This document summarizes a presentation on product design in the enterprise and data products. It discusses how information architects are well-suited to address emerging challenges in software, interaction design, and user experience when designing data products. It then covers various topics relating to designing data products, including using social signals from online interactions, designing impact metrics to provide insight into authored content, and addressing challenges like privacy and iterative design when data products meet reality in the enterprise. The role of information architects in designing experiences and deriving meaning from data is emphasized.

1. Product Design in the Enterprise
EuroIA 2013, September 28, 2013
Chris Rivard
@chrisrivard
When I think about enterprise product design and data products in particular, and the skills necessary to solve the emerging challenges we face in software, interaction
design, user experience. I can think of no better role within an organization than that of the information architect. This is our domain.
As cross-disciplinary practitioners it is our responsibility to both ensure that what we are designing is both contextually meaningful and that it reaches into the past
to remind us of our inherent humanity.

2. 1. Materials
2. Social Signals
3. Data Product Design

3. Product Design
Materials
1. survey of materials used to design and build artifacts
2. meaning that we imbue into these artifacts
3. artifacts help us to make sense of the world around us.
4. Data product design at Jive
5. Close with some insight into enterprise product design and our emerging role in the design of information, products and data.

4. Sillustani
1. Pre-Incan ritual and burial site in the Peruvian Altiplano (~600 years ago)
2. Ceremonial Area
1. Entrances Faces East
2. 3 Steps - Condor, Puma, Snake
3. Constructed of materials readily accessible.

5. Aymara Chullpas
1. Aymara Chullpas (elite family burial towers)
2. Entrances and openings face east to the rising sun
*this site was only made a national archeological preserve 2 years ago.

6. Materials
1. No wheel, massive human labor - testament to the social organization involved.
2. Material left unused, catalogued (and numbered by archeologists)

7. Don’t lie
Don’t steal
Don’t be lazy
1.Chakana or Incan Cross - Incan Moral Code
1. Condor, Puma, Snake
2. Knowledge, Love, Work
3. Cusco - the capital in the center

8. Carl Jung
“We constantly use symbolic terms to represent concepts
that we cannot define or fully comprehend.”

9. Assigning meaning
Making sense of the physical world
1. A creative process
2. Multi-layered and complex
3. In the case of the Inca and pre-Inca: Rooted in the physical world.

10. 100 years ago

11. Portland
1. Utility of the artifact - a steel ring hammered out by a blacksmith
2. How to keep a horse from wandering off in the city?

12. Social Utility
1. Moving away from a reflection of the natural world toward our interactions within society. Utility.
2. These artifacts are all around us, concrete objects.

13. Purposefully designed
Built by artisans from materials readily accessible
artisan > mass production > artisan
1. From artisan to mass-production (back to artisan?)
2. “You can have it in any color as long as it’s black” - Henry Ford

14. Product Design
New materials
Let’s transition. And fast forward to the present.

15. What do we value?
Where we focus our attention defines what we value
1. As information architects
2. As designers
3. As technologists
4. As a culture

16. 1. Where we focus our attention defines what we value
2. Hidden complexity in a physical product or technology (magic) (making cat5 cables, TCP/IP, wireless)
3. Assign meaning through personalization through a single physical characteristic: the color.
4. Bridge generation - saying goodbye to old metaphors // flat design // goodbye to skeuomorphism

17. Bricked
1. Irony of the language that we use.
2. Anachronistic
3. As a physical artifact, a slab of plastic and metal is not that interesting (you can’t build a house out of bricked mobile phones) / the utility of the physical artifact is
lacking.

18. The human brain inherently
tends to gravitate toward
ideas which sound complex.
This is the negative space.
Let’s pause for a moment here.
1.This is the negative space of software product design
2.This is where the designer earns their keep
3.This is probably the greatest source of friction among designers in enterprise software.
1. And germane to this audience... information architecture is a bit esoteric, we like complexity, our raw materials are linguistics, rhetoric, interactions.
4.Taleb in Antifragile calls this “via negativa”. Removing/taking away from - not adding.

19. Complexity
Jawbone Up
1.Complex technology hidden in a simple physical artifact - sensors.
2. From the utility of the artifact to the data the artifact creates

20. Blue or Red or ...
1. Fitbit Flex
2. Our new raw material - the resource we are building with - are data.
1. It is not a finite raw material - these are our contrails.

21. Sensemaking
Adding meaning to our experiences
1. Adding meaning to our artifacts ... to meaning to experiences.
2. Do we have to choose between the value of the data or the value of the experience? Do they complement one another? Do they enrich or inform an experience?

22. 1. Does the quantification of the experience add value?

23. Doggles!?
1. What does the measurement of our experiences add to them?

25. “The Milkshake Run”
1.There are variables, qualities of the experience that cannot be captured by data.

26. Instrumentation
Finite variables in a closed system.
In Quantified Self - Variables do not add up to the experience.
Person in physical space (exercise)
Monitoring physical objects (in the 3 dimensions).

27. 1. FACET - NASA, air traffic evaluation tool
2. Closed system, no room for error.
3. Generally finite variables (you could argue for weather discrepancies)

28. 1. What about instrumentation in a closed system?
2. Cloud computing architecture. Application monitoring.
3. Complex, many variables - yet inputs, software and hardware are controlled.

29. Complexity
Sensemaking
Meaning

30. Data Product Design
Designing with data (R&D, Sales, Product)
At Jive:
1. R&D focused initiatives - Collaboration.
2. Sales & marketing initiatives - Renewals Dashboard.
3. End-user product initiatives - Impact Metrics.

31. We provide a social business software platform that
we believe improves business results by enabling a
more productive and effective workforce through
enhanced communication and collaboration both inside
and outside the enterprise.
1. Mix of internal and external communities.
2. Large, global customers.

32. Truffle sniffing hog

33. Data Science & Design
Degree Centrality
Interaction Pairs
Collaboration Co-Clusters

34. 1. Degree centrality, e.g. how connected is the node (fig. A)
2. “Interaction Pairs” - Creation and response pairs.
3. Island method - breaking large networks into small networks

35. 1. Force directed layout - fun the first time.

37. Social Signals
Everything we do emits a signal
1. We’re not instrumenting hardware or software any longer
2. We’re instrumenting human interactions

38. How we speak
“Pronouns and other stealth function words serve as subtle
emotion detectors that most of us never consciously
appreciate.”
The Secret Life of Pronouns, James Pennebaker
1. When writing about positive experiences people tend to use “we”-words at particularly high rates. People who are happy are also more specific, relying on concrete
nouns and references to particular times and places.
2. When in great emotional or physical pain, they tend to use I-words at high rates.

39. Our body language
We cannot interact with signaling
A lot like style - you cannot not have it.

40. Do not disturb

41. Power poses
1. Amy Cuddy’s TED talk (http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are.html)
2. Drawing inward vs. opening up (cortisol or testosterone)

42. Honest Signals
Influence / Language Style Matching
Mimicry / Body Language
Consistency / Mental Focus & Variability
Activity / Excited or Subdued
- Sandy Pentland, MIT
Sandy Pentland -MIT
Autonomic nervous system

44. Social Signals
Through our online interactions
1. How do these signals manifest in an online community?
2. Not physical, not a f2f conversation (mirroring - Language Style Matching)

45. Impact Metrics
Better insight into authored content
1. Jive content types, social graph, communities both internal and external
2. Early on this was called “vanity metrics”.

46. How can we make using Jive
better than sending email?
1. Think of a read receipt.
2. Think of sending an email and having immediate feedback.
3. Can we make a case for that? This is the problem presented to the design team.

47. 1. Various collections of people organized into (Places: spaces, groups, projects)
2. Robust permissions: secret groups, private groups, members only groups
3. Activity streams where content is disseminated throughout the community
4. Multiple collaborators on a piece of content
5. Complexity in how the interpretation and understanding of this data

48. Platform Complexity
Multiple Content Types
Activity Streams
Group & Permissions

49. Calculated Metrics
1. Reach - how much of the community did your content reach **permission
2. Sentiment - how was your content received **total likes / viewers
3. Impact - social actions to views **shares, bookmarks, likes, comments

50. Private or Public?
1. This feature was added in the second cloud release after internal testing / feedback.

51. Actionable

52. Who?
1. Who read my content?
2. This decision was extremely controversial.
3. There are system admins who have all access. Should they appear in the list of viewers? Yes, they do.
4. My boss has never read any of my content. And he gave me a bad review.

53. Iteration
When data products meets reality

54. Impact Score / Viewers
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350
r2
r1
Viewers
ImpactScore
Trending
Downward
Smooth + Up
1. As a piece of content trends, the impact was going down. why?
2. It was going viral

55. Enterprise Cadence
Learn & Adapt
1. Talk a little about the design between the 2 releases (Nomad to Samurai to Titan - Great Divide Brewing)

56. 1. Redesigned for the Titan release.

57. 1. Realtime
2. Segmentation
3. Analytics API Cloud Service - allow direct access to the data
4. Instrument everything
5. Expanded content types (documents, discussions, blog posts)

60. Privacy (pre-prism)
1. (The illusion of privacy) in the workplace
2. Bundesdatenshutzgesetz (BDSG)
3. Safe Harbor Act - Directive 95/46/EC (personal data)
4. Cloud
Threatens the openness of the Internet - which is a problem.
Brazil response: walled gardens. Innovation will slow. More of a philosophy of openness.

61. Design Challenges
1. Entitlements / Calculation
2. Compute / Analytics API
3. Calculated Metrics / Meaning

62. Data to Action to Meaning
Insight and sensemaking
1. This is the next phase.
2. Remove the data from the forefront.
3. Correlation is not the primary interest.
1. Does the reason why really matter? Nate Silver is saying this...
4. Relate IQ (CRM using social data)
5. Klout (an idea without a business model?)
6. The Data Guild - former colleagues who are building an “IDEO for data science”.
1. Data is a raw material with which to build.
2. Determine the questions that you want to answer “how can groups make better decisions?”
1.e.g. What is the best way to decide how to construct a nuclear reactor so that it will withstand an earthquake + tsunami? Fukishima.

63. Observer Paradox
Observation of an event is influenced by the observer
e.g. “The Gentleman’s Like”
1. “The Gentleman’s Like”

64. Human Behavior & Identity
1. As information designers we live in information spaces, but I want you to think about the same concepts in physical spaces.
2. Sensemaking in complex environments, complex systems (Cynefin)
3. What I personally find so fascinating - is the ownership people feel to their data (reward + punishment)
4. How users tie their Identity to the data they generate.

65. Ongoing Conversation
Social signal + work persona?
Etiquette for ‘Liking’ in a business context?
Network intelligence (signal > response)
Deriving meaning from data

66. Data Scientist 2.0
“...they’re going to ... understand how to put the
human back in the loop of data.”
-DJ Patil, RelateIQ (Le Web - Dec 2012)

67. Information Architect 2.0
Drop the mic and walk away.
1. These are questions of behavior, experience, design, information. This is our domain.
2. This is cross-disciplinary - this is where we earn our keep.

68. Choices | Aesthetics
(doing nothing is a choice)
1. We’re (culture) running up a mountain at top speed. No idea what is on the other side. Google Glass / Oculus Rift VR
2. We have choices... dystopian panoptical surveillance state (note: 9/30...oops.) (Franzen) or a sustainable / complementary balance.. where technology and being human
are complementary.

69. Koyaanisqatsi
(out of balance)
Complementary
(balanced)
1. It is a fallacy to assume that we will escape our nature (our biology). The old metaphors will fade into history - it’s up to us to establish new ones.
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koyaanisqatsi

70. Design the world
you want to live in.
1. As information architects, data is our raw material. I think it is our responsibility to design the future we want to live it.

71. Thank you for your attention.
e/ christopher.rivard@jivesoftware.com
t/ @chrisrivard

72. Set in Raleway
The League of Moveable Type.
https://www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/

73. Attribution
Slide 8 - http://chakanahealing.com/about-chakana/the-chakana-a-universal-symbol/
Slide 12, 13 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_rings_in_Portland,_Oregon
Slide 17 - Apple Computer, Apple.com
Slide 20 - http://gearhungry.com/2012/11/jawbone-up-2012.html
Slide 21 - Fitbit.com
Slide 23 - Strava.com
Slide 24 - Matthew Mioduszewski
Slide 25 - Strava.com
Slide 26 - Marquam Nature Park - http://bit.ly/19a0z13
Slide 28 -FACET, http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/home/tech_life_facet.html
Slide 29 - newrelic.com
Slide 35 - Jive Software
Slide 36 - Jive Software
Slide 37 - Jive Software
Slide 41 - ?
Slide 42 - http://smallville.wikia.com/wiki/Diana_of_Themyscira
Slide 44 - http://pandawhale.com/post/24402/excited-kid-birthday-party-gif
Slide 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 57, 58, 59, 60 - Jive Software
Slide 65
Slide 70
All other images - Chris Rivard, Peru 2013

74. References / Resources
The Secret Life of Pronouns - James Pennebaker
Honest Signals - Alex Sandy Pentland
Social Network Analysis for Startups - Maksim Tsvetovat & Alexander Kouznetsov
Antifragile - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Shallows - Nicholas Carr
Amy Cuddy - http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are.html
The Machine in the Garden - Leo Marx
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
The Rhetoric and Poetics of Aristotle
Thanks to Chris Diehl (@chrisdiehl) and David Gutelius (gutelius) for helping to move the needle ;-)