What I Learned From Jonathan Biss (and Beethoven) About Experience Design
Most people wouldn’t agree that user experience design is a form of art, because it is more problem solving than self expression. But there’s definitely a lot we can learn from different forms of art. Because above all, art is creation of experiences.
I’m always a big fan of Beethoven’s music. Although I’ve been playing violin for a long time since I’m a child and I’ve been listening to Classical music ever since, I never really know what it is that attracts me. I’m not formally trained in music theory, so even though I can play many classical pieces, I don’t really “understand” them. But I do enjoy them immensely.
Earlier this year, I came across Jonathan Biss’s Exploring Beethoven's Sonata course on Coursera. In one of the lectures about sonata form, he genuinely urged us to learn about the shape and structure of the music we are listening to and thus have a different understanding and less passive relationship to it.
I was instantly drawn to him because “have a less passive relationship with music” is exactly what I wanted to do. Also, as UX designer, I’m also obsessed with structure. When we look at an interface, we almost inevitably first notice the color, images, words on the interface. Except for those people who call themselves UX designers(or a million other names you could call them), we care equally deeply, or in my own case, care even more about the structure of the interaction. How to curate different visual elements and content to tell a compelling story, or take the user through a wild ride, or even just ask someone to deliver them a pineapple with absolutely no friction. It requires A LOT of thinking. When most people listen to a piece of music, they wouldn’t say, how skillful this composer to use a distant mediant key to convey a sense of dislocation. They will only say, this passage of music is to DIE FOR! Similarly, for a well designed digital experience, people will say, they made it so easy! No one will say, they optimized the interface by streamline the fruit ordering process and makes the ordering a one click action.
Now I’ve finished the part one and part two of the course, I have to say my understanding of music in general and Beethoven’s sonata in particular have greatly increased. A side benefit is that I realized there’s so much in common between experience design and music composition. Earlier this September, I watched a series of Jonathan’s Master class on youtube. Different from the Coursera course, the master classes focus more on the playing and performance part. I find it infinitely interesting to know the thought process behind a performer. There are definitely a lot I can learn from the creative process of music composition, there are also a lot we can learn as experience designer from music performers.
Why digital experience designer can learn from music composition and performance
Also, concepts unique in music such as rhythm (and its associated concepts tempo, meter and articulation are also important in experience design, such as how much information density in each interaction, or simply the speed of animation.
Jonathan is trained to be deliberate in what to say(play) and how to say(play) it. He once said in one of the lectures that he is serious about the notion of music as a speech. I also think what do you say and how you say it is also very important in human computer interaction, which is a unique form of communication.
How to create affective experience
Although I always tend to forget, his class always reminds me of how nuanced our emotions and feelings are. He talked about the psychological effect of Beethoven’s sonatas in much detail in this course. Being able to identify those feelings in the music and also become aware of how do composers and performers collectively achieve the effect is simply magical.
Specificity of character and critical events
In those master classes, he asked the students these two questions again and again, what are the specific characters moment by moment, and what are the events that matter the most?
In one of the master class, he stated the following:
“Any good music, are full of beauty and full of events, if one place equal importance on all of them, you don’t give the listener a sense of it’s overall shape, it’s overall shape comes from telling us, here are the moment where essential things happen, essentials things change, and those are the things you have to show us at all cost, other things are slightly less important, less structural, less the support beams of the piece, the piece is so incredible lyrical, so you don’t fall into the generalized lyricism, you make sure there’s emotional and sonic specificity all the time.”
This insight is so valuable for experience designers because we too, need to be have a clear understanding of the overall shape of the user journey and make sure user knows what the critical moments(be it the check out button or the sent a message to your crush button) are.
The role of descriptive language and music understanding
Jonathan’s master class on the late works of Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms are so emotionally charged and so enlightening. It almost completely changed how I listen to and understand any kind of music. It also helps me understand the music language and the emotional undercurrent of those pieces so much more. The way he uses words, sounds and body language to convey what the music is telling us is so expressive and so moving and the passion is utterly contagious.
I think part of the reason his playing is so convincing is because he can describe the sound and emotion in such a precise and affecting way. Without real understanding, he couldn’t have done so. And it became almost a requirement to understand the character of the music, the feeling one wants to convey, literally, to play well. That’s what is so marvelous about his master class and his Coursera class. Jonathan is so good at putting music into proper language. It helps us understand the structural purpose of harmony, nuance of the sound and silences so much better. For us non musicians, we are not trained to hear the structure of classical music and how does change of keys and harmonies help achieve that. He is the one who uses the torch light to illuminate those moments and make us really hear them. And that actually changes everything. I can now hear them and appreciate them much more after I’ve heard his interpretation. It’s almost like an epiphany.
I also wondered the role language played in music understanding and performance. If one can put a feeling into words, maybe he or she can make the feeling more pronounced for the performer or audience? It implies a notion of transparency. In the case of music, should composers write the description of the music in words to help the performers and the listeners? Will it adversely affect their expressive freedom and imagination? In the case of user experience design, if we make our intention or the system logic transparent to the user, will it actually help them or take the element of surprise away from the experience?
Now what I know is that there’s so much more I can learn from different forms of arts. Let me quote Jonathan again, after Ning Zhou played Schubert D960 first movement in one of his master classes, Jonathan walks to the stage and said: For that alone, it’s worth to be alive. Learning to design for human has given me great satisfaction and also keeps me awake at night(sometimes). And I know it will remain a struggle and I’m glad to know that artists have long been struggling with it. And it would also be a great pleasure to share the result of my struggle with people.
