Karen Holtzblatt claims to know what makes things absurd. She even has a book out bearing the extremely literal championship: What Makes Things Cool? But I am suspicious of anyone who claims to sympathize what makes things cool and sells his or her know-how to gigantic corporations (in Holtzblatt's case: LG, Walmart, Nokia, John Deere, and others). In detail, I disagreed with something Holtzblatt wrote in her book: "Nosotros all know cool products when we come across them." Cool, I think, is learned. Nosotros are social creatures, after all, and we look to a select few to help united states develop our tastes–which is why we telephone call such people tastemakers.

However Holtzblatt seems to exist proverb that coolness can literally be designed into a product. I encounter coolness as fleeting, something deficient. She says there is a connexion between learning and joy and the perception of cool. I remember cool is external. We like certain things and find them cool considering they tell the world something about united states of america and how we'd similar to exist perceived. You could play information technology absurd, in other words, but could you really exist absurd? Maybe, if you were The Fonz. The rest of united states of america are simply faking information technology.

She and I fundamentally disagree most the nature of absurd, and disagreements make for good chat, so I called her recently to talk about the ideas in her book.

FAST Visitor: What is it that y'all really do, and how did you lot come to practice that?

KAREN HOLTZBLATT: I'll give you lot my usual pitch. When I came into the high-tech industry over twenty years ago, my training was as a psychologist, in cognitive psychology, and this was right when technology started being used by real human beings–people who were not engineers.

How was being a psychologist useful then?

There was the result of nobody really wanting to empathize how the technology was put together. And back in those days, at that place were hardly whatsoever usability engineers, allow lone UX [user experience] or UI [user interface] designers. I had a much broader sort of applied background and had already basically been doing usability testing in my lab work and out in the field. People were similar, "What do you mean yous'll go out and talk to people about what they're doing and how they practice it?" There's some paper someplace where I'grand called a mystic and heretic.

The typical way then, and nevertheless, in some ways, was to ask people what they want. But people don't actually know what they want. People don't know technology or themselves or their lives. And besides, we aren't interested in truth, we're interested in making things people love. Out of this came my first book, which is used by universities and companies all over the world, on user-centered design processes. I'g known, now, as this sort of vox of understanding customers in the field. I would consider myself…well, people telephone call me a guru.

Okay. This cool affair: I don't think nosotros run across middle to eye here. Your notion is that y'all can build something absurd.

That'southward right. If you recall about the idea that'due south–what's front end design?

[Long pause]

I don't know.

You come up with an thought, iterate, validate, and the user experience part is baked into that process. When we talk about the user experience, nosotros're not talking about Lady Gaga cool. The globe absurd has a variety of meanings and assumptions. So what I wanted to know when I started researching absurd was what was going on such that people were exclaiming, could non stop talking nearly their technology, that it itself had become cool.

How did you research this?

I went out into the field. I asked people, what were the dimensions that defined this experience, that the give-and-take cool was a geiger counter for.

That'southward a complicated way to put it!

Well, we didn't say exactly that. Nosotros started with sixty people and asked them to bring together their stuff, what they thought was absurd that had some engineering science component. When we talk about the results of this study, we go, "Look, it's cool because people brought this together and they said and then." We went into their homes, each of the things–sometimes it was a radio or a vacuum cleaner; it was always their mobile device, their DVR, their large screen Television receiver; every so often it was their car. The technology devices were always at the superlative of the listing.

Merely you asked them–you said there had to be a technology component.

Certain. Merely information technology also could have been a fridge or a microwave. We then said, "Alright, show me what it does in your life during the construction of your twenty-four hour period, and we looked at what was really going on and looked for themes. When nosotros were done, at that place were seven core concepts that business relationship for the driving issues effectually the user experience. The overarching experience is 1 of joy being ripped out of your guts.

I don't call back I own any piece of engineering that makes me feel this way.

Well, what'due south interesting well-nigh joy is you can't cognitively create joy. Yous tin't think your way into joy. Simply finer your joy is attached to something that moved you. Information technology's a little metaphysical–it moved you in your soul. Talking about their cool tools, people were going bananas. They talk almost their phone the same mode people talk well-nigh a puppy.

I detect that kind of sad.

Well, if I had told designers to blueprint for joy, it would be but every bit hopeless as saying "design for cool." But the fact of the affair is that human beings–never forget I'm a developmental psychologist–are born with cadre concepts. Small children can experience joy. And it happens because of certain lived experiences. Touching, for example, is one of our most primal human being motives, which we are supporting and so much more than. Nosotros are touching things that were never touched before with engineering. The style that these cadre concepts piece of work, the cool concepts, the more of them y'all touch, the libation your thing is.

What are the absurd concepts?

The absurd concepts are proprietary. Each concept has a prepare of 10 phrases. I don't desire you to write the phrase, just you tin can write the concept.

Can we possibly use an example? What'due south a piece of actually absurd engineering science today?

Look, for all really transformative technology that volition rock the base, something has to exist so transformative that it punches a hole in homo experience, and it goes "whoa," you know? The first product that probably did this for a lot of people was the spreadsheet.

(Literal sound of me doing a spit-accept, only with air, and then it's just pffffffffffffffffff)

No really! It allows you lot to do "what ifs," on a large calibration for the commencement time. It made the first Apple reckoner. If at that place wasn't a spreadsheet, that is the awarding that made the box. In indicate of fact, it in one step was a sweeping change.


So where does Google Glass autumn?

Pretend information technology'due south a prototype and this is a corporate experiment. Effectively, we don't know however whether people want something in their eyeball.

I don't think Google Glass is very cool.

Let's use Google Glass equally an example, and I'll tell you lot the seven cool concepts. My girl works for Google, by the way. Then the beginning and the near important is the experience of accomplishments in life, the departure between doing a task efficiently and, you know–if you scout a little babe zip their zipper for the first time, and they break out into a joyous grinning; when you try doing something and you exercise it and yous become, "yes!" And people hate existence bored: at the motorbus terminate, in the doctors part, paying their bills. Yous could read your volume in the line now. We are now designing for time–tiny bits of time at piece of work or at home.

My problem is: I don't run across the problem with being bored. Also, by the way, I think a lot of us are not paying bills or reading, just playing Candy Beat.

Well, the joy, the absurd, is getting your overwhelming life done. And the requirement for Google Glass is, does it help me get my life done?

I thought, at this point, the requirement is more like: We need people to exist Okay with this weird Internet face-photographic camera and then that they don't dial other people wearing it in the face.

That'due south part of the problem, certainly, simply if Glass was more than useful, it would exist more accepted. Also, the always-on attribute is a problem. People suspension up the day and cocky-interrupt. In the old days, they'd get up, go to the bathroom, talk to someone. People don't want to be doing chores during their core time, they want to be doing it in dead fourth dimension. We've ever had these responsibilities, we've just never been able to handle them on the become. What I basically call up is that dads have been sticking their nose in the paper and hiding out in the bath for a very long fourth dimension. Now information technology'due south non really different.

And then technology is escapist, and that'due south ever been the allure.

Technology is revealing what is cadre about humans. Escapism, accomplishment. But connexion too: Cool tools are assuasive distributed families and friendship groups to stay continued. Iii of the cadre principles have to do with how ofttimes you impact, the conversational content, the collaboration and planning. What is Google Glass doing for connectedness? Is it actually in the manner of interacting with someone? The mode laptops got in the mode of relationships, with Google Glass you as well don't have the ability to share what you're looking at.

Also, there really is no way to look cool wearing it, allow's be honest.

That'southward information technology too. If a product helps yous practice the things that make you a professional, it doesn't just cool points for achievement, but for identity. So we gather data for relationships, your life, the nature of yourself. What makes you experience whole, consummate, and joyous. Google Glass, actually? Is that me? Is that who I want to be? Wait at the outset Sony Walkman: Black was for professionals, yellowish was for working-class. The only fashion glasses are going to work…is if it helps yous and says something most you in your profession.

I buy that, considering information technology seems like at present the simply people who are routinely using glass are surgeons or technicians in the workplace. Certainly not so much at bars while socializing. And then what's the last of these absurd concepts.

The concluding one is awareness. We're born it. Kids are just sensual. We snuggle, we laugh in the wind. In that location's joy just in sense that we honey the beauty of the aesthetics of things. People at present await a modern, industrial blueprint. If they don't have it, they don't like you. Just this is the least important attribute, considering if information technology doesn't actually do anything, it doesn't thing.