Disinformation architecture

It's not often I see such a good example of information architecture being used to obscure information that a business only reluctantly provides. In this case it's the nutritional information for sandwiches from the fast-food restaurant Quiznos.

Here is the main navigation. Note the lack of a direct link to nutritional information (arguably one of the main reasons users might visit the site, and hence a clear candidate for a main navigation link). So you click on 'menu' to get the sandwiches...


You are presented with a list of subs. The ingredients are listed, but no nutritional information.

But wait! What's that lurking at the bottom of the page? It's a green link saying 'Show nutritional information'. Nice place to hide the link:


If you click this link, it doesn't show nutritional information. Rather it adds a 'nutritional information' link below each sandwich:


Clicking on the Tuna Melt link pulls up a pop-up layer. Initially you see the total calories of 500, with 33g of fat. Not too bad. Until you realize that you're only looking at the small sandwich, and without cheese or dressing. Curious. Given the small vertical space this layer takes up one wonders why all 3 sandwich sizes aren't initially shown.



If you click 'large' then the information for the small sandwiches disappears, and is replaced by the information for large:


But there is still one more step. You have to click the '+cheese' and '+dressing' checkboxes to get the full count. Two additions that no doubt you'll be offered (encouraged?) to add in the store.


Finally you get the complete count. And when you see the numbers it's no surprise they wanted to hide it. The single sub weighs in at 2090 calories; about the recommended daily amount for a typical adult. In one sandwich (Tuna too). And the 175g of fat is double the recommended maximum. That's one serious sandwich.

If governments are providing regulations on label design for food products to protect consumers (surprisingly lax in the US, which seems to prioritize quantity over clarity), then how long is it before rules are in place for similar information online. And what form should those rules take?

Either way, I'd love to read the design brief the IA who created this tortured use case had to work to.

Sadly this practice is much more common than it should be. For example, I personally have once been asked to make the customer support phone number hard to find on a web site in order to encourage users to use the online support tools. The wireframe ended up having the phone number shown BIG at the top of the page, but then the best way to get me to do something is to ask me to do the opposite.

Craziness

It's like some unholy demon emerging from hell

Ethical Design: IA summit Barcelona

I presented a panel at Euro IA / Barcelona a couple of weeks ago, with Joe Lamantia and Thomas Frölich.

The subject was 'Perspectives on Ethics' in information architecture. My part of the panel presentation is above, you can also download a pdf here. Joe presented some intriguing ideas on designing for conflict, and Thomas provided a set of very-well researched insights into whether or not the field of IA needs a code of ethics.

Synesthesia documentary

I just watched a stunning documentary from the BBC about a savant named Daniel Tammet. He has a particularly rare mix of conditions: socially-functional autism, and what appears to be both intense number and language synesthesia. The fact that he can clearly describe what he 'sees' whilst he performs incredible mental feats is unique. Feats such as dividing numbers to 100 decimal places and learning a language in a week. It's the true story of the movie "∏"...

For the story of another truly gifted synesthete, read Nikolai Tesla's page on wikipedia.

I have sometimes wondered if I have a mild synesthesia towards information structures - doing IA I get what I can only describe as a sort of 3-dimensional colour / texture shape: I rotate in my head and when I see particularly clear lines through it (a more crystal-like structure) they can sometimes represent very clean ways to structure the data. But I get this only infrequently, it takes a lot of concentration, and the images are vague and weak.

Watch it here, for free (I love google video)...

The revolution will be sychronized

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that the iPhone is going to radically alter the mobile phone industry, and complained about how many people have claimed this, yet how few have explained 'how'. Time to take my own medicine. So, to start at the beginning:

UI
The iPhone's UI is novel in that almost every function is driven via the touch-screen. This makes the hardware component of the phone substantially less limiting when it comes to adding new features and functions. In short: if Apple wants to add a button, a feature or an application, it's just a software change. This, combined with the fact that the phone is running a very powerful complete operating system (OS X) makes it simple for Apple to rapidly add innovative new features on top of the existing hardware design. Whilst Nokia and Sony Ericsson can update the software on their handsets, any departures in terms of input methods and interaction methods sit behind the roughly 2 year time-to-market limit for new hardware designs. Whilst we expect new form factors on a monthly basis from the main handset manufacturers, we don't from Apple. Don't be surprised if an iPhone in a couple of years looks nearly identical to the existing iPhone, just with more and faster stuff inside, and a whole lot more features and applications. That's not true of anyone else.

Guaranteed daily syncing
This is where things start to get interesting. Very few users currently update the software on their phones. For practical purposes, the manufacturer has to assume that most customers will be carrying their phone around with whatever software version on it that it shipped with. This presents a range of challenges.

For starters backwards compatibility and the need to support old software versions is a concern, something that can get expensive when supporting a large range of handsets. But more importantly here, new software improvements can't easily be distributed to existing customers. Rather, it's only the buyers of the latest handsets that get the latest software. The phone is effectively frozen in time at the moment of purchase. This is especially tricky for maintaining services: a web site designed to work on a Nokia needs to support a whole host of browser versions and screen sizes dating back 2+ years, adding significantly to the cost plus limiting the ability of the designers to use the latest features without excluding a large proportion of the potential user-base.

The iPhone is not limited in this way. Since to charge and load the iPhone you plug it into your PC, you'll also inevitably update the software on it. This is a huge behavioural difference: almost no phone owner plugs their phone into their PC, but every single iPhone user does. What is more, when you're plugging your iPhone in it's connecting to one of the best pieces of software ever written: user friendly, relatively hassle-free DRM, auto-updating, and with an integrated store, media viewer, playlist manager, crosss-platform, massive installed user base...

Rapid development and roll-out
The result of this regular syncing and the iPhones 99% software UI is that Apple can reinvent the iPhone user experience and feature set and reasonably expect that within only a few weeks every single iPhone user will be using the new system. This is the key to why the iPhone is revolutionary. The 'phone' changes from being a relatively static consumer electronics device to a software platform that can be universally updated by the manufacturer as it sees fit on a nearly instantaneous basis.

Compare these two scenarios:

Nokia decides that an instant messaging client is a good idea. They develop it, and have to have it ready for end-to-end testing. Meaning that once the software is ready, it's another 6 months before it reaches the market. The testing has to be perfect (hence time-consuming) since the possibility of fixing bugs once the app is live is very limited.

Once it reaches the market, it slowly gets into the hands of their customers as they buy the new phones. A few geeky users might download the software for existing devices (that it works with), but only a few. Given the 2 year device-replacement cycle, about 2 1/2 years after the software is complete, almost all users will have the software.

Apple decides that an instant messaging client is a good idea. Since their phone runs OS X and they already have a great IM client app and extensive OS API, the development time is short. Also, since they can easily patch any bugs after launch, the test cycle is short too, a couple of months is fine. So Apple are been able to write and launch the app in roughly the time it would take Nokia to test it, plus its probably a better app.

Then they go live. Instead of having to install the app on new devices and wait for the 2 year replacement cycle to run, they push the app out to all their customers overnight. Within a couple of weeks, 95% of all existing iPhone customers will be running the app. Find a bug a month later or a small UI improvement... just push out a patch.

Apple are in a position to design, develop test and launch apps to all of their existing users in the time it takes a typical handset manufacturer just to test an application.

What is more, customer satisfaction is much higher with the iPhone. Whereas the existing Nokia customers may be irritated that they're locked into another year of their contract before they can go out and buy the new phone, iPhone customers get the software automatically and 'for free'. The experience is 'hey, look, my phone does cool new things!'. No time investment or hassle for the user. Their product is improving whilst they own it, with no effort on their part. This removes the opportunity costs so common in the tech industry (oh, I'll wait for the next one because I don't want to be stuck with last years model).

Manufacturer and operator
This arrangement fundamentally shifts the balance of power between the operator and the manufacturer. It's worthy of note that handset manufacturers call operators 'customers'. Nokia and Sony Ericsson sell almost all their handsets to... Vodafone, T-Mobile, and the rest. They don't sell them to you. The result is that these operators have huge leverage when it comes to the relationship. Operators effectively 'own' the end-customer (thats you), dictate features on the phones, and insist on software customisation just for them.

This changes with the iPhone. The fact that the end user is getting these constant feature updates direct from Apple changes the value proposition. The real value now isn't the network and the contract (which is rapidly turning into a commodity business), but in the frequency and quality of the new product features. If Apple can constantly delight their iPhone users, then that's where their loyalty will lie. AT&T know this, they are paying Apple a share of the monthly contract fee for each user. This is unheard of in the mobile industry, and represents the biggest balance of power shift the industry has ever seen.

However for other manufactures to follow in Apple's footsteps they need to offer a product as compelling as the iPhone. And not just a super-desirable device, but the ongoing service-type arrangement via iTunes that Apple offers. Currently no one is in a position to offer this: they lack a suitable iTunes-like content and software delivery platform, and the phone operating systems (Symbian etc) are years behind OS X. They have their work cut out.

You might ask why the operators don't attempt to do this? Perhaps they could establish their own software platforms and update mechanisms and 'own the end customer'. In theory it's possible, but take a look at the anatomy of a typical operator. Their technical and software skills are minimal (and mostly bought-in), their key competencies are marketing, billing and (usually mediocre) customer support. What is more, they'd have to support a wide range of different manufacturer's hardware, or severely limit their product offering. And, given that they don't manufacture the hardware, they lack the integrated software / hardware development teams of the handset manufacturers. Short of one of the big players actually buying a manufacturer (eg Vodafone buying Sony Ericsson), with all the attendant conflicts of interest, there's very little chance of them competing in this new space effectively.

Operators as the new ISPs
Where this is going in the long run is, I think, clear. The other manufacturers will be forced to raise their game, eventually, to reflect the iPhone's model. Namely: a flexible device with the latest software and services automatically supplied on an ongoing basis. This will commoditize the operator market. Operators will gradually lose their control over the feature set of the device, and the relationship with the customer. They'll have to compete on the basics: network quality (primarily data speed), price, and keeping their customer service simple, effective and out of the way.

Does this remind you of anything? It might do. Where we are now is where the web was in the mid-90s. Companies like AOL and Compuserve were trying to own the end user via walled gardens (like Vodafone, Verison, etc are attempting now), whilst struggling to keep up technically. An impossible task: create a walled garden that is as good as the rest of the internet combined! The end was inevitable: the ISPs became almost invisible to consumers as commodity suppliers, and the important players became the device people (Dell, HP, Apple, Microsoft), and the application / content service people (Google, MSN, Yahoo, MySpace, etc).

Naturally the operators are not keen to let this happen, and will put the breaks on any developments moving in this direction coming from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and the rest. But with the Apple iPhone out in the market, the cat is already among the pigeons.


PS: I got to use an iPhone yesterday, a rare treat for a european. It was every bit as good as I'd expected, and a whole lot more ... bijou.

Best commute ever

I did a tandem sky-dive on saturday. One the way down (you have plenty of time to chat up there), my instructor told me of his commute. It is without a doubt the best commute ever...

Him: That's Apeldoorn over there, and Zwolle to the north.

Me: Oh? Where do you live?

Him: See that house over there, with the red car? It looks very small from up here.

Me: Yes I can see it.

Him: That's where I live.

Me: Right. So do you just parachute into your garden last jump of the day?

Him: Yes I do.

Japanese strangeness

One of the lesser-known Japanese idiosyncrasies is their widespread fascination with little anime / hentai plastic dolls. When I was in Tokyo (a couple of years ago now), I witnessed this in action. Middle aged men going into a specialist store and drooling over these 10cm dolls with a strange look in their eyes (in the eyes of the men, not the dolls).


I honestly can't tell you what they do with them. Just put them on top of their PlayStations I'm hoping?

Picture from Tokyocraiger