By Allen Brown | STC Member
Before his retirement, Richard Hodgkinson specialized in helping IBM ensure that its products were accessible to persons with disabilities. He is a Fellow of the United Kingdom’s Institute for Scientific and Technical Communicators (ISTC). In 2012, Richard received the International Electrotechnical Commission 1906 Award for “inspiring leadership and service as convenor of the Working Group 2 for the Joint Technical Committee of the International Organization for Standardization and International Electrotechnical Commission.” Put more simply, Richard’s working group was responsible for devising documentation standards for the engineering of software and systems.
Richard lives in the town of Chandler’s Ford on the central south coast of England, near Southampton and Winchester. I interviewed him in March 2017.
Hereditary Talent
As a boy, Richard Hodgkinson liked drawing. He came by his talent naturally, as his grandfather was a professional sign maker, or in Richard’s words, “a sign-writer,” sketching and painting signs by hand. His uncle, who died in 2001, was the Australian Frank Hodgkinson, an artist of some renown during and after World War II.
Richard’s affinity for drawing led him to Southampton College of Art. He earned a diploma after a three-year period of study, choosing graphic arts over fine arts because he thought his employment prospects would be better. After graduation, he went to work for a local design firm, Studio 63, to which IBM outsourced some of its work. After one year of working for Studio 63, he learned of an opening at IBM for a graphic draftsman. Thinking that this might be a good opportunity, he applied and was hired. He considered himself “very fortunate” to land a job with a company like IBM. Such an opportunity was not common at the time for art school graduates.
Early Years with IBM
As an art school graduate, Richard couldn’t have joined IBM at a more opportune time. In the late-1950s, Thomas Watson Jr. became the company’s CEO. Watson considered “good design to be good business.” As evidence of this focus on design, Richard explained that Watson recruited and hired Eliot Noyes, an architect and curator of industrial design at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Noyes was among several design luminaries who influenced the company over the years, including Charles and Ray Eames (the Eames chair); Paul Rand, who designed the company logo; and Edward Tufte, who published a seminal book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, in 1983. As my interview with Richard progressed, it became clear to me how IBM’s emphasis on good design served him well in his long career with the company.
In his early years with IBM, Richard’s design work included products for both internal and external communication. They included letterhead, newsletters, and product packaging, as well as posters and graphics for trade show exhibitions. In the 1960s and 1970s, one of IBM’s important products was the Selectric typewriter. It was known for its rotating type element known as a “golf ball” or “typeball.” Businesses that purchased the Selectric had to call upon engineers to remove it from its packaging and install it. To ease this burden, boost sales, and save money, IBM wanted to simplify the Selectric’s packaging and provide instructions so that secretaries could themselves install the machines without the aid of IBM customer engineering staff.
Richard was assigned to this project, which was initiated by the company’s customer set-up (CSU) program. He traveled to Amsterdam to develop and refine what became known as “wordless instructions” for installing the Selectric typewriter. Part of the challenge with solving the design problem included altering the packaging’s configuration of bolts that affixed the typewriters to the box. To remedy these challenges, he worked with a human factors engineer to develop and test various iterations of wordless instructions. To ensure that actual users would be able to follow the instructions, they recruited and paid secretaries to test them. The third round of instructions was successful. The wordless instructions not only eliminated the need for IBM personnel to install the machines, but they also avoided translation costs for the company, which operated a massive plant in Amsterdam that manufactured and shipped Selectric typewriters across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.
Richard said that he still had a copy of these instructions, which were designed to rest atop the Selectric typewriters in their boxes. He held up the instructions to his laptop’s camera so that I could see them. I was astonished to find that they were the size of a wall poster—and to see how much they resembled instructions so common today for installing any number of devices, including printers. When I asked him whether human factors labs and “wordless instructions” were common at the time, he replied that IBM was really “at the vanguard” with such innovation, exploring how customers responded to and interacted with products and systems. His “wordless instructions” were so innovative that he published an article about the process for developing them in a 1982 edition of the IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication.
After our conversation, I acquired a copy of the article and became particularly fascinated by graphic images of women following the steps to unpack and install the Selectric typewriter. The instructions were designed to remove the intimidation factor and to send a clear message to women: Not only can you use this typewriter, but you can also unpack and install it.
I asked Richard about the similarities between artists and engineers. He said that he considered both to be “creative types” interested in both the aesthetics and usability of design. But freedom with creativity for both artists and engineers can have its limits: he stressed that IBM maintained strict corporate design guidelines that, while aiding him in his design choices, were also constraining to him and others, particularly with colors and typefaces.
Designing Icons for IBM
Over time, Richard’s work at IBM evolved. As IBM began to develop computers for both business and personal use, he was assigned to design icons that became integral to the graphical user interfaces that enhanced the usability and functionality of personal computers. I asked him whether in those early years he recognized his role and contributions to the company as one of a technical communicator. He responded that such a notion really “wasn’t on my radar at the time.”
In his new role, IBM engineers would enlist his skills as a graphic designers to design icons for both hardware and software. To design the icons, he would schedule meetings with the software engineers, ask lots of questions, and try to understand the essence of the task that the icon would represent. Richard stressed that he sought to understand “the prime purpose of the icon.” Once he elicited this information from the engineer, he’d try to develop a “visual metaphor” for the icon that would resonate with the user.
As an example of a visual metaphor for an icon, he mentioned a mock-up of a piggy bank that a colleague of his conceptualized. The icon or image of a piggy bank was meant to convey the concept of “saving a file.” The piggy bank icon was abandoned, he explained, because users were not able to associate “saving money” with “saving a file” and because pigs in some cultures are considered unclean animals. Icons that serve as metaphors, therefore, must help users intuitively understand the tasks they can accomplish, and they must conform to the cultural norms in all of the countries where they are used.
I asked Richard about his working relationship with IBM software engineers. Did they ever display any level of condescension toward him as a graphic designer? Without hesitation, he responded that he had always enjoyed positive, mutually respectful relationships with engineers and that they had always valued his contributions. He said that once he established a reputation for designing icons that aided in the functionality and usability of the product, his credibility was never questioned. His icon designs were well received, and engineers appreciated his ability in making them stylistically consistent. I could easily discern that it was not only his talent and skill that earned him respect with his engineer colleagues, but that his wit and affable nature also helped him forge collaborative working relationships. Richard is a likable guy with a clever sense of humor.
He expressed that he had always been interested in symbol design. Hence, his work with icons was particularly gratifying to him in his IBM career. Technology in those early years, he was quick to point out, afforded him a limited color palette and a limited number of pixels. Over time, however, technology advanced and design options expanded. In developing icons for IBM’s computer interfaces, he said that he found the Symbol Sourcebook: An Authoritative Guide to International Graphic Symbols by Henry Dreyfuss to be enormously helpful.
In his work with symbols and icons, Richard began to develop an awareness of and sensitivity to cultural influences on graphical representations of information. IBM was then—as now—a global corporation. He therefore recognized the need to make conscious and intentional design choices tailored to the needs of users around the world. For example, colors and images that are perfectly acceptable in the western hemisphere may convey different meanings in other parts of the world. Such business considerations are imperative if your products are going to be successful and profitable. IBM was among the first international corporations to develop effective approaches to conducting business in the global marketplace and to incorporate design elements that appealed to various cultural norms.
In his work at IBM Hursley Park, he recalled collaborating with human factors engineers who tested and evaluated competitor products, including those by Xerox (its Star Workstation) and Apple, whose systems were the first to incorporate a graphical user interface (GUI). I later discovered that Hursley Park was originally an 18th century estate, the centerpiece of which was Hursley Mansion. During World War II, aircraft, including the Vickers Supermarine Spitfire, which fought off the German Luftwaffe, were designed at Hursley Park. IBM later acquired the mansion and the estate’s ample acreage to develop a major software development center that still operates today.
Over time, Richard’s work with icons expanded, and his role began to encompass animated tutorials for using software. The software included early versions of workplace productivity applications for creating business graphics, such as bar graphs and pie charts. He developed tutorials to teach users how they could use the technology to prepare and deliver formal presentations to executives and clients. When I asked Richard whether he would characterize his work as more technical communication or user experience, he replied that he considered it to be both. He felt that his work with icons not only helped users understand how to perform complex tasks, but that it enhanced the overall user experience. Icons that serve as shortcuts for complex keystroke combinations can make technology more inviting and less intimidating. Though innovative decades ago, we take such icons for granted today.
Richard said that during the 1980s and in the early-1990s, he devoted about 80 percent of his working hours to designing icons. I asked him about any challenges that he or IBM faced with claiming ownership of icons as proprietary intellectual property. He recalled a major lawsuit in the 1980s that never ultimately resolved any copyright claims. After the lawsuit, icons became fair game and anyone and everyone used them, regardless of the company that originated the design. The main benefit of this was to aid consistency for users across various software platforms.
Traditional Technical Communicator Role
In his later years at IBM, Richard’s work gravitated toward that of traditional technical communication. He began developing and writing standards that would come to define effective icon design and software documentation. In this role, his contributions were situated within IBM’s Information Development/User Technologies Departments. At the time, legislation aimed at affording persons with disabilities equal opportunity came to the fore, chiefly the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Mandates imposed by these regulations affected not only business and industry, but also public education, public transportation, and perhaps most importantly for Richard, government agencies.
In response to the legislation, he began to specialize in the accessibility of information communication technology (ICT) for persons with disabilities. Federal agencies in the United States were required to provide and procure ICT that could be used by persons with disabilities. US federal government agencies were major IBM customers—and as federal contractor, IBM was (and is) subject to regulations that are far more stringent than for non-federal contractors. IBM had to ensure that its products met or exceeded prescribed accessibility standards.
As he concluded his career with IBM, the European Union introduced Mandate 376, which stressed “design for all” in ICT. In the years following his retirement, he continued to work on standards, including those of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and other worldwide federations concerned with creating standards around the use of technology, such as the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI).
I asked him about the complexities of developing international standards, and he said that arriving at consensus typically takes at least three years, usually more. Sometimes when committees and work groups take too long to codify a standard, it can be cancelled and the committees disbanded. In years past, members of these international committees traveled and convened in an agreed-upon location where they discussed and debated the intricacies of these written standards. These committees now commonly collaborate using Web conferencing tools, eliminating some of the need for lengthy and expensive travel.
To initiate a standard, participating countries must vote on the need to develop it. When I asked him how binding such standards are, he explained that standards are those to which you “shall” adhere, whereas guidelines are those that you “should” follow. Richard’s contributions to ISO standards earned him the status of Fellow with the ISTC. From 1998 until 2013, he wrote a regular column in the ISTC journal, The Communicator, about developments in international standards for icons, symbols, software documentation, and IT accessibility.
Reflecting on a Long Career
As we concluded the interview, I asked Richard about the advances in technology he had observed and experienced during his 30-plus-year IBM career. He explained that these developments were so much a part of his life that they seemed like a natural evolution. He recalled lugging around laptops that were as heavy as bricks and transporting bulky, awkward portable printers. Although he is fascinated and delighted by the efficiencies and conveniences afforded by technology, he is concerned that human beings are spending far too much time with their smartphones, tablets, and laptops, but not enough with each other—and not enough enjoying all that nature offers. As a man with lots of grandchildren, he is particularly concerned about the effects such technology may have on those still in their formative years.
After our conversation, I pondered all of the technological developments that Richard had not only witnessed but had helped orchestrate. In his work with IBM over three decades, he observed the evolution from a manufacturing economy to one that employed “knowledge workers” like himself who were instrumental in ushering in the information age. He clearly enjoyed his career at IBM, admitting during our conversation that he often lost track of time during the work day, spending far more time at the office than either his wife or children appreciated.
Cheers to this former IBMer for a career of rewarding and enjoyable work with the global powerhouse known affectionately as Big Blue.
ALLEN BROWN is Managing Director of Operations for Bridges from School to Work at the Marriott Foundation for People with Disabilities in Bethesda, MD. He recently completed his MS in Technical Communication Management at the Mercer University School of Engineering.
