Toolkit for Fun/Sexy/Cool User Experiences

I read a lot of information architectecture and user experience design blogs, articles, books and subscribe to every related mailing list I can find, but I still can't recall a good discussion about this topic.

As our little discipline has evolved, we've developed a fairly common toolkit for creating useful and usable experiences. We have a delightful collection of things like ethnographic research (and other various flavors of research), card sorting, site maps, wireframes, usability testing, and all the rest.

Where I work we've suddenly gone from producing task-oriented, content rich, fairly conservative corporate sites over 3 month to one year timeframes, to producing small, nearly task-free, content light, visual design heavy sites over a two to six week timeframe. All of these newer sites have been Flash-based.

Suddenly I find myself somewhat outside the process. My tools and methods don't offer enough return on the investment they take. But I want to play too.

Now, I'm not looking for what not to do, or looking to just add to the usability of these sites. I realize there are plenty of usability guidelines, dire warnings and no-no's out there regarding Flash. They are useful and important. I also realize there are still tasks to perform on these sites; content to be located, things to sign up for--and am comfortable using familiar methods--wireframes, sitemaps, standing behind the designer and asking if the text could be just a bit bigger--to accomplish those.

But the main point of these sites is not to be easy to use. It's to let the user forge some sort of emotional connection with the (young, hip, cool) brand.

So, what I want to know is:

- What are the methods or deliverables that allow us to create a compelling experience for the site's users?
- How do I go beyond usability to surprise and delight and fun and humor?
- How make sure our very talented designers go beyond what 'looks cool' to them, and really make something that really is 'cool' for the user?
- What methods, tools and techniques allow us to produce fun, sexy, cool, delightful, as well as still easy to use?
- And how to do this when the timeframe on these projects is literally a few weeks?

If I had the answers I'd love to write the article! But I need some help from all of you first. I've been poking around game design theory for starters, but am along way from a useful set of tools or methods. Do I look to how advertisers do their work? Are my current tools still useful, I'm just thinking about them wrong?

I always enjoy Nathan Shedroff's thoughts--he's been thinking well beyond usable for a good long time, it seems to me. Check out his article here. Not a lot of actionable methods here though. I also suspect IDEO may have a handle on this, and am curious about their Method Cards, but still need some 'on the cheap' type approaches.

I want to think like Hans.

Hans Monderman, that is, one of the greatest designers of our time.

What, you've never heard of Hans Monderman? Unless you carefully read your Wired in December of 2004, you're probably not alone. I doubt Mr. Monderman would ever call himself a designer anyway. He's a traffic engineer. Most importantly, he's someone who has taken a very intelligent look at the way people really drive, and the way they really react to visual cues around them, and come to the conclusion that the best way to design, say, an intersection is to take all the signage away.

That's right, the best design is almost entirely lacking in the obvious markers of 'design'.

It turns out, when people aren't busy looking at and interpreting signage, they pay attention to one another. And to pedestrians. And apparently it works. The don't run each other over. Children come out of hiding. Traffic still flows, but safely.

Everything about Monderman's design gives ultimate respect to the human over the designer. Let's say it again. It respects the human over the designer. Here's how Monderman puts it:

Who has the right of way? I don’t care,’ said Hans Monderman, a traffic engineer. ‘People here have to find their own way, negotiate for themselves, use their own brains.’

Monderman isn't saying what is so often unsaid, but so often present in our design process--the idea that, as the designer I'm a bit smarter than you. I know what's best for you, and I'll give it to you as I see fit. Don't we IA types just love to assume we can make it easy for our users, hold their hands through the process, spoon feed them small bits of information, carry them in our loving arms safely through their tasks? Isn't it pretty much the crux of what we do? But Monderman isn't saying, simplify because your users can't grasp too much, he's saying, simplify, because they can.

And that's the most egoless design I've ever heard of. It goes way beyond the "less is more" sleekness of my sexy new iPod. It goes beyond the glorious"we didn't know any HTML" asceticism of Google's home page. It goes beyond because it intentionally respects human abilities, and never assumes the designer is the smarter one.

As a former project manager with a knack for detail, but zero design training (or some might say, talent) I started my information architecture career with plenty of thoroughness -- holy cow, I had a link for everything -- but very little sense of where to stop. Of how much was too much. As I adopted the popular 'wizard' style of IA, the link count shrank, and I hope the results became more useful. I think I learned a bit about carrying those users in my loving arms, safely through their tasks. But if I'm being honest, that's about it. I still fall back on step-by-step, wizard approach for many online tasks. After all, we all now by know that we must "reduce memory load" and "prevent errors" right? After all, I'm a bit smarter than the "user" aren't I?

I know I'm not alone. Who of us regulary counts on people to "find their own way, negotiate for themselves, use their own brains"? Isn't that what we IA types spend all of our time trying to avoid? The dreaded possibility of users having to think? If we take Hans seriously (and I do, oh I do) this could mean the very end of our raison d'etre and our paychecks too!

Of course, there are limits to the uses of this sort of un-design. It doesn't work in every context, it doesn't scale. Most importantly, its success relies on social interactions:

This is social space, so when Grandma is coming, you stop, because that’s what normal, courteous human beings do.

I honestly don't know if this model can work online. It's not a social space, or not consistently a social space. And before you get all Web 2.0 on me and start screaming about how the internet is all about social interaction now, remember that people still use the internet for all sorts of fairly non-social tasks. They check their bank account balances, they look up who played Wayne in last night's Love Monkey, they put their sexy new iPod in a shopping cart and then pay for it. People still do plain old 1999 style tasks online, often interacting with no one other than the corporate brand.

So what I want to know is, in the absence if social interactions, can a model like Monderman's work? Can I un-design? Can I respect my users' abilities?

Because I want it to. I want to respect my fellow humans.

I want to think like Hans.