Connections between UX and Architecture
(Transcript of my opening talk held for Design Week Budapest on October 11, 2017, at KREA School of Contemporary Arts. Many thanks for the reviewers!)
Today, I want to talk about two fields rarely discussed together: one is physical, the other is “virtual” as they call it. In some sense, architecture isn’t even a single field, as the scale of projects, the focus and the materials involved require different skillsets, therefore urban architects, landscape architects also belong here, just as interior designers do. And I’m not talking about “technical architecture” or “enterprise architecture”, which are subjects of IT, albeit the “other side” will be quite related to IT and computing in general.
And the reason I want to talk about this, is that we have entered a phase in human history, where “we spend more and more time online” as the cliché goes, and we have to think about it, we have to think about the time spent this way. Some say that in order to have a happy life, we must restrict our “online” time, but I’m convinced that we are online for a reason, and that it adds to our life.
So the ultimate question is what we will discuss today, is about searching for happiness, both in the physical, and in the virtual environments. And when talking about virtual environments, I restrict myself to the environments that are common today, that is, 2 dimensional websites and apps running on 2 dimensional screens.
We will be talking about the design and creation of space. If one thing is common between all the architecture related fields is that they are creating environments, or rather, modify them in certain ways: the amount of mud that is on Earth stays the same, no matter if it’s part of a hill, or consist of a wall and a big hole somewhere else. No matter what an architect does, it’s always part of a bigger whole, as we have only one Earth to share.
Introducing Christopher Alexander
What does the moment of creation do to our happiness as inhabitants of a space?
Let’s start with a guy called Christopher Alexander. Have you ever heard his name? He is an architect. Through his life, he was searching for answers to a single question:
What does it take to make a place feel alive?
Whether it was a town, a district, a building or a room, he was looking for this. His presumption was that modern architecture of his time denied us from being able to create „living structures” as he called them, which would be able to fill us with a feeling of life.
The question is, whether the place you are at when you are reading this, is alive? Do you feel yourself good just by the bare existence of the place itself?
Do we know what needs to be done in order to make a place alive? Of course, we may have talented friends with a sense to create such places, but does it have any rules, processes, upon which we could systematically create such places? How could we do this on a global scale?
This is what his architecture is dealing with.
What the heck is UX?
I’m a UX designer.
A lot of people don’t really know what does this mean, except for the part that it does something with computers. Let me quote an older edition of Wikipedia then:
„User Experience is the sum of thoughts and feelings, which pass through a human while in contact with a system”.
This experience could be good or bad, the field of UX itself does not neccesarily judge such (they do a lot, but not in general), they are mainly focused on what are these feelings and thoughts, and how do we create them.
But can thoughts and emotions be created in another human being?
Apart from certain medical solutions, of course it’s near to impossible. If anyone expected me an essay on drugs, I’m sorry to let them down.
We can’t design emotions: we can design objects, which might evoke the emotions we were intended to create. A UX designer is creating websites, applications and so on, and asks people around what kind of feelings do they evoke – with a presumption on a certain list of feelings.
Let’s make a quick test.
This link will show you a logo for 5 seconds. Then it will ask you what is the first thought, or feeling which comes to your mind.
Here is another one:
What kind of emotions did it create within you?
The logos are just two alternative designs for a company logo I took from a logo contest. Still, with statistical significance, we can deduce what were the top 3 words that comes to people’s mind, and we can continue this experiment with different versions, until that top 3 list matches our expectations.
The two examinations, the one carried out by Christopher Alexander, and by us, are essentially the same: we build something, we bring people in, and we ask them how they feel. Of course, most of the time, a UX designer is occupied to bring good feelings. For this, he designs something, then shows it to people.
Prototyping
Alexander was a master of prototyping on a 1:1 scale. Once, he built a whole building out of hay bales, as they were easily movable. His workshop was full of full-scale models. For the windows of the Eishin campus’ main building, they built a wall out of cardboard, with a ricepaper-covered, window shaped hole in it. They were changing the different cardboards with different cutouts until they got just the result they’ve expected. The campus itself was first built using bamboo sticks and ropes on an empty field way before the first plans were drawn.
Just last week, I was at a meeting of a government organization. When asked, how a UX designer could be useful for them, I’ve shown two clickable Marvel prototypes of the same program: an original one designed by a committee, and ours, resulting in less than half of the mouse clicks for the same task.
They weren’t astonished by the fact that we were able to cleverly shorten the workflow without major modifications in its architecture: they were amazed that you could click through an application, even before it was built, just like it was the real thing. Before us, even if they used screen mockups, they were part of long word documents, and it took quite a bit of imagination to grasp how will it work: but this time, they could see it without the app itself.
But let’s not dwell that far yet.
Patterns
What is common between a train station and a railways website?
Why do we go there?
What is common between Facebook and a pub?
Why do we go there?
(No, not just for drinking, but we will deal with this later on)
When do we feel ourselves lifelike at a train station? When do we feel ourselves good?
It should be clean, unlike most in Europe, yes, and..?
When do we go to a train station?
When we are just about to leave with a train… We are to arrive the latest time possible, isn’t it?
Therefore, it’s important, that the most important trains are close to the entrance. It’s obligatory to write down the departure times at as many places as possible, along with the platform/rail numbers, when do they depart, and how much time it is now.
Train stations tend to have a high floor level, but why? That’s because the lowest level of the trains (the one we could call a floor) are at least half meter high.
But sometimes we still have to wait for those trains. How can we wait pleasantly? Of course, it has to have a roof, so that rain doesn’t fall upon us… Has to have some coffee and refreshments around, perhaps a newsstand… Free WiFi. We will need to have something to sit on. We will need to have sunlight, lots of it, therefore most railway stations are designed with huge windows.
These architectural functions define a railway station for the most parts. But how is a website defined?
What should I see on a website for a railway company? When does my train depart, right? Which one? The one I want to go with.
Good design is what adapts to what it is used for, and how it is used.
Do we recognize, we are not talking about:
- Fonts
- Colors
- Little loading animations
But instead, we are talking about, whether:
- It shouts at me when does my train leave,
- Does it know, where do I want to go
Also, in architecture, we shouldn’t speak about:
- What kind of materials were used
- Are these secessionist or neogothic?
- What kind of stuccos are exactly there.
Don’t these affect how do we feel ourselves in a certain space? Of course they do! The main railway station is full of frescos for example, rarely seen by the naked eye.
Back to Christopher Alexander, he started to watch out for these patterns.
He recognized, the solution is not within the elements, but how they are combined.
His first principle was, each of such combination should be there to solve a particular problem
His second principle was, that it should be coherent, so that the same things are solved the same way.
His third principle was, that we need to have a kind of „generative” property of these combinations, as a set of rules working together, just like DNA defines the human body. Grabbing these components, defining that:
- A train station should have a high floor for the trains
- Important trains should stop right at the entrance
- It should have a roof
- Etc
One should be able to build up a railway station. Of course, you should always adapt to the local environment, not just from a physical perspective, but also on a cultural and directness level: it’s not only that you can’t build a train station on top of a steep hill, or it has to fit a certain area available, it has to fit its age, and its neighborhood as well.
But still, once you remove these adaptations, you might find something more general underneath.
There is something similar going on for webpages.
What’s this?
A rectangle? A button? Who knows?
What if I make two of them?
What’s this? You might have an idea…
Let’s add a third one, this time, a bit different:
I guess there is a tiny part in your brain, shouting: „this is a login form”!, while another part is explaining, „these are just rectangles, they could be anything”. Yet purely from the shape and relative position of the elements, there was this part of your brain where I was able to invoke a thought – Inception, if you like the word.
It’s not the objects themselves – the rectangles in this case – which emit this thought, but rather their context, their environment, their relation to other elements.
Alexander realized, that such arrangements are the key to liveable architecture: that, for example, at a workplace, we do need a big, shared kitchen, somewhere in the middle, making the offices open to that if possible. We will return to this in a moment.
Space and navigation
But first, let’s deal with space.
Because if the one above is a website, it’s likely we will click around, visiting different screens, or pages as we call them.
It seems, according to cognitive scientists, that this clicking around will create a mental map inside our head, full with landmarks, routes, vantage points (where certain objects could be seen) and sometimes even surveys, like maps.
Now tell me, how could I get from Picadilly Circus to the Buckingham Palace on foot? (Or from Piazza del Popolo to the Colosseum in Rome, to the Carl Bridge from Venceslav Square in Prague, to the Eiffel Tower from the Louvre in Paris, etc)
Just think about it a moment.
It’s likely that you will use landmarks, routes, or explain it with a map.
This is extremely important on websites, except that we call the vantage points „menus”, paths are links, and objects are those buttons, boxes, modules which you are looking for when you try to find where to click next.
Labels are important here: it’s pretty embarrassing to arrive to a place labeled „Orders”, when you’ve certainly clicked on something called „shopping cart”, not knowing whether it’s about your past orders, or the one you are trying to make.
But labels are important in architecture as well: think of that railway station for a moment. Yes, departures are usually written in the main hall, but if you are in a hurry (and chances are good that you will be at one), and you are to board a train further away from the main platforms, will you remember the exact platform number at every corner? It’s likely that departure tables need to be displayed at multiple locations, possibly at every intersection, just to make sure you are on the right path still.
So, navigation in space seems to use similar parts of the brain, whether it’s online or in the real world.
Let’s dwelve to our next topic.
Communication
Every single roman town had a forum. A forum is essentially a large square, surrounded by important buildings of the era, like churches, bathhouses, amphiteatre, and of course it served as a marketplace as well – it wasn’t as empty as it is nowadays, except for tourists. An interesting archeological finding is, that regardless of the ethnic nationality of the early roman settlers, every single settlement had one, a town could be defined as a place with a forum. This is were rendezvous were organized to, this is were celebrations happened, this is where public meetings took place.
Forum is a meeting point. Our city has many of these, some of them are quite natural, sometimes even against regulations, others are a logical consequence of their environment, even others are commercially generated, sometimes even forced (inside shopping malls, for example).
The forum is a place where you could meet people you know even accidentally, just because they happen to be at the same place. Old cinema of Budapest has such a setup, with each room opening to a central hall, resulting that, in case you were to be there at the same day, it’s absolutely likely that you will meet, exchange a few words, perhaps even waste half or entirety of a movie for an ad-hoc talk.
Every one of us have their own forums. At the school I’m teaching at, the forum is in the 1-meter range of the edge of the reception, blocking a lot of traffic all the time. It’s also well known even among students, which tea houses and coffee houses do I frequent, so in case I’m not working somewhere, or at home, it’s easy to find me there, and there are a lot of friends who just bump into me in those places.
But, if I wanted to let the whole city know, where do I put it? At the reception desk of the school? At the big auditorium? Do I stick it to the wall of one of those coffee houses?
Likely, I would post it on facebook instead, to a big forum, like „Budapest stories”. Facebook is the „forum”, around which commercial entities are advertising, and there are lots of available entertainment. This is the forum of Budapest, not Deak Square, not the railway station, but this facebook group.
About 10 years ago, I’ve posted the screenshot of my chat client to social media, with the caption „My workplace”. It was a group chat, not unlike the one I’m pretty sure all of you are part of, with your families, friends, schoolmates, etc. I’m also pretty sure, that most of you do their daily job with computers, sometimes even „in the cloud”, or „on the internet”: we do our mailings there, some people run drawing applications there, and I’m writing this post there right now.
Which brings us to my last point, and that is
Immersion
Amber Case had a wonderful talk, where she said that
the phone is a device of teleportation.
Research shows that people on the phone have some part of their brains in a different world, the world of the one they are speaking with. They aren’t here with us. This is why it is forbidden in every single country to use a cellphone in a car, and it will be until the end of the world, or until the arrival of self-driving cars, whichever comes first.
Some countries allow for „car kits”, but it’s not a solution. The problem is not with the occupied eyes or hands: the problem is with the occupied brain. As a worst case scenario, you might give out directions to someone over the phone, and while instructing them to turn left at their place, you might accidentally turn left at the motorway as well.
People imagine themselves to these places. A few years ago, german scientists played a small game with students, where you would cross a wall through a door or such, and you could see the character through the door. Now they paused the game, and they asked: „Are YOU in front or behind the door?” To their surprise, the players identified themselves with their characters, and most of them said, they are behind the door.
But this also makes teenagers using facebook on family dinners easily relatable. They are teleporting. It’s likely they are in the circle of their friends, perhaps talking about what happened at school, but not the parts they would dare to share with their families.
It took of first in America simply because distances are huge, and after the day at school, with non-existent public transportation and no right to drive, young teenagers were restricted to the home of their parents and a few neighbours. A school could easily have a range of a hundred miles, and therefore, these virtual forums were built between teenagers to have a social life there.
Integration
Therefore, we reached a point in history of mankind, where we exists in two worlds at once: a physical and, through a teleport, we have a window to another world, and we can reach through this window, we can have new experiences, we can consume, we can communicate, we can watch our friends, and, lots of times, we can work through there.
This isn’t some far-flung future, this is today and yesterday. It wasn’t the smartphone who made us teleport, it was the phone invented by Graham Bell. It wasn’t Facebook who made a private, shared forum out of the world, it was the newspapers. Only its interactiveness, this two-way public communication is something of a novelty.
We have to build this world in a way that it is comfortable. We have to find ways to integrate these worlds well.
Of course, urban space started to adapt already: In Holland, there are stripes on the ground at walkways, turning green and red, as people wouldn’t look up from their mobile phones anyway. As a believer in remote work, I try to work from the nicest places possible, and the last place I want to go to is an office.
A lot of my friends who are able to ask for home office on longer terms go to other countries with cheap flights, and spend a whole week, sometimes even a month there, sometimes giving up their rented flat at their home country. Of course, AirBnB tends to be more expensive, but they still get their salary.
Conclusion
What you need to understand about virtual space is:
- This is a space, just like physical space – it gives us the same sensations, we use the same parts of our brain to navigate through it, and serves similar purpose, apart from hosting our physical selves
- It is built, it’s a result of deliberate human effort, and each year, billions, if not trillions of dollars are spent on it
- It affects us – it makes us feel and think and behave in ways we wouldn’t do otherwise and we spend a whole lot of time from our lives looking at the different windows where we could perceive it.
- We need to be careful on what we build, because of this, as it affects our life, our feeling of life
- And the main question we should always ask ourselves while we are building it, regardless whether the space is physical or virtual is this: how does it make us feel? Do we feel more alive by it?
