Where Does Innovation Come From?

During my walk yesterday afternoon, I stopped by the Toner Center (on the campus of SMUMN) and was surprised to discover in the SMU gallery (right outside of Toner Lounge where we gathered for the summits), an exhibit about the Innovations of Brother Finbar.

Not only are some of the actual innovations on display, but there are descriptions of how each innovation began. Seeing this exhibit reminded me once again that innovation often stems from or out of a particular experience of life.

In the case of some of the innovations on display, the innovation began from a pain point or something someone was trying to do in a certain way but was not able to.  Other times, the starting point was an instinct or an idea. Sometimes the innovation was something wholly new; other times, it was a change made to something already in existence.

What surprised me, though, as I went through the exhibit was the connection I noticed between innovation and daily life. The innovations were practical.  Rather than creations that sit on a shelf for people to admire (which also have their place), these were innovations that allowed people to interact with the world around them in new ways.

What a wonderful thing: to influence & impact how people interact with the world around them.

When you see some of the things that Brother Finbar created you will see that in what he created, he has influenced how people interact with the world.  

By influencing their interaction, he has influenced their experience.  

I would encourage you take the time before August 19 to explore the gallery of innovations at SMUMN.  Go by yourself, go with your team, go with your department, but go...and, as the poster in the gallery says, “Discover the Innovations Around You".

Click here to see some of Bro. Finbar's work

Why We Need to Challenge Our Assumptions

One afternoon,  Megan, Jason and I  were sitting around the table in the Steger Conference Room as Christy tested a paper (prototype) version of an iPad app for us. 

Jason, as facilitator, gave Christy the first task and asked her to complete it with the prototype (or sample) in front of her and asked her to talk about what she was thinking, doing and seeing as she carried out the task. 

Then he gave her the same task and asked her to complete it with a different variation of one of the functions in the prototype.  All in all, we gave her four variations to test the task on.

On the second or third variation, I remember observing her relationship with the prototype change.  She started progressing differently in the completion of the task and her comments seemed to suggest a particular favor for the variation.   She made the comment, “ I really like this one because it’s more linear; it makes sense to me.”

I assumed I knew what she meant. I assumed she meant she liked the shape of it, the way it used lines.

But I decided to ask a question just to check and to challenge my assumption.

It turns out that’s not what she meant at all.

When I asked Christy, “When you were carrying out the task, you said it was linear and that you liked that. Can you say more about that?”

Christy obliged us and explained that the way the functionality unfolded was very logical to her and felt like it was following along in a line; it made logical sense the way one part was flowing from the one before it.”

In the end, the variation that Christy found most logical and easiest to use was the same one that the other users seemed to gravitate toward in their test of the prototype. 

Asking Christy to “say more” about what she meant by the term “linear”, shattered the assumption I had built in my own mind and replaced it instead with the reality of what she as a user was expecting in terms of the flow of the functionality.  

She found favor with a particular variation of the prototype because the way she could interact with the product (or the user interface) in that variation matched the model she had in her mind of how the functionality would/needed to work. In user experience work, this means the product matched the "mental model" (or the model in the mind) of the user.

Because of the match, the same task felt easier with a particular type of interface or interaction. 

This, to me, is the great value of UX work and the unique benefit of the UX friendly questions and statements (that help to dig digger into the user’s experience).  No matter what assumptions we have, bring or begin with, when we go beyond what we ourselves bring to the table, we are opened up again and again to the mind of our customer, the mind of those who use our products. 

The more we understand the models in the minds of our customers, the more likely we are to create products that match those models and the more likely customers are to look at our product and recognize something that really fits!

_________________________________________________________

 To go deeper into this idea, read Susan Weinschenk's article in UXmag, the-secret-to-designing-an-intuitive-user-experience