September 20, 2006

Losing Control and Loving It

Over in Adaptive Path land, Todd Wilkins called out to User Experience (UEx) practitioners to reconsider the prevailing design model of tasks, goals, and situations. His assertion is that this framework falls short of delivering value since it doesn’t really mesh with how users experience the world. In its place, he offers an alternative perspective: one that would address meaning and culture via a focus on behaviors, motivations, and contexts. I won’t chance misrepresenting his words completely–you can read them for yourself over at the AP blog. G’head, I’ll wait.

While it may not have been Todd’s complete intent, his point about accommodating systems “…with multiple touchpoints…and the need for consistent and complementary interfaces…” leads to an interesting situation concerning XML-derived feeds, open APIs, and other technologies that blur the boundary of Our System versus Other Systems. We see this in the young, but growing popularity and approachability of mashup technology. Non-techies are increasingly adding Flickr streams, del.icio.us links, and YouTube videos into their weblogs, feed aggregators, and MySpace profiles.

What’s compelling about this in terms of UEx? For one thing, it means the experience we strive to maintain is expanding outside of our absolute zone of control. We can try to accommodate user goals within the sandbox of our own sites. As we publish content to other subscribers through raw XML, basic APIs, and the prefab widgets, we begin to lose control over how it is being integrated and used. Drawing a dividing line between us and them is one recourse, but one that is shortsighted. That stance presumes that the users’ experience with our systems ends when they leave our site. Should they decide to incorporate our data feeds, well then, caveat emptor. Well, that’s not the best approach to take since our responsibility migrates along with the content.

There is an alternative which permits us to extend our zone of influence and, perhaps, distinguish ourselves in the process. Actually, it’s already being used in a few choice places; YouTube is one. Many users experience this video sharing service not from being on YouTube.com, but through interacting with the video widgets it allows users to embed it on any other site. This allows users to repurpose the content, contextualizing it along the way. Embracing this behavior, YouTube created an affordance to readily share the video from within the embedded player. In a nutshell, it provides a complementary interface to their main site and allows YouTube to better manage the experience alongside the content.

The UEx practice should remember look outward and keep in mind how the published content plays with people’s lives. We need to proactively seek out how users employ our content away from our control zone. In doing so, there is an opportunity to differentiate our products. By emphasizing the experience at the touchpoints–our apis, feeds, and widgets–we can provide more value to the user and increase our chances of success.