Losing Context - Bryan Haggerty

Connecting Bookstore Shelves and Book Lookup Systems

There are occasions where I visit a traditional book store such as Barnes & Noble, as opposed to simply ordering on Amazon.com–albeit rarely. Visiting a local bookstore does allow for that browsing of printed material more easily than an online store and some people do take joy in lingering around the vast shelves. But when visiting a bookstore in search of a specific item, the process can be somewhat frustrating and like a treasure hunt–almost making you rather wait the three days to get it by mail.

Barnes & Noble stores offer a kiosk system which allows for a search of a particular item and tells what floor and section it can be found in, there’s even a picture of the book’s cover. Conveniently, this can be printed to aid in the search. Unfortunately, how big the book is in both thickness and height or what the book’s spine looks like is not known from the kiosk’s information. The kiosk’s provided book cover picture isn’t much help in finding the book as bookstores stack books vertically with their spines facing front–hiding the book cover from view. Resulting in the all too common, head tilt browse as the person attempts to read the title’s on the book spine, since they have no clue what the book’s spine actually looks like. The kiosk managed to get the person to the right location but fails at that critical point of actually easily identifying the physical book.

While the kiosk’s provided book cover picture is certainly useful in validating that that is the book the person wants, it doesn’t provide enough information as a wayfinding tool in relation to how bookstores are arranged. A simple addition to the kiosk might just be a picture of the book’s spine, as shown below.

Barnes & Noble’s kiosk updated to show a picture of a book’s spine

Looking Back at Futurism

Earlier I had spoken about what I had thought about the state of current user experience books and that if I am seeking to find new knowledge I would have to look elsewhere. Oddly enough that elsewhere may be in the past. Which as I write this, seems utterly obvious but I think Alex Wright sums it up nicely in his book Glut:

“For all the barrels of ink and billions of pixels spent chronicling the rise of the Internet in recent years, however, surprisingly few writers seem disposed to look in any direction but forward.”

We owe a lot to those who came before us and I’ll be perfectly honest, I cannot say I know a great deal about those who laid down the path, which is the basis for my career today. The work of these visionaries or futurists when looked at today, the hits are amazingly accurate and the misses well, while amazingly interesting have yet to come to fruition.

But this makes me wonder, are we more caught up in the day after today? As opposed to, who is laying the ground work for that true tomorrow? Yes, working day to day is an iterative process and you’ll get anywhere one step at a time. Some of the works of earlier futurists describe ideas which are far beyond anything they ever had, and I’m not talking about looking at a bird and envisioning all humans in flying cars. So where are today’s futurists? I assume it is only negligence on my behalf to find them, hopefully.

This Year’s UX Book, Same As Last Year’s

Often I check out what some of the latest UX books have got to offer, always on the lookout to learn more. Unfortunately, recently I’ve noticed a lot of the same. I picked up Robert Hoekman’s Designing the Obvious and while well written and containing an abundance of relevant examples, I found that, like many other books on the shelves today, it seemed to be a regurgitation of everyone else’s books.

I can only take so much of half page pull quotes from the likes of Alan Cooper, Don Norman, Jakob Nielsen, and Steve Krug. They’ve all had very insightful things to say, and that is the issue; I’ve already read their books. Where am I took to indulge my learning desire?

Looking for Inspiration

The bookshelves seem to be a little too much about The Now or more appropriately, The Yesterday. I won’t lie, I miss the days of doing research and reading about ideas in their infancy–at the time questioning their relevance. That is why I was happy to come across a little feature in iTunes called, iTunes U. It is an area in iTunes dedicated solely for universities and the content they want to share with their students and, in my case, the curious public.

Most interestingly are Stanford and MIT’s offerings. Video lectures on topics ranging from HCI to Brain Structure and its Origins. Best of all, they’re cheaper and more accessible than any book.

The Revolution is Now

The Dean campaign is what got me into seriously following politics as opposed to just watching the headlines and never really scratching the surface of where our country is going. When I first saw how Howard Dean was taking politics in a different direction, and using what is considered to be an unconventional political tool–the Internet–I was ultimately curious. Mainly due to that I am avidly interested in technology and beginning to question where we as Americans fit into deciding our government.

Joe Trippi, Dean’s campaign manager, has written an excellent book–The Revolution Will Not Be Televised–depicting the beginning of the revolution of the people taking back the government and using the Internet to do it.

I have always felt that as a person I could have no real affect on the people who make our policies. But Joe Trippi’s book speaks of the revolution which has already started, the people becoming a major part of calling the shots and taking back what once was ours, the government.

From this point on, there will be a new special interest group to reckon with–the American people. And this special interest group has a tool–the Internet–more powerful than broadcast politics…

The book is not liberal propaganda, it’s barely even about the parties. It’s about how the people have lost their voice in our political system. We are constantly fed “news” from the broadcast and cable stations, supposedly telling us the facts. But where is the interaction, how do we get involved and become heard? As I’ve stated earlier the Internet is that solution, the voices are heard and actually make a difference.

After reading Trippi’s book it makes me wish I had been more involved, but at the least I can say that the Dean Machine sparked my interest in politics and that it is possible even as an average person to have my voice mean something.

At a time when everyone says things have changed since September 11th, I’ll say I agree. We as American citizens will no longer let our voices fall victim to the special interests who now dictate our government policies.

This is nothing new, even our forefather Thomas Jefferson spoke of it:

A little rebellion is a good thing. God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. … What country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance.

We are at a crossroads in the way our government works and as Joe Trippi stated we are living in the Empowerment Age.

The Coma

Just read Alex Garland’s The Coma which not surprisingly was an ultra quick read. The book clocks in at about 200 pages with a good amount of illustrations and double spaced text.

That aside I’ll say it was still a good read. The Coma plays almost like a dream analysis in terms of what make up our dreams, the setting, characters, and events. Garland constructed the book in much the way that dreams feel to me, the sudden change in scenery or the appearance of unfamiliar people as major characters. Upon finishing the book you realize that Garland leaves the story very open ended, much like a dream, so it’s up to you to decipher the story as you feel.

All Consuming: Blogs put to good use

A few years ago I was telling people how I felt that in the future there would be aggregator services which would search the web’s blogs and analyze them for topics such as movies, music, or books. I saw this as a way to get real reviews from regular people.

I think we’re getting closer to that with a service I came across today known as All Consuming. I had come across this site from looking at referrers to my site. All Consuming searches through blogs for entries which have links to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and so forth. These links are what bring the entry into context about a particular book. The web site then aggregates blog entries from tons of sites and you can now look up a particular book and see what people are saying about it on their blogs.

The site features my entry reviewing Defensive Design for the Web.

Defensive Design for the Web

I recently picked up 37signals new book Defensive Design for the Web. The book offers some good insight into some of the more basic usability design issues on the web and while it is a quick read I wouldn’t recommend it to the more advanced designers. If you’re new to web design or finally realizing that there is more to creating web pages than just html this book is probably a good read.

I do still think that I will use it as a reference in my library of books. Defensive Design for the Web does one thing that most usability design books don’t and that is showing bad design. Many books out there exclaim how they are not writing a book to scold designers but to laud those which are designed well. Unfortunately that doesn’t always help because as humans we learn from mistakes and showing bad design helps us learn what not to do.

If you do get a chance to pick this up I highly recommend getting Steve Krug’s book Don’t Make Me Think as well since his book I feel makes a great companion to Defensive Design for the Web. Krug’s book shows a lot of great design and a lot great ways to make them even better which is something that the 37Signals book does not do.