… and how he can help to get more satisfaction from cable TV.

Oddly enough, one of the biggest challenge I face when meeting prospects is to explain concisely what I really do. Depending on their background, they see an interface specialist either as a graphic artist, or a programming guy. Actually I work closely with these people, yet my job is clearly distinct.

I would define an interface architect as the guy who articulates programming and design to achieve a superior goal known as experience. An interface is actually the only perception users will have of a product or a service. It IS the product.
Each interface tells a different story. A command line interface tells a much different story than a modern desktop interface, though eventually the machine is performing the exact same tasks.

In my personal experience I came to the conclusion that there is a missing link between programming and design, and that neither programmers nor designers are always qualified to handle this task of being accountable for the whole experience.

I once worked on a new concept of TV programming guide (i.e. IPG or EPG). The mandate was to find something new in term of pure ergonomics. After several hours of research, I came to the conclusion that there is just no way to navigate through hundreds of channels + 5 to 6 days of time ahead. Simply because people don’t to choose between thousands of possibilities, they want to FIND programs that match their needs.

So, in this case, building a better interface – thus improving the experience – implied to assess the issue from a different point of view. The following images try to illustrate this shift.

First we have a data point of view.
Because IPG/EPG are historically programmers’ creatures, the story was 1° we have a bunch of data and 2° we propose tools to extract, display and browse the data a human friendly way (see image below).

The first problem is, after a while, that there is too much data to browse. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack: a magnifier glass won’t help you at all. Second problem is that users have to use different apps to dig similar data: IPG, VOD subsystem, PVR subsystem, Search, etc. to find seemingly identical items: TV programs.
In conclusion, this data centered model goes from abstract (data) to concrete (watching TV) and users are treated as a peripheral phenomenon.

So now we can really improve the experience if we change the story. It all starts and revolves around user’s needs (see image below).

User’s needs are, in their diversity, at the center of the experience. The system provide filtering tools digging in the data to fulfill user’s needs. It’s nothing more than a search engine model, a la Google, enhanced with multiple layers of guidance – editorial guidance (like in a web portal), community guidance and sponsored guidance (commercials) – and a set of tools (favorites, smart searches, you name it).

With this new paradigm, it’s truly possible to develop a new and better interface for an IPG and, guess what, to address VOD, PVR and Search engine in this same interface, because now we have just one service providing the identical items: TV programs (users don’t care whether these programs are live, recorded, rented or webcasted).

The tangible results cannot be displayed publicly in this blog, but soon I hope in a TV set near you

The interface architect is here to keep the experience consitent throughout the development process. Like a building architect or a movie director, he is in charge of the big picture. As such he has an impact on functional requirements, business requirements, ergonomics and visual design. But furthermore, as we have seen, he has a dramatic impact on the story, the global experience, where users meet a machine or a service.