Curating the User Experience

For a while, I’ve been thinking it might be useful to compare the act of curating an exhibit and that of designing a user interface. By useful I mean helping folks who are not in the industry understand the value of good user interface design. Opening to the front page of the Sunday Styles section of this weekend’s New York Times, I thought: well, someone has finally done it. Below the fold was an illustration of the word “curate.” The related article, “On the Tip of Creative Tongues,” concerned the expanding use of the word outside the realm of museums and art galleries. But the author, Alex Williams, did not compare user interface design and curation in the article, which focuses on the use of the word to “self-inflate” other acts of selecting and editing. Since the Times article has left that particular analogy unexplored, let’s take a closer look.

Early in the piece, Williams asserts that the use of the term curator in the wider context is “code for ‘I have a discerning eye and great taste.’” While the examples cited might lead you to that conclusion, the term connoisseur better matches that definition. That said, the activities described—hosting fashion shows and booking just the right bands and food vendors—do involve more than just using one’s refined sense of taste: a discrete collection is culled from a much larger set. Whether night club or museum, the aesthetes who are making those choices do seem to be curating…at least according to the traditional definition. But just as connoisseurs have begun to act as curators, museum and exhibit curation itself has evolved. Contemporary curators do more than define collections, they create narratives.

Not being a curator myself, I have no insight into the evolution of this discipline. As a former student of architecture, I’d like to think that Frank Lloyd Wright (and the Guggenheims, of course) had something to do with this shift in curation. The Guggenheim building has its share of galleries and niches, but its defining feature is the spiral walkway. The very architecture of the building compels visitors along a predefined path and makes the visitor map superfluous for understanding how to engage with the building and, therefore, the exhibits themselves. The architecture also provides the framework for the museum’s curators to organize their collections in a similar way, with a start and a finish.

You need not visit New York to experience exhibits in this way. Many museums of science and natural history tell stories to set the context for each display and diorama. Museums of culture and art may organize their collections along a timeline, the most fundamental narrative construct. Truly memorable museums and exhibitions invite the visitor to engage with a point of view and to learn and discover new things about the works and their creators in that context. As Virginia Postrel is quoted in the article:

“Because there are more things to put together,” she said, “the juxtapositions become a big part of the interesting experience of those things. It is a creative activity in itself.”

Postrel’s quote hints at an important factor which informs the curator’s work: constraints. For museum curators, the physical space of the building or gallery becomes a key limiting factor. Time is another. Exhibit visitors have only so much time (and attention span). A good curator will take a collection, design a theme or narrative arc for the flow, and then make the best of use of the available space to create a coherent and compelling experience for the visitor. With limited space, time and budget, curators forge experiences out of collected works. User experience designers do the same thing with information, and they wrestle with analogous constraints.

As with curators, user interface designers are not merely collectors or connoisseurs of relevant information and good design, they create experiences. Though the gathering of information (the collection) and acting as a connoisseur (refining that collection) are critical activities for the UI designer, those tasks alone are unlikely to result in a compelling digital experience. A compelling digital interface engages the user in a narrative. This assertion is true even for the more prosaic websites where a well designed user interface can imbue tasks with context and meaning. Whereas a museum curator invites a visitor on a journey through physical space, the user interface designer performs the same feat in the digital realm.

User experience designers grapple with the constraints of space, time, and budget as well. While the canvas of the browser has become more expansive as monitors and resolutions have increased in capacity, there is only some much information a typical user can process at one time. That said, the number of screens of information are limited only by the client’s budget and the user’s patience. Where the digital space may be more forgiving than the curator’s physical space, the attention span of the user is much less so. Once a visitor has entered a museum, they are likely to stay and capitalize on their investment of time and, often, money. Website visitors are much more transient, so the interface provided must be that much more compelling.

Regardless of these differences, the analogy between user experience designers and curators reveals a key similarity: the importance of narrative to the user/visitor experience. Without an underlying story, theme, or message, an exhibition becomes merely one connoisseur’s taste on display. That kind of exhibition may be interesting, but it is less likely to educate or enlighten (or even entertain) the viewer. Similarly, a series of screens (even well designed) that lacks a meaningful context may allow a user to complete a task, but it is unlikely to leave them with a sense of understanding or accomplishment.

Good designers and curators do more than decide what to keep and what to leave out when designing experiences, they create a meaningful context for the user. Maybe the linguist Williams cites in the article is correct. Maybe comparing user experience design to curation is an “innocent form of self-inflation.” Or maybe the work of user interface designers is more important that you think.