Basak Haznedaroglu - Cracking the code of what users want

Hi, hi everyone. I'm really happy to be here, excited to be here. Thank you for having me. It's a really great group of kick-ass speakers and a cool audience. Alright, let me talk a little about myself. I started my career in industrial design, designing furniture, gadgets, appliances, nerding a lot on material science, ergonomics, physics, and reading a lot about design pioneers like Donald Norman, Victor Poponek. So please bear with me when I channel my inner industrial designer here and there. Then I fell in love with interaction design, human-computer interaction, and software development, and then started to design more interactive systems and started to think about products that people really love and making software really lovable and more human. And six months ago, I joined Microsoft. I joined the Wunderlist team post-acquisition, building productivity tools and messing with computing powers like Cortana, Microsoft's artificial intelligence. And before that, I was living in New York. I was working at Foursquare as product lead designing Swarm, which is a social app for checking in to places and sharing your location with friends, and also Foursquare, which is a local search engine. So I'm a huge app for discovering places. So in the next 30 minutes, I am going to talk about what users really want, how really designs sit in the middle of art, science, and technology. And we will discuss our brains, our perceptions, and our bodies. Hopefully, I'll be triggering your left and right side of your brain. And sometimes I'll be telling stories, and you guys will be thinking like, okay, what the hell is she talking about? But towards the end, it will hopefully make sense. We will think together and have fun together. So sounds good? Cool. Let's start. And how many of you guys are designers? I'm hoping like the majority of the room. Cool. So a couple of ground rules that you will hopefully appreciate. You will not see any Venn diagrams where I'll be explaining like disciplines like user research to you. Or you will not hear the word delight because we are really misusing it, overusing it in really wrong context. And you will not see any icon art clips. So art, because it just hurts our eyes. We are designers. So yeah, let's start. Interestingly, a very little known fact about technology is where it's really originating from. And it comes from Greek like shocker, like all the good words coming from Greek. But techne really means actually art, craftsmanship, and the manner, the behavior of how something comes to life. So we sometimes really tend to see technology as cold. This evil thing that really puts a distance between us, between humans. But it actually originates from a very human place and crafting something really meaningful. So we should really see this as art challenging technology but also technology inspiring art and human life. And you know, innovation doesn't just come up with numbers and equations. It's coming from, again, a human place. And similarly, as the invaders, as the gods. We are creators of good products. Us, we sit in a very unique place. Our discipline is very unique at the intersection of all these disciplines. We are like artists. We are very open-aided, very gutsy. We make all these decisions. And while we are also relying on user feedback, analyzing business models, and implementing technological novelties. And you can see that in other professions too. Like I really admire winemakers. You know, especially the old world winemakers. Doing agriculture, really looking at the science of fermentation. While really romanticizing bringing poetry and wine consumption. Or similarly, like the visionary architects from the early 20th century. Like Frank Lloyd Wright or Miss Van Der Rohe. How they were religiously studying science while designing space for humans. So you also see this new shift in technology where our industries start to care more about art. Really start to care, think consciously about art and science coming together. So now you see every startup has a copyright department where they really work on the language. Or you see, you know, companies, big companies hiring poets. And artificial intelligence is now driven by the collaboration between poets and, you know, engineers. Like it's really fascinating, right? Because now we know that personality is the real user experience. And every interaction is a conversation. Is a conversation between our products and our users. And, you know, for design it's exactly the same too. Like we should start calling ourselves as craftsmen. Because we craft experiences that evoke emotion. We design software that speak human and relatable to humans. And you know that joke like with the vegans. How do you know if somebody is vegan? Don't worry, they fucking tell you. I see us like that too. We are designers. But we are also proud to be designers. Because our job is really unique. We shape people's lives. And, you know, we've removed artificial from the craft. And, you know, this also requires sciencing the shit out of everything. And, you know, nobody wants to be this, right? Nobody wants to build average tools, average products and experiences. So I want to share a few tips of and pieces of my design journey that really helped me a lot to design good experiences. So let's start with the first chapter. Actually what our users want is just to trust us. You know, we've seen all these products that have the buzz for a month or two. And then they just disappear in the black hole of fast internet and digital commodity consumption. We don't want to be one of those products. We want to create this long-term relationship with our products. And it all starts with trust. And it's just like magical words, you know, right? It's not like assessing when we are thinking about if you should trust somebody. It's not like we are thinking about their mathematical ability. It's a completely different brain function. And, you know, from a cognitive science perspective, also it's one of the very complex emotions where, you know, lots of parts of the brain is very active, you know, from judgment to, you know, surprisingly, surprisingly a pleasure center. So when we are actually making trustworthy products, we are creating happy users that take lots of joy out of our products. So the bottom line is users want to feel confident in their choices. And us as designers, we want to build software that people can trust where we don't really let them down. So for Wunderlist, one of the major trusts really comes with the fact that we can safely store their information. Right? Your information will not get lost. And your lists, your content, your to-dos will always be available, sync immediately on every device. So to be able to do that, we've been constantly working on the sync technology. And sometimes we really had to go back to the drawing board and rebuild our own, like, infrastructure, our back-end system. But this was all really at the end to be able to create that experience that was reliable, that was trustworthy. And leaving this good feeling in the user that, you know, our product got their back. Oh, I forgot to click for the video. And I also want to share a few tips about Foursquare, too. And for the trust in Foursquare was coming from the content, was coming from the privacy aspect of things. And, you know, when it comes to tips, reviews, we have the system. Where people can leave tips about the place, about the food that they have, or the experience that they gain. But there was this problem that we saw with Foursquare. People were always raising their eyebrow. Like, okay, is this review, is this tip legit? Is it written by somebody in Bangladesh for 10 cents apiece? Or the owner is opening up all these fake accounts to praise his or her place? So constantly we were trying to create this trust around the content. And, you know, first we tried these little signals, little actions like saving and liking a tip. So as the users, you see, like, oh, this tip has been liked or saved by a lot of people. So this must be a good tip. And then, you know, we start to see, like, okay, we need something simpler. Because, you know, there was this very blurry line between saving and liking. It was not really very distinct from each other. So we thought about rating. You either like a place, you either dislike a place. And that's it. And then, you know, as we were moving forward, then we start to realize, like, this voting. In every community-driven platform, you see people upvote each other or downvote each other. And then we brought this signal. And it really worked fine. And then we start to see people, you know, really liking it, really trusting us at the end. And, you know, in this way, we were trying to gain this trust in our user-generated content by, as designers, creating the right signals for the users to weigh this, to make a better informed decision. And trust is even more tricky for Cortana, for example, Microsoft's artificial intelligence. Because she's so smart. She knows so much about you. She analyzes all the semantic data around your email, around your calendar. She knows where you are. She knows your agenda. But when she gains all this power, of course, like, the users were like, you know, is she going to use this for good intentions? And it's also the psychologically, you know, we are always watching these, like, sci-fi movies. And we think the end of the humanity is not from global warming or some asteroid coming in and destroying our world or some epidemic happening. We always think, like, robots will take over. These cool-looking gadgets will come and be all evil on us. So it was very, very important to create that trust in Cortana, too. So as designers and technologists, we were really trying to build trust. We were trying hard to forge that relationship based on trust. And to be able to get there, there were a lot of disciplines involved from a global staff of ethnographers to voice actors to even, like, playwrights. And, you know, our aim was trying to create that cultural sensitivity and this trustworthy, positive relationship. And, you know, she was really getting there. She was getting chitchatty with you. She was very conversational with you. She was making jokes. You can ask her who her daddy is, and she would say Bill Gates. And, you know, we should really treat every interaction as a conversation between the machine and the user. And we already know how to speak with one another, right? Like, language has been the first human interface. So why don't we really use this concept as language conversation really driving the experiences? So Cortana has become very dialogue-driven over time. And let's talk about this second chapter, which is delivering what you promise and really empowering your user. So promise is a very tricky word, just like trust. We really weigh our decisions, again, based on people really keeping their promises, really delivering what they promise. And, you know, it's, again, like a very emotional state. And sometimes you see there are consequences of good behavior and bad behavior. And this is how we maintain our social order from day one, right? And, interestingly, there is a study by this Dutch researcher, Manuela Viet. It shows that she talks about how betrayal of trust actually pushes our buttons to seek revenge. It sounds really, really, you know, really, really empowering. And she says that we really, like, we need to keep our promises. We really need to consider the user's state because the consequences are very serious. And we don't want, for us, betrayal would be bad store reviews or angry tweets or bad PR amongst friends and family. And at the end, users abandoning us. And we don't want that, right? So with Wunderlist, one of our biggest promises, obviously, productivity. Empowering the user to be productive, to really motivate them and to carry them to the state of getting things done. And, again, along the lines of cognitive science and productivity, a Hungarian psychologist, Mihály Csikszentmihalyi, recognizes and finds this concept of flow. How he defines this flow is basically a state of concentration and deep absorption. With the task in hand or with the situation. Which really leads to deep enjoyment and creativity and total involvement with life. And you can call this as, like, being in the groove or being in the zone. And as designers, I'll translate this as the model, as the flow for no bullshit product. We should really think about how to minimize. It's very basic. How to minimize apathy, anxiety, worry. And maximize that. And maximize the relaxation and this deep enjoyment and help people get things done while they are still having a good time. So for Wunderlist, we managed to do so by designing a very simple layout. And really getting out of the way, out of the user's way. Removing the distraction and integrating seamlessly into their lives. And, you know, there's intention behind every decision here. Layout is simple. You have one navigational menu on the side. You have this middle big view of task entry and your list view. And this third view of just like a streamlined view of your task details. So very focused and very simple. And this intention was even in the smallest details. Like the task entity. All right. Yes. I have trouble with videos today. But, yeah, this intention was even in the smallest details. Like how to create that tangible connection with the task and the user. Because we saw that when, you know, we see it in psychology too. People tend to create a lot of tasks and create like a long list of things. And then really become overwhelmed. So how can we create that task as more like an entity. That has more weight. And would make you more conscious about what you're really entering. So that emotional attachment come with designing the right form factor for this task. And similarly, at Foursquare, the real productivity and the flow was coming through speed. Because, you know, Foursquare is about finding places to go. Finding places to discover. And the reality is when people are looking for a quick bite during their lunch break. They do that in seconds. When they are looking for a place for Sunday brunch for their mother's day that they forget. They do it in minutes. So to be able to gain this speed and experience, we were constantly looking at the flow. We were constantly looking at the motor and the cognitive load that we are creating on users. Like how many swiping, how many tapping, how many typing is involved in all these actions. And in this example, as you can see, if we know that, people are constantly looking for coffee, coffee shops. So why do we force them to tap the search, trigger the keyboard, type coffee. Why don't we make it more accessible and easier to see and reach and make it a part of the navigation. And we know that all the freelance bees are coming out around noon looking for coffee shops that have Wi-Fi. So why don't we create this filtering mechanism. And really put it right on the front and center. And make it easy for the user to get into that flow of finding a place. And yes, a successful design is really a conversation with the content. The big promise is not only the good quality of content. The big promise for our users is also creating that emotional attachment, that deep connection with the user and the content. And you know, let's be real. People filter things out automatically. We are even evolved in a way that we have a limited vision. We can only see 140 degrees. We have a limited store capacity for our memory. You know, even look at the way we write down our numbers in chunks, right, so that we can remember. So when this is the hard, cold reality, harsh reality of our evolution, so we really need to be more mindful about creating the reality. Creating the right bridges between the user and the content so that the content becomes more meaningful. And oh boy, creating that meaningful connection is so hard in the digital era. A quick example would be like, think about your record collection. Any vinyl fans? Any record enthusiasts around here? Like you would feel the fact that every record that you own comes with a memory. You remember, you know, the time. The people that you were with or that store that you get it from. And then compare it to your Spotify. I have no idea how many songs, how many albums I have on Spotify. And this doesn't really mean Spotify is a bad product. It's really great. It's so functional. But what I'm trying to say is in this digital era, it's just hard to make that bridge. To really sit in the right place in the spectrum of functionality and emotion. So designing the content in this smart and emotional way was, again, very important for Wunderlist. And one of the things that you constantly see, again, in human psychology is this incredible fulfillment of creating things. Adding to do's. Creating tasks. But, you know, we are so busy organizing them. Then there is such little time really left for us to actually get those done. So to be able to really, again, give the right connection. Again, give the time and make that connection for the users with their to do's. We were relying on this little thing. The red ribbon. Which is coming from inspired by this bookmark. Which is this tool that we've been using for centuries. And it had really the perfect metaphor of keeping you in place. Making you remember where you leave things at. And with this little connection, people were able to prioritize things. People were using this in the right way. That they were emphasizing the to do's that they really needed to get done in a quick and fast way. So, you know, another way to look at deep connection is, like Ingrid is saying, is through emojis. You know, just let your user customize, personalize their content so that they would feel more attached to them. And even really little things matter. Like instead of seeing a standard list item. Or seeing a standard list icon for their trips or for their favorite TV shows. Let them put a little emoji. Because we all love emojis. Right? And going back to deeper connection. We were having the same challenge at Foursquare. Especially in Swarm as well. Because when you look at how people share locations, it's also a narrative. Every location share comes with who you are with. Where were you going? How were you feeling? What was the occasion? So, when we were looking at different ways to show this location, we really didn't want to have like a long list of check-ins where people can scroll through and see where their friends are. We created this new system, this new neighborhood grid system where people can see people who are close to them. So, we were putting close distance people together thinking that maybe it would encourage you to meet up and hang out with them. Just knowing that they are two minutes walking distance from you. So, this was a different way to look at the location to bring more emotion and to bring more encouragement for the user. And another way to empower your user is through the power of words and language. So, according to Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist, he talks about how we evolve as homo sapiens and create our own languages. Actually, not to only communicate and survive, but also create the signal of our triage. Of our tribal background, of our culture, of our ethical and moral values. So, when this is the case for human beings, when language really becomes our identity, why don't we think the same way for our products as well? So that our products can become more lively with a personality. And noting out more on linguistics, because this is really fascinating. In the early 20th century linguists, they were talking about how we read, write, affect the way we think. The way we live our lives. So, the languages that, for example, didn't have yellow and red as different words, they were people speaking that language, but also having a hard time distinguishing those colors in real life too. Or, according to the economist Keith Chen, he talks about languages like Chinese and Finnish that doesn't have a tense, actually affects people's lives as well. So, in the Russian-Chinese you see they don't have a future tense, unlike English. And they were looking at this research of how people were saving money. And when you don't have the future tense, there is no distance psychologically in the way you think about today and future, because they sound the same. So, they were looking at how people were saving more money in China and Finland compared to English-speaking countries. It's so drastic, right? Like the impact of language. So, when we see the language, the power of words, we should really fully take advantage of that in our design journey too. So, in Wunderlist, it's really cheesy to say this, but our mission is to make better versions of people, to really help them to become better humans. And every little detail really counts for this, like from how you name folders, from how you position lists, and how all the naming conventions really add up to this mission. And we saw that smart lists that are created with folder names like today or this week really force the user to think more consciously about their capabilities. So, if I see a to-do in my today list, if it's too long and overwhelming, then it really makes me think like, okay, this is outside of my capacity, and I will start thinking more consciously about my responsibilities. So, the existing of words or finding the right words really made a huge impact on the user experience. And again, similarly in Foursquare, when leaving a tip at a place, we really wanted to make people think, trigger the right buttons in their brain. So, you know, instead of just leaving a blank slate for, okay, tell us what you think, we really wanted to use the right sentence. And even using the word good here, the positive good semantics of this word, pushed people, encouraged people to think about, okay, what was that good food that I had at that place? Or was the service good? So, really making them think about the experience. And again, on Swarm, like I said, every location share is a narrative. We really want to make this experience social for everybody. So, when each location share is a conversation, we were trying different things to make it more accessible. We were trying different things to get a status from the user. So, when you're checking at a place, also tell us how you're feeling or who you are with. But finding the right wording, finding the right language for this was a little bit of a challenge, you know, because it's really limited when you ask, who are you with? Because not all the time you're at places with people. Or how are you feeling? But, you know, sometimes people don't want to share their feelings or their emotions. So, we finally nailed it down after a lot of A-B testing. That actually something simple like what are you up to was really enough for the user to just have that split second for us to tell, give us the right social message. All right. It's really great. We are making utilitarian, functional, and empowering products. But what's that special sauce? What's that little, like, sweet spot that really leads to lovable products? What's that remarkable, iconic product? That pure, genuine, real craft? Where does it really live? So, I'll be talking now about more authenticity and inspiring experiences. And, you know, there's another fact that we are all social beings driven by emotion. You see that from the first second a baby is born. Maybe the baby's vision is blurry, but baby still prefers the faces and can recognize the mother. Or prefer the sound of voices compared to non-speech voices. And, you know, we are all emotional beings. As humans, we like things to be simple. We want to laugh at things. We want to have fun, enjoy our time while we are achieving things. And also we want the systems, the products to do that little petting on our backs and really make us feel rewarded when we are accomplishing things. That really helps. That really brings us to this dilemma of productivity. So, when we are designing a product for productivity, we run into this a lot because, you know, people think productivity is not even a sexy word. It's really uncool. People always think about productivity tools like, oh, my God, okay, I have to do this task. Okay, I have to pay this bill. I have to do this thing for work or, you know, bad things will happen. And there's this association of punishment also. But this is actually very wrong. Productivity can be very emotional as well. It's really funny when our social media support team came to us with this little thank you email of a mother of a 7-year-old girl, how she was using Wunderlist to make a catalog of her dolls. I mean, that was really, really cute. And I think that's the emotion that we expect to have with the user. So, when we are thinking about this as a task management, we are also thinking about how people are using it for, you know, planning their honeymoon. They are giving all these personal details of their trips and putting all these, like, life goals. Another thing also, you know, we don't really want people to focus on the short-term goals. Like, okay, I have to buy milk for my child. Okay. Or, you know, I have this dinner party that I have to organize and buy things. Here is my list. But there is also the long-term goals like, hey, there is this, like, bucket list, the places that I want to go, the languages that I want to learn, the hobbies that I want to gain. So, actually, both the system content and the channels can be very emotional in productivity as well. And authenticity, inspiration is multisensorial. When we talk about emotional success, not, whoa, that's a little too high. But, all right. Are you guys ready? Another one is coming? No? All right. But it's really multisensorial. Are you guys back to reality? Are we good? We survived this, right? All right. But, yeah, where was I? All right. So, when you complete a task, Wunderlist shows you. And Wunderlist triggers this twinkling bell. Normally, it's better for the eye. But for this moment, it wasn't really that rewarding. It didn't really feel that cheerful. But there is also a very deep science behind this. So, actually, behind this thing, we have the C major 7 chord, which really stands for, when you look at the characteristics of this chord, it stands for purity, naivety, as well as happiness. And musicians compare this to children's cheerful talk. So, I don't want to nerd out more on the sound engineering side of this. But when we were really looking at the synesthesia aspect of this, too, like how audio triggers certain visuals in our brain, C major 7 was also triggering this nature, landscape, tranquil kind of images in our brain. So, we were really hitting the jackpot. While we are making you happy when you accomplish something, we were also subconsciously affecting you in a way that you feel relaxed. And you're like, yes, I got that shit done. And I feel really good and relaxed. So, you know, it's really fascinating, right, when you talk about senses. So, when I joined Wunderlist, one of the things that I kept hearing from my team was, you know, make it more Disney. Make it more like Pixar. And what they meant by that was really clear to me. Like when you look at Pixar, they make all these amazing movies with, you know, making millions of dollars and, you know, really, really creating these, like, fascinating worlds and wonders in front of our eyes. And while they are, again, shitting the science of everything. And one of the Pixar characters, Wally, we were always relating ourselves to. Because, you know, Wally is a garbage collector. Right? Doesn't sound very sexy. Right? But he still has so many emotions. And he doesn't even maybe have a traditional mouth or eyebrows or eyes. But he was still able to create that emotional bond with us. So, this is where we start putting more thought into motion and little big details at Wunderlist. And, you know, motion is, again, another, like, overused word with bad reputation. But when you look at the actual underlying meaning of anything. The underlying meaning of animation is giving breath, life, and soul. And in that sense, little elements were giving soul to Wunderlist and really making it feel more alive. And, you know, that, like, little twinkle, that little notification bell that shows you when you have something new coming in your inbox. Or, you know, bringing that, like, refinement, that polished feeling. And in Zen Buddhism, we have this concept that we call, you know, the Zen Buddhism. And we have this concept that we call beginner's mind. Which refers to having this attitude of pre -consumption and lack of pre-consumption. And having this, like, refreshing mind and eyes to things. And I also call this the baby's mind. You know, how they can be so fascinated by these, like, little things. And the possibilities are endless for them. So, when I think and read about this, I immediately think about, like, how can we create this beginner's mind in our users? So, in Foursquare, we used to have badges. And, you know, some people were feeling very nostalgic about badges. So, we created this little experience for them. Where they go down the memory lane of their badge trophy. And then there is this dust because badges are old now. But they still want to see them. So, there is this, like, cute interaction of swiping the dust. And voila, you have your badges again. So, this was just, like, one example. One single moment of bringing that. One moment of bringing that fun and bringing that nostalgia in the experience. And similar to this very familiar way of interacting with the real world. And bringing that natural interaction in the digital experience. Is how you collect coins when you check into places. There is this little, you know, piggy bank kind of metaphor. Like, you used to collect money when you were little. So, you know, it's again like partner.com. Partnered up with the right audio and with the right visual. It's creating this real life mechanic. Turning that into little emotional experiences. And there is this, also this quote from one of the Disney animators. How appeal is so hard and magical. But you know it when you get it. And similarly, I'm a sucker for food shows. And when it comes to, like, famous chefs. I just like my jaw really dry. And like try to listen every bits and pieces of wisdom that they have. And this is Ellen Pasta from La Parge Arpège from Paris. One of the top chefs in the world basically. And he talks about how he never really writes recipes. He never really follows the trends. And this, the lack of recipe really forces him to innovate himself. To really think different ways. So, it's the same thing for us too. Really pushing the boundaries. And not really sticking to trends. And now we are in the final chapter. Where I'm just going to spend a few quick minutes. To give you practical tips about having the right attitude. To really craft experiences that are lovable. So, first things off. Be a good listener. Like Buddha says, if your mouth is open, you're not really listening. You're not really learning. And please, please don't really think like mistakes are punishment. We always grow up with this notion of like when we make mistakes, people don't like us. Or we fuck up. We screw things up. But it's really important in this process to learn from our mistakes. Acknowledge them and keep going. And it's also very important that we should fall in love with the problem. Not the solution. We shouldn't really feel attached to one big, nice, perfect, perfectly pixelated solution that we create. We should keep iterating. And really finding the solution. And finding the truth out there through a very complex path sometimes. And I want to end this on a high note by a quick advice from one of my design heroes, Charles Eames. In an interview when he was asked about constraints, of course he talks about like, yes, design is guided by constraints. But when the question is, well, how about design obeying laws? But constraint is enough. And that's it, right? So, we should really dream big. We shouldn't obey laws. We should really sometimes go with the gut. Because like Morag Meyersock says, no guts, no glory. Thank you.