Preston Smalley

I read in Techcrunch about Yahoo!’s new improvements to search results. What caught my attention was how elegant the search suggestion widget operates. Unlike other search suggestion sites which annoyingly get in the way all the time with their smarts, this one senses hesitation in the search box and only then displays the results–that way it doesn’t get in the way. Also it correctly interprets arrow keys (down moves into the related search box widget). This kind of interaction design is not flashy but it is quite effective, meets the needs of the user and I think is a sign of where the web is going.

I give our yodeling friends up the peninsula a lot of credit for getting this one so right. While I’m an avid Google search user these improvements just might lure as a customer.

I’m looking forward to attending next year’s SxSW and am impressed at all the panels that people have proposed. Below is one I’d like to moderate, provided I get selected.

Letting Community Content Shine Through

How do you design a site that lets users feel it is truly “community owned and operated”? A site that supports business objectives centered around creating user-generated content, and differentiating it from company content? This panel will explore the issues surrounding a user-centric site, including voice, interaction, and visual design.

Some potential panelists could include folks from: Yahoo! Answers, YouTube, Facebook, WordPress, and perhaps Ning. Vote for this panel.

Other panels I’m interested in:

• View some of the panels proposed by other eBay Designers
• The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems with Pictures by Dan Roam
• Design Metrics: “Better than because I said so” by Micah Alpern
• The Design, Development, and Science of Web Forms
• The State of Professional Front-End Engineering by Nate Koechley

After working with Darrel Rhea of Cheskin for the past few months, we invited him to speak to our design team this week on his recent book Making Meaning (co-wrote with Nathan Shedroff and Steve Diller).

At the core he speaks about how companies have three ways to create a long term strategic competitive advantage: strategic M&A, operational excellence, and organic growth. It’s the last of these three that design forms the cornerstone of success for he said “Design is the skill of identifying and creating value”.

Given that design is the key to organic growth, he went on to discuss what makes a great experience and introduced the following framework:

At the most basic levels, a product or service may simply fill a need. For example, perhaps I need to buy some salt (economic need) so that I can add it to some cookies I’m making (functional need). However for a brand to become truly meaningful it must create a meaningful experience. Perhaps using Morton brand salt to help me bake cookies with my son would evoke memories of baking with my mom growing up–a meaningful experience.

I think Darrel and others evangelizing creating customer experience through the design process are right on. The companies that embrace this thinking will do well in an age where meaningful experiences create loyal customers (and thus value for shareholders).

This fall one of my courses at Haas will focus on design and how as leaders we can leverage it as the key to innovation and growth. I look forward to learning more and sharing it here on this blog as well as my thoughts on the Making Meaning book which I just ordered.

One of the sessions I attended last week at CHI2007 I found useful was moderated by Richard Anderson on the increasing the role of User Expeirence teams within business. He was joined by the following on a panel: Jeremy Ashley (Oracle), Justin Miller (eBay), Secil Watson (Wells Fargo), Shauna Eves (Blue Sheild), Jim Nieters (Cisco), Manfred Tscheligi (CURE). Here were some of what was discussed:

• Documenting & Advocating User Experience — Yeah, not so much. Generic ROI arguments tend to be received as voodoo. Most agreed that sharing specific project successes was more successful, “The proof is in the pudding!” as Jeremy said. Only distention is early on to define the role of group in order to fit into the overall process. We should also avoid talking about work as a “black box” but work as a collaborative force within the org. I couldn’t agree more that we simply must deliver and the rest will take care of itself.
• UX Owning User Experience – Early on yes, but later no. Jeremy emphatically stated that everyone is responsible for quality of which UX is a part. Justin mentioned how now at eBay, the entire company is involved in defining what the customer experience should be. Richard referred to his thoughts on owning design and also referenced a quote from Forrester in Jan 07, “Treat customer experience as a competence, not a function. Delivering great customer experiences isn’t something that a small group of people can do on their own — everyone in the company needs to be fully engaged in the effort.“
• Organizational Design – More important to understand how you fit in and how to best maximize it. Executive sponsorship who can involve you in the right discussions and decisions. In my experience having an advocate on Exec Staff can make or break your org’s role–you’re either involved in the inital conversations, or not.
• Ethnographic Research – YES! Gets you executive access, builds credibility, and has a multi-year shelf life. Ridealongs and use of video is key as it gives the research credibility. We introduced these about 18 months ago at eBay and have seen it work quite effectively in focusing the organization more around customer issues and positioned our User Experience team to help solve it.

Richard also typed up some his thoughts on Moving UX into a Position of Corporate Influence [PDF].

CHI is returning to San Jose for their 25th anniversary and I’ll be attending for the fourth time. While the conference at times is more academic than I would like there are always some good sessions.

Here’s what I’m most excited about:

• Mon 8:30 – 10:30AM: Opening Plenary speaker, Bill Moggridge, who will hopefully talk more about the topics in his recent book, Designing Interactions.
• Tues 2:30 – 4PM: Richard Anderson’s session on “Moving UX into a Position of Corporate Influence: Whose Advice Really Works?” which will focus on real-world advice from UX leaders. A colleague of mine, Justin Miller, will represent eBay.
• Tues 7 – 10PM: eBay and PayPal’s cocktail party at the Tech Museum. You can get to know our User Experience team and mingle with other design professionals. If you’d like an invite to the event, just let me know.
• Wed 9 – 1PM: Marti Hearst, Corey Chandler, and I will present “Faceted Metadata for Information Architecture and Search” which covers best practices of how to design a faceted search interface. We’ll reflect on Flamenco, eBay Express, and other competitive research we’ve done.
• Thurs 9 – 10:30AM: Jeremy Ashley, Oracle, will moderate a discussion on management techniques for maximizing the impact of User Experience teams. We’ll hear from leaders at SAP (Daniela Busse) and Cisco.

34, originally uploaded by rajsid.

A few weeks ago eBay’s user experience design team went to Nestldown off Hwy 17 for an offsite centered around effective use of personas. One huge challenge of using personas at eBay is the massive customer base of ours which essentially mimics much of the Internet. We are pioneering how a design team might scale this concept over an array of product offerings and customer demographics which is quite exciting. If others have similar experiences to share, I’d love to hear about.

In between sessions we enjoyed the blooming tulips and held a photography contest (see eBayUED tag). Above is one of the winning photos taken by Raj.

A couple year’s back I commented about the booming job market for interaction designers in the Bay Area. As I try and build out my design team, I’m now acutely aware that the job market is not only as hot as it was in late 2005, it’s actually hotter.

As you can tell from the above chart, the demand for Interaction Designers has actually reached an all time high since I started tracking this in 2003 at 113 open positions in March 2007. The shear number of open positions means that the supply is unable to meet the demand–causing designers to move between companies but no real progress.

Therefore if you’re a great designer and have always wanted to move to California, let me know… or contact any of the many firms seeking people like you. As a design community, I’d love to meet this demand and show the world what can be accomplished.

Update 4/19: David on Signal vs. Noise spotted a similar rise in competition for talent. His take on it is based on the rise of Recruiting Spam, which I frankly am also growing annoyed with as well.

One of my favorite designers, Sarah Culberson, made her blogosphere debut today where she reflects on her experience at SxSW. Here are some excerpts I found interesting:

•  “It is better to be flamboyant failure than mediocre success.” Jeffrey Zeldman on being fearless with design. Lots more great quotes from Sarah’s notes.
•  Lots of great advice from a panel on creating a “Kickass Design Team” including providing direct mentorship/coaching, importance of outsourcing and junior designers, and feeding execs great UE questions. Love it.
• How designers can add value in big companies by helping them get Unstuck.

Thanks Sarah and Welcome.

In catching up on my blog reading list, I stumbled upon a refreshing talk that LukeW gave at the SHiFT conference last September. In a short 30 minutes he highlights how design is changing not only the online world but products in general.

Since eBay’s began the dominant means for buyers to browse the search results page was to use the Ending Soonest or Newly Listed time based sorts. Now with the launch this week of Best Match our buyers have a new more relevant way to shop which ranks the results based on the item’s title and description, plus past buyer behavior for similar searches.

Let’s look at a typical search for the words “Canon Powershot”…

Top 5 Results Sorted by Ending Soonest (see example):

• 2x NB-4L Battery for CANON Powershot SD200/SD300/SD400
• Battery NB-4L For CANON POWERSHOT SD400 SD450 SD600
• NEW Canon PowerShot SD600 ELPH 6.0 MP + 1GB SD Card
• Canon Powershot A540 6MP Digital Camera 2 Lens 1GB Kit!
• Leather Case Canon PowerShot Pro 1 G6 S1IS S2IS etcCX07

Top 5 Results Sorted by Best Match (see example):

• Canon Powershot A540 6 Megapixel Digital Camera NEW
• New Canon PowerShot SD450 Digital ELPH 5.0 Megapixl NR!
• CANON 5.0 Megapixel PowerShot(R) Compact Digital Camera
• NEW~CANON A530 POWERSHOT 5MP DIGITAL CAMERA+3 BONUS+1GB
• NEW~CANON A530 POWERSHOT 5.0MP DIGITAL CAMERA 16 X ZOOM

Notice how in the Best Match results the top results are actually cameras, not batteries and cases–although they’re all still there just further down in the list.

Hat’s off to Raghav and all the research guys that made this possible as well as Esteban and Sheila in the Product group for getting it out the door. Official Announcement