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Eco Luxury: Not to Scale, Yet

My big advice to Nau 2.0: Charge more for your clothes. And start as small as you can.

A few months ago, I wrote a post on the rise of Indie and Eco Luxury, and one of the hero companies of Eco Luxury that I mentioned was Nau. They were one of the first attempts at creating a luxury brand that forcefully marketed ecological, sustainable, and stylish clothing through online and direct retail stores.

Sadly, due to a lack of venture capital funding Nau was forced to shut their retail stores and sell off all of their stock at a discount. There's been much talk in the blogosphere about what killed Nau v1.0:

Their unusual, I mean novel, retail model. Nau stores generally carried one size of each style and encouraged store visitors to have their purchases shipped to their home instead of buying them in the store. Critics have noted that many luxury fashion purchases are often made on whim, and the inability to easily carry a purchase out could have been a negative for the buying experience. (I personally didn't care when I had made an purchase there, but then again, I'm not really a luxury shopper.)

Their all-Flash Web site. Nau.com, as much as I love it from a branding perspective, was not created in a manner that made it easy to shop and had weak user experience. When the brand launched, some of my designer friends had hammered on the site design as an example of design trumping usability, which is definitely a bad place to be for a design-oriented brand that focuses on function and form.

Their oversized ambition regarding audience demand. Nau's business plan hinged on continued rounds of investor financing to ensure their continued growth into more retail locations. This is what really spiked Nau's ambition, when you boil all of this down. Instead of fostering an audience through their Web site and then growing that online audience into local retail, where demand had been generated, Nau was looking to expand into new locations even as they were discussing shutting their doors. My neighborhood of Fremont in Seattle was the destination for one of those new locations.

I find it fascinating that a company that wanted to live, eat, sleep, and breathe sustainability in clothing production, distribution, and sales practices didn't launch their business by only selling through the Internet, or intentionally limit their market by starting very exclusive before mass-producing their line and attempting to go big retail. Millions of dollars were wasted in proving that without a strong online customer base, a compelling retail experience in a few upscale markets isn't quite enough to keep the doors open.

Had Nau offered a smaller product line that was made to order and was perhaps more exclusive in both price point and retail placement, my gut tells me that they would have organically created a group of loyalists that would have evangelized the brand when they dove into the mainstream retail market as their own storefront.

Small pioneering eco-luxury brands such as Mink Shoes took about as long as Nau's lifespan to get off the ground, and still haven't achieved any major economies of scale. But they're profitable, and resell through many top retailers. A recent article in Fast Company echoes similar sentiment regarding the need to find sustainability through selling small quantities of green products in the luxury market. You won't see Barney's selling 2,000 of the same pair of eco-friendly shoes. Eco Luxury has a long, long way to go if it's going to scale to the mainstream in any meaningful way.

Hindsight is 20/20 here. And luckily, Horny Toad has swooped in and purchased the Nau brand and legacy, along with much of the original staff, to give it another go. Here's hoping that with this new financial backer, Nau 2.0 will be able to create a sustainable business practice through actual clothing sales that matches the deep philosophical roots that underpin their products.

So, back to what I said at the start of all this...

Okay, Nau 2.0: Now that thousands of your loyal customers have jumped up and down and told you how much we want you to stick around, I don't think we'll mind paying a little more for your clothes -- especially if that will allow you to continue donating 5% of each purchase to charity.

If you're going to try and keep the luxury mantle on your products and your philosophy untouched, that's one of the few ways to keep an edge on the dozens of other fashion brands that are now rolling out eco-friendly lines alongside their usual unsustainable practices.

And we'll forgive you for the missteps along the way... just be sure to be a little smarter about what you're doing this time.

What My Yoga Teacher Taught Me About the Design Business

A few months ago, my yoga teacher Jennifer made some bold statements that I couldn't help but write down and think about in the context of design business...

1. Gain is an illusion.

We need to get paid for what we do (unless you've got one of those trust funds that we're all clamoring for). However, we can't get too caught up in the illusion that doing good work for a fair price earns you some thing in return. Design is one of the most selfless professions, in the sense that what we reap from our actions are artifacts that usually create value for other people (read: clients).

Gain is an illusion in this profession, as shown in our portfolios, which are a record of our activity. Our portfolios are not us. The humanity of our design activity is evident in the work. I find that mature designers learn this, just as professional writers, painters, and musicians achieve a level of success when they are able to see their work with a clear eye, divorced from any personal context.

Gain can be reflected in what we are paid, both in personal satisfaction, in the realization of our talent as artists, and in compensation, but money alone is an indicator of value more than a token of actual progress and change. At least, to clients and tax advisors.

It's my belief that true gain -- personal gain -- happens out of the corner of our eyes, when we're not focused on the work at hand, when we aren't aware of any sort of boundary around our talent and experience. It sneaks up on you and pounces when you least expect it, which is when it's most welcome and appreciated.

The word gain isn't even the right word to describe it. Maybe we should just call it fulfillment of potential.

2. Don't lean too far into the future... or the past.

Designers are extraordinarily intelligent, soulful, yet pragmatic individuals, often possessing whole brains that can cartwheel between fanciful dreamscape and logical Web site user flow.

It's fairly easy to short-circuit a designer: make them focus on their past work, where they begin to drill into the compromises that they made on each client project, or try to plot out the future, with its bevy of unknowns and fear of unfulfilled ambition. (I know I've been wanting to design book covers since I got out of college, due to my deep love of books as designed artifacts and my voracious reading habit. Definite hasn't happened yet.)

I started doing yoga about a year ago, and realized how many mental cycles I was spinning in worrying about the progress of my work and my life. Progress and change are constant as a designer, even as we strive to create a design that's finished. (Have you figured out what a finished design is yet?) If you're spending a good deal of your time in the moment, communing with your design work, you may discover that you're going to be a lot more happy in the creative process, and surprise yourself with the results.

3. If you're feeling pain, you should back out of it.

If you try too hard to reach for a goal, you pay for it with a measure of your humanity. This is the kind of lesson that's always learned through pain.

Until the age of 31, I was a design masochist. I would always complete any job or task, at agency large or small, no matter what the personal cost. Isn't that what's supposed to be expected from a top-of-their-game creative workhorse? Uh, wrong.

If you don't have boundaries and protect your humanity, you don't have room to grow. Think of it like this: you decide that you're going to run a marathon, then only train by doing 800-meter sprints. There's no way you'll survive a career as a creative if you don't pace yourself and respect your limits. This is especially bad in the big creative agencies, where your tolerance for pain is often subverted due to undue expectations.

I've watched designers burn up in a ball of flame because they put every bit of themselves into their work, to the detriment of themselves, their work, and their employers. Personal investment is important, but you need the space to keep your creative self whole. Avoid that by training like a good athlete: build yourself up for the big races through cross-training and fostering a support network, get the right amount of rest, eat right, and make sure to keep a copy of The Elements of Typographic Style by your bedside if you want to keep your A-game going.

If your work is always too painful to accomplish, rethink what you're doing. Question everything: your clients, your talents, your process, your fees. Chances are, there's an imbalance in one of those four areas that needs to be rectified.

4. It's a lifelong practice, even if you don't do it every day.

You don't stop being a designer if you aren't designing 8 hours a day, or even 2 hours. Be secure in your talent. When you aren't thinking about a design problem, talent continues to exist in full measure.

5. Be sure to use both your mind and your body.

Something that surprised me about beginning yoga practice is that focusing on the body and forming discrete poses creates space in the mind for the self to well up. The same approach applies to great design work, which requires space for emotion to emerge in the design itself.

Often, we need to feel our way through the design, capture what emotion arises there in the material, and craft that raw artwork into what the job at hand requires. If you analyze things too deeply, they often fall apart or fail to contain that essential human element that resonates with people beyond ink on a page or pixels on a monitor.

Any other thoughts?

Why I Am a Designer

Designers Hate Estimating, Pt. 3 of 3

In Pt. 1 and Pt. 2 of this series, I shared some of the common variables that designers should take into account to reduce their "cone of uncertainty" when estimating a project.

In this final post, I want to talk about the things that designers often don't quantify when creating an estimate.

Factor: What the client needs, as opposed to what they articulate they need. The client wants a new logo, but that's not the business problem that comes out in your exploratory call or meeting. If you need to reframe the problem for them as part of the process, you need to consider it as a variable and secure more time and money to do that work. The way I couch this to clients is that designers aren't just problem solvers. They also have talents in helping clients to understand their problems, clearly define them, and then solve them. This is our strategic role beyond providing decorative assets.

Factor: How the client will behave through the course of a project, and if that will influence your work. Clients ask designers for references, but it's not always a bad thing to check up on your clients and/or closely observe how they interact with their peers or other vendors. This kind of gut check should govern what kind of buffer or multiplier you apply to your project fee, or whether you wish to engage with them at all. Sometimes you need to say no gracefully.

Factor: Not budgeting for potential failures through the design process. Why do we budget for exactly how long it will take? There should always be contingencies for at least one point of failure. Assume that at least one thing will go wrong, and be prepared for it in advance of it happening.

Factor: Not having an articulated business process that fits another designer. Let's say you're indisposed and you need to pass off your project to another designer. Many designers make the fatal mistake of estimating it to a person as opposed to a role. Don't just say, "It'll take me twenty hours to design this logo." Think about how long would it take any designer to design that logo. Leave room, should you get too busy or need to hire a freelancer, that the project can be covered without losing your shirt on the estimate. This may sound like heresy to some solo-flight designers, but this is what keeps large agencies alive.

Factor: You've never done a specific deliverable before. If a project is outside your realm of expertise, most designers usually assume they'll eat the cost of learning how to do it. This opens up risk from the client's perspective, and also gives them a point of negotiation to have you burn up hours meeting impossible goals. Do your due diligence and consult with one or two colleagues and ask them for advice on how to bid the project. Don't just give it away if you haven't done it before, or let the client know you can be taken advantage of because you're not an expert regarding this one type of deliverable. You should always continue to control the process of the project, follow your established design methods as they apply to the deliverable, and not allow the situation to become a power play.

Designers Hate Estimating, Pt. 2 of 3

In Pt. 1 of this series, I introduced Construx's "cone of uncertainty" and how to narrow the risk in your estimates by determining what unknown variables exist in your project scope.

Let's work through what these variables usually are, and how they can be brought in line in your estimate.

Define the Problem before You Estimate

In your estimate, what you need to demonstrate most is your understanding of the problem. Your approach to how it should be solved would follow, and should always be consistent. As a quick example, let's think through the variables that exist in creating a new logo for a local business.

Many years ago, I would estimate doing a logo by looking back through previous project to see how long it took for a project of a similar type, bash together an estimate based on how long they think it would take, multiply it by 1.3x to give some cushion for contingency, slot in some money for printing costs if they need to create any supporting materials as part of their bid, and send it off to the client.

Today, I focus more closely on what the client needs before I think about how I'm going to create it -- even if I've done a similar type of project for them before. And I charge my client for this extra time spent on the estimate as part of my overhead and creative fee, because they're getting more than just a cost for creating a logo.

Let me try to break it down here.

There's data from your prospective or current client, relating to specific needs out of the project (looking for brand lift, increase in perception, greater sales, etc.), as well as competitive analysis and market research.

There's qualitative information that your client provides in the way of what customers and staffers think about the old logo, which adds up to an impression of why they need a new one. These elements shape up into a business problem, which must then meet your process.

This information can usually be teased out in a single phone call, with some follow-up via email. I recommend making a set of questions you always ask in the exploratory call and keeping them by your phone in case you're surprised by an opportunity.

Have a Consistent Process for Creating the Solution

Within that same exploratory phone call, you should delineate what standard steps the client would take through the project, and what they are given with regard to rounds of review per each deliverable as part of the scope of work. Get that on the table from your very first conversation, so they're aware that they will follow your working process, not vice-versa.

It should go without saying that all of your rounds of review and costs for work outside the scope of the proposal must be in writing to protect your interests. I also recommend providing an hourly estimate of your work for a project, not a flat fee. There is always risk in accepting a flat fee, as it places the onus on you for understanding all the ways a project could go sideways and accounting for them.

There's qualitative information that you control in forming your estimate, such as what kind of creative approach you think you'd take -- but I'd recommend articulating that in your creative brief. I wouldn't recommend writing the brief before getting a signature and a portion of your fee, but I generally have a glimmer of an idea of what approach I'd likely take. This thinking can sometimes provide some color in the estimate, but should never be doled out for free and can sometime be shared anecdotally if the client is looking for a detail to tip the scale in their choice of a designer.

In Part 3 of this series, we'll explore some of the incidental details that many designers overlook when estimating a new project.

Designers Hate Estimating, Pt. 1 of 3

Have you ever met a designer that likes to create time estimates for projects?

The process is fraught with peril no matter how you approach it. Estimate too many hours, the client balks at the price and you need to negotiate to a resolution. Estimate too few hours, the client gladly signs on the dotted line, and you end up taking it in the gut. Hit it bang on the nose once in a blue moon, and take yourself out for a double-tall latte to celebrate, before walking back to the office and rebalancing your books.

Well, I could alleviate some of your estimating stress by telling you that there is no perfect estimate...

...and then raise your blood pressure by venturing that your estimate could deviate as much as four times from your original figures, depending on the scale of the engagement. That is, if you don't properly define what you're delivering, and assess the risks appropriately.

Get out of the "Cone of Uncertainty"

For a quick lesson in estimation, take a page from the software development playbook, which doesn't really differ too much from the large-scale interactive estimation process -- and can be scaled down to apply to most design estimates.

Construx, a well-known software development consultancy here in the Seattle area, has an article on their Web site regarding the "cone of uncertainty" that's essential reading for any designer who is responsible for managing large-scale design engagements.

The "cone of uncertainty" is the zone in any project where a number of interrelated variables -- the details of the work to be done, your process of doing the work, who will be creating the work, etc. -- have not been defined. Any methods of reducing uncertainty can limit "scope creep" (or just plain "lack of scope"), and also create further clarity with your client over shared expectations for the life of the project.

The only way to escape from this scenario is to put all your information out on the table and determine what you don't know -- and get the answers -- before delivering your estimate. That'll be the subject of Part 2.

Give Your Phone the Finger

Multi-touch, gestural interfaces are the new black. And for the next four to five years, they're the immediate future of our ever-evolving human/computer interactions. But for us designers, I'd like to project a little further into the future and discern an even more likely scenario: true sense integration on mobile and desktop computing devices.

As designers, we usually only get to consider how media looks, sounds, and feels in a mildly tactile sense. In the future, we'll be able to consider these variables at a much greater depth and dimension than that of a static, unchanging substrate. I also wouldn't be surprised if smell and taste gained much greater prominence in the designer's arsenal.

Specifically, there are certain kinds of interactions regarding mobile and desktop devices that don't seem very far off from a technology standpoint. They do, however, require weaning us off the idea of doing our computing through a screen-topped device with a gestural input mechanism. Multi-touch interfaces don't have a ton of utility if you have disabilities, and definitely don't exploit other mechanisms we humans have for conveying and receiving information.

Here's what I'm dreaming of...

An earpiece that doubles as a phone and really understands what I want.

I don't always need to see the Internet to be able to grasp the information from it.

If you're looking to access the visual Internet, the iPhone dominates the field for ease of use and clarity and will likely be the gold standard for some time. But what if I'm going out on the town and don't want that phone in my pocket? Make the earpiece a phone as well, and pair it with trainable natural-language voice recognition software driven through the cell-phone network that learns my voice, my needs, and my quirky slang.

I could imagine the earpiece phone recognizing commands such as "give me turn-by-turn directions to Pacific Place," "pay my cell phone bill with my credit card," or "text my friend Joanie that I'll be twenty minutes late" and it will be smart enough to fulfill your actions without any major hiccups.

This is a true expression of cloud computing separate of the desktop and is where Google is starting to lay the ground with services such as 1-800-GOOG-411, which they claim is a not-for-profit venture, but makes a heck of a lot of sense in their long term strategy for having a universe of cloud-driven Internet tools that have great utility for a broad audience and further help them sell search advertising.

Knowing how excited people get about these kinds of interfaces, I could see them being smart enough to recognize patterns of behavior and quietly prompt you: "Did you mean to pass by the cereal aisle? I know you like Lucky Charms." (Okay, that would be scary...)

A touch interface that communicates through sense of touch, not screen activity.

What's the weather going to be? I go to the weather service on my phone, and when I touch the screen to see what the upcoming weather's going to be like through the weekend, the surface of the touch interface gets hotter or colder depending on the time period my finger hovers over. Sounds frilly, right? Sure, if you aren't blind. Blind people should be able to ask their phone, "What's the temperature going to be tomorrow?" and have the phone adjust its heat output in relation to today's temperature to indicate the relative difference.

Another example. Let's say I'm considering taking SR-520 over I-90 to get to the Eastside. I ask my phone (using my voice interface) how the traffic is on SR-520. The steering wheel gets harder by 30%. Should I take I-90 then? The steering wheel softens dramatically. There are other ways of getting data instead of me barking orders to my phone/car/computer, then having it bark at me a series of choppily-voiced words, which are interrupting my enjoyment of the new MGMT album.

Yes, the multi-touch gestural interface is very cool and gets rid of that mousy thing on the desk. But I want more sense out of my touch interactions.

Forget the idea of the phone altogether. It's part of the devices around me.

I know phone manufacturers want to make money from our phone networks that require devices that earn money for large publicly traded companies through the use of night and weekend minutes... but doesn't that idea sound... quaint?

I'd be perfectly happy if phone calls followed me from device to device around me, instead of me having to carry a device around in my pocket. Sure, there is the love that I'd lavish on a phone as part of my technological pocket arsenal next to the iPod, the (soon to be smart) wallet, my house keys, my sketch notebook, and my pack of mints. But I'm of the "less is more" camp, and less means no phone whenever possible.

Since I'm Gen X, I'm cool with being a little out of touch. I'm already seeing that use of cell phones will stratify, with phones being generated for the youth as part of their uniform, while from Gen X on up, it's seen as a necessity, not as an entertaining activity. Higher-end luxury phones will be wispy, while phones for the youth will be badges.

But really, I'd like to get rid of the word phone altogether. Or at least call this new category of devices something else. The whole beauty of the term "mobile device" is that you don't have to say it's a phone/MP3 player/GPS/Knife/Wii remote. Let's just tack the word "multi-sensory" onto mobile devices and hope that the device manufacturers can pay it off with something that delivers some real utility to us technology junkies.

Farewell, graphic designer. We'll miss you.

If you're hiring somebody for a design position... if you're freelancing in the design community... if you're about to make the leap into this burgeoning field... leave the word "graphic" off your title. Just call yourself a designer.

I think it's time to put the title "Graphic Designer" on the top shelf in the closet, turn off the light, and tiptoe softly to bed.

A "Graphic Designer" today may be responsible for a range of graphic applications across various materials, but that's not what we're paid to do anymore. We're asked to consider audience experiences through media. The expression of that consideration is our tangible work, but the volume and quality of thought that creates the work is often just as valuable. Designers can contribute insights and ideas that have ramifications far beyond some ink on a page, or colors on an LCD display.

At the shop where I work, in any given week we may be responsible for creating a motion graphics piece, a Web site, a poster, a 60-page annual, a logo, an advertisement, an email, or a brand experience that extends into a physical presence at an event. Different people at my office have deep competencies in many of these areas, but none of us can be great at all of them -- which is as it should be. But the thinking underlying all of the design as part of those deliverables is always focused in the following way:

1. We think about, over time, what the audience may expect from our clients, and exceed those expectations through what they experience.

2. We consider what happens through the audience interaction with each touch point, and attempt to make them as intuitive and effortless as possible.

3. We see how those interactions/touch points sew themselves into a cohesive story and experience, fostering meaning over the course of a relationship with a brand.

Design as a discipline has broadened to encompass functional considerations in a way that has made the term "media designer" or just plain "designer" carry more (ambiguous) meaning. And I like it that way.

Designers reduce uncertainty and provide meaning, value, and respect for our client's products and services. Adding the term "graphic" doesn't speak to long-form experience. It speaks of responsibility for managing visual graphic quality, which is often reduced by clients to a function of decoration.

I'm not interested in decoration as a sole function of being a designer, and the designers that I work with -- while passionately dedicated to creating the most artful visuals they are capable of achieving -- know that a killer design won't overcome a flawed strategy. Well-designed visuals don't function in the marketplace if they don't speak to a grounded insight into a real human need. Besides, as design tools become more easily used by our clients, our skill sets will overlap, and they'll be telling us to drop the leading by two points on the paragraph styles.

Trying to Solve a Wicked Problem?

When you work as a professional in the area of solving problems for clients, no matter what your discipline, there's rarely a roadblock you run up against that can't be overcome through collective brainpower or sheer brute force.

Most designers would be loath to concede defeat in the face of a client need. We thrive on challenges that require all of our wits to surmount, either by solving a difficult problem with an elegant design solution, or reframing the problem to probe the thinking behind it and come up with a new problem to solve properly. Wrong audience, business, message, media: no problem. Just adjust these dials, push a button or two, and we've recalibrated the machine for maximum throughput. Press "print" or "go live" and all will be well in the state of Designopolis.

Once you start playing with the big corporations, however, you aren't solving simple problems anymore. Instead of digging a hole to plant your tree, you're asked to move a mountain, spoonful by spoonful, to the other side of the bay. And while you're at it, can you raise customer satisfaction in the 24 to 40 age bracket by 20 percent and sell $2 million more of our product line, and pronto? Different goals and needs become tangled together. What you as a designer can control, and what your client controls, become contingent. Insert a wicked problem here, and it'll all go haywire.

Wicked problems. Big, thorny, gnarly problems. The kinds of problems that drive our creative industries to sleepless nights, burning with their own sort of dangerous energy, morphing over time and confounding marketers left and right.

The idea of "wicked problems" was coined by Horst Rittel, a theorist of design and planning and M. Webber. (See the full Wikipedia entry here.) I've copied Rittel and Webber's list of wicked problem criteria here from Wikipedia because they can't really be paraphrased, and while they're related to social policy planning, as you read through this list some previous clients you've worked with and the problems they were trying to solve might bubble to the surface of your mind:

• There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem.


• Wicked problems have no stopping rule.


• Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but better or worse.


• There is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem.


• Every solution to a wicked problem is a "one-shot operation"; because there is no opportunity to learn by trial-and-error, every attempt counts significantly.


• Wicked problems do not have an enumerable (or an exhaustively describable) set of potential solutions, nor is there a well-described set of permissible operations that may be incorporated into the plan.


• Every wicked problem is essentially unique.


• Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem.


• The existence of a discrepancy representing a wicked problem can be explained in numerous ways. The choice of explanation determines the nature of the problem's resolution.


• The planner has no right to be wrong (planners are liable for the consequences of the actions they generate).

While scientists have been spending years trying to develop various tactics to break down and expound upon wicked problems to derive positive change, we as designers can't easily engage with wicked problems -- that is, without entering into a client-designer relationship without both parties being aware that the problem is wicked and that we can only define success as a specific type of improvement agreed upon by both parties. Without calling out the complexity of a problem before engaging with a client, and being aware that you can't "solve it," you can't easily escape failure. This is why marketing is both an art and a science. You can quantify your goals and your previous actions, but only hope to predict the outcomes of your current and future actions, based on a snapshot of your audience's needs that are fluid, at best.

When I first read this list, a wicked problem for designers seemed to fit these criteria neatly:

Being asked to steer public opinion regarding a complex societal problem to sell a product. Hello, greenwashing. Social responsibility marketing, or any kind of marketing that is hinged on "changing the world for the better," really, is a function of a wicked problem. This is why there's hypocrisy inherent in promoting incremental improvement towards an idealistic goal of reduced environmental impact for, say, a plastics corporation. I could go on and on regarding this subject, but I'll leave it here with the knowledge that my thinking alone won't make a major dent in this problem. Marketing products through social responsibility requires reductive thinking on the part of the marketer and the market, which doesn't always indicate positive change from the requested action on the part of the customer.

The following didn't seem like a wicked problem at first, but it's definitely indicative of some of these criteria and hard to overcome:

Being asked to create belief in a company's actions when the customer's desired experience is never acknolwedged. If you are asked to motivate consumers to act based on a poor product experience, it's going to be an uphill fight. The rules change monthly, if not daily, based on customer behavior prompted by variables you can't control. Designers can't solve these types of problems without systemic change by the client, and can only effect positive change by attempting to foster alignment across all parties in the long term -- and hoping your competitors don't move to entrench their relationships with said audience at the same time. This type of situation requires designers to have discussions with potential clients about doing more than a marketing campaign. It requires a systemic gutting of how that company approaches their customer experience to achieve real success. Otherwise, you're just moving the needle positively in one area while the other ones plummet.

You'll notice that posing any type of positive solution to these wicked problems fall outside the domain of what designers can usually control. And nowadays when a client comes to you, asking for a solution to a problem that can't really be solved, only improved, it usually requires reframing the problem on a grand scale -- reaching your hands into the mechanisms of their organization to point out where the real problems may lie. This can be a scary place for a designer to operate, as it isn't always our core competency. Also, as marketing can be very reductive -- Universal Selling Proposition? Three product pillars in the body copy? -- I would argue that any type of reductive thinking will actually worsen a wicked problem unless it's grounded in a very sophisticated long-term plan that strings together those marketing nibbles into a holistic, long-term pattern that generates meaningful change.

Common Flaws of Web Site Search Design

I fondly remember the good old days of mediocre search technology, where you could design a Web site with the assumption that people would expend at least a few dozen seconds combing through your site's pages to see if there was anything of interest.

Nowadays, you only have a matter of seconds to grab a site visitor's interest, and that generally consists of the following actions: 1) scanning the page for a few moments for headlines of interest; 2) thinking if there's anything on the site that isn't exposed that they would like to find, and 3) typing a keyword into your search bar. Not much else, unless they land on a page in your site from a search, and you'd better hope your information architecture is strong enough to orient them.

Knowing this is the default behavior for a good number of your site visitors makes the design and placement of your site search tools of critical importance for a functional user experience. Users expect the quickest paths between their need and a correct result -- they want the bullet train, not the sailboat.

Here's some common UX design gaffes related to search I've noticed recently, clearly documented, and tried to avoid in my own work.

1. Placing filters or pull-down options in a simple search. Ready to go find all the content related to, say, corgis? People have grown to expect just a box and a submit button if they're executing a self-guided search. Don't add pull-down menus or anything else that allows people to filter content independent of keywords on your plain text search box. Put those features in your advanced search functionality for those users who want to get crafty with selecting different types of context and don't know the shortcuts like "grouping words together" in the search box, etc.

2. Changing controls from search to result. Very dangerous. Users expect consistency from their search experience and the functionality that they're presented with. When flipping from the initial query to your results screen, your search box shouldn't change functionality. If you offer an advanced search, it should always be an option to toggle on, or never be an option for the end user. Otherwise, you're going to confuse them and/or piss them off.

3. Not making your search criteria explicit. Your search page design should always foreground what the user sought before any search listings. It's not enough to re-render the same search terms within the search box. There must be a listing of what they asked for before you give them what they asked for, and with a real level of prominence in the visual design. I liken it to placing an order at a restaurant. When your meal arrives, your waitron usually says, "So, you ordered the cheeseburger with avocado, right?" Same principle.

4. Over/Underbuilding the advanced search. If you do offer the user an advanced search, consider clustering different search methods on one screen, then collapsing them and having the user choose which methods they want to combine to search your site. This allows the user to expose types of data they're wishing to sift and use those in concert. Google does this fairly well. Don't implement it like the advanced search on Windows Live which forces you to string together your advanced search criteria one at a time. Fewer interactions foregrounded in one place will equal a better user experience.