AirTrain in Vain: Good and Bad Visual Design

BART Light Rail Map: An example of good visual design.

On a recent trip to San Francisco I was confronted with side-by-side examples of excellent and awful visual design.  I needed to get from the airport to downtown San Francisco via the light rail, or BART system. After finding my way to the BART station, the light rail map was exactly what I expected. Like almost all subway and light rail maps today, it's based on the style of Harry Beck's London Underground Tube map. This style is a classic example of elegant and effective visual design. One of the few criticisms is that these maps are not always geographically accurate, but this flaw is typically far outweighed by the fact that such maps are so easy to understand.

However, getting to the BART station was another matter entirely. The signs in the airport terminal directed me to the AirTrain, where I was confronted with a dreadful map. The first thing you notice on this map is all the white space, roads, and terminal buildings. Although the geographical accuracy may be useful to some, it probably does not need to be to scale, as less empty white space would make the stuff of interest much bigger and higher in resolution. The orange and green fill on the buildings serves no purpose whatsoever, except to distract the viewer. It is pure visual noise. Is there a train on this map somewhere? Since I am on a train and would like to know where get off, that would be fitting. Eliminate the colored fill, and place the emphasis on the AirTrain route itself.

AirTrain Map: is there a train in here somewhere?

After I finally figured out that I could access the BART station from the AirTrain, the next problem revealed itself. The train line leaving the BART station is shown in a reddish/ magenta color. Anybody who's done a little research in advance knows they are looking for the yellow line, but there is no yellow line on the map. Must I get on the red line instead? It turns out that the colors on the AirTrain map have nothing to do with the lines on the BART system. I guess somebody just thought red or magenta would like nice with the orange and green terminal buildings.

I confirmed this suspicion with a passerby and had about 10 minutes to kill before the next yellow line train arrived, so I decided to wander around the station and stretch my legs. That's when I came across another AirTrain map even more bewildering than the first one. Note the Zaxxon-style isometric projection of the AirTrain and terminals. Confused? Then just drop your eyes a little to the detailed top views and side view, where you can count the number of steps on each escalator and find the location of the nearest trash can. What is the purpose of this map? My theory is that it was drawn by a first year drafting or architectural student and placed in the station as a prize for getting the highest grade on the project.

Anybody up for a game of Zaxxon?

The entire purpose of visual display of information is to improve understanding beyond what can be conveyed with words. In these examples the BART light rail map does exactly that, while the AirTrain maps fall way short. They may actually create confusion and decrease understanding, which is the antithesis of good visual design. Map making is one of the oldest forms of graphical design, and great examples of professional maps surround us. It's perplexing how the maps for a key transportation link in a major metropolitan area could have missed this.

Product Managers Can Learn From Babies and Toddlers

A recent, wonderful article at fastcompany.com about Fisher-Price made me ask myself, "From a product manager's perspective, are babies and toddlers the ultimate user?" Let me explain. Fisher-Price is an 83 year old company that started out selling painted, wooden blocks for kids to play with. They have managed to stay successful and relevant through a delicate balance of adopting new trends and technology, and sticking to their roots. Among other things, the article describes Fisher-Price’s PlayLab proving ground for new products, where employees simply observe the way babies and parents play.

As product managers we are charged with being the voice of the market and being in tune with what users need and are willing to pay for. To know what potential customers want and will buy, we can simply ask them, but experienced product managers know this only gets you so far. People answer the questions you ask them; not the ones you don't ask them. They often tell you what they think you want to hear. Occasionally they lie. A good facilitator can sometimes break through these barriers and extract the truth, but it gets harder as the products, features, and solutions become more disruptive. This is particularly true for technology products. Potential customers will reliably tell you they prefer the white BMW over the green one, but try asking them about BMW's iDrive system when they've only used old, analog, discrete controls and it's a whole different scenario. Good luck with that.

To outwit our users, we product managers take a different tact. We don't ask them what they want; we watch them. We experience their worlds, understand what frustrates them, and try to gain insight into product gaps that force them to a work-around, substitute, or completely different product. As Yogi Berra said, "You can observe a lot just by watching." Armed with these observations, our development teams will come up with clever ways to address the problems.

This takes us back to Fisher-Price. When the users are babies and toddlers, there is no choice other than simply observing them. No questions to ask, and no answers to lead them to. You're forced to see what makes them tick and what frustrates them in a pure, unfiltered way. Does this make them the ultimate end-user? Perhaps.

Next time you visit a customer for a day-in-the-life-of visit, take a page from Fisher-Price's book: imagine your user in diapers, bring along some Goldfish crackers, and keep your mouth closed.

Presenting Data and Information: A Day with Edward Tufte

Last Friday I had the pleasure of attending Edward Tufte's lecture entitled "Presenting Data and Information" in downtown Denver.  Tufte is a professor at Yale where he teaches courses on statistical evidence and information design.  He's been called the DaVinci of data and graphical information, and one of his books (The Visual Display of Quantitative Information) is widely considered one of the greatest non-fiction works of the 20th century.  For many data geeks like myself, it is a go-to treatise referred to routinely.

Speaking of those books, all four were included in the $380 cost of the lecture, which made the price tag more palatable since they retail for $40 to $50 each.  And they are gorgeous!  Self-published by Tufte, he practices what he preaches and has produced what are truly heirloom quality collectibles.  Everything about these volumes is beautiful: the paper, type-faces, use of color, and printing quality.

So what about the lecture?  For those already familiar with Tufte's work and presentation philosophy, there was nothing new or earth-shattering offered.  The lecture could have been called "the world according to ET in six hours."  His disdain for Powerpoint is well-known, and he did not disappoint in reinforcing this.  Having said that, I truly enjoyed seeing his well-rehearsed and choreographed lecture, and it was nice to hear what he considered the most important take-aways from his four volumes.

My summary of those take-aways is as follows:

1. All problems worth talking about are multi-dimensional.  They shouldn't be presented serially or one-dimensionally, which is what Powerpoint forces us to do.
2. Start the presentation by giving a thorough data-dump on a high-resolution display (i.e. a printed document), and spend the first 15 minutes of the meeting telling people to read it.  For comparison's sake, printed documents have 6 to 7 times the resolution of most computer screens, and still twice the resolution as the latest retina displays.  Your audience isn't stupid.  They routinely read and understand charts and tables with 200 numbers or more in the newspaper, magazines, and internet.
3. Follow that with a summary of the items you wish to highlight and discuss, and open it up for their questions and discussion.  The whole purpose of visually presenting data is to improve understanding, so that's what the focus of the meeting should be.
4. You don't need to be a designer.  Find some good non-fiction reporting sources that you like, and model your documents after those.  Just copy the fonts, color-schemes, spacing, etc.  Sources that Tufte repeatedly referred to were the journal of Nature, espn.com, plos.org, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.
5. Show your sources, and make your data available to anybody who wants it.

Would I pay $380 to see Tufte again?  Probably not.  But this is one of those things that I'm glad I did once.  (For more info, check out Tufte's website.)

Beer Labels as Fine Art? Occasionally.

While recently enjoying a Sierra Nevada Ruthless Rye, I decided that I liked the beer label more than the beer itself.  Don’t get me wrong – I think this beer is good; it’s just not great.  It’s very restrained for a “rye-PA,” so I admire that Sierra Nevada is not joining the malt and hops one-upmanship game that so many craft brewers are playing.  But overall I found it to be, well… meh.  Apparently this is a replacement for their Glissade spring bock, which is a little surprising to me, as this rye ale just screams autumn.  As does its label.

And the label is striking!  Done in a style reminiscent of high-end graphic novels, the first thing you’re drawn to is the color scheme.  The hues are analogous enough to be soothing, but just far enough apart to throw you off a little and create an uneasy feeling.  The woman is haunting yet beautiful, like Patrick Nagel meets the witches from MacBeth.  Details, like the ominous clouds and strands of hair in the woman’s face, complete the picture.  The overall impression is chilling, hypnotic, and mysterious.

It turns out the artist is rock and roll illustrator Ken Taylor.  Best known for his album covers and concert posters, he dabbles in other areas too.  Somebody at Sierra Nevada must be a fan, so now he can add beer labels to that list.  Perhaps he’s a craft beer lover too?  Check out his portfolio.

Most beer labels have an illustration of an animal, landscape, person, or some other scene that matches the beer’s name.  It is usually competent and professional, but unmemorable.  Those who try to make the artwork take center-stage often go over the top in my opinion, producing art that’s better suited for the next Motorhead or Insane Clown Posse album cover.  (Sorry Coney Island and Ska Brewing.)  To me, the best beer labels are ones like those shown below.  The monochromatic, accented color schemes and easy to read fonts make beautiful, elegant designs.  But they are not art.  And that’s just fine, because it’s about what’s inside the bottle.

But Sierra Nevada may have changed the rules with their latest label.  Look at the crowded craft beer section in any well-stocked liquor store, and you’ll notice that Ruthless Rye really stands out.  That's the whole point of packaging.  You are drawn to it because it’s unique; it’s fancy, but it’s classy.  It’s a Bellagio in a sea of tacky Las Vegas strip hotels.

As the craft beer scene becomes more crowded, small brewers are struggling to come up with unique beer names and packaging that attracts attention.  I have a hunch that some of these brewers will follow Sierra Nevada’s example and start employing established artists.  For us beer-geeks who love art and design, this will be a nice bonus!

Please comment and share some your favorite beer label designs, and check out these links for more on this topic: The Pour Curator, and  15 Beer Labels we Love.

Product Development Use Cases and the Libyan Civil War

We all know that social media played a role in last year's Arab Spring, but I certainly didn't appreciate the extent of that role. This article from Technology Review is a fantastic read: Technology Review: People Power 2.0.  It provides some truly mesmerizing examples of how social media was used in the Libyan civil war to gather intelligence and receive critical weapons knowledge.   For product development professionals, it also leads to an interesting discussion regarding "use cases."

Most product development processes require "use cases" to be created very early in the process.  The purpose of doing this is to try and define all the ways a customer or user will interact with the product.  In other words, what will they use it for, and how do they want to go about doing that?  From my experience developing new products, I've concluded that there are typically three valid categories of use cases:  1) The ones the development team and product management come up with based on their experience; 2) The additional ones actual or potential customers and users come up (using interviews focus groups, demonstrations, etc,); and 3) The ones nobody came up with, but the product ends up being used that way none-the-less.  Kleenex and WD-40 are well-known, classic examples of the third category in which the unanticipated use cases led to vast, commercial success.  More recent examples are SMS text messaging and Gorilla Glass.

I have a hunch some of the examples cited in the Technology Review article fall into the third category as well.  In one example, Twitter was used to crowd source weapons knowledge, and an unusual type of landmine was identified in less than 40 minutes.  In another example a rebel commander received critical information about how a certain type of rocket launcher works from two civilians a continent away, using Skype.  This allowed his brigade to successfully attack the weapon.

I'm fairly certain Twitter never had a focus group to understand how their product might be used for weapons identification.  I'm also reasonably sure that Skype doesn't have an "intelligence" division tucked between the cubicles focused on small business and grandma.

So what does this all this mean regarding the way we develop new products?  I'm not ready to throw the baby out with the bath water.  Today's product development methodologies work pretty well, and most companies are able to bring new product to market faster than ever.  But product development professionals need to be opened-minded and acknowledge there are potential use cases that nobody can imagine... think of Donald Rumsfeld's "unknown unknowns."  I once worked for somebody twenty years ago whose philosophy was to "just throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what sticks."  Perhaps he has never been more right.

Building a Better Bug: the Anti-Apple

If you work in product development and technology, you're probably sick of hearing, "this is how Apple does it!"  I certainly am.  The attached article about VW's great success the past few years provides a nice counterpoint.  A more traditional (but always evolving) management approach is what works for most companies.  Think big, lofty goals; understanding your core competencies; and constant, incremental growth from great execution.  Building a Better Bug Colorado Business Magazine