Use the Wrong Angle

02.12.08 | Category: Asymmetry, Interaction Design, Zen Jazz

Wynton Marsalis backstage
Unexpected angles and perspectives lead to invaluable insights.
What does watching a Jazz performance live from backstage have to do with giving your Palm Pilot to a Senior?

Jazz Backstage
Last week, Jazz legend Wynton Marsalis invited me backstage. It struck me—Watching a brilliant jazz performance from behind, where it is not meant to be watched, connects you with the spirit of Jazz like nothing else. Jazz by its nature is asymmetrical, dynamic, improvisational– (one can argue, like a start-up). From this vantage point, you can feel the chemistry and dynamics among the musicians. You can see their mutes, plungers, set lists, bags, water bottles. You can hear them talking to each other, gesturing, and signaling: all of the hidden elements that glue a performance together.

Backstage with Wynton Marsalis Video

Palm Pilots for Seniors
Recently I attended a lecture by Tim Brown, CEO and President of IDEO. He spoke about the importance of unusual perspectives in usability testing. Brown made an interesting point. A new product needs to be tested against “extreme users:” seniors, toddlers, etc. This way, the product managers can get insight into flaws and challenges much better than through a conventional usability test. Conventional users have worked their way through many of the challenging points through practice, so these challenges can be harder to spot. But they remain a challenge nevertheless, and overcoming them can present competitive advantage for the new product. Like in Jazz, the unconventional perspective brings us closer to the true spirit of the process at hand. At unexpected angles, invaluable insights are revealed.

Front view—————-Backstage view
Educated mind————-No-mind
Polished image————-Rough edges
Light————————— Dark
Full—————————– Empty
Fixed—————————-Dynamic
Squarely on——————Extreme angles
Balanced———————-Askew
Visible————————–Obscured
Clean—————————Untidy

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4 Comments so far

  1. Erryn 02.13.08 at 8:51 am

    You’re absolutely right, Drue! Sometimes it’s important to look at our work from another angle in order to take it to a new level or get closer to the truth.

  2. Tristan Naramore 02.13.08 at 4:34 pm

    “At unexpected angles, invaluable insights are revealed.”

    Reminds me of Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies. (If you’re on a Mac, grab the widget at http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/reference/oblique.html)

    I remember getting invited to watch an Einstürzende Neubauten show from backstage (in Paris, c. 2000). It was then I realized how performers get such big egos. To see your fans’ faces staring up at you in sheer adulation, night after night…Well, that’ll grow anyone’s ego. How very un-Zen!

    One of the trickier aspects of designing usability studies is finding the right test subjects, the ones that most closely match the idealized Personas that drive design. It’s like trying to find the “average” person: There is no such thing. Perhaps finding and testing “extreme users” would indeed yield some very useful surprises.

  3. Jeremy Miller 02.20.08 at 2:04 pm

    I have heard of the concept of “extreme users” and the idea is rarely practiced during product testing. Frequently our gut instinct is to go to potential customers, especially ones who we think would bite even on our crummy prototype:). Not only are we cheating ourselves by testing this way, we are working with groups that may be able to effortlessly use our product (especially since we probably built it with them in mind).

    I think the above principle stresses an important point: our sample should be far more innocent than we would like; people who will definitely let you know where they feel the pain of poor usability design.

    Wish I had been at that IDEO lecture, love those guys!

  4. Henry W. Lu 03.27.08 at 8:37 pm

    Drue,

    When I look at your list, I was amazed by your artist zen view perspectives. Some Zen philosophy came back to me and I think your teaching is actually trying to help us get back to the core of Zen philosophy. I was stunned that you summarized Zen in 7 principles. It looks like so simple but they give us a totally renew spirit of Zen. Jazz is very different from classical music. Jazz is very conversational, each instruments coming in mostly with very unexpected rhythm. You always want to catch those flying notes and you always one step behind. Painting is visual while Jazz is audio. Painting is in our physical 3D space while Jazz is in Einstein’s fourth dimension: Time. For Jazz, it is so Zen. Asymmetry, no clutter, bare essentials, so natural, so profound, so free and finally, bring us tranquility into our inner soul.

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