Product Design in the EnterpriseEuroIA 2013, September 28, 2013

Chris Rivard@chrisrivard

When I think about enterprise product design and data products in particular, and the skills necessary to solve the emerging challenges we face in software, interaction design, user experience. I can think of no better role within an organization than that of the information architect. This is our domain.

As cross-disciplinary practitioners it is our responsibility to both ensure that what we are designing is both contextually meaningful and that it reaches into the past to remind us of our inherent humanity.

1. Materials2. Social Signals3. Data Product Design

Product DesignMaterials

1. survey of materials used to design and build artifacts2. meaning that we imbue into these artifacts3. artifacts help us to make sense of the world around us.4. Data product design at Jive5. Close with some insight into enterprise product design and our emerging role in the design of information, products and data.

Sillustani

1. Pre-Incan ritual and burial site in the Peruvian Altiplano (~600 years ago)2. Ceremonial Area

1. Entrances Faces East2. 3 Steps - Condor, Puma, Snake

3. Constructed of materials readily accessible.

Aymara Chullpas

1. Aymara Chullpas (elite family burial towers)2. Entrances and openings face east to the rising sun

*this site was only made a national archeological preserve 2 years ago.

Materials

1. No wheel, massive human labor - testament to the social organization involved.2. Material left unused, catalogued (and numbered by archeologists)

Don’t lieDon’t stealDon’t be lazy

1.Chakana or Incan Cross - Incan Moral Code1. Condor, Puma, Snake2. Knowledge, Love, Work3. Cusco - the capital in the center

Carl Jung“We constantly use symbolic terms to represent concepts that we cannot define or fully comprehend.”

Assigning meaningMaking sense of the physical world

1. A creative process2. Multi-layered and complex3. In the case of the Inca and pre-Inca: Rooted in the physical world.

100 years ago

Portland

1. Utility of the artifact - a steel ring hammered out by a blacksmith2. How to keep a horse from wandering off in the city?

Social Utility

1. Moving away from a reflection of the natural world toward our interactions within society. Utility.2. These artifacts are all around us, concrete objects.

Purposefully designedBuilt by artisans from materials readily accessible

artisan > mass production > artisan

1. From artisan to mass-production (back to artisan?)2. “You can have it in any color as long as it’s black” - Henry Ford

Product DesignNew materials

Let’s transition. And fast forward to the present.

What do we value?Where we focus our attention defines what we value

1. As information architects2. As designers3. As technologists4. As a culture

1. Where we focus our attention defines what we value 2. Hidden complexity in a physical product or technology (magic) (making cat5 cables, TCP/IP, wireless)3. Assign meaning through personalization through a single physical characteristic: the color.4. Bridge generation - saying goodbye to old metaphors // flat design // goodbye to skeuomorphism

Bricked

1. Irony of the language that we use.2. Anachronistic3. As a physical artifact, a slab of plastic and metal is not that interesting (you can’t build a house out of bricked mobile phones) / the utility of the physical artifact is lacking.

The human brain inherently tends to gravitate toward ideas which sound complex.

This is the negative space.

Let’s pause for a moment here.

1.This is the negative space of software product design2.This is where the designer earns their keep3.This is probably the greatest source of friction among designers in enterprise software.

1. And germane to this audience... information architecture is a bit esoteric, we like complexity, our raw materials are linguistics, rhetoric, interactions.

4.Taleb in Antifragile calls this “via negativa”. Removing/taking away from - not adding.

Complexity

Jawbone Up 1.Complex technology hidden in a simple physical artifact - sensors.2. From the utility of the artifact to the data the artifact creates

Blue or Red or ...

1. Fitbit Flex2. Our new raw material - the resource we are building with - are data.

1. It is not a finite raw material - these are our contrails.

SensemakingAdding meaning to our experiences

1. Adding meaning to our artifacts ... to meaning to experiences.2. Do we have to choose between the value of the data or the value of the experience? Do they complement one another? Do they enrich or inform an experience?

1. Does the quantification of the experience add value?

Doggles!?

1. What does the measurement of our experiences add to them?

“The Milkshake Run”

1.There are variables, qualities of the experience that cannot be captured by data.

InstrumentationFinite variables in a closed system.

In Quantified Self - Variables do not add up to the experience.

Person in physical space (exercise)Monitoring physical objects (in the 3 dimensions).

1. FACET - NASA, air traffic evaluation tool2. Closed system, no room for error.3. Generally finite variables (you could argue for weather discrepancies)

1. What about instrumentation in a closed system?2. Cloud computing architecture. Application monitoring.3. Complex, many variables - yet inputs, software and hardware are controlled.

ComplexitySensemakingMeaning

Data Product DesignDesigning with data (R&D, Sales, Product)

At Jive:1. R&D focused initiatives - Collaboration.2. Sales & marketing initiatives - Renewals Dashboard.3. End-user product initiatives - Impact Metrics.

We provide a social business software platform that

we believe improves business results by enabling a

more productive and effective workforce through

enhanced communication and collaboration both inside

and outside the enterprise.

1. Mix of internal and external communities.2. Large, global customers.

Truffle sniffing hog

Data Science & DesignDegree CentralityInteraction PairsCollaboration Co-Clusters

1. Degree centrality, e.g. how connected is the node (fig. A)2. “Interaction Pairs” - Creation and response pairs.3. Island method - breaking large networks into small networks

1. Force directed layout - fun the first time.

Social SignalsEverything we do emits a signal

1. We’re not instrumenting hardware or software any longer2. We’re instrumenting human interactions

How we speak“Pronouns and other stealth function words serve as subtle emotion detectors that most of us never consciously appreciate.”

The Secret Life of Pronouns, James Pennebaker

1. When writing about positive experiences people tend to use “we”-words at particularly high rates. People who are happy are also more specific, relying on concrete nouns and references to particular times and places.2. When in great emotional or physical pain, they tend to use I-words at high rates.

Our body languageWe cannot interact with signaling

A lot like style - you cannot not have it.

Do not disturb

Power poses

1. Amy Cuddy’s TED talk (http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are.html)2. Drawing inward vs. opening up (cortisol or testosterone)

Honest SignalsInfluence / Language Style MatchingMimicry / Body LanguageConsistency / Mental Focus & VariabilityActivity / Excited or Subdued

- Sandy Pentland, MIT

Sandy Pentland -MITAutonomic nervous system

Social SignalsThrough our online interactions

1. How do these signals manifest in an online community?2. Not physical, not a f2f conversation (mirroring - Language Style Matching)

Impact MetricsBetter insight into authored content

1. Jive content types, social graph, communities both internal and external2. Early on this was called “vanity metrics”.

How can we make using Jive better than sending email?

1. Think of a read receipt.2. Think of sending an email and having immediate feedback.3. Can we make a case for that? This is the problem presented to the design team.

1. Various collections of people organized into (Places: spaces, groups, projects)2. Robust permissions: secret groups, private groups, members only groups3. Activity streams where content is disseminated throughout the community4. Multiple collaborators on a piece of content5. Complexity in how the interpretation and understanding of this data

Platform ComplexityMultiple Content TypesActivity StreamsGroup & Permissions

Calculated Metrics

1. Reach - how much of the community did your content reach **permission2. Sentiment - how was your content received **total likes / viewers3. Impact - social actions to views **shares, bookmarks, likes, comments

Private or Public?

1. This feature was added in the second cloud release after internal testing / feedback.

Actionable

Who?

1. Who read my content?2. This decision was extremely controversial.3. There are system admins who have all access. Should they appear in the list of viewers? Yes, they do.4. My boss has never read any of my content. And he gave me a bad review.

IterationWhen data products meets reality

Impact Score / Viewers90

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0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350

r2

r1

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Imp

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Trending

Downward

Smooth + Up

1. As a piece of content trends, the impact was going down. why?2. It was going viral

Enterprise CadenceLearn & Adapt

1. Talk a little about the design between the 2 releases (Nomad to Samurai to Titan - Great Divide Brewing)

1. Redesigned for the Titan release.

1. Realtime2. Segmentation3. Analytics API Cloud Service - allow direct access to the data4. Instrument everything5. Expanded content types (documents, discussions, blog posts)

Privacy (pre-prism)1. (The illusion of privacy) in the workplace2. Bundesdatenshutzgesetz (BDSG)3. Safe Harbor Act - Directive 95/46/EC (personal data)4. Cloud

Threatens the openness of the Internet - which is a problem.Brazil response: walled gardens. Innovation will slow. More of a philosophy of openness.

Design Challenges1. Entitlements / Calculation2. Compute / Analytics API3. Calculated Metrics / Meaning

Data to Action to MeaningInsight and sensemaking

1. This is the next phase.2. Remove the data from the forefront.3. Correlation is not the primary interest.

1. Does the reason why really matter? Nate Silver is saying this...4. Relate IQ (CRM using social data)5. Klout (an idea without a business model?)6. The Data Guild - former colleagues who are building an “IDEO for data science”.

1. Data is a raw material with which to build.2. Determine the questions that you want to answer “how can groups make better decisions?”

1.e.g. What is the best way to decide how to construct a nuclear reactor so that it will withstand an earthquake + tsunami? Fukishima.

Observer ParadoxObservation of an event is influenced by the observere.g. “The Gentleman’s Like”

1. “The Gentleman’s Like”

Human Behavior & Identity

1. As information designers we live in information spaces, but I want you to think about the same concepts in physical spaces.2. Sensemaking in complex environments, complex systems (Cynefin)3. What I personally find so fascinating - is the ownership people feel to their data (reward + punishment)4. How users tie their Identity to the data they generate.

Ongoing ConversationSocial signal + work persona?Etiquette for ‘Liking’ in a business context?Network intelligence (signal > response)Deriving meaning from data

Data Scientist 2.0“...they’re going to ... understand how to put the human back in the loop of data.”

-DJ Patil, RelateIQ (Le Web - Dec 2012)

Information Architect 2.0

Drop the mic and walk away.

1. These are questions of behavior, experience, design, information. This is our domain.2. This is cross-disciplinary - this is where we earn our keep.

Choices | Aesthetics(doing nothing is a choice)

1. We’re (culture) running up a mountain at top speed. No idea what is on the other side. Google Glass / Oculus Rift VR2. We have choices... dystopian panoptical surveillance state (note: 9/30...oops.) (Franzen) or a sustainable / complementary balance.. where technology and being human are complementary.

Koyaanisqatsi(out of balance)

Complementary(balanced)

1. It is a fallacy to assume that we will escape our nature (our biology). The old metaphors will fade into history - it’s up to us to establish new ones.2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koyaanisqatsi

Design the world you want to live in.

1. As information architects, data is our raw material. I think it is our responsibility to design the future we want to live it.

Thank you for your attention.

e/ christopher.rivard@jivesoftware.com

t/ @chrisrivard

Set in Raleway The League of Moveable Type.https://www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/

AttributionSlide 8 - http://chakanahealing.com/about-chakana/the-chakana-a-universal-symbol/

Slide 12, 13 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_rings_in_Portland,_Oregon

Slide 17 - Apple Computer, Apple.com

Slide 20 - http://gearhungry.com/2012/11/jawbone-up-2012.html

Slide 21 - Fitbit.com

Slide 23 - Strava.com

Slide 24 - Matthew Mioduszewski

Slide 25 - Strava.com

Slide 26 - Marquam Nature Park - http://bit.ly/19a0z13

Slide 28 -FACET, http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/home/tech_life_facet.html

Slide 29 - newrelic.com

Slide 35 - Jive Software

Slide 36 - Jive Software

Slide 37 - Jive Software

Slide 41 - ?

Slide 42 - http://smallville.wikia.com/wiki/Diana_of_Themyscira

Slide 44 - http://pandawhale.com/post/24402/excited-kid-birthday-party-gif

Slide 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 57, 58, 59, 60 - Jive Software

Slide 65

Slide 70

All other images - Chris Rivard, Peru 2013

References / ResourcesThe Secret Life of Pronouns - James Pennebaker

Honest Signals - Alex Sandy Pentland

Social Network Analysis for Startups - Maksim Tsvetovat & Alexander Kouznetsov

Antifragile - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The Shallows - Nicholas Carr

Amy Cuddy - http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are.html

The Machine in the Garden - Leo Marx

Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace

The Rhetoric and Poetics of Aristotle

Thanks to Chris Diehl (@chrisdiehl) and David Gutelius (gutelius) for helping to move the needle ;-)