Appendix: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in UX
As we have already discussed, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZAMM) [Pirsig, 1974] may seem like a strange text to use for a Computer Science based UX text; but it isn’t. In reality, I am not interested in you remembering anything much within the general narrative of ZAMM. But ZAMM is not really about Zen or indeed motorcycle maintenance, it’s about science, quality, and rhetoric. Actually it is much more than this and so I want to talk now about why the concepts contained within it are useful to cover in this text, and how theses relate to your understanding and practice of UX within a professional setting.
The Collision of Two Opposing Ideologies
In the past we characterised practical human computer interaction in terms of usability and interaction engineering (in some cases accessibility was included but mainly as an afterthought). In this case, we decided if an interface was usable and the interaction design was good, based on tangible, measurable metrics such as task completion time. These kinds of metrics enabled us to understand the interactive experience in terms of time, theorising that the least time spent using the interface, the better; and this may have been, in some ways correct, as most computers were used in work situations.
As time passed our concept of the computer and the interface evolved such that computers were no more tied down to the desk but could be mobile or ubiquitous, and the interface was not solely confined to software but may also include aspects of hardware, moving computers from the workplace and into the consumer product domain. Our ways of measuring and valuing the goodness of these interfaces however remained the same, task completion time, errors and error rates, correction times, Fitts Law pointing predictions, etc. Indeed this was the scientific or classic view of technology. At this point intangibles were seen as being soft science, unmeasurable and too open to incorrect interpretation. Other aspects, which might also affect how interfaces were experienced, but which could not be directly measured, and which relied more on subjective views of the user was seen as being, at best inconsequential, and at worst just plain old bad-science.
This clash of ideologies runs large through the whole of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, its main theme being how to unify both the scientific and the romantic; the classic and the aesthetic; the tangible and the intangible; the measurable and the experiential. ZAMM tries to rhetorically unite these two opposing ideologies via a quality framework, indeed this rhetorical attempt eventually sends the author insane; happily this is not the case with practical HCI.
UX is our attempt to unite classic HCI with modern ideas of experience and perception in which accessibility, usability, and interaction engineering (tangible, scientific, measurable) are combined with aesthetic, emotional, fun, affective, collaborative, and gameplay (intangible, humane, difficult to measure).
By understanding the clash of worlds as discussed at length in ZAMM we can also understand the more successful combination of these two – seemingly opposing – ideologies into a unified and cohesive whole as practically applied in UX. By understanding the nuances as discussed in ZAMM, we can better understand what issue we will need to overcome in future UX design, build, and evaluation and also begin to value – and better understand – the subjective qualitative views of the interactive experiences of our users.
Perception of the User Experience
One of the other major themes of ZAMM is that of perception, and the differences which lie between people and their experience of the world. At its most trivial this can be seen in the realisation that all Chris has been able to see for hundreds of miles is the back of his father – until he stands up – and that this is in someway responsible for Chris’ boredom and behaviour. However, more deeply the perception of reality for the different protagonists and how that reality is experienced is discussed in detail. This runs from how Chris experiences driving a car when his father is unable to function properly, through to the imposition of normality expected of the author by the society in which he lives, and culminating in the annihilation of his personality. Through to the perception of the authors friends in Bozeman who do not understand that the person they knew does not now exist.
These complicated experiences and perceptions of experience should be taken as warnings to anyone working in user experience. Our perceptions are complicated and incredibly difficult to categorise; what may seem to be obvious to one person, maybe obscure to another. User experience, as opposed to classical HCI, takes these different subjective perceptions into account in its desire to create practical pleasing experiences for each user.
Perception is something not normally measured or quantified in classic HCI and so only in the modern additions of emotion, fun and dynamic interaction can these intangibles be acknowledged. ZAMM shows us that experience can be massively divergent, and that outliers are as important as the general cases (if not more so). By intertwining stories of two different personalities in the same person, and understanding the perceptions – explicitly discussing these perceptions – of experience from different protagonists, ZAMM becomes a valuable teaching tool for UX. It could be though of as one large ‘Agile Scenario’.
The Discussion and Framing of Science in the User Experience
In its comparison of subjective and objective paradigms – the classical and the romantic – ZAMM does an excellent job of conveying the nature of the scientific method and the work that stems from it. Indeed, in its discussion of empiricism, ZAMM also discusses objectivity and the belief systems that arise around both objectivity and subjectivity.
The discussion of science and its limitations is also pursued, in this case we can see that most of Pirsig’s students share a common understanding of quality, in that they can tell quality when they see it, but quality is difficult to measure in any empirical or objective way; or describe with any degree of clarity. It seems in some ways an emergent property, or an umbrella term under which other more easily measured objective indicators can play a part. However, the richness of the description of quality is difficult to place only in such objective terms. So we can see that science cannot be the only measure of user experience, because science is mostly about generalisation, and because we do not have a full model of the universe; we therefore do not know all the variables which may arises to influence the user experience of a single individual. By nature we must conclude, in some regard, that objective, empirical science cannot give us all the answers at this time (until our model is complete), only the answer to testable questions.
This discussion of science is directly related to our discussions of the application of user experience, how we understand modern user experience, and how older styles of human computer interaction serve as an excellent base, but cannot provide the richness which is associated with the intangible, and often unquantifiable subjective, and emotional aspects which we would expect any user experience to comprise of.
We must, however, be cautious. By suggesting that subjective measures may not be testable means that we may be able to convince ourselves and others that a system is acceptable, and even assists or aids the user experience; while in reality there is no evidence, be it theoretical or experimental, which supports this argument. It may be that we are using rhetoric and argumentation to support subjective measures as a way of sidestepping the scientific process which may very well disprove our hypotheses as opposed to support it.
The Conceptualisation of Theoretical and Empirical User Experience
Notice, in the last section we discussed one fundamental of science, the fact that we can disprove or support a hypothesis, in empirical work we cannot prove one. We cannot prove a hypothesis because in the real world we are not able to test every single condition that may be applied to the hypothesis. In this case we can only say that our hypothesis is strong because we have tried to destroy it and have failed. But now notice that in ZAMM this is not the case.
Pirsig, is trained in rhetoric, in theoretical not empirical work, and so his conception of science is different to ours. In theoretical science (the science Pirsig is familiar with) it is quite possible to prove or disprove the hypothesis. This is because the model of the world is known in full, all tests can be applied, all answers can be evaluated. This is especially the case with regard to mathematics or theoretical physics whereby the mathematical principles are the way the world is modelled, and this theoretical world works on known principles. However this is not the case in user experience, and it is not the case in empirical science whereby we are observing phenomena in the real world and testing our theories using experiments, which may be tightly controlled, but are often as naturalistic as possible. In this case it is not possible to prove a hypothesis, because our model of the world is not complete, because we do not know the extent of the world, or all possible variables, in complex combination, which are able to affect the outcome.
In real-world empirical work we only need one negative result to disprove our hypothesis, but we need to have tested all possibilities to prove our hypothesis correct; we just don’t know when everything has been tested.
Rhetoric, Argumentation, and the User Experience
So, how can we satisfy ourselves that subjective, or intangible factors are taken into account in the design process and afterwards. ZAMM provides us with an answer in the form of rhetoric and argumentation. While we may not be able to measure the subjective outcomes or directly generalise them we are able to rationalise these aspects with logical argumentation; and rhetoric – the art of using language effectively so as to persuade or influence others – can obviously play a key role in this. However, you will notice that the problem with rhetoric is that while you may be able to persuade or influence others, especially with the aid of logical argumentation, your results and premise may still be incorrect. Indeed, these failures are also discussed within ZAMM whereby the author discusses rhetorical debates within his Chicago Ph.D. program, but which seem to have little concrete outcome even though the rhetoric is built upon seemingly solid logical and rhetorical foundation. Pirsig, at first fails to ‘win’ his rhetorical encounter with his supervisor - but then successfully argues the same point and does ‘win’; notice that the point is the same, win or loose. If you haven’t thought of or don’t predict the [counter]arguments that will be made, and have your own convincing counter arguments you’ll loose - you may be right, but if you are, your arguments and counter arguments should be complete; that’s the point of rhetoric and rhetorical debate.
Remember though, that with the user experience it is not our job to win an argument just for the sake of argumentation or rhetoric itself. We are not there to prove our eloquence, but we are there to support our inductive and deductive reasoning, and our own expertise (Pirsig calls this ‘feel’ when he refers to it in the context of mechanical repair) when it comes to understanding the user experience within the subjective or intangible.
Further, Pirsig elucidates ‘feel’ by telling us that ‘The difference between a good mechanic and a bad one, like the difference between a good mathematician and a bad one, is precisely this ability to select the good facts from the bad ones on the basis of quality. He has to care! This is an ability about which formal traditional scientific method has nothing to say.’
Values, and the Intangible Nature of the User Experience
ZAMM’s subtitle is ‘An Inquiry into Values’ and it is useful to remember this in the context of understanding the user experience. In reality, many of the intangibilities which arise in UX work stem from these often hidden values. Values which are expressed throughout the book, from when Pirsig describes his experiences with motorcycle mechanics who may be competent but do not seem to place a value on their work or their ability to fix, in this case, tappets, to Chris Sutherlands view of ‘shims’.
More interestingly however, Pirsig discusses the values which are related to the world-views of the people he is with; the Sutherland’s. Indeed he uses the Sutherland’s to play the counterpart to his mechanical, logical, functional view; the Sutherland’s being romantic, aesthetic, and emotional. Again, denoted by the discussion surrounding John’s view of the ‘shim’ created from a can as opposed to that created for the specific purpose and so therefore more aesthetically appealing.
The point here that Pirsig, and myself for that matter, are trying to make is that people bring their own values based on previous experience and their emotional state of equilibrium to any experience. These aspects are intangible and can be difficult to spot especially with regard to understanding the user experience. However, we can also use these values and world-views (if we have some idea of them) to positively influence users emotional response to an interface or interaction. Remember, we have already discussed that the expectation or perception of an experience, be it good or bad, will influence to a large degree the perception of that actual experience once enacted.
The ZAMM Narrative Enhances the User Experience
Finally, let us consider ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ in more broader terms. I would imagine that if you have read the book you would have immediately found the principles and concepts now that they’ve been pointed out to you more digestible than those within the main teaching text. It is often very difficult to make textbooks as engaging as a good story, especially when it’s overarching ideas and viewpoints you’re trying to convey.
Placing these ideas into a more digestible form (such as my use of ZAMM, or Pirsig’s use of Chautauquas) is like slipping broccoli into a big Mac, or a vitamin supplement into Coco-hoops. We already know that stories and narrative are a key aspect of usability or ‘efficient experience’ because they enhanced learnability. This said, key aspects may be lost in the general narrative if they’re not signposted or pointed out. This appendix does just that.