Jon Hung

A trend I have become skeptical about is designing donation systems as a means to receive badges and adornments (profile widgets). Recent events in Haiti have brought out huge humanitarian aid; Americans, despite being deep in a recession, are keeping pace with donations made during previous disasters. This is due in part to the creativity of humanitarian organizations in their donation campaigns that are leveraging technology and word of mouth to develop a new set of tools for motivating charity. We can now donate by text message, content providers have links to donate to the needy, and grassroots social networks spread messages about a cause at higher speeds than ever.

These are all great innovations. However, I am wary of a trend towards badges & other virtual assets to reward donors. For some donators, a badge prominently displayed on a social profile for all to acknowledge them as Mother Teresa reincarnated provides the requisite incentive that motivates giving to charity. (Fred Wilson sums up some of the reward systems that have benefited the Haitian crisis). I am equally skeptical towards people whose charity is motivated in this way, as I am towards designers who integrate these status symbols into their social systems. They are submitting to the deepest reaches of psychological egoism, tinting our actions with a self-serving spin, re-framing donation as an activity that demands acknowledgement and adoration by our peers and strangers. Social networking helps spread ideas, but when the main idea is that “I donated, I am awesome”, we are cheapening the act.

Is there a need for these symbols in the humanitarian space? Are organization failing to demonstrate that your money, charity, and actions are creating a better place, so they need to give you a virtual goodie to donate? Perhaps traditional donation methods that leverage the direness of the situation and empower the compassionate individual are failing and there is a need for these crappy incentives. I don’t think they are. Let us rely on the skills of the journalist, copywriter, photographer, and graphic designer to build bold and illustrative campaigns that draw attention to the situation on the ground & open the hearts of the reader.

I still believe in coming up with new ways, even social ways, to increase donations. But I think the pat-you-on-the-back badges is moving in the wrong direction. Here are some alternatives for low-cost incentives to motivate charitable action:
1) Phone call or letter written by someone you’ve helped
2) Unlocked premium content
3) Tax returns
4) Removing ads and banners

Services can also be re-designed to allow for donating in small amounts. (A creative re-use of Bank of America’s “Keep The Change” campaign is one example)

Although badges might be increasing donations, we are also increasing narcissism and the act of donating for self-interest. We should design for compassion, which unlike virtual assets, has lasting benefits for society.

image by Rosenfield MediaBefore I make more of a fool of myself by talking about sustainability and my role in saving the world, I should probably read some more.  I’m starting with these two books: “Nudge” by Thaler and Sunstein, and “Design is The Problem” by Nathan Shedroff.  I respect both works for their non-traditional approach to sustainability:  “Nudge” begins with the problem of human psychology, DiTP with design principles.  Which helps when you know little about environmental science. Read the rest of this entry »

Image by singsing_sky

If there’s anything that serves as a universal mentor, it’s the written word.

I’m an avid reader of blogs.  Anything related to UX and design, and I’m probably subscribed to it.  Blogs are great spaces for engagement, they provide multiple perspectives on a single topic, and they’re a great way for invisible and unrepresented populations to make an impact on larger bodies of knowledge.

I’m also a lover of novels.  Transporting the reader to another time and place, a good novel is both a creative exercise and a relaxing release from the world.  They can also provide in-depth instruction that most blogs are unable to provide.

Today, DailyBlogTips asked its readers: Is there still a need for reading books in this information age?

My answer, like most, is an emphatic yes; both blogs and books are valuable mentors.  Their differences merely imply different use contexts.

Picking up a book requires a sitting of at least 45 minutes (for me).  Chapters are longer than blog posts, and it usually requires at least reading through one whole section or chapter to gain the sense of closure and progress in the narrative.  Admittedly, due to the amount of devotion required to get through a book, I have a bad habit of leaving books un-finished (sometimes with less than 20 pages left!).  However, the time investment has a huge return: finishing a good book can be a formative experience, and with the right author and public acceptance, a book can create a shift in the cultural perception of reality.

Blogs on the other hand are quick fixes of information, meant to be skimmed during a coffee break or read on the subway.  They can be left unfinished and saved for later reading –  there are times I have more tabs open in Mozilla than I know what to do with.  Furthermore, the nature of hypertext implies an interrupted narrative.  Through hyper-links, readers are transported elsewhere in cyberspace not through their imaginations but through disruption of the perceptual stream, analagous to changing the channel on the tube.

Is blog consumption any better than TV consumption?  I fear that this medium, which I admittedly am infatuated with, has slid down with “baser” modes of communication and authorship.  The very freedom that allows anyone to create a blog does clog the airwaves with noise.  Though I am all for open source media, there is something to be said about the institution of the publishing house that serves as a gateway to quality content.

Like the author of the original post, I’ve not been reading as much as I probably could be.  It may indeed be a sign of the times that people are blogging more and probably reading fewer books.  Many people probably share with me the problem of not having time to devote to reading a book; whether it’s coding, tweeting, writing the blog, or researching new gigs, I find it hard to set aside time for good reading.

However, these differences don’t stop me from buying and enjoying books. (some of my favorites I’ve listed above)

The idea of consumers buying an experience, rather than a product, was first introduced to me through reference to Pine & Gillmore’s book, The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre & Every Business a Stage. Products in the market today, no matter how mundane, are packaged around some sort artificial or natural experiential context.

There are good and bad sides to this experience economy. A lot of bad stories get made up: McDonald’s as a lifestyle brand for the youthful and active, cigarette smoking as narcissistic and nihilistic cool.

It is time we begin to craft real experiences through products we design.  What do I mean by that?  First, a well-meaning and thought out experience is one that serves to please the consumer (or user, or audience) through total engagement: tapping into emotions of anticipation and satisfaction, create responsible narratives, and form bonds in a trusting relationship. Furthermore, a real user experience informs the consumer directly and responsibly about their product’s consumption and the context of use.  This implies a built-in understanding of the user’s experience outside the web (or whatever platform we design our product).

We must be aware of how the experience we craft interacts with and compares to the audience’s lived experience.  We must provide experiences that consumers are comfortable with, are informed about, feel are genuine and authentic, and allows them room for freedom and empowerment, much like the kind of life choices that humans actively and happily engage in.

Addendum: Wow there’s so much to be said about Jesse James Garrett’s closing statement at the IA summit this year. For now, this quote stood out in my mind. I’m literally losing sleep over this, writing 3 hours after I intended to go to sleep.

They take people, they hook them up to mRIs, you know “brain wave scanners” and then they show em tv commercials and they look at what parts of their brains light up when they watch these tv commercials… and they can figure out how to craft a tv commercial that will illicit a feeling of safety, or trust, or desire. So yeah, my first reaction when I heard about this stuff: wow I gotta get my hands on some of that…my second reaction was wait a minute, what are we talking here? A process designed to illicit specific patterns of neural activity in users; back in the 50s they called that mind control.

Now in a lot of ways we’re already in the mind control business: IA and interaction design both seek to reward and reinforce certain patterns of thought and behavior… So there’s always been an ethical dimension of this work. But who’s talking about this stuff, who’s taking this seriously? I don’t hear anybody talking about these things.

Green design.

Web 2.0.

Since entering a more “corporate” (non-profit) setting, I am realizing how new these concepts are to a lot of company cultures where everyone is pining for a blog or a recycling program.  Everyone’s got their own opinion about what these things are.  Here are two such opinions I found to be interesting:

Green Design:

a UX podcast speaking with Marc Ettig of Fit Associates.

Ettig talks about the green design being contingent upon two important organizational behaviors which are emerging in the consumer market: 1) the move from worrying about “me” to worrying about “we”. 2) being concerned about quality of life, rather than (and independent of) just “having stuff” (about 45% of the way through the podcast).  These new collective ideas are what is charging the movement towards greener products and services.  What I like about his discussion is that green and sustainable means more than how we use materials, but it is an ethical attitude towards creating a better future (however that may be broadly defined).

My quest continues to find a green video game company.  Who’s improving quality of life in the market?

Web 2.0:

Posted a week ago on DESIGNING *for humans, a blog post compares web 2.0 to older, nostalgic devices which serve as the web 2.0’s precursors.  The Sony Walkman and Polaroid camera set up a culture of sharing media which made web 2.0 possible.  D*fh takes their definition of web 2.0 from O’Reilly media:

2.0’s key attributes, O’Reilly presciently suggested, include “harnessing collective intelligence” (think Wikipedia) and “rich user experiences” (think YouTube).

They do a great job of illustrating how nebulous this concept really is, by tying the “2.0 concept” to devices which existed long before the web.

This week’s mentor is Van Jones, who hails from Oakland and brings his message of building green collar jobs to Washington D.C. as recently appointed green jobs advisor for the Obama administration.  VJ is not only a local hero, aiming to bring men and women out of poverty through the creation of green jobs, but he’s also a wonderful example of how people can leverage the power of social technology to amplify their message and escalate it to the national stage.

Read more about Van Jones, and the marriage between the green and social, after the jump.

Head to San Francisco this week and you’ll hear about the hottest trends and news in video game platforms, graphics, and interaction design at the GDC, or Game Developers Conference.  Multimillion dollar developers preview long-awaited releases amidst indie developers pitching their ideas hoping to be the next hot WiiWare game at this  exciting event.  But what you probably won’t find amongst all the buzz are discussions about the social impacts of these new interactive technologies. For instance, what do you think about the Wii-mote extension that mimics a handgun and trigger for Nintendo shoot-em-up games?

I’ll keep this post short because I don’t want to sound like an old man, and don’t intend to spoil the fun and enjoyment this conference is all about.  I have not yet researched whether there are conferences dedicated to exploring the cultural implications of video games and their development, so I can’t claim that all developers are ignorant of these issues (though I doubt many people in the industry would find such a conference as exciting as GDC).

However, I’ve not yet heard of any emerging companies stepping up and acknowledging their role in shaping our collective futures.  I would really like to see a ‘green’ gaming company that markets itself as a company that spends significant time developing socially responsible games that can improve our world, rather than provide distractions from it.  I would also like to hear a story about a ‘green exec’ on the board of one of these huge gaming companies.  Does such a role exist?

Last night, a good friend confessed to me she “didn’t get Twitter”, and that she wasn’t going to. Fearing I was going to lose one of my followers, I told her about an upcoming blog post I was writing (this very one) about the virtues of Twitter. She rolled her eyes at the idea,  unimpressed by my efforts. Ten reasons she’s already heard this wasn’t about to change anything.
She’s right, many of these lists make it onto blogs somewhere. Despite these doubts I persisted, and with a different approach, I think I might have caught her attention a bit. I told her about a day in the life using Twitter.

Here’s what I did using twitter, yesterday:

Read the rest of this entry »