Designing the User Interface, 5th Edition
Ben Shneiderman and Catherine Plaisant, Addison-Wesley, 2009

Ben Shneiderman of the University of Maryland’s HCIL (Human-Computer Interaction Lab) contacted me recently to say that he and co-author Catherine Plaisant have recently revised their excellent book Designing the User Interface. This new edition, due to be released this month, has now been updated to address today’s latest interface challenges with the following additions:

• Expanded coverage of social media & social networking
• Strategies for enhancing quality of user-generated content
• Strengthened commitment to universal usability, sustainable design, and societal transformation
• Contemporary challenges of spam, privacy, and security
• Guidance for designers to reduce frustration and alienation
• Increased awareness of internationalization and customization of consumer electronics

In chapter 1, the authors write:

Successful designers go beyond vague notions of “user friendliness,” doing more than simply making checklists of subjective guidelines. They have a thorough understanding of the diverse community of users and the tasks that must be accomplished. They study evidence-based guidelines and pursue the research literature when necessary. Great designers are deeply committed to serving the users, which strengthens their resolve when they face difficult choices, time pressures, and tight budgets.

If this description fits the kind of designer you aspire to be, this book is for you. According to the publisher, Designing the User Interface “provides a comprehensive introduction to the dynamic field of human-computer interaction (HCI). An expanded author team brings unparalleled industry and academic experience to this latest edition. Practical techniques, research-supported design guidelines, and a multitude of current examples and figures illustrate good design principles and practices, effectively guiding readers through their first HCI design projects.”

Everyone involved in the development of products and systems that require interaction between people and computers should approach their work with an understanding of user interface design. Even if you’re a programmer who writes code based on specifications that are written by others, you should still know how to develop a system that will really work for humans.

Here’s the table of contents:

Part I: Introduction

Chapter 1 Usability of Interactive Systems
Chapter 2 Guidelines, Principles, and Theories

Part II: Development Processes

Chapter 3 Managing Design Processes
Chapter 4 Evaluating Interface Designs

Part III: Interaction Styles

Chapter 5 Direct Manipulation and Virtual Environments
Chapter 6 Menu Selection, Form Fill-in, and Dialog Boxes
Chapter 7 Command and Natural Languages
Chapter 8 Interaction Devices
Chapter 9 Collaboration and Social Media Participation

Part IV: Design Issues

Chapter 10 Quality of Service
Chapter 11 Balancing Function and Fashion
Chapter 12 User Documentation and Online Help
Chapter 13 Information Search
Chapter 14 Information Visualization

Afterword: Societal and Individual Impact of User Interfaces

At a list price of $95 ($76 from Amazon.com), this book isn’t cheap, but its 672 pages of practical guidance makes it worth every penny.

You’re probably familiar with the expression: “Eating one’s own dog food.” Although it sounds a bit repulsive, it refers to a company using its own products. The makers of products should routinely and liberally use them to do real work of their own. Vendors that don’t do this fly blindly. I know several that fall into this category. In addition to eating their own dog food, vendors should also follow the best practices of their field. This means that business intelligence vendors ought to run their companies intelligently, using data in effective ways to inform their decisions (it’s surprising how few do). It also means that data visualization vendors should demonstrate good visual design practices in everything they produce, especially what they produce for the public. For this reason, among others, I work hard to follow the data visualization principles that I teach in everything that I produce. I know that if I slip up, I’ll invite a barrage of criticism—and rightfully so.

It is in this spirit that I want to say “shame on you” to a couple of vendors because they have recently distributed promotional materials that collide with data visualization principles and practices, which they supposedly understand and support. The first example was distributed by Advanced Visual Systems (AVS) as a promotional email, which appears below.

If you received this ad in an email, would you bother to read it? I expect better visual design from a data visualization vendor. I know that AVS produces software that can be used to create effective data analysis and presentation applications, but this ad suggests differently. It reminds me a bit of those documents that people produced in droves when word processing software first became available and no one could resist playing with the new fonts and colors. In this ad, colors have been over-used and applied to text and sections of background in meaningless ways. All but one section of text have been pressed right up against their top and bottom boundaries, giving them a crowded appearance. By indenting the “AVS is an authorized reseller…” section and placing extra space above and below the text, this section of content has been caused to arbitrarily pop out, as if it deserves to be featured. The horizontal bands of gold and varying shades of background color fragment the content, separating related sections from one another. Even apart from the visual design, the advertising copy itself exhibits no clear organization. Just add bullet points in front of the sentences and what we have here is a really bad but typical PowerPoint slide.

The person who created this marketing email is probably not one of the AVS’s data visualization experts. Likely, it was created by someone in the marketing department with no training in data visualization or in any aspect of information design. This person is probably not at fault for lacking the necessary knowledge and skills, but someone’s certainly at fault for letting this slip through. Vendors should demonstrate the expertise that they claim in everything they produce, including their marketing materials. This means that people who participate in producing anything that goes out to the public—products and marketing materials—must understand the company’s mission and possess enough of its expertise to represent the company accurately and skillfully.

Data visualization researchers who include poorly designed Excel charts in their research papers undermine the credibility of their work. Vendors that showcase horribly designed dashboards, even if their products are capable of producing better, shouldn’t expect to be taken seriously.

Although I’m somewhat familiar with AVS, I’ve never done any work for this company, but I have worked a fair amount with the other company whose promotional materials have recently ignited my ire: SAS. Take a look at the following graph, which appeared in a February 4, 2009 press release about the company’s impressive earnings:

When I saw this graph my chin nearly hit the floor. These guys know better. Perhaps their marketing department doesn’t, but the folks that I’ve worked with at SAS certainly do. This graph is completely unreadable. The twists and turns of the baseline (which differs, by the way, from the graph’s top edge), the 3-D plane, and the rounded bars with angled tops, among other things, emulate the kind of display you might expect from a PowerPoint clip-art library, but not from SAS, which is perhaps the world’s leading statistical analysis vendor. I suspect that this was created by a graphic artist in the marketing department who wouldn’t know a good graph from a George Foreman Grill, but that’s no excuse. I hope that some of the $2.26 billion that SAS earned last year will be invested this year in teaching their marketing department more about the company’s business and the principles and practices that distinguish them. Come on SAS executives, stop undermining the fine work of those who design your products by allowing the distribution of embarrassing marketing materials like this.

All of us who provide data analysis and presentation products and services should stay true to our mission in everything we do. Oh yeah, and we should always remember to dine regularly on our own dog food. 

Take care,

People like me who serve as independent industry thought leaders, analysts, or journalists must take great care to maintain objectivity. Our favor is sought by industry vendors, so we must work hard not only to protect ourselves from inappropriate influence, but to also avoid even the appearance of compromise. People rely on us for accurate and useful information. Before founding Perceptual Edge and beginning my current focus on data visualization as it applies to business intelligence, I thought long and hard about the principles that I should follow to protect my work and reputation as a reliable source of information and opinion. Having already worked in the business intelligence industry for many years, I’d heard stories about how the favor of some analysts and journalists could be influenced by vendors through various incentives, and I was determined to never become the subject of any such stories.

We who serve the business intelligence industry in this capacity find ourselves in an awkward position because the business intelligence vendors that we evaluate look to us for help. It’s appropriate for them to look to benefit from our services, but this situation invites compromise, which we must vigilantly resist, both to preserve the value of our work and our personal integrity.

It isn’t my place to define the principles that all business intelligence industry thought leaders, analysts, and journalists should follow, but I’d like to describe those that I follow and invite my colleagues and anyone who’s interested to discuss this topic with me. It wouldn’t hurt to tidy up our own houses a bit. Business intelligence practitioners should be able to rely on us for objective, evidence-based information, with confidence that our favor has not been sold to the highest bidders. Here are four principles that I carefully follow:

1. Avoid vendor marketing.
2. Don’t accept compensation from vendors for reviewing their products.
3. Don’t tie a vendor’s financial interests to your own.
4. Publicly identify all clients.

Avoid Vendor Marketing

Support for a vendor’s marketing activities can take many forms. Some journalists write articles about vendors, but include nothing but quotations from that vendor’s marketing materials. In so doing, they are serving as a member of the vendor’s PR team. When an analyst writes a white paper for a vendor that does nothing but promote the vendor’s product, this isn’t the role of an independent analyst but that of a paid marketer. Whenever I’m approached for the first time by a vendor to write a white paper, do a webcast, or speak at an event, I give them the same spiel. I tell them that I don’t participate in marketing activities or anything that anyone might reasonably mistake as a marketing activity. The content that I deliver is always educational in nature about principles and practices, not about a specific product. If the vendor’s product can be used to do anything that I advocate in the paper or presentation, I’ll happily mention the fact or sometimes use the product to illustrate my points, but I won’t build the content around their software. Instead, I’ll build it around principles and practices that are useful to readers and listeners.

On more than one occasion I have tried to discourage vendors who sought my services for such work, because I knew that their products couldn’t support the principles and practices that I teach. To their credit and as evidence of their good intentions, on a few occasions vendors have pursued my services regardless, allowing me to provide educational content that in no way promoted or included even a single favorable comment about their products.

Don’t Accept Compensation from Vendors for Reviewing Their Products

Although it’s certainly possible to review a product objectively when you’re being paid for the work by the vendor who sells the product, in my opinion this crosses into territory that should be avoided. I have never received payment from a vendor for reviewing its product. The few vendors whose products I have reviewed positively, for whom I’ve also done paid work, were not and had never been my clients when I reviewed their products the first time. Some have engaged my services since and some haven’t-it makes no difference. I have never uttered a positive comment about the products of many business intelligence vendors for whom I have done paid work. In fact, in my classes I include examples of what I consider bad graphs and dashboards, which I describe as such, that were created by many of my clients. In other words, whether I’ve done work for a vendor or not has no effect on what I teach or write. Vendors don’t always appreciate this fact and sometimes try to sway me, but credibility is difficult to earn and easy to lose, so there’s no room for compromise.

Don’t Tie a Vendor’s Financial Interests to Your Own

On a few occasions I’ve been invited to accept compensation for work with vendors in the form of stock shares or royalties. For instance, I did extensive work to design a new software product, and could have done so as a co-owner of the product, sharing in its profits. Despite the product’s tremendous revenue-generating potential, I chose to be paid in the form of standard consulting fees. I didn’t turn down the opportunity to make a bundle of money and retire early because I lack business savvy. I turned it down because to do otherwise would have tied my financial interests to the product’s and thus the vendor’s success. Had I shared in the profits, in the public’s mind I would have no longer been able to objectively judge the merits of this vendor or its competitors.

Also, on a few occasions I’ve been asked to serve on a vendor’s advisory board, with compensation in the form of stock. I happily advise any and all vendors who ask, but never in the form of a partnership that might incline me to favor them for my own financial interests.

I’m sure that some business intelligence thought leaders, analysts, or journalists who have partnered with vendors in the ways that I avoid can still maintain objectivity, but the potential for bias certainly complicates matters, and their credibility is compromised. At the very least, those who enter into relationships of these types with vendors should declare the partnership publically each time they write or speak about the vendor or its competitors.

Publicly Identify All Clients

Anyone who wishes can go to the About page of PerceptualEdge.com to read a list of my clients. With the exception of a few small organizations (all non-vendors) for whom I’ve done minor work, and organizations that have sent people to my public workshops but have never engaged my services directly, every client for whom Perceptual Edge has ever done work is on this list. This makes it easy for anyone to look for correlations between my clients and my opinions (favorable, unfavorable, and neutral).

I’m so committed to this level of transparency, I only work for clients who allow me to include them on this list. Not long ago I turned down a lucrative engagement with Disney because shortly before the work was scheduled to begin they asked me to sign a contract that would have prevented me from naming them as a client. Despite my desire to help the good people at Disney who requested my services, I wasn’t willing to compromise, not only because of my commitment to transparency, but also because, in principle, I can’t abide any attempts to block simple statements of fact. I suspect that many people who work in information-related fields share my discomfort with gag orders of this or any type.

Final Thoughts

If you’re a business intelligence industry thought leader, analyst, or journalist, following these ethical guidelines won’t necessarily prevent people from calling your integrity into question, especially vendors whose products you’ve unfavorably critiqued.  When this happens, I believe that the professional, honest, and constructive way to respond is with reason and evidence. Make your case, do so publicly, do so truthfully, and do so rationally, based on a clear presentation of the facts. Due to the nature of our work, we set ourselves up for attack simply by doing our jobs. This comes with the territory. We can’t prevent it, but we can do everything possible to live above reproach.

Take care,

Information management is a means; it is not an end. If the information is well managed but does not have an impact on performance accomplishment, then the technology is without value-it’s a toy, not a tool. We have to keep our perspective on the uses of the information, not the information itself. We have to understand the cognitive landscape that permits decision makers to effectively use IT.

Working Minds, Beth Crandall, Gary Klein, and Robert R. Hoffman, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2006, p, 168.

The business intelligence (BI) industry has done a great deal for information management, but it hasn’t fulfilled the essence of its promise. It has provided a powerful technical infrastructure for collecting, integrating, improving, storing, and accessing large amounts of information, but few tools that directly help people understand and make good use of that information. For years I’ve been hoping that, with the right encouragement, the BI community would figure this out and begin the work that remains. This requires a paradigm shift that I had to make years ago in my own work, so I believed the industry could do the same. BI must shift from a focus on engineering and technology to a focus on the human beings whose work the technology was created to support. After years of constant effort and almost relentless frustration, I now believe that the industry at large will not and perhaps cannot make this shift. It is too entrenched in a techno-centric paradigm. The skills that have enabled BI to build a solid technical infrastructure, which has made so much information available, are not the skills that are needed to build tools for information sense-making and presentation, the activities that most directly support decision making. While most traditional BI vendors have made failed attempts to provide what they don’t understand-data analysis and communication-others have arisen to do the job.

The vendors that are effectively doing what BI has promised fall into two camps: (1) relatively recent start-ups, which are spin-offs of non-BI efforts-mostly academic research, and (2) statistical analysis vendors that have been around for many years but have only recently made efforts to befriend businesspeople. Both of these camps have been working to infiltrate the BI industry with their solutions, but the industry resists them. Not only do they meet resistance, they also find that their association with the BI industry often prevents the very people who need the solutions that they offer from recognizing how these tools are different and better than pseudo-solutions of BI.

I believe it’s now time for the vendors with real decision support solutions to thank the BI industry for the technical infrastructure that it’s provided, but then set themselves apart as a new industry, different from but complementary to BI. Much as groups of people throughout history have arisen and set themselves apart to fix what cannot be fixed within the reigning power structure, the decision-support solutions that people need will only make their mark on the world by leaving the calcified fortress of BI.

Take care,

For the June/July issue of the Visual Business Intelligence Newsletter, I wrote an article titled “Time on the Horizon,” which featured a new time-series visualization called the horizon graph. Developed by Panopticon, horizon graphs can meaningfully display 50 or so full sets of time-series values on a single screen or page in a way that supports comparisons among them. The following example displays a year’s worth of stock prices for 50 separate stocks (one per row).

Click the image to enlarge it.

Though it takes some getting used to at first, once you’ve learned how to read it, it works quite well.

As it turns out, three information visualization researchers at the University of California, Berkeley became interested in horizon graphs and decided to put them to the test. To my delight, and no doubt that of the folks at Panopticon as well, the horizon graph performed well and some useful guidelines for its use were discovered.

I found this research inspiring, not only because of the results, but because it is such a fine example of the kind of constructive collaboration between software vendors and academic researchers that we desperately need. No, these researchers weren’t paid by Panopticon to confirm their work. In fact, neither I nor Panopticon knew about this until after the research was complete. This wasn’t the kind of collaboration that can sometimes get messy when money’s exchanged, but the kind that arises naturally from a group of researchers’ desire to apply their talents to something tangible-something that has a good chance of actually being used.

This research, done by Jeffrey Heer, Nicholas Kong, and Maneesh Agrawala, was well designed, well conducted, and written up beautifully in the paper “Sizing the Horizon: The Effects of Chart Size and Layering on the Graphical Perception of Time Series Visualizations”. It will be presented at CHI 2009 in April (CHI stands for Computer-Human Interaction) and has been nominated for the CHI Best Paper award.

Take care,