The Design for Mobile conference starts in just one week, and we're finishing off the last preparations, including some changes to the speaker lineup.
Today we'd like to introduce you to Jason Ward, head of field research, who is replacing Clyde Heppner, who has recently been promoted to head of UX for Sprint.
An interview with our other Sprint speaker, Mike Lundy of the device group, was published last week.
Steven Hoober: What excites you about mobile?
Jason Ward: What excites me about mobile is what excites me about design in general. Coming from a research background, I think I see design as stimuli; so its actually a way to investigate people's cognitive systems, their perceptual systems, the decisions people make in different contexts.
Mobile just happens to be a really challenging slice of that pie. I think of it as a subset of the whole design field, with added challenges over large screen design.
And I truly enjoy the people side of it; I enjoy finding out how people interact with different designs. There are certain colors that humans can perceive differently than others, there are certain levels of cognition that we're capable of. So it was really the human side of it that first drew me to this area.
SH: What is design?
JW: It's so varied and broad??? but it's really about allowing humans to interact with a system in an optimal manner.
That "system" could be an aircraft cockpit, an air traffic control screen, a mobile phone – or could be as simple as a door. But design is developing an optimal way for humans to interact with systems.
For me, be it interaction design, visual design, pysical ergonomics, etc. design is creating systems that will operate within human capabilities and expectations.
SH: You probably have a story about the major use case with your work at the company. What is that story?
My job is to provide empirical information regarding the consumption experience, to Product and Design teams so they can make fact based decisions.
A lot of what my team provides are a host of small or medium sized issues that are impeding the experience with a product or service during real world use. Examples could be pointing out that the coupon codes for free ringers were too difficult to memorize and could not be cut and pasted from one page to the other on the wired web, or the fact that on a (now old) version of Sprint TV you had to drill down several layers before discovering whether or not you could access certain channels on your data plan.
You can imagine the frustration these instances add to use. Another example was when using GPS while driving the screen would dim after x seconds (as a resident setting on the handset), forcing the user to constantly reach over and wake the phone up again and again. This could be corrected by exiting out of the program and modifying the display properties under settings, but who wants to do that and then likely have to reset it again when not using GPS (for battery conservation)? None of these seem like eureka moments, but they add up and can spoil an experience when not uncovered and remedied.
SH: Sprint has a unique perspective, at least amongst US carriers, in that you try to enforce a certain set of standards. What are your thoughts, experiences and problems with device diversity, or fragmentation, from your point of view?
JW: The challenge is the same, obvious one as for other carriers, really. There are multiple platforms each of our manufacturers are operating on, and different templates for each manufacturer. Motorola, LG, Sanyo, etc. each have their own design template and their own way of working.
On top of that, many of the services offered on mobile handsets are provided by another 3rd party who, again, may work within another, different, set of constraints. And as you work back from these different groups, they can apply things differently. So you end up with a slightly different experience across range of Sprint products, although the standards, the research and the intent is the same.
SH: What is the biggest obstacle to getting good design into the marketplace?
JW: It is sort of what I was talking about with the challenges of designing for mobile in general. You are limited to the types of interactions you can implement. But when you consider the entire business that has to get behind any one concept, it gets even more complex.
There are a lot of third parties offering solutions, this isn??t a bad thing in itself, but while some of the solutions provide powerful new feature sets or innovative resolution to past problems, in some cases they also come with a new set of unforeseen difficulties be they technical or interaction related. Understandably, new technologies – or the new shiny thing end up catching attention, so it's hard to keep your eye on the ball and pursue a roadmap or iterative improvement.
What my team really tries to bring to the table is an understanding of how design, and technology, changes over time affect user needs, user perception and desires and ultimately the bottom line in terms of a usable and satisfying experience. In summary, we operate in a highly competitive, extremely dynamic, marketplace and solidifying the customer experience in any one area is a challenge because that area is likely to change rapidly.
SH: Considering anyone planning on coming to see you speak at D4M, what book / article / movie / blog would you suggest they read to understand the way you think?
JW: Well, we don't really spend a lot of time reading blogs, and movies... there's not a lot of popular representation of research like this. We do have a set of books we pass around amongst the group. They're pretty dense, so if you aren't into statistics you might not like them, but we use them all the time, and are excited when new editions come out.
The Psychology of Survey Response by Roger Tourangeau, Lance J. Rips, and Kenneth Rasinski.
The fairly new Fifth edition of Using Multivariate Statistics by Barbara G. Tabachnick and Linda S. Fidell.
Applied Multivariate Statistics for the Social Sciences (Applied Multivariate STATS) by James P. Stevens.
SH: What emerging, or just-over-the-horizon technology do you look forward to most or expect to change your job?
JW: The US Air Force, over a decade ago, was researching menu selections based on patterns and behaviors, a contextually-reactive interface. The next really-far-out step, which was also functioning years ago, is encephaletic menus (yes, brain control).
Yes, the brain control is far out, but it could be in our future. At least, I'm waiting for some sort of predictive interfaces to come to consumer mobile phones. I think that would change everything about how we're designing and interacting with all these devices.
I realize that encephaletic menu selection is not exactly in the scope of reality right now, but imagine a phone with technology we have in place right now (e.g. GPS, accelerometers, etc.), add in a touch of AI and the handset might be ready for your next move before you are.
If you want to see even more about this, be sure to sign up to attend Design for Mobile, September 22nd - 24th in Lawrence, KS.
The complete schedule is up on the Design for Mobile site. Almost all of the speakers have published an abstract of their session. If you have any questions before the sessions, or desires you'd like to see satisfied during them, we've got you covered. Each session page has the ability to take comments, so you can have conversations about it.
Check it out for Jason's session on Informing Design Through Product Research.