Cooperism must end!
comments on "The myth of a big screen"

David Fore of Cooper Interaction Design wrote...

I agree whole-heartedly with John Coppinger, who writes that interaction designers ought to "Trust your own intuition and trust your users," and not rely on experts for permission to do what's right.

But I feel compelled to take issue with his assertion that "If every task involved so few variables as driving a car or writing a book, then there would be no need for computers." Think about the visual information *alone* that you must monitor during a few moments behind the wheel. The velocity of your car, your rate of acceleration as you pass that Volvo, the arc of the turn you're making around that bend, your constantly changing position with respect to that motorcycle, the fast-approaching cliff over which you will surely fly if you don't stop messing with the confused and confusing interface of your cel phone... the quality and the quantity of this dynamic data set is impossible for a computer to handle. Add the acoustic information you gather from the roar of your engine and the sensations your rump experiences as you pass over drunk bumps... and, well, the variables become all-but infinite. That's why computers can't get driver's licenses, even in Silicon Valley.

Mr. Coppinger also asserts that Alan Cooper's approach cannot deal with difficult real-world software problems. On the contrary. In my experience, the more complex the problem, the more critical it is for interaction designers to use something like a Goal-Directed (R) approach to solving problems. Take for instance an in-flight entertainment system design project that Cooper Interaction Design undertook for Sony TransCom. The problem: how do you offer airline passengers hundreds of videos, CDs, shopping opportunities, games, and advertisements... all on demand without befuddling them? With loads of media streaming out of a server and through this flying LAN and finally into a screen set into the seat in front of the passenger, the challenge became: how do you make a computer stop behaving like a computer? Just because it is a complex system with hundreds of alternatives doesn't mean you simply fall back upon tired old concepts like hierarchical information retrieval systems.

In the course of its investigation, Cooper researched the wide range of people who would use the passenger interface. To meet the goals of these different users, Cooper then developed a Primary Persona named Clevis. The key passenger Persona, Clevis had simple goals: he wanted to keep from looking stupid in front of other passengers, and he wanted to keep himself entertained during the flight. Cooper recognized that an interface which Clevis could immediately understand and use would serve any passenger on the plane. To meet Clevis' goals, Cooper developed a single control for the system: a physical knob which scrolls a flat list of options back and forth, including movie posters to indicate movie selections, CD covers to indicate music selections, and so on. To make a selection, Clevis simply touches the item. A preview of the selection appears automatically, along with all of the information that Clevis needs. From there, he can start the movie or go back to the main list: two clicks, and Clevis has what he needs.

Seem obvious? Well, so do all the right designs.

David Fore, Managing Designer
d4@cooper.com
Cooper Interaction Design

Dear David,

Following Mary Deaton's comments, Yes, bigger screen size is not an entire solution for mobile devices. I completely agree about the idea of using voice as a means of interface in the mobile area. However, I am unable to understand what Mary Deaton means by saying Cooperism must end. Which Cooper is this? Alan Cooper? Did he say that bigger screens are the only solution? Or anything of that sort? Please clarify this title for me.

Dave Roberts' interview is excellent- thanks for your great efforts in bringing such great brains to an open forum like uidesign.net. Its an extraordinary help for designers, especially for professionals who are outside USA.

Sincerely,
Bhagavan Jalli

uidesign.net reply

Thanks for pointing this out. The "Cooperisms must end!" comment actually came from John Coppinger. I have now provided a link at the top of the page to John's comments further down.

This thread actually started as a response to the article "Myth of the Big Screen" which was driven by Cooper's comments that it is not complexity that is the real design issue but appropriateness. For smaller screens you must choose carefully what is appropriate.

Regards,
David Anderson
Editor

Hi David,

Thanks for your careful explanation. I read later part of the letters now. The problem with me was, I did not think that they are letters related to one major issue. The root of such a controversial title- John Coppinger's letter should have been kept in the first among the list. When a reader like me looks at "Cooperism must end", he or she would immediately attempt reading. Mary's has little to justify the title. So, one may keep wondering! Anyway, I don't think one can just live by bullying alone :-)

Thank you once again,
Bhagavan.

Karma or coincidence? This morning, I was reading an article in InfoWeek or one of those online news sites about TellMe seeding the market with a product that enables people to telephone your web site and have information read to them. All the light bulbs in my cube started flashing because I have to come up with a design that allows field inspectors in the building industry to do inspections of construction projects and record them into a database while on-site. Or to get information about the project and its permits.

We thought PDAs or Pocket PCs were the answer, but everyone is telling us these people do not use computers, do not like computers, and will likely drop them in the foundation framing and cover them with concrete the first time they get annoyed with them. I have been decrying the smallness of the screen on all of the so-called handhelds, and actually had the thought a day or three ago that why not just let people talk and use voice as the input and output device for mobile web access? Unfortunately for my retirement, TellMe and others had the thought and did something about it already.

My point is, why are we obsessing about small screens when perhaps we need no screen at all?

Mary Deaton
Architect for User Experience

uidesign.net reply,

Hi Mary,

I agree with this. I think that there is a case for voice applications. Others have differed on this recently. I'm pretty sure that Jakob Nielsen stated voice was not going to happen but then he said that about WAP too.

I think that voice is a specialist area and has it's uses. It can also be used in conjunction with other things. For example, in your application, it seems reasonable that a WAP phone could be used, the user will select some project service from the homedeck and possible browse some levels of menus to select the piece of information they need, then the service switches to voice call and your server is connected to it and uses VoxML or VoiceML for the next part of the interaction. You use a Text to Speech application to achieve this.

Motorola have been previewing a service to do this called Mya. You should find it on motorola.com but I haven't checked recently. Motorola are differentiating their wireless technology offering from Nokia and Ericsson by focusing on voice technology (Mya) while the others are focused on screen and keyboard interaction.

Alan Laird of likk.net has been testing a voice control satellite navigation system in his car in Tokyo. It takes voice commands and delivers back driving directions and traffic updates. Even though he is not a native Japanese speaker it still works amazingly well. He has reported that he cannot imagine trying to control it with his hands whilst driving. Voice is really the only option.

I also like the idea that there are other "no handed" applications for technology and see these as candidates for voice control, again it will need to be a specialized application.

Thanks.
David Anderson
Editor

As always you get to the heart of the matter in a hurry. Your observation about the distinction between Palm Pilot usage (head down, two-handed futzing) verses the mobile phone (one handed, no handed) is very important.

I refer to the mobile phone as a parallel device in the sense that numerous activities can take place simultaneous with little or no interference. You can walk down the street, sip you latte, gab to your buddy, and wink at that cute girl across the street all at the same time. Come to think of it, can you recall ever seeing a person using a mobile phone who was *not* do something else at the same time! Hey, I think mobile phone usage qualifies as a new form of modern dance.

I insert a mobile phone into my normal behavior patterns comfortably. The PDA requires disruption of my normal behavior patterns.

I believe Nokia has taken over the mantle previously held by Apple in this dawn of the era of wireless mobility. They are brilliant at marrying concise functionality, excellent software usability, and excellent industrial design.

I remember when I first arrived in Iceland three years ago from Silicon Valley and saw for the first time a Nokia (6100 series) mobile and an Ericsson (standard issue "bar of soap" design) mobile sitting side by side. The difference between then was so stark and so jarring that I was surprised to find out they were used for the same purpose. Then I held the Nokia in my hand. I didn't want to let go of it.

The genius of Nokia design is the observation that it is not about smallness. It is not about feature explosion. It is about the relationship between the human body and the device. Device to hand, hand to ear.

The challenge for developers of mobile phone Internet services is to try and replicate this experience and not "break the spell".

Cheers,
Douglass Turner

Dear uidesign.net,

You wrote:

Why should computers be any different? Would you rather brake your car with your right foot or by moving a mouse with your right hand and then pressing the "brake" button?

This Cooperism must be dispelled. Would you rather search for someone's phone number by pressing a pedal under your desk? Would you like to trade stocks using a steering wheel (with or without the horn)? Well, you might and some actually have tried it, but they lost money to the traders with Quotron green screens.

Some tasks simply involve more variables than others, and so we say those tasks are more "complex". Guiding a car involves constant monitoring and setting of just a few variables: speed, direction, and the location of perhaps a dozen obstacles. But add a few more variables to the interface (a map, a phone, a particularly volatile obstacle) and interface becomes difficult or even dangerous. If every task involved so few variables as driving a car or writing a book, then there would be no need for computers. We use computers to handle tasks that are too complex to manage with Industrial Age machinery: brake pedal, steering wheel, whatever. Cooper demeans his profession by choosing to illustrate his ideas with trivial example problems.

Don't forget that Cooper makes his living the same way every other Silicon Valley hawker does: traditional bully marketing. The goal is to create a vacuum in your sense of professional self-respect, then offer to fill that vacuum with their products and services. They convince you that you don't know what you are doing, and that they do. Once you believe that, then you're ripe pickins for a juicy consulting deal or fat purchase order. They carefully orchestrate their media image to prevent messy things like difficult real-world software problems from tarnishing the manufactured illusion that they have all the answers.

I have singled out Cooper here, but the same applies to most any self-styled "interaction experts". Don't put too much faith in these professional book-writers and speechmakers. Trust your own intuition and trust your users. If you listen to them, they will tell you how to design. And they won't charge you a cent for it.

I really enjoy your site and your writing. My favorite parts of your writing are the parts that are your ideas and not Cooper's or Nielsen's. You are quite insightful - keep up the great work!,

John Coppinger

uidesign.net reply

Interesting letter.

Not to devalue anything you've said, the point I was trying to make and maybe it doesn't come over well enough, was that there are uses to be found for devices which do not require two hands and often most of your fingers in order to use them. I want people to start thinking out of the box or beyond the blinkers. I want them to start saying, "OK, how do we make an internet surfing device that people can use whilst they are jogging?"

That device won't be a Palm Pilot with a cell phone circuit shoehorned into the back as many people are suggesting.

I like your point about computers being used to solve complexity problems. I had a similar debate when I was in college with my Artificial Intelligence teacher. My argument was that most "Knowledge Based Systems" and other similar techniques were simply number crunchers like IBM's Deep Blue. We were still using the computer for what it was best at - number crunching - and not thinking. We were reframing questions so that they could be solved by number crunching rather than thought. IBM did this with Chess and Deep Blue.

Now, to come back to your driving the car example. If you try to reframe that as a computer task it is actually, incredibly complex. Number crunching is not the way to solve it. By designing a motor vehicle to be driven by human beings, the designers were able to take into account many human factors and modalities to simplify the task.

For example, a steering wheel is a one handed device when all you need to do is go straight. It is a two handed device if you need to turn. Hence, gear changing (I know that Americans don't know what this means :-) ) can be done whilst going straight. The driver is in "one handed mode" and has to switch to "two handed mode" to make a turn. I want people to start thinking more creatively about Information Appliances and start trying to figure out how we can make them work for people and what they do and how they live. Why should everything that needs a computer have to be a complex task which requires a complex interface?

However, when you look at where the money has been made by computer over the last 20 years, you see that most of that money has been made improving (arguably) human communication. Products such as Powerpoint highlight this point. You didn't know you needed it until it was available. It raised the expected standard of business communication.

Personally, I don't believe in a lot of that stuff and I prefer to do presentations live, writing on a white board or flip chart. I use my personality and the procedure of drawing the slides to animate the presentation. I don't rely on the technology. However, I cannot deny that such technology exists and frankly there is little complexity involved in it. Many of these business packages are no more sophisticated in mathematical or computational terms than games I was coding in the early 1980s.

You just cannot ignore that the most common uses of computers are human communication related and not computational complexity related.

Thanks for the kind words about the site. I love to have feedback like yours. Keep it coming.

Regards,

David Anderson
Editor

Wow, you should talk to more designers before you figure out what kind of screen they should have. Most designers I know--including myself--would quit if you gave them anything less than 19 inches at the very least. Have you ever been in a design shop? What do you think they're looking at? And if you don't know why they need this kind of desktop real estate--in dv, they sometimes have 2 BTW--then you don't know anything about design--"ui" or otherwise.

Sincerely,
Leo Robert Klein

uidesign.net reply,

If you took that time to read the article properly then you would realize that I didn't actually say that designers don't need a 21" screen.

Actually, I think this is a legitimate example of the need for a big screen. The focus of the article is that a bigger screen is often quoted as a the way to improve all UI problems. The problem with such an over generalization is that it is just plain wrong. The size of the screen required is dependent on what the User needs to do with the system. Understanding Users is the key.

So quite rightly, you as a designer, need a big screen. A big screen would be the one of the UI Design solutions to fit your problems (or requirements). However, this is not generally true.

The corollary that all small screen devices must be useless is also untrue. The secret is to find the appropriate use for them by understanding Users better.

David,

if you had taken the time to structure your article properly, it wouldn't lead to misunderstandings. Perhaps I'm just being thick but first you mention big screens for developers then you say "We'll revisit that argument in a moment." A developer might expect (as promised) another word on developers. Clarity is in the eye of the beholder.

Sincerely,
Leo Robert Klein