“Forty-eight” (AGDA Event) – transcript of a presentation by Alex Tyers for AGDA to the graphic design industry, Kaleide at RMIT, 360 Swanston Street Melbourne 28/05/07

Hands up who has ever watched someone actually using something they have designed?

Its interesting that we are in the business of designing things that are intended to be used by people, yet we don’t ever take the time to observe how well our designs can be used.

I not only watch people using my designs, but actually incorporate this as part of my design process. What I am talking about is design testing and what I am going to show you is that the only way that you would know that a design can be used effectively is to observe people using it.

You don’t need a lot of people to help you test the design. I usually find that after 6 interviews I have uncovered most of the faults. Faulty design is a bit like a flight of stairs with a creaky step. If 10 people walk up the stairs the same step will creak each time. If 100 people walk up the stairs then the same step will creak each time. By testing the design with more people you don’t necessarily find out anything more about what is wrong with it.

I test the design using one-on one interviews rather than focus groups. When was the last time you sat around in a room with 10 other people and collectively looked at your phone bill? It just doesn’t happen. Most design is used in a solitary fashion, so its pointless testing it in a group.

Now I am going to show you some jobs where the testing has totally changed my thinking, or led to design solutions that are far more successful than they would have been if no testing had taken place.

The first is a project for NRMA to redesign their insurance certificates. Their feeling was that it looked cluttered and could do with a design overhaul. When I tested this design I found that people didn’t know what to do with it.

So, I changed the design so that the first page provided a set of steps to follow – such as check your contract, make changes, pay your premium by the due date and so on.

After implementation many customers increased their insurance cover, realising they were underinsured. There was also a huge increase in the number of customers paying their premium on time because they realised they wouldn’t be covered if they paid late. Phone queries fell. And customers have been less inclined to change to other insurers because their insurance policy is more transparent and easy to use – a great example of how good design that considers the end user can build customer loyalty.

After this project I redeveloped NRMA’s Policy Booklets. A lot of document design is based on the traditional book layout – nice cover, followed by general contents, chapters, headings and bodycopy. This is great if your reading a novel but most documents aren’t used in this way. In testing people said that they would only ever use the policy booklet as a quick reference guide, either at the point of taking out insurance or making a claim. So I redesigned the booklet to make it task-orientated – which not only helps you to navigate and use the booklet, but also provides a visual sense of how your policy operates.

At the front is a list of the main tasks you would expect someone to perform using the booklet – such as finding out what the policy covers you for, how to take out a policy and how to make a claim. From here you go to a chapter heading for the task with a list of topics that are involved. And, from here you go straight to the topic you are after. Each topic is divided up into 3 columns – a description of the topic, what NRMA will do and under what conditions. These booklets have been extremely well received by NRMA’s customers, who, based on this design describe NRMA as being open, honest and up-front.

The next job is a label redesign project that I did for Nature’s Own. In testing I found that the key information on the front of the labels was obscured by graphic elements such as the starbursts, the fruit motif and busy little messages. Important product information and instructions on how to use this product were missed by customers because they were divided across two panels, while the use of red type on a yellow background made the instructions difficult to read. These instructions were also hard to read because they ‘disappeared’ around the circumference of the bottle. In response to these findings I made a number of significant changes.

I reduced the clutter on the front panel and moved the ‘front panel’ to the left hand side of the label. It makes no difference where the front panel is placed once it is wrapped around a bottle. This layout allowed the instructions and product information to flow uninterrupted as a list. I also rotated the instructional text sideways so that it did not disappear around the bottle’s circumference. Each line of text is essentially on a flat surface. This was a radical departure from what had been produced previously and is a more efficient use of the label space. Finally, I changed the order of the information in the instructions to reflect the order that testing showed a consumer would follow when making a choice, or when using the product.

The next example where testing had a major effect on the design outcome was my Telstra bill redesign. Telstra’s bill design had been around for over 12 years. The old bill had been designed when all we had was a landline. Telstra was having a few problems with their bill, in particular, customers weren’t paying on time. When I tested the old design one of the problems I found was that customers couldn’t find the late fee warning. In the new design I made this more prominent by placing it at the point where you need to see it, following on from the bill total and the due date. After this bill went live Telstra’s call centres were flooded with calls from people complaining about the late fee, even though it had been on the old bill for 7 years previously. This is a common by-product of a re-design that is transparent and can actually be used by people. The outcome for Telstra was an increase in the number of customers paying their bill on time. And, it won an AGDA Award for Design Effectiveness – I have never heard such a chorus of groans at an awards night.

In 2005 Pfizer commissioned me to redesign their Codral packs. One of the benefits of testing is that it shows you what needs to change and the best way to make the changes. A result of this is that in terms of structure and layout there is usually one optimum solution. So, rather than producing half a dozen designs and leaving it to the client, who is rarely an expert designer, to pick one, I only ever produce one design. By only presenting the best option you get the best results once a design is implemented. According to pharmacists these Codral labels are among the most easy to use on the market. Pfizer have even had customers call to commend them on these labels.

Obviously some jobs do not have the budget to include testing, however, I try to apply the best practise approaches and learnings developed through testing to all of my projects. An example of this is for my client Mezzanine, a wine wholesaler who I produce a yearly pricelist for. Initially Mezzanine was a one-man band in Melbourne, but within 5 years grew to a company with reps in every state except Tasmania. Their sales have effectively doubled each year since the introduction of this pricelist. The pricelists are redesigned with a different theme each year, but are also designed to be highly usable by people.

I’d like to finish by saying that in this industry we are not at the mercy of a bad or incomplete brief. We don’t have to continually reinvent ways to describe ourselves like “brand experts” or “information architects”. Through testing we can provide evidence-based reasons to our clients for what we do. Testing fills an enormous hole in the design brief by pinpointing what needs to be addressed by the new design. It also provides clues as to how people are using, and expect to use the design. It provides you with evidence that you can base your new design on, evidence that can also be used to help sell your solution to a client and that your client can in turn use to manage its stakeholders. It allows you to make direct comparisons between the new design and the old. And, it leads to design outcomes that you might never have thought of.

Recently I was travelling back to my office from Melbourne’s city centre via a train that circles the inner city—the city loop. Sitting alongside me were a couple of anxious middle-aged English tourists. They were debating whether or not they should get off at the next station—on their map the station was listed as Spencer Street—but the announcement was telling them that the approaching station was Southern Cross. I told them the name had recently changed and they happily hopped off the train and went on their way.

This got me thinking about the new name. Why has it changed from Spencer Street to Southern Cross? Which consultant or spin doctor had this amazing brain-wave? Certainly nobody from the design industry seems to have been consulted, or at least anyone from the design industry that knows anything about signage and way finding systems.

Looking around, its a nice looking station, with confident use of simple modern shapes and materials, unlike Federation Square which could have been so much better with just a little editing. The roof structure is a sight to behold – it seems like the architects have taken their inspiration from either Pamela Andersons‘s breasts or ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ by Eric Carle. Unfortunately the station signage is lost amongst the steel supports of this architectural marvel.

The advertising ‘guff’ claims that the Southern Cross Station will provide me with a truly 21st century travel experience. However, changing the station’s name to Southern Cross makes the experience of wayfinding anything but 21st century.

Travelers orientate themselves through a number of ways: memory or familiarity, landmarks, and street/place names being the most common. If I need to catch a train I will read a Met route map, and use a street or place name – including place names that relate to landmarks – to work out what train I need to catch, and when to get off that train.

The name Southern Cross does not help me. I know that if I get off at Flinders Street station I’ll be at Flinders Street in the city. If I get off at Flagstaff Station, I’ll be near Flagstaff Gardens. Parliament is adjacent to Parliament House and the recently renamed Melbourne Central station is smack bang underneath Melbourne Central. Southern Cross however, is only useful in telling me that, yes, I am somewhere in the southern hemisphere. And if you don’t know that, then you really shouldn’t be catching public transport on your own.

The name of a station aids wayfinding by providing travelers with a description of where they are. Spencer Street station was perfectly suited to this. If the name did need to change, then perhaps Docklands Station would have been more apt, given that Spencer Street straddles the new Docklands precinct.

This station is the city’s main terminus for country and interstate trains and buses. Approximately 55,000 people pass through the station on a normal working day, and around 15 million people a year. Such an important station should not have fallen prey to marketing spin. We were told it was all going to be finished in time for the Commonwealth Games. It wasn’t. Lucky for them they didn’t need to get off at this station for too many events.

Heard this quote? “Chip Kidd is the closest thing to a rock star in graphic design”. How about this quote? “Book design has been described as before Chip Kidd and after Chip Kidd.” What about this one? “The AGIdeas conference can be described as before Alex Tyers and after Alex Tyers.” Sound ridiculous? These are just the kind of grandiose statements about designers that make me dry retch. In an industry that is often lamented by its protagonists as being ‘invisible’ we are overly eager to clamour for visible design heroes. Fortunately, in the case of Chip Kidd, we actually have one.

I didn’t start out thinking that way though.

A couple of days earlier Andrew and I had planned the complete Sunday – Chip Kidd’s book signing at Metropolis, followed by a twilight football match at the MCG between Carlton and the Tigers. (Go Blues!)

I like reading, especially comics. I have a stack of publications on my shelves at home wrapped in Chip Kidd jackets. I wished I’d brought along my copy of ‘Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans – the best of McSweeney’s humour catalogue’, for Chip Kidd to sign. Instead I purchased a copy of Chip Kidd Book One and sidled up to the book signing table. After a brief introduction Chip proceeded to sign my book with the words: “I can’t think of anything to write. Sorry.”

I must say this was a bit of a let down. No clever witticisms or bon mots for me. He seemed either totally disinterested or brutally honest. I could only hope that Chip had a little more to say in his AGIdeas presentation.

Subsequently I arrived at AGIdeas with quite low expectations. Chip Kidd’s talk was late after being delayed by presentations from a guy who loves to stack rocks, a Sydney studio by the name of Zed preaching the virtues of ‘radicality’ (what the hell?) and by Graphic Thought Facilities’ tales of interesting gallery signage projects.

I found Chip Kidd’s presentation to be not only entertaining, but full of insight, considered opinion, and lessons for all of us. His talk was well-structured and planned. Chip had actually thought long and hard about what he could say to give us a sense of his perspective about our craft. More than just giving us a run-down on the work he has done, he revealed himself.

Chip Kidd lives pretty much at the centre of Chip Kidd land. Consequently, much of his work seems driven primarily by self references. From playing second fiddle to Batman as a child (his mother used to dress him in a very cute Robin costume she made herself) to snapping ‘Big Nozzo’ at the Portuguese fisherman village parade while staying with his partner in their weekender – its all there in his work. I couldn’t help but feel that these personal references must occur over and over, evolving and changing over time, in different contexts and in response to different briefs.

Even the words that Chip Kidd inscribed in my book started to make sense after he described a poster brief for Adobe that he received. It was largely the responsibility of Chip to develop his own brief, to come up with something that was suitable. Like many of us, he struggled with the blank canvas for some time, initially developing a poster that said ‘I couldn’t think of anything’. The client hated it. He then used the photograph of ‘Big Nozzo’ – a person dressed as a hideous green nose. Again, the client responded badly thinking that it was a big brain. Finally it took a frustrated conversation between Chip and the client to provide an inkling of a brief. The final solution utilised a commissioned illustration of an oyster by comic book artist and illustrator Charles Burns.

Chip likes to respond to briefs rather than making up his own. In his words, ‘that is why (he) is a designer not an artist’. I have often thought that one of the fundamental differences between artists and designers is that an artist defines their own brief while a designer interprets a brief that someone else has provided. It is great to hear someone tell you something that reaffirms your own thoughts, and makes you think harder about what you do yourself. Chip did just that throughout his presentation.

Chip reads every book that he designs – and not just the good ones. Again, this is part of the self referencing process for Chip. He reads the novels, lets them become part of him, and then uses his own interpretation and experiences to develop the design solution. How often do we as designers even consider the content that we are working with? How many design possibilities do we miss out on exploring because the text is treated as a design element rather than words with actual meaning?

I liked the way Chip Kidd brought a bit of classroom into his presentation. To demonstrate the importance of experimenting with different voices in design Chip gave a somewhat camp impression of the Wicked Witch from Wizard of Oz reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Sometimes it works, sometimes you need to use a voice that is appropriate. Chip also spoke a little about the use of scale of image – big works for him.

One theme in his work that mimics his self-referencing is the idea of a book jacket within a book jacket. Chip showed us a series of covers for crime writer James Elroy’s novels where he had employed this visual device – gunmen jumping from the covers of a novel, bad guys being punched right out of a page, crime vixens resplendent on an open book. Personally, I hated the look of these, but it did provide an insight into Chip’s thinking process and showed that sometimes if you try to be too clever the result can appear a little contrived.

Chip is a comic book tragic and gleefully showed us the work he has produced for two new comic book series – Superman, and Batman and Robin. He created mastheads for these by stretching type into perspective in Photoshop. On Superman the ‘Super’ was in the foreground, while on the Batman and Robin comic book cover ‘Robin’ was in the foreground – finally Robin was not playing second fiddle to Batman – at least typographically.

Crosswords are a passion for Chip. He uses them as a means to sharpen his word association skills. (I have been doing crosswords as often as possible since his talk to see if it will make any difference to me but no obvious difference so far…) Chip seemed to yearn to be back at home in New York doing crosswords after a month on the road in Australia – incidentally the longest he’d ever been away from home. He finished his presentation with the answer to a crossword clue that he had revealed earlier in his presentation – clue: ‘a number of people’, answer: ‘anaesthetist’. The audience was definitely not ‘numbed’ by Chip Kidd.

Every now and then you hear a speaker that actually makes some difference to the way you see things as a designer. Chip Kidd was one of these speakers.

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