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A Path to Success - Interview with Patrick Jordan - 8 August 2005
by Eleanor Lisney
Read this article in Chinese (translated by Christina Li, proof read by Long Pan)
Dr. Patrick Jordan is an award winning international design and marketing consultant, author and professional speaker. He is also the President and CEO of Contemporary Trends Institute (CTI), – an international trends and branding consultancy. He is the former head of design for Symbian, the world’s largest mobile-communications consortium.
Dr. Jordan is the author of Designing Pleasurable Products (Taylor and Francis 2000) and the #1 Amazon.com category bestseller How to Make Brilliant Stuff that People Love and Make Big Money Out of It (Wylie 2002).
He is also a Professor, Chair of Design at University of Leeds. Pat is on the advisory board of uiGarden.net where he advises on the project’s research agenda.
As part of uiGarden editing team, Eleanor Lisney was fortunate enough to join Dr. Jordan’s workshop at the International Workshop on Internationalisation of Products and Systems (IWIPS) conference in Amsterdam and interview him for the webzine.
Eleanor Lisney
Patrick Jordan
Dr Jordan, you have been involved in both industry and academia. Can you give us an idea what lead you into this usability field? Have you always known that this was the direction you wanted to go as an undergraduate?
I became interested in user-centred design issues when I was an undergraduate Mechanical Engineer. I always struggled with technical issues, but then came across the discipline of ergonomics. I did a Masters in that at the University of Birmingham and really loved it.
For the people who are not very familiar with your research, could you please briefly give an idea of what you mean by “the four pleasures”?
“The four pleasures” is about the different ways in which people can have positive interactions with products and services. They are: physical, social, psychological and ideological.
Physical interactions are to do with how the product looks and feels and how well it fits to the user physically. Social are to do with the role of the product in interpersonal relationships and things such as the status which the product confers.
Psychological includes things like how easy the product is to use and the emotions that the product generates. Ideological is about people’s values and whether or not the product is consistent with them. For example if they value youthfulness the product should be youthful, if they care about the environment it should be environmentally friendly – that sort of thing.
The framework was developed from the work of anthropologist Lionel Tiger and Christian philosopher C.S. Lewis who is probably better known for writing children’s books. It doesn’t just apply to products but to life generally, but I have adapted it for use with design and marketing.
Your books “Designing Pleasurable Products” and “How to Make Brilliant Stuff That People Love and Make Big Money Out of It” talk about creating products and services that people will love. I sometimes wonder if it is not a question mainly of packaging and advertisements these days. My cousins visiting me from Malaysia bought several boxes of cornflakes – when they do not even like cereal, just for collecting the Star Wars toys that came as free gifts. It might seem flippant and cynical but one questions the relevance of the product in itself. I am not denying great design in everyday things but for consumer goods such as Coca Cola (as you mention in your article “The Greatest Design of all Time” for this webzine): should it be contender for top design?
I always advocate that we use these approaches with integrity to deliver honest good quality products and services to those for who we design. The four pleasures and other approaches are really just tools. Like any other kinds of tool they can be used in a positive or a cynical way. However, my view is that ultimately integrity is not only morally right, it is also the way to succeed in the market as consumers are sophisticated enough to see through cynical marketing ploys and if they are disappointed they will not buy your product again.
Reading some of the reviews about you and your books, I have seen the word “holistic” mentioned a few times. Would you agree that this is a good description, as how you would see your approach to usability?
Yes. If we want to understand why people like or don’t like something and why they have a particular emotional response, it is important to understand them as widely as possible. Of course we need to understand people’s practical needs, but we also need to understand their personalities, their emotions, their hopes, fears, dreams and aspirations. We need to know how people want to feel about themselves and the role that the products and services that they use can play in this.
Do you think culture should also be a consideration? How do you see the role of culture in design?
Yes, I think it should. Studies have shown that values can differ from culture to culture and that this can affect the different types of things that people want from products and services. It is important to understand that sometimes those that we are designing for may have different cultural values to our own and to respect these when considering their requirements.
From your workshop and books, I have gained a conception of your theory and would like to apply it in my design practice. Could you please suggest good practical methods for applying in designing a pleasurable product?
I would try to understand the needs and characteristics of the people we are designing for and then create a persona. A persona is a made up person who is representative of a target group. I would then use the four pleasures to work out what this persona would want from a particular product and then make sure that the product design delivered these and also that they came across in the marketing campaign.
When I say ‘I’ actually I would do all this in most instances with the company’s in-house design and marketing teams. It is really important to work together and get everyone focused on delivering a great user experience.
Having worked as both independent out-source design consultant and a leader of in-house design team, what’s your view of them? What would you say are their merits and drawbacks?
A potential advantage of out-sourcing design consultants is that it can bring a fresh prospective to issues. Most companies develop an in-house design culture and while this has many advantages, it can sometimes help to have an outside consultant bring a fresh prospective.
However, as I mentioned having a strong design culture within a company has many advantages. In particular it helps to make design a major part of the brand image and also raises awareness of design within the company. These benefits can be lost if a company is overly reliant on outside consultants.
Another issue is about retention of knowledge within the company. Each design project gives insights and learnings and if there is a strong design team within the company then these learnings will stay in house.
I think that the best combination is to have a strong in-house team, but also to work with external consultants from time to time. This helps the in-house team to develop and stay fresh and gives a good balance of consistency and new approaches.
At the moment independent consulting businesses are the vogue in the west and is also starting to appear in Chinese design world. What would your suggestions be to a new consulting start up company? What would you say is the most important thing to be attentive to?
In addition to providing clients with top quality design work, it is also important to help them think strategically. It adds a great deal of value for your clients when you help them to understand more about their users and their markets and about what the implications of this are for their designs. Keeping up to date with the latest lifestyle trends and understanding what their implications are for people’s attitudes and values is an important part of this. Good design work is not done in a vacuum, but rather in the context of what is going on in society and the marketplace.
Another important part of being a consultant is understanding the culture of the companies and organizations that hire you. Getting yourself listened to and getting your work implemented depends as much upon how you present it and yourself as it does on the actual content. Get to know how decisions are made within the organization, the people involved and the way they approach things. Learn the terminology and language that people within the organization use and talk to them in a way that is consistent with this.
If the organization tends to be very analytical for example, then present the reasons for your design decisions in an analytical way. It is important to realize that the people commissioning design work will not necessarily have an instinctive understanding of what good design is. They may not be able to judge the quality of what we have done just by looking at it. It is important that we explain why we have made particular design decisions and what the effect of those decisions will be on the success of the product.
Thank you, Dr. Jordan, for giving us your time in answering these questions and for a very enjoyable workshop. I understand you have just accepted a new professorship in the University of Leeds, may I offer you congratulations on behalf of uiGarden team and its readers? We wish you all the best and hope to have you contribute again with your ideas on usability and design.
Eleanor Lisney is part of the uiGarden editorial team. She holds a Master of Science in Information Studies. Her main interest is in accessibility and usability. Eleanor worked for the University of Massachusetts before her return to live in France.
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