Thomas Lewis Reveals the Future of User Experience Design

– Thomas Lewis, Web User Experience Evangelism Manager, Microsoft

When we approached Tom Lewis to grant the UIRC an interview about user experiences, he readily agreed. After all, he is an evangelist, and one of his job responsibilities is to generate early adopters of Microsoft technologies.

However, we decided to ask Tom agnostic types of questions so he could share his views about the nature and the future of user experiences, and how organizations can begin to realize the value of human-centric design. In this interview, Tim Wood, director of user experience at EffectiveUI, prompts Tom to talk about ambient applications — and much more.

Q. Tom, thanks for speaking with us today. To start out, what technologies do you see on the horizon that will impact our current thinking about interactive design?

A. First, I think changes in mobile technologies will pre-empt any assumptions we have about applications today. Now, we are saddled with certain limitations as we interact with a Web application on a computer, but with mobile technology, those assumptions no longer apply. With mobile, we have to think about what context the user is in — standing in line at a restaurant, trying to catch a plane — unlimited scenarios. The mobile user experience needs to focus on contextually relevant tasks and allow people to accomplish those tasks using least amount of interaction as possible.

Another emerging technology is the touch device, or the gestural interactive screen. Microsoft has a product in development called Microsoft Surface. Imagine a table with a 30-inch display tabletop that allows you to interact with things on this table digitally. For example, if I wanted to look at pictures, I might set my camera on the table and my images are automatically downloaded to the table. Through gesture, I can stack them up, move them around —much the way I used to spread out prints on the dining room table. If you and I are having lunch together, we could sit at one of these tables and instead of making you look at my pictures on my one-inch by one-inch camera screen, you could see them on the table. Taking it one step farther, you could stack up the pictures you’d like to keep and drag them onto your camera, phone or other device.

Q. What technologies will enable organizations to build next-generation user interfaces?

A. The technology to build great user interfaces is Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), which is part of Microsot’s .NET programming framework. What we tell design-development teams today is to learn how to interact with WPF, and learn to build really compelling applications, so when new hardware like the touch table becomes available tomorrow, designers and developers can leverage their knowledge to build applications for this new form factor, and others.

Q. With advanced operating system advances like Vista and, dare I say, Leopard, as well as UI advances in the device space, how are users’ expectations changing?

A. It sounds very cliché, but people want their information anywhere, anytime, on any device. But it’s really true, and it’s an expectation that we, as designers must meet. Also, people want experiences that make life easier and take away the pain points. I always use the concept of search as an example. Just a few years ago, users had to select 10 to 20 small drop-down lists to establish search criteria. Now, we have one box.

Where I’m going with this is that we’re moving rapidly toward user-centric interaction design. That is, I shouldn’t have to be an expert to use any technology or application. Instead, I should be able to discover how things work innately. That’s what we call adaptable software — that is, software that understands what it is you’re trying to do. A great example of this thinking is in our latest version of Office. We heard from customers continually that Word is too complex. They don’t use all the features. Certainly true, but not everybody uses the same 20% or 30% of the features.

So, rather than have 20 different toolbars, we built an intuitive toolbar that understands the context the user is in. For example, if I am working on a graphic image in PowerPoint, Word will show me a toolbar to deal with that. If I go back to just inserting text into my slide, Word will give me the tools to deal with text instead. Adaptable software says, “I’m not going to expose you to everything. I’m only going to expose you to the things you need. But when you do need other things, we’re going to make it very easy for you to find them and not bury them under three layers of sub menus.”

Q. What are some of the challenges you see when trying to elevate the value of user-centricity, particularly with organizations that are unfamiliar with that type of thinking?

A. We talk with a lot of customers about the challenges they face, the first of which is around the concept of cost. When you talk to folks about user experience, often it’s really hard for them to grasp the ROI, or even know how to approach the cost of an RIA project. They can understand that if a developer writes code for an hour, it’s going to cost “X” dollars. But understanding the value of experience design is more difficult.

Even though there are myriad ROI case studies to read, few people understand how to apply those formulas to their own organizations. It’s difficult to figure out how user experience impacts the bottom line because it’s not about building something, turning around and selling it on a pure unit basis.

Another challenge organizations face is that they are flexing muscles they haven’t flexed before. Many of the developer partners we work with have to educate themselves about design — at least to the extent of what design means as more than making things look good. It takes a while for people to understand that design is about broader concepts like information architecture, accessibility and usability.

Q. Given those challenges, how do organizations justify the value of robust experiences? Ultimately, how is success measured?

A. I point people to Forrester Research, who publishes studies about how to measure the success of an RIA across channels in various verticals. But, from a more user-centric viewpoint, I really like this chart below for people to wrap their heads around the reasons behind RIAs. In a March 2008 report titled “Three Steps to Better Web Site Performance Metrics,” Forrester analysts looked at web site usability, functionality and enjoyability gains in 2008. The chart below is very interesting and may help UIRC readers: 

(click for larger view)

Thomas: People…  You can say that things will be better by making changes, but this actually shows that: Hey, you know what, if you do invest the time to recoup that cost is minimal and you’re going to continue to grow the business. So I think that’s a really great way to sort of talk to people who maybe lack the user experience vision and for them to understand: Oh, by putting my investment and my time into thinking about this that I really will show a true ROI. 

Q. How can organizations interpret the concepts from the chart in relation to their own circumstances?

A. Organizations have to realize that they are dealing with an entrenched user base. I stick to the idea that ‘Users may not like what they have, but they know what they know,’ and may only be willing to make incremental changes.

Organizations must also must look carefully at the relationships among all the different applications within their business. Each new undertaking is sure to have dependencies on other applications. It is essential to involve the folks who own those applications throughout the development cycle of any new undertaking.

Also, when it comes to business applications, we’re talking about people’s jobs — the means that they rely on to feed their families, not just update their Facebook profile. When organizations develop new applications, it’s important to remember that if something doesn’t work well — if users don’t adopt it, or if the new application doesn’t increase productivity — there are personal as well as bottom line consequences. If Twitter goes down, I don’t lose any sleep. But if the tool I need to perform my job duties fails, I fail.

Q. Tom, to wrap this up, here’s my fun question: I believe we’re entering a golden age of user experience and the graphical user interface. Do you agree?

A. Actually, I do agree, but I prefer the phrase “age of enlightenment.” I think what’s happening now is that people are becoming enlightened to the fact that user experience matters greatly. The classic example is Starbucks. If I stand outside of a Starbucks and ask customers, “Why do you come to Starbucks?” I doubt they would say “Oh, I like it because paying $5 for a latte is a good return on investment.”

The answer is that people like the experience around product consistency no matter where they are in the world, being able to work on their laptops, and feeling the overall vibe of the place.  My hope is that we embrace and enhance this kind of unconscious thinking and get to the point where user experience is just yet another part of what we do, without consciously thinking about it or rationalizing it.

Like you, I see the classic notion of the graphical user interface (GUI) going away and being replaced with ambient-types of experiences. At some point, GUIs will become organic, and ambience will proliferate. Our children will abstract out infrastructures as we know them today. They will not care what chip is under the hood. Rather, they will say, “Okay, how do I make technology that people use in a way that makes sense to them?” There will be no more manuals or help systems. Our children will seamlessly interact with technology the same way they interact with their everyday world. It’s exciting to think about that!

Tom, this was an awesome interview. Thank you very much.

Tim, it was great to share views with you.