, design it well:

• A limited number of wedges, generally six or less, with the most important proportions of between 25% and 50%.
• Good color choice that emphasizes the important wedges.
• If precise values are needed, label each wedge or provide an accompanying table.
• Don’t use a pie chart if you want meaningful comparisons drawn or to show change over time.
• Avoid faux 3D effects.
• And, please, no spinning wheels-of-fortune.

Finally, realize that there are many – and many better – ways to communicate the same information. Information visualization is not a monotheistic religion. There are many gods in the pantheon, each of them with appropriate and inappropriate uses, beautiful and horrendous forms, useful and meaningless applications. Design from knowledge of the different types, not ignorance of all the others. Be a thoughtful acolyte, not a dogmatic sycophant.

UPDATE: Kathy Rowell chimes in.

Last month, I participated in UXCamp DC and led a session to discuss the design considerations for enterprise mobile application design. I’m building a model showing considerations for desktop versus mobile and enterprise versus public/consumer. Thanks to everyone who participated in the session!

Click thumb for larger, legible version or download the PDF.

Jared, and the team at UIE, thanks so much for the personal attention you’ve given me around my UI15 experience. Your customer service has been top notch, and you’ve gone beyond the call of duty to make me happy.

For the rest of you, I attended UI15 and was quite unhappy with one of the workshops. I was honest in my survey responses, and Jared contacted me personally to get more details as well as to offer a credit or refund for the workshop. We then ran into each other at UXCamp DC last weekend, and he went out of his way to apologize in person.

I’ve always been a fan of UIE, often with an amused smirk at Jared’s style. UI15 turned out to be less than I had hoped, mostly because it didn’t have enough content for seasoned, experienced practitioners, but particularly because of this one workshop I attended. It left a bad taste in my mouth, but Jared’s personal, respectful, and overwhelming follow up has renewed my appreciation for him and his organization.

Thanks again, Jared.