Three by Three, They Came

Why the WordPress Three-Column Layout Became the Web Standard, Until It Wasn’t Anymore -- A Discussion of User Experience Evolution and the Adoption Curve in Pattern Libraries, Interaction Design, Visual Cues and Calls to Action, with References to The Wayback Machine, Popular Culture, and Art

Prologue

Changes in the pattern libraries, interaction designs, visual cues and calls to action of web sites, mobile tools and online applications come in waves, and they follow the typical adoption cycle: bleeding edge, everywhere, over.

While we don’t always have a working theory of where these changes are going, --  just the knowledge that change is the only constant --  the law of evolution is:

(a) observable in action and

(b) enforced by the market.

Figure 1: The Technology Adoption Lifecycle, as it Applies to Anything that Plugs In or Has a Battery, plus Popular Culture and Art*

* The version of the adoption lifecycle referenced here is from Crossing the Chasm.
This custom illustration is from Wikipedia. 
The adoption curve concept also applies recursively to the adoption curve.

The Present and the Recent Past

Here are three examples of  user experience evolution in full effect: adaptations in pattern libraries, interaction designs, visual cues and calls to action that appeared in a few places, spread, and are already fading out of coolness into ubiquity: 

1. Three-column webpage designs: Totally new at first, these clean and simple slabs of content and color upended overly art-directed sites. But now they’re as prevalent as daisies; they’re everywhere.   
Prediction: Something else is coming soon. 

2. AJAX/jQuery Action Bars and Plugins: Functional and sleek, these tools do so much that used to be handcoded or impossible.  
Prediction: They’re here for a while, until they aren’t.  

3. My Account / Login / Sign Up: Typically tucked into the top right corner, the utility nav area has been around for long enough for an overhaul.
Speculation: Something will replace it in the future. What will it be?

Compare and Contrast: The Present vs. the Ancient Past (in Internet Years)

Using the upper righthand corner of websites for account management tools is typical today, but it wasn’t always thus. In the beginning, these functions barely existed.

Q. How did the toplevel utility nav come to be the way we expect to see it today?
A. Like most things -- slowly, then all at once.

On the Amazon.com homepage from 1998,  “Buy Books” was a category, and “Shopping Cart” and “Checkout” were subcategories:

Figure 3: Amazon.com, Earth’s biggest bookstore: July 1, 1998 
(via The Wayback Machine.)

Today, the old interaction metaphors Amazon used feel like the website equivalent of maps from the "here be dragons" era of cartography, but without the cool drawings.

The Future is Already Here — Just Not Evenly Distributed

Websites, online tools and mobile apps of a given time and place go through periods of change and equilibrium:

1. They look and work the same

2. They differentiate

3. They start looking the same again.

This cycle of user experience evolution follows the older adoption curves of popular culture and art:

1. Styles and schools are invented

2. Defenders of the status quo cling to the old thing

3. The new thing becomes standard, and upstarts differentiate.

The law of evolution doesn’t predict how things will change: just that they will.

Love songs are examples of popular culture calls to action, and here are two examples of how they have changed across four centuries:

“Had we but world enough and time” Andrew Marvel, 17th Century

“Rah rah ah-ah-ah!Ro mah ro-mah-mahGaga oh-la-la!” Lady GaGa, 21st Century

Online, the ways we create engaging user experiences have already changed at least this much, in much less time.

What will happen tomorrow? 

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I can't take credit for discovering the evolution of online user experience, but if I wanted to name it Laurie’s Law, and say it was discovered by you, that would be an appropriate example of Stigler's law of eponymy. *

*Stigler's law of eponymy is a process proposed by University of Chicago statistics professor Stephen Stigler in his 1980 publication "Stigler’s law of eponymy".  In its simplest and strongest form it says: "No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer." Stigler named the sociologist Robert K. Merton as the discoverer of "Stigler's law",  consciously making "Stigler's law" exemplify Stigler's law.

 

Unicorns, Hedgehogs and Foxes: Which are You?

There's a great post by Jeff Gothelf on the roles UX people play: Unicorn: a Visual Designer with UX Chops. It's earned a long and thoughtful string of comments.

My take on it: As engagement architects, user experience consultants, and customer experience practitioners, we share core skills and deliverables, and we bring our own extra bonus knowledge. People can be unicorns; they can also be hedgehogs or foxes.

In my case, I'm a little of each -- a UX and CX lead who is originally a communicator. I worked as a newspaper reporter in the dark years before Senator Gore invented the internet, and the years I spent asking questions, synthesizing information, writing it down, and making sure I got it right is pretty much the foundation skill set of #UX and #CX -- plus boxes and arrows, which I learned working for Seth Godin's startup, Yoyodyne, back during the late 20th century.

For others, coding, visual design, marketing or project management are the deep competencies they bring along with their #UX and #CX skills.

Shorter: Where you stand depends on where you sit.

In the future, I see the creative hierarchy looking like this:

Experience Director / Engagement Architect
o UX director / UX staff
o Art director / production artists
o Content strategy director / editorial staff
o Marketing Director / Online marketing team

On any given project, these hats all need to be worn by someone, but people can wear more than one hat.

These are my UX skills and capabilities; what are yours?

---

The internet was originally a government program, and Senator Gore supported it. He began to craft the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991 (commonly referred to as "The Gore Bill") after hearing the 1988 report toward a National Research Network submitted to Congress by a group chaired by Leonard Kleinrock, professor of computer science at UCLA. The bill was passed on December 9, 1991 and led to the National Information Infrastructure (NII) which Al Gore called the "information superhighway".


Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn have noted: When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication. As an example, he sponsored hearings on how advanced technologies might be put to use in areas like coordinating the response of government agencies to natural disasters and other crises.^[3]

CX, UX: Chicken Fingers, and Cancelled Flights

The ice was already melted in my to-go cocktail from the bar down the street (they look the other way, as long as you return the glassware) when I realized that the two lines at the Chicken Fingers ʻnʼ Beer Place for After Soccer were roughly equal, but I was waiting on the slow line.

As a professional Engagement Architect and User Experience consultant, I had questions.

Fortunately, I also had a framework:

1.0 Why?
Always the first UX question

1.0.1 How hungry were the children and parents waiting for me to order for them?
Create personas for users, and prioritize their needs

1.0.1.1 When would the inevitable meltdowns begin?
Time the rollout of phases and features for user acceptance and engagement

2.0 If I left the line to get another cocktail, should I (a) come back at the end of the fast line, or (b) ask someone in the slow line to hold my place?
Consider and plan for social options

And then a phone behind the counter rang, revealing the workflow issues throttling the slow line, and proving once again that there's no substitute for observation in the field in UX work.

Figure 1: Customer Service Workflow: Chicken Fingers ʻnʼ Beer Place for After Soccer

This was amazing to behold:

i. Two cashiers.

ii. Two lines.

iii. One phone.

iiia. The cashier on the slow line answers all the phone calls

I perceived a pattern here, and I had questions:

(a) How many people in the slow line had no idea they were also effectively in line behind people calling on the phone?

(b) How many noticed?

The situation reminded me of the debacles at airport gates when flights are cancelled and some people start banging on and shrieking away at their phones, while others remonstrate with the ticket agents.

I had a proposition to test: What if, while I was standing in line, I called my order in?
Would I see the cashier answer the phone and take my order ahead of, well, me?

I pondered the ethics, until it was my turn.

And I thought about how situations like this are everywhere, and how the questions around them are always the same:

• What will it take to fix this?
  
• What is the price of not fixing it, vs. letting things continue as they are?

At the chicken shack, the possible solutions are obvious. Only one phone? Get another. Too short staffed? Staff up.

What are the issues where you are? How would fix them?