Inventing behaviors, needs and perceptions

Picking up on my colleagues Robert Fabricant and Jon Kolko talking about the recent IxDA conference, I thought I’d add a few thoughts. I didn’t attend the conference, but their posts about behavior and its place in interaction design struck a chord with me.

Robert’s argument is that the true medium of interaction designers is not technology, but behaviors.

I definitely agree that behaviors are an end-result that we are seeking to address, whether it is by allowing them to stay the same (a new product does not require an alteration, which helps people adopt it) or by altering behaviors in part or in whole.

I’m not sure that behaviors rise to the level of medium, however, since we do not manipulate them directly. Changing behaviors may be an end goal, but we use an intermediary (software, physical products, services, brand, etc.) as our influencer. We are like writers: their end goal is to create a new universe in the reader’s mind and to perhaps draw them into action or a new way of seeing the world. The words are the means to that end, the medium, and the writer can hope that the reader responds the way they intend, but has no real control over what they end up feeling, thinking and doing. But I don’t know that writers would see reader emotions and behaviors as their medium per se. This is one of the interesting things about design and writing though, people constantly surprise you with how they’ve re-interpreted your work. It is both humbling (to realize the limits of our control) and also wonderful (to realize how creative people are).

In the case of interactions, the altering of behaviors can either be seen or used as a push, where the change is forced, or as a pull, where new behaviors are enabled and opened up that had previously been inconvenient, impossible, or simply unconsidered.

But there is more to it than behaviors; perceptions also play a large role, and we want to affect both of them. Perceptions lead to behaviors, and behaviors lead to perceptions; they are a loop, each building on, reflecting, and altering the other.

This is particularly true when talking about trying to create social change, as Robert is. Project M is as much about changing perceptions as it is about behaviors, as the two cannot be separated.

To tie this a bit into Jon’s presentation about synthesizing research, this is often where the rubber meets the road of determining needs, and then conceptualizing solutions that will allow new behaviors (and perhaps perceptions) and therefore satisfy those needs.

Often when analyzing user needs we are looking for needs that they did not express explicitly. We are therefore to an extent imagining, even inventing, what their needs are. Not blindly or randomly, of course, as Jon argues there is a chain of logic that needs to lead up to the determined needs, it’s just not always the familiar A+B=C logic. But this is not a mechanical process, there is a level of informed intuition required. The more breakthrough the need insight, the behavior change, and the product concept, the more intuition is necessary.

Furthermore, through our designs we are seeking to create new behaviors for people. Out of those new behaviors will come new needs, for every product introduces new problems directly or indirectly, even as it solves existing problems.

I think some people get uncomfortable with the idea that we are in the business of creating needs, changing behaviors, and changing perceptions. It smacks too much of marketing and manipulation. That can be true, and some people will use these methods for cynical ends. The methods in themselves are not inherently good or bad, just as words that writers are craft are not inherently good or bad. It is up to us to use them in ways that we think will benefit people and improve the world, rather than just to sell more stuff to supposedly gullible consumers.

The fact is, we influence behaviors and perceptions with everything we create, whether we intend to or not, and maintaining the status quo is just as much an influence as changing things. But we can kid ourselves if we maintain status quo that the world is created “out there” and that it is the way it is because of user choice, and we are just fitting into it.

If we seek to actively change things, our role becomes less implicit. Our responsibility thereby becomes more explicit. That is where things get tricky because, as Robert and Jon state, we do not have a model about behaviors (or perceptions) that can help us predict outcomes well enough to make our responsibility feel comfortable.

Palm Treo Pro: Not digging it

Underwhelming. That’s the word that comes to mind when I look at the new Palm Treo Pro. Yes, nicer looking for sure, with a strong influence from the lower-cost Centro model (and looking rather like the upcoming Blackberry Bold). And it has 3G and WiFi, which is great, and the newest version of Windows Mobile, and GPS, though these can also be found on existing competitors. So it’s got a decent package of features, but what’s so compelling about it that isn’t being offered elsewhere?

In this day and age, offering a screen that takes up less than 50% of the device, especially with as big borders around it as the Pro has, just doesn’t cut it. I’m not suggesting touchscreen only here, as I definitely prefer typing on a physical keyboard to tapping on a virtual one, but really, even a business-oriented device like this one is going to be used to show off photos, looking at web pages, etc. which all benefit from a large screen. 320x320 has been the Palm standard for years now. Heck, even the Palm Tungsten T3 I had 4 years ago had a 50% bigger screen, albeit without a physical keyboard. The Pro’s screen already looks small, and will look even more diminutive over its product lifecycle given how slowly Palm brings out new models.

Size-wise the Pro is almost identical to Blackberries, though longer. It’s fatter than the iPhone. So no real advantage in pocketability or bragging rights there.

The talk time and battery life are good, but the 2MP camera is ho-hum.

In this video Palm talks about how the Windows interface is great because it mimics what people are used to on their desktops. Ironically, as Rob Haitani, the software architect for Palm back in the day used to talk about, the whole philosophy of the original Palm OS was that you should not try to mimic a big-screen mouse/screen environment, because it was not optimized for small-screen direct touch interactions. Transferring desktop interaction patterns onto a handheld was just not efficient, and which is why the early versions of Windows Mobile were slow to use. Now they’ve adopted the Windows platform on this device, Palm has to sing the opposite song.

Palm got a lot right in their earliest models, but they’ve struggled to stay innovative and focused in the last few years.

In the video they also talk about how they wanted to take care of all the little details. It looks like they’ve done that, but by focusing on the small things Palm’s come up with a device that treads water in the market. There are no big things that really push the boat out further compared to other smartphones, no marquee features that really stand out from the increasingly large and diverse crowd. With the current state of the smartphone market, that’s just not good enough to move the needle on their dwindling market share and attract new customers to the Palm brand.