Interaction10 – Paola Antonelli – Talk to Me

Paola Antonelli’s keynote was probably my most favorite of the keynotes at Interaction10. She was a bit livelier than most, a bit more animated and had a great sense of humor about about her. She also had some great sensibilities about how design and technology should work.

Oh, and she hates that damn tamagotchi.

Paola Antonelli’s Bio:

Paola Antonelli is senior curator of architecture and design at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, where she has worked since 1994. Before MoMA, she curated design and architecture exhibitions in many countries and worked as contributing editor for Domus magazine and design editor of Abitare. She has lectured on design and architecture worldwide and has published numerous articles in publications ranging from Seed and Nest to The Harvard Design Review. Antonelli is author of a number of books, including Workspheres (2001), Objects of Design from the Modern Museum of Art (2003), Humble Masterpieces (2005), and Design and the Elastic Mind (2008).

Talk To Me Keynote Description:

Whether openly and actively, or in subtle, subliminal ways, things talk to us, and designers write the initial script that will let us develop and improvise the dialogue.

My Notes on the Session:

• We are now at the point with technology that we’re no longer drunk with it and we can finally do something really humane, has humane interfaces and make it elegant.
• She is more comfortable with objects than she is with people–objects talk to her about their properties.
• Technologists make revolutions, but designers bring it to life
• Computers evolved from being tools to being pets in your home–they started to have personalities.
• Post-it note was a mistake in the 60s that became a success in the 80s
• Real-world interfaces in the real world have become friendlier and friendlier–beginning to be pithy, have a degree of humanization to them.
• Throwie: an LED light with a battery and a magnet that you can throw up high and stick to metal. People make graffiti and give boring objects personalities with them.
• Laser Tagging by the Graffiti Research Lab – Used lasers to write on the sides of buildings.
• Seeing is Understanding
• Ref: Tufte (ick)
• Eames – Brought about multimedia before it really existed – Mathematica
• Access to Networks & Systems
• Access to networks & systems allow us to collect very disparate and complex sets of data and turn it into something visual that we can understand better/easier.
• Networks and systems can make devices somewhat irrelevant–as long as you have the data <somewhere> the device can easily be replaced.
• Making & Mixing the Worlds
• AR, Simulations, alternate ways to live & build
• Designers are now aware of resources, sustainability, etc.
• Grand Theft Auto is a wonderful simulation of a world that already exists.
• Portable systems may go away; it’s not augmented, but a blurring of the reality
• The connection between the real world and digital world will become seamless and this will make your experience “bigger”
• The symbol of this all is: @
• It’s not about possessing things now, it’s about tagging them. Where’s Gene Smith?
• Paola_Antonelli@moma.org if there’s anything about this you want to talk to her about
• Designers not only need to learn Anthropology, but need to take some screenwriting, drama, acting classes!

Interaction10 – Timo Arnall – Designing for the Web in the World

A handful of years ago, I worked for a mobile phone manufacturer, and that made Timo Arnall’s presentation on Designing for the Web in the World particularly interesting to me. I was fortunate enough to get to spend some time working on and thinking about Location Based Services (LBS) and RFID projects and getting to learn a bit more about where things are heading really gave my brain a jumpstart.

Here’s hoping my notes may give you a bit of that, too.

Timo Arnall’s Bio:

Timo Arnall is a designer working with interactive products and media. Timo leads an international research project on mobile technology, collaborates on interaction design work and lectures in design, media and technology. Timo’s work spans design, media and technology; interested in the ways in which products are used in everyday life, the emergent uses of new technologies and the design of products and services in local contexts and situations. Timo’s history of design work has included projects on the web, location-based and mobile services, film and interactive television production, art direction, motion graphics, installations and exhibitions.

Designing for the Web in the World Description:

From NFC mobile phones to Nabaztag and Nike+, there is an entirely new class of consumer product that becomes almost useless when disconnected from the network. How can designers deal with the vast complexity of designing not only interactive physical products, but the connections and resulting interactions with the data that they produce? In the Touch project we have been working with designing interactive products and services that involve RFID, NFC and mobile devices. The project has developed useful models for designing across tangible and mobile interactions, networks and the web, that allow us to see where existing products succeed or fail, and to get to a grip on the design of new networked products.

My Notes from the Session:

• Shows copper-lined pockets so people can’t scan his RFID “stuff”
• Shows “RFID-Proof” wallet to protect your personal wares (froms canning)
• References “Shaping Things” by Bruce Sterling (@bruces); calls it out as a short, fascinating read, but if all our products are trackable & traceable, maybe it has an impact on lifecycle, recycle-ability, etc.
• NFC is “Near Field Communications”
• NFC – The integration of RFID into mobile phones
• You can embed tags in everyday objects and then take actions upon them – similar to stuff I worked on for <insert mobile phone manufacturer here>.
• We are keen to “reframe” technology to make it fun, not talking about the utility of it all, but more about the exploration, the game-y-ness of it.
• RFID/NFC with youth testing seems to have gone from passive to active usage in a very short amount of time. Learning curve was quick & easy and it was fun for children to have simple controls that delivered fun, consumable actions.
• Showed RFID stickers; previous discussed those types of re/actions at <insert mobile phone manufacturer here> and it’s great to see that we really were looking at the future about 5 years ago.
• The part of the problem with this genre of products is that they become worthless without a network.  This echoes my feelings/fears about working in the cloud (that is, if the cloud.
• 3 Levels of thinking about designing network objects
• 1. The tangible experience.
• It’s become important to create things that live in our everyday lives & attach to our everyday objects
• 2. Objects need to have a connection to the outside world
• They need to also have a reason for doing this! In many ways, this ends up also being very social–sharing data of your workouts, your sleep patterns, etc.
• 3. Visualizing and perfection
• Once you start to collect and create data about/around a device, you need to start to visualize it, show people what’s going on with it.
• Design decisions for products that are connected need to be taken very seriously and need to considered for the *very* long-term. If the network and/or engagement dies, the usefulness of the product dies.
• This seems like an enormous risk (to me) when creating new products.  Does it kill the entrepreneur?
• Nike+ used as a good example. Absolutely; and the advantage of Nike money coupled with Apple money and long-term, low-risk of either/both of them going away. The product *should* have a pretty long shelf-life & you should be able to use it for a very long time.

Interaction10 – Rob Nero – TRKBRD: From Idea to Conception with Physical Prototype

Rob Nero’s presentation at the Pharmacy during Interaction10 was so packed that Todd Zaki Warfel, Brad Nunnally and I all ended up sitting on the floor in the very front of the room.

We may have had the best darn seats in the house. This presentation blew our minds. TRKBRD is far from a perfect nor finished device, but it’s a clever prototype that was fun to learn about.

Hands-down, more of our conferences need more talks like this. We learned of failures and successes and hacks and end-runs, and there was energy just in watching the story. This was definitely one of the highlights of an outstanding conference.

TRKBRD: From Idea to Conception to Physical Prototype Description:

Physical prototyping allows you to see and touch your design. You don’t have to pretend to use your design in order to test it, you can touch your design and feel the interactions firsthand.

My final project, in my first year of grad school, started as a theoretical idea for a brand new way to interface with a portable computer. The interface had never been done before, so there wasn’t hardware available for me to realize my idea or even test it with people. The only way to realize my idea physically was to use the Arduino electronics prototyping platform and create the interface device myself. With a lot of research, testing, and talking with other Arduino users, I brought my idea to fruition, the TRKBRD (trackboard) was born!

Read more of the TRKBRD Description >

Rob Nero’s Bio:

Rob is currently working on his Master’s thesis at the Interaction Design Masters program at Malmö University, in Malmö, Sweden. Before deciding to move to Sweden, he designed enterprise web applications for large and Fortune 500 companies for 10 years. Rob’s design projects while attending the Masters program include a music remix web site that was used in a national campaign for refugees, a Bluetooth-enabled music distribution box for an inner-city hip-hop club, and multiple physical prototyping projects with the Arduino platform.

After graduation in 2010, Rob is seeking employment opportunities in the physical and tangible interface areas. He hopes to continue his work in rapid physical prototyping, electronics, and people interaction in every adventure and future employment.

My Notes on the Session:

• Rob is a student at Malmo, Sweden and the last bit of his work for his degree was “Anything”. Yep, anything he wanted, but he had to create something.
• He was at a coffee shop doing work; his laptop barely fit on the table, as usual, and couldn’t use his mouse–hates the trackpad.
• He found a spatial problem to solve with his laptop and the space to work in–and trackpads keep getting smaller, and they’re a pain in the ass to use.
• The only way to make a smaller netbook is to sacrifice the trackpad space.
• Had the idea and the tools, wanted to make this new thing.
• Thought of: TrackBoard (keyboard and trackpad?)
• Combining keyboard and trackpad so as to create more available space.
• Recognized “zones” on the keyboard based upon where your hands sit on a keyboard for typing.
• Checked out the Arduino board (Arduino Duemilanove) – www.arduino.cc
• Rec: Getting Started with Arduino by Massimo Banzi
• Sparkfun.com is a good electronics site to check out.
• Built it
• Put 3 sensors around the board – Left, Top, Bottom
• Put 2 lasers–bottom-left, bottom-right
• Used Infrared lasers to avoid issues with light in the area
• He was able to get the x & y coords through this simple set up.
• Problem with Infrared: you can’t see it!
• But, you can hack a webcam and you can then see infrared – you can remove the lens or you can add over some exposed photo film (seems almost like an antique to find!)
• The Arduino programming language is pretty simple, some basic background in coding may help you.
• The memory on the Arduino is really small
• Arduino forums really helped to optimize the code and queries to make it much smaller in memory size.
• The end solution was 110 light sensors. The laser in the corner was to create the plane of light.
• Problem: He showed a professor, professor posted to Arduino blog, MakeZine.com picked it up….
• Then Engadget picked it up! Rob nearly died.
• Big exposure: 11,000+ video views (10-50 a day), 90,000+ links
• Now a Russian wants to rebuild as the equivalent of what Smart Boards/Walls are in the US (at my kid’s school)
• Final Prototype
• 
• Tested & Iterated
• Did “Man on the Street” Guerrilla User Testing
• Gave lots of demos, too
• Had focused feedback from the demos that he gave; felt people gave him real loves & hates
• trkbrd.it is the website, @TRKBRD is the twitters.
• He’s only doing this for his Masters; it’s not anything beyond that (at this point).
• He does some “faking it” in Flash since he doesn’t know Windows or Macintosh coding.
• Can double tap to open
• Single tap [X] to close it
• Independent control of both interfaces
• Can select/highlight text
• Can type without moving the cursor – but on the entire trackboard, not a real keyboard
• Also: This was awesome.

Interaction10 – Kevin Cheng – Augmented Reality: Is it Real? Should We Care?

Kevin Cheng was one of the first folks I met at the IA Summit in 2008 in Miami, and I’ve been a fan of him ever since. Besides being a bright chap and an all around good egg, he’s recently become a Product Manager at The Twitters (and they’re hiring, folks!), but you may also know him from such online comics as OK/Cancel. He’s also getting married on 10/10/10, but you’ll have to ask him some questions around that, yourself.

Augmented Reality: Is it Real? Should We Care? Description:

This year, we’ve seen the mobile market make incredible strides in technology. The iPhone, Android and Palm platforms have increased their functionality well beyond just being a phone and have added critical functions such as faster internet connectivity, video cameras, GPS and compasses. Handheld gaming devices have also converged, adding cameras and accelerometers to their devices.

The combination of all of these pieces have made Augmented Reality—overlaying information and technology virtually over what you see—become a true possibility. Suddenly, science fiction has become much less fictional.

This presentation will:
- share my personal experiences and insights from developing a game for this new medium
- cover some of the challenges and considerations when designing for such an experience
- the viability of this medium
- how we could apply aspects of augmented reality to projects
- include other examples of such projects on the market ranging from entertainment to practical applications

Kevin Cheng’s Bio:

Kevin Cheng splits his crayon time between many endeavors. He is a product manager at Twitter, the co-founder and artist for OK/ Cancel, a webcomic on user experience, and the author of the upcoming book, See What I Mean: How to Communicate Ideas with Comics. Most recently, he is also co-produced an iPhone augmented reality ghost hunting game. Kevin blogs at kevnull.com and has been known to Twitter as @k.

My Notes on the Session:

• Kevin saw a video on AR and thought about how this would be a cool ghost-hunting game.
• ARGH (Augmented Reality Ghost Hunter) is the app he built.
• Tom Caudell coined the term AR when he was working at Boeing on a project. 18 years ago. That’s right–18.
• Wikipedia def: Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with (or augmented by) virtual computer-generated imagery – creating a mixed reality. The augmentation is conventionally in real-time and in semantic context with environmental elements, such as sports scores on TV during a match. With the help of advanced AR technology (e.g. adding computer vision and object recognition) the information about the surrounding real world of the user becomes interactive and digitally usable. Artificial information about the environment and the objects in it can be stored and retrieved as an information layer on top of the real world view. The term augmented reality is believed to have been coined in 1990 by Thomas Caudell, an employee of Boeing at the time[1].
• Our reality is already being augmented–look at the 1st Down line overlay in football games, HUDs in video games, etc.
• AR is possible via LBS, Audio, etc.
• AR is here to stay; it’s main stream now, but not meeting it’s potential just yet.
• Why is NOW the right time?
• Google trends show it skyrocketing in 2009.
• Mobile seems to be a key reason for it to take off–especially cameras/video cameras.
• Reasonable Internet Connectivity
• GPS
• Compass
• Accelerometer – less, but you can do some cool things like running/motion, etc.
• What’s it being used for now?
• It’s being used in Art.
• Toys – Lego has a cool app where you can hold up the box and see the 3D version of what your end result will be.
• Topps baseball cards has some “attempts”
• Zombie killer game by Skittles–skittles are bombs for killing zombies
• USPS postal service demo – see if your item fits in the box.
• There’s a “live tweeting” app–Kevin pointed his phone to the room to see who is tweeting and got heat points. Pretty cool.
• Problems:
• Lack of design patterns
• And none of the existing ones are good
• The usage of AR is pretty immature
• Need to get some standards created for AR
• What if you wrote a “BurglAR” app? If objects are tagged and shared in the cloud and I see that you just bought at Plasma TV, I could know which house to watch and steal from!
• Clearly, no one is thinking about the deviant side of AR Design!
• GPS is not that accurate again. It’s not going to show you in exacting measurements where “things” are.
• Image recognition
• Processing on mobile – it’s just not there yet.
• RFID proliferation – not everyone (or enough people have all of the features to make this work well)
• Technology is not there yet!
• Looking Ahead for AR
• Jupiter Research: “The market for mobile AR services is expected to reach $732 million by 2014″. Was less than $1 million.
• Annual # of Mobile DLs featuring AR content is expected to rise to less than 1 million in 2009 to MORE THAN 400 MILLION by 2014.
• Smartphones are becoming more common
• Someone’s actually working on AR Contact Lenses!
• BMW and AR for Training of mechanics/engineeers.
• Google Goggles is an app that could have legs, too.
• Kevin says, “What’s interesting is that we (UXers) appear to be not all that interested”
• I don’t think we’re not interested, I just think the good ideas aren’t getting to US!
• Our technology consumption isn’t as fast as Japan, for example.  When I (Russ) worked in mobile, the US was at 18 months for a phone lifecycle and EMEA was more like 6 months.

Interaction10 – Jon Kolko – My Heart is in the Design

Unfortunately, I was a little late to arrive to Jon Kolko’s keynote, but I really enjoyed his presentation and wished his talk would have been longer. Without further pause, here’s some descriptions and some notes.

My Heart is in the Design Description:

Interaction design has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with shaping our engagement with society and with each other. As designers, we build the artifacts and frameworks that support this engagement, keeping us entertained, aroused, engaged and productive. We are cultural architects, and possess capabilities to enable massive change in an increasingly fragmented and tense world. We are, however, held back by three fundamental problems: a lack of quality, a lack of competent leadership, and a misappropriation of our skills.

This talk will examine the critical role we play in shaping culture, and will then describe the fundamental challenges that face interaction design as a discipline: the pursuit of quality, the need for intellect, and the void of leadership.

Jon Kolko’s Bio:

Jon Kolko is an Associate Creative Director at frog design. He has extensive experience in the professional world of interaction design, working around complicated technological constraints in order to best solve the problems of Fortune 500 clients. His work has extended into the domains of consumer electronics, mobility, supply chain management, demand planning, and customer-relationship management, and he has worked with clients such as AT&T, HP, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Ford, IBM, Palm and other leaders of the Global 2000. The underlying theme of these problems and projects was the creation of a solution that was useful, usable, and desirable. He is the author of the text Thoughts on Interaction Design published by Morgan Kaufmann, and he sits on the Board of Directors for the IxDA.

My Notes on the Session:

• Design synthesis is the secret sauce for why design is powerful
• Design synthesis is an abductive sense-making process of manipulating and framing…
• If it is not ethical, it cannot be beautiful.
• “In today’s world, it’s apparent that good design is a privilege instead of being a right. In order to get good design into the hands of people who need it most of you ask many questions; how much does it costs should not be done.”
• Designing for real cultural change starts by understanding how people currently behave. -Mitch Murphy.
• Your work will change culture. Do work that is worth doing.

Interaction10 – Dave Gray – Knowledge Games

(Sorry, had some odd WordPress snafu–this is a repost of a post I somehow killed off inadvertantly)

Dave Gray’s session was–as always–fun, insightful and inspiring. He’s always a great speaker and a sure-fire bet to be one of your favorite sessions if you’re at a conference he’s presenting at. He did not let us down this time, and I hope my notes make sense.

Knowledge Games Description:

We’re moving from an industrial to a knowledge economy, where creativity and innovation will be the keys to value. New rules apply. Yet two hundred years of industrial habits are embedded in our workplaces, our schools and our systems of government. How must we change our work practices to thrive in the 21st Century? Dave Gray will share insights from his upcoming book on the work of creativity and innovation, due to be published in the first quarter of 2010.

Dave Gray’s Bio:

Dave Gray is the founder and chairman of XPLANE, an information design consultancy serving Fortune 100, NGO and government clients around the world. An artist, journalist and information designer, he is passionate about applied creativity.

My Notes on the Session:

Knowledge Games – Dave Gray

• The AK-47 has killed more people than any other weapon.
• Best designed weapon; can drop it in water, pick it up, still use it.
• A 12 year old can use it.
• Simple – Has 8 moving parts
• Rugged
• Reliable – many other guns would jam, etc. American soldiers would take the AK-47 from killed enemies
• Lightweight – can be used by a 12-year old, but also easily portable.
• Easy to manufacture; can make it in a machine shop
• Design is a Weapon that can be used for good or for bad. It’s a powerful tool for change.
• Design Philosophy: Don’t design for a perfect world, design for chaos. Because the world is filled with chaos.
• Design challenges have a starting point and an end point, but what do you do when the end point is vague and/or unknown?
• DG thinks of a process as more like a pachinko game; with all kinds of structure around it, but you don’t exactly what’s going to happen. There is unpredictability in the process.
• Some things are linear and some are non-linear. But they can be friends.
• Business process: a series of steps that are repeatable.
• Knowledge games: a mothod for inventing and discovering new processes.
• What is a game: A creation of a microworld that represents aspects of the real world.
• A game has boundaries and exists within time and space.
• A game has a goal
• A game has rules
• A game has artifacts
• A Game has players
• A game exists between a start point & end point. How do we define a goal when we don’t know the  goal?
• Fuzzy goals – you know you’re going somewhere, but will figure that out along the way. It can adjust & change as you move along.
• Conference Design: What if a conference was as good as all of the coffee breaks?
  • 10 Essential Rules:
  • 1. Opening & Closing – It’s all about rhythm. The rhythm of working with people. Game reference: Scrabble.
    • Two Rules
      • Never open & close at the same time; you can’t be creative & decisive at the same time
      • Always close what you open! It’s frustrating as hell if you don’t close things.
• 2. Fire-starting – getting people excited is a huge part of getting things done. Game reference: 20 questions
  • Get in touch with your ignorance; you need to get beyond knowing all of the answers & be happy to be wrong!
  • 5 Kinds of Questions
    • Opening – What has been keeping you up at night?
    • Examining – What is this? How does this work? Can you give me an example? What does the data indicate?
    • Experimenting – If we worked in a restaurant how would we solve this? What are we missing? What if all the barriers are removed?
    • Navigating – Is there some tension around this topic? How about a short break?
    • Closing – How would you prioritize these? What’s feasible for us to do in the next 2 weeks? Who will take responsibility for doing that?
• 3. Artifacts – usually portable, items that people have imbued with meaning even if we don’t know exactly what it is. Game example: Chess; you can’t play without knowing the rules of the pieces.
• 4. Node Generation – like sticky notes. Game example: Scattergories; generate as many notes as you can, get as much stuff on post-its, etc. around solving a problem.
• 5. Meaningful space – Think UPSIDE the box! What is the right kind of container for all of this stuff? Draw borders; think of Pros & Cons, axes, etc. to help define the space.
• 6. Sketching! Game reference: Pictionary!. There is no try! EVERYONE CAN SKETCH! Anyone who can write the alphabet and the numbers 1-10, can sketch!
• 7. Randomness – Shake things up! Game example: Dice
• 8. Improvisation – game Example: Charades!
• 9. Selection – This is where you make hard decisions. You have to kill some of your babies here. Game example: Jenga! Choose well.
• 10. Try something new. Every time you do something, try something new. If you do the same thing every time you’ll get bored & everyone will know it.  Game example: Operation! Keep it alive!
• Don’t be afraid to be wrong—you’ll find something no matter what!
• Paradox of discovery: You find things that you’re not looking for…
  • Basically, don’t over-think it!

Interaction10 – Livia Labate – Ceci n’est pas une KPI

I’m proud to call Livia Labate a good friend and a fellow board member for the IA Institute, so I’ll admit having bias here. That aside, she gave a great presentation and everyone learned a bit more about Key Performance Indicators, as well as the challenges and struggles that Livia went through in her journey to be able to share this information with us.

Ceci n’est pas une KPI Session Description:

“What are the Key Performance Indicators of a succesful user experience?” asked the business stakeholder, “It depends” answered the wise interaction designer…

Inquiries about measuring or managing anything seek to answer an underlying question: How do we know we are doing a good job?

(So, how DO you know you are doing a good job in the work that you do?)

While many UX practitioners like to answer this question with ‘when we achieve our goals’, we have struggled as a community to identify and articulate approaches and measures to assess how successful our solutions are.

More at the Interaction10 Website >

Livia Labate’s Bio:

Livia Labate is a user experience designer practicing in Philadelphia at Comcast Interactive Media. She also currenty on the IA Institute Board of Directors and co-chairing the 2010 and 2011 IA Summits. In other words, she loves the UX world and enjoys giving back to the community.

Here are my notes from Livia’s awesome session–I hope she’ll continue her exploration on the topic so we can learn more!

How do we value success in UX?
- Livia promises us she has more questions than answers

How do we KNOW we are doing a good job?
- Livia asked all the designers at Comcast “How do you make decisions?”
- The theme was that people were wanting to know how they were doing a good job throughout the interviews.

How do we MEASURE UX?
- She had to put the question aside; couldn’t get a definitive answer.
- Felt it was a lot like asking someone to measure love.
- Do I have to deal with all those NUMBERS?
- We’re really consumers of data, but we’re not analysts

NUMBERS
- When people hand numbers that were meaningful for them, they really didn’t want to investigate <the problem> further.
- Numbers by themselves don’t express meaning–context really help us understand the way to answer a question.
- Jared Spool made her read “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game.
- “Statistics do not have the power of language, it’s just numbers.”

METRICS
- “You can’t manage what you don’t measure” – W. Edwards Deming (or Peter Drucker)
- We need to focus on the outcome
- “You can’t improve what you don’t understand.”
- A metric is a unit of measure. It’s a quantitative measurement that describes events or trends.
- A KPI is a metric that helps you understand HOW you are doing against your objectives.
- Context really sets the frame for what KPIs make sense. A competitor will most likely have different KPIs.
- KPIlibrary.com is a good resource for finding–big surprise–KPIs
- KPIs will help us play the game, as soon as we know what they are?
- He who knows the KPIs can direct the conversation(s)

USER EXPERIENCE
- How can we measure the undefinable?
- Focus on the outcome
- The task completion rate
- The time a task requires
- The error rate
- Users’ subjective satisfaction
- Morville created the honeycomb to help clients move beyond just usability.
- Livia talks about “Linking Elephants”; references Adaptive Path’s 2005 report on Leveraging Business Value: How ROI Changes User Experience
- Livia tried to do this, but it was difficult/impossible for her in the projects she tried it with.
- It’s not a KPI in it’s own right, but it can be useful for framing a conversation.

Why KPIs?
- KPIs are concrete metrics
–quantifiable and measurable
-KPIs are relative measures
–to predefined objectives
-KPIs are understood in context
–circumstances in which they are measured
-KPIs are about behaviors
–and this is why we like them!

The Right Way to Wireframe – My Video Explanation

Preparation for “The Right Way to Wireframe” workshop at Interaction10 involved a healthy bunch of problem solving from myself, Todd Zaki Warfel, Will Evans and Fred Beecher. Our client, Lend4Health, has a great design challenge and Gabby Hon was kind enough to step in and provide us with business requirements and a creative brief that enabled us to get to work pointed in the right direction.

Brad Simpson was the creative genius that I worked with to come up with the stunning visual design you’ll see in the video.  The music was licensed for use online and is by Jami Sieber, titled, “Red Mood” from the album “Hidden Sky”. She’s awesome–buy her music! Mr. Dave Shelleny was kind enough to offer some light editing support and cool enough to recommend the track by Jami Sieber.

I used Balsamiq Mockups as my wireframing tool, and it was new to me. It was fun, too! I encourage you to give it a try for sketching and wireframes.

The video above shows my work. If you’ve got 3 minutes, take a look.  If you don’t, well, when I return from Savannah, I promise to do a version that’s about half as long.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank Nick Finck for the inspiration from his blog post “Creating Wireframes” from August 26, 2009.

For more information, see The Backstory.

I hope you enjoy the video.

Also #1: Go check out Will Evans’ version: The Right Way to Wireframe (YouTube)

Also #2: Go check out Todd Zaki Warfel’s version: The Right Way to Wireframe (YouTube)

The Right Way to Wireframe – The Backstory

In April 2009, I was reflecting on my conference experiences–I’d been pretty fortunate to present at both SXSW and the Information Architecture Summit (IA Summit) in a variety of different formats.  One of those formats was a panel, and I wasn’t ultimately all that satisfied with what had been put out to the audience.  That is, we had a message, but I wasn’t sure that a message was enough without providing a course of action.

In addition, Jesse James Garrett’s closing plenary had a couple of points in his closing plenary that I’d been noodling on for awhile, but hearing them vocalized really helped me.  Jesse said (paraphrased) that we all believe he’s a good Information Architect or User Experience Designer, but we’ve never seen his work. We may have read his book (Elements of User Experience), but is his work really out there, readily available for the rest of us to see? Do we really KNOW if he’s good at this stuff? Do we really know if we are, or for that matter, the people on the left or right of us?

I made a very conscious effort while writing my parts of “A Project Guide to UX Design” to reach out to others in the field and show examples of work, and provide examples for people to work with as starting points (and in some cases even more advanced points) in order to put more deliverables “out there”.

But what do the deliverables really mean?

What do wireframes really mean? How do I know if I’m doing it right, if my tool is right or if doing them at all is right when I’m just one guy in a Chicago suburb who works at a large company in a big city for a variety of clients doing work that I mostly can’t show?

I didn’t have the answer.

So, I did what felt to be right.  I called up Todd Zaki Warfel, Will Evans and Fred Beecher–people that I know and respect in the design field and know that their particular approach to solving problems via some sort of wireframing and/or prototyping methods are somewhat different than mine–and I talked them through all the things rattling in my head.

In less than a couple of hours, we took a seedling of an idea and turned it into a presentation–and thanks to Bill DeRouchey and Jennifer Bove at Interaction10–we also turned it into a workshop.

If you attend any of these sessions, we’ll walk you through a process for creating the right wireframes–and we’ll show you ours, including the process each of us went through to come up with the work that we did.

We created a project. We worked with Gabby Hon to create some great requirements and Lend4Health as a great client with a great need and then we isolated ourselves from each other and set out to solve the design challenges in front of us.  We went from ideas to requirements to sitemaps to sketches to wireframes to prototypes to creative design.

And we documented every step along the way.

Now, it’s time to show you my process and my work.

(see next blog post)

2009 – My Year in Review

(Alternate title: “2009: A Year in Russview”. And yes, feel free to insert your favorite groaning noise here.)

I don’t have a “Top 10″ list or any sort of “10 Best”-something list.

I didn’t count those things this year, I didn’t put so much focus on the rest of the world in that sort of fashion, and if I’m lucky, I won’t forget the important things that I got to be a part of this year.  I could, however, probably sift through a ton of photos and find the Top 10 of my family, if I tried–but even that would be a challenge.

So, instead, and at the risk of coming across egotistical (which is not my intention), I’m going to review all of the stuff that I did this year that had some sort of an impact on my life.

This one’s for me.

• In January, I started work as Director of Experience Planning for Draftfcb in Chicago. I started building a practice around user experience, information architecture, strategic design and planning and frankly, I busted my ass for the better parts of 2009. That’s not a complaint–I knew it going in, and in many ways, the crazy parts were every bit what I expected (and more) and the great parts where just the same–and more. The investment in the relationship has been a lot like that of a marriage; I love the work I get to do, I’m fortunate to be able to spend my time with so many other talented people. When it works, all of that is that much better. When it doesn’t, I look to the lessons, ask for advice and input and hope to not repeat the mistakes. I’ve got one of the best bosses I’ve ever had and he challenges my thinking, makes me want to get better at shifting my view and solving from a different angle. I was lucky to grow my own practice this year; sharing the madness helps bring some clarity, but it also helps me learn a lot more about myself. I’m pretty grateful, again, to get to work with some wickedly talented folks.
• In February, I attended Interaction09 in Vancouver, and kicked-off the inaugural “Bromantic Dinner” with Jared Spool, Todd Zaki Warfel, Will Evans and Mario Bourque. It was legendary and I was appreciative–if not in awe–of the great company and great friends that had been so helpful to me along the way while we were wrapping up the book. I also tried oysters, and really don’t think I need to do that again. I was also lucky enough to sign-up a few speakers for the IDEA Conference later in the year. I’m hopeful that some of the side/back discussions can get resolved in 2010; so many folks with the same interests at heart and on the same page, it seems like things should align…
• Throughout most of January and the first half of February, I was also scrambling to wrap up a little project I like to call “A Project Guide to UX Design” (or A Project Guide to UX Design: For user experience designers in the field or in the making). This probably would never have happened without the help of Steve Baty. Why? Because he’s in Australia and could read chapters while we slept and give us timely feedback when we woke up. Think about Australia when you write your book! Writing a book was… well, it would have been a lot easier without a baby/toddler who ended up having some pretty serious allergies to dairy products–and the doctors didn’t figure it out, we did, after an insane battery of tests that caused me to miss a few events. Beyond that, it was an awesome experience, even after chopping out pages upon pages of copy, because…
• In March, I attended–and spoke at–my very first SXSW with Sir David of Armano in what was called a “Core Conversation” on the topic of “Friendship is Dead”. Look, David was the star of that show; I just started the idea (which was initially slated for myself, David Armano, Bill DeRouchey and Matthew Milan) and his name brought us the room full of people to listen to what we had to say. I don’t have any real misinterpretation about my own draw, but I certainly saw a few familiar faces in the chairs and I’ve spent more than a little bit of time exploring our online relationships. I’d say I held my own, at least until we got to…
• Cogaoke was crazy at SXSW. It was a karaoke contest and with a little (a lot, really) of frantic entering in of CAPTCHA to vote for yours truly, I got to take the very large stage in the very packed venue and sing some Hootie & the Blowfish. Wow, was I ever mediocre, but wow, was it ever fun!
• A Project Guide to UX Design also launched while I was at SXSW. I’ve got a lot of mixed feelings about how I feel we were handled as authors, especially as authors of what appears to be a fairly successful book. You might not know this, but authors do the lion’s share of the marketing–at least from my perspective. Publishers have the talent to recognize ideas and/or talent that’ll sell enough books to make a profit and they have the reach through distribution channels to help that along. For the most part, it was a lonely endeavor once we sent off the last pages and after we received our copies. Sure, there was a little hoopla and some marketing push here and there, but when you don’t know what to expect and you’ve been working closely with an editorial team for months and suddenly there’s nothing… Well, it’s a mix of emotions.
• Also in February–and I can talk about this finally–Todd Zaki Warfel and I put together a book proposal and submitted it to a couple of publishers. One publisher was very excited and spent a fair amount of time at SXSW talking to me about it, sent along a few emails about their excitement since they hadn’t published the previous book (they were interested, but the timing came in as the deal was being finalized with Peachpit) and then disappeared in a cloud of “other stuff happening”. That’s okay; it’s how it works, and I’m not bitter about it–it is what it is. Mostly, however, this proposal didn’t get any real traction until much later in the year. After SXSW was (hung)over, next up was…
• The IA Summit in beautiful Memphis, Tennessee. I was nearly a zombie after the run at SXSW the previous week, and I recall spending the afternoon in my room at The Peabody on a client call, but feeling elated that I was in one of my favorite cities in the country. The next day, my wife arrived and she got to meet everyone, hang out away from the kids and I got to be on the “Evolve or Die” panel with Gene Smith, Josh Porter & Christina Wodtke as well as give a solo presentation called “Heuristic Evaluation for the Pitch Process”. March was a blurrrrrrrr of epic proportions thanks to all of the traveling back and forth and presentationing.
• Right after the IA Summit, I got together with Todd Zaki Warfel, Fred Beecher and Will Evans to hash-out an idea that we’re going to be discussing in 2010 titled, “The Right Way to Wireframe”. I think it’s important that we put our money where our mouths are and decided to ask these fellas to step up and show our process and samples of our work and share it with the world. Fortunately, they bought off on the idea and we had a pretty nice proposal put together for a couple of conferences that has been very well received–far better than our expectations (except for CHI, which, well, whatever).
• April found Carolyn and I presenting at the Voices That Matter Conference in San Francisco. It was great to share the same space with so many other bright minds and great speakers–and frankly, intimidating to some degree, but getting to spend time hanging out with Steve Portigal, Christina Wodtke, Robert Hoekman, Jr. and a lot of the really great people at Peachpit / New Riders. Gotta be honest here: we didn’t do so hot. I like to blame it on presenting on the last day AND after Jared Spool and a flat room, but I don’t think we–or at least I–projected the energy we needed in the room. The reviews were far from great, and I took a few things away from the experience. But it was also odd, because just a few days later…
• Carolyn and I presented at the Chicago Interactive Meetup on the exact same topic and we really held the room and got really high overall remarks. Each audience is different, the energy of the speakers is different, home turf advantage, etc. Who knows? But we did a lot better and restored a bit of confidence that I was needing at this point in time.
• May came along and I had to miss the Web Strategy Summit put on by the brilliant minds at nForm. Everyone at nForm is top-notch and world-class (if not thought leaders, right? No, really…) and they completely understood when I had to back-out so we could get Avery in for some more tests to try and figure out why she wasn’t sleeping right, was fussy, stuffy, and an all around mess. I hated missing this conference and it was one of the biggest letdowns of 2009 for me. I’m hopeful that now that Miss Avery seems to be sleeping and on the right track, I’ll have another opportunity this year.
• Chicago’s UX Book Club also happened in May, featuring “A Project Guide to UX Design”. It was nice to meet somewhere that I could walk to from work, and also informally interview Abby Covert, who would be an addition to my “team” at Draftfcb. The whole event was great, and Chicago’s lucky to have Gabby Hon putting things together for us! My pal Steve Baty had started this UX Book Club thing at the tail end of 2008, and it’s done wonders for authors–I’ve attended a variety of meetings from Toronto to Minneapolis to Edmonton via Skype, and it was pretty great to be a part of. 2009 is starting off with more of these events, and it’s always a blast to get to engage with people who have an interest in the book!
• Somewhere along the way, Carolyn and I did a podcast interview with Peachpit which was a lot of fun for us, and helped get us some exposure for the book. The book also started getting positive reviews on Amazon and started making its way on a bunch of lists of books UX / IA / Designer-y types should own. It was fairly euphoric, when I wasn’t busy waiting for a horrible review to arrive and crush my already-fragile insecurities.
• June and July were just busy. Busy beyond belief. At work and on the planning front for the IDEA Conference. The IDEA team was busy wrapping up logistics, lining up speakers, planning a program, launching a website, getting registrations, making mistakes, recovering and generally propping each other up and making me realize what a great team I’d put together.
• At the end of July, I was able to bring my first employee on board. Just in time to take a much-needed vacation. Whew.
• At the end of July, I also flew out to Philadelphia during my vacation and went to the Philadelphia UX Book Club put on by Roz Duffy (@stellargirl) and hosted at the awesome offices of Happy Cog. Afterward, we had some local drinks with a bunch of folks (and I got to meet the Cavaluccis!) and then had dinner at El Vez with Kevin Hoffman, Angela Coulter, Mick & Jen Carvin, Roz…and maybe another person snuck in there that I forget? (sorry) If you’re ever in Philly, go there, and get the surf & turf tacos! Then, my pal Livia Labate picked me up and I stayed at her place and finally got to me the awesome Amelia Pousson. I got to visit the really cool Comcast Center the next day when I trailed Livia to work – that place is awesome. Finally, on the way out of town, Liv and I got to eat some true Philly Cheese Steaks (and I bagged a handful to bring home with me).
• August brought us the Agile Conference in Chicago, where Todd Zaki Warfel, Joe Sokohl, Jonathan “Yoni” Knoll and I did some pretty fun and well-received workshops on User Experience. In 3 days, we delivered our asses off. It was unreal what we pulled-off and that we were able to raise so much money for a non-profit in such a short period of time (basically, just during the closing keynote dinner). To summarize: We Ship.
• August also brought ad:tech to Chicago. It was interesting to see where ad agencies sit from the UX perspective, but also from Social Media and Mobile. Personally, I submitted 5 proposals to ad:tech in Chicago and I think a couple/few to New York, but I never heard back–not so much as a “sorry, but you were not selected” email. Instead, I emailed them and received a “we’re too busy to email everyone, but if you don’t hear from us in X days, you weren’t selected” email. Hey, it is what it is, and these are my thoughts and I’m not disparaging them nor the event, but now I have expectations moving forward, at least.
• And then something crazy happened. I went to Zappos to talk to their UX team. Brian Kalma invited me out and I got to spend about 90 minutes talking and listening to them and then I got a tour of the facilities. Visit the place yourself and take the tour and I promise you that you’ll be sold. It’s a pretty awesome place and it’s nearly impossible to NOT think about what it would be like to work with/for them, no matter how happy you are.
• Mid-September brought about the IDEA Conference. From everything I can tell, the numbers hovered around 250 attendees, the same as in 2008, but we added significantly more sponsors and managed to keep our registration the same while cutting out a few expenses. I’m a harsh critic of myself and I was fairly depressed after the event, even in light of the mostly positive feedback that we received. The conference, however, was pretty good. I think most people enjoyed it, enjoyed Toronto and left feeling pretty inspired. Matthew Milan saved my ass and stepped in as a last-minute speaker replacement and then rocked the damn house with his “Innovation Parkour” talk. Guys like Matthew make you realize how lucky you are to have great friends. But, the event wasn’t perfect, and the mistakes that were made were mine to own. There was stress and strain (and a pinched nerve to combat with that kept making my arm go numb throughout most of the summer and fall–thanks, body, for getting old on me) and I didn’t perform as well as I should have to a few folks, in particular Jeff Parks, and I’m sorry that happened and I own the mistake. At the same time, people like Yoni, Abby Covert, Brad Simpson, Mario Bourque, Denise Phillipsen, Andrew Hinton, Will Evans, Melissa Weaver and a host of others really stepped-up and helped prop me up to keep things moving along with only a few hitches. Overall, IDEA09 was a pretty big success and appears to have been the best by the numbers.
• Right after IDEA, Yoni and I worked up a few samples for how to tackle the Repeat Email Address issue. It was wild to work on something like this together–sketching ideas in IM and code and throwing them live for people from mailing lists, twitter, etc. to comment on and give us inspiration to do more. It’s great to now be able to implement some of these myself and to see them from others starting to filter out in the world. We’d love to tackle more issues like this–if you’ve got one, bring it! It’s much better than pontificating about it message after message on a mailing list, after all!
• Somewhere along the way, October snuck up on us and I became president of the Information Architecture Institute. I also started speaking to many of the founders and previous board members and I’ve learned more than I could have ever hoped about our history. The board has a great set of directors, but always a shortage of time and bandwidth.  It’s interesting to me that a lot of people don’t realize that the board of directors is entirely volunteer–anything we’re able to do for the IA Institute is on our own time, after our work and personal time (or in some cases, in place of). I used to think that the board was rather cliquey when I wasn’t on it, and now I realize that we, as board members, are so infrequently able to be together in-person, that we do our best to capitalize it and catch-up talk to and see as many people as possible. What I can assure you is that we’re all approachable and we all look forward to hearing from you. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to any of the board members, and please don’t hesitate to volunteer. Please.
• I was also fortunate enough to get to work with Leah Buley and Todd Zaki Warfel to curate the Research track of content for the 2010 IA Summit. I can safely say that we’ve got some great speakers lined up and what looks to be a great program overall.
• Out of the blue, I got a note from SXSW asking me to curate a workshop for them on Information Architecture. Yoni, of course, tells me that since I’m president of the IAI and have written a book, I could pretty much be a monkey and they’d choose me for such a task. Monkey or not, it was still pretty damn flattering. I chose 3 1-hour sessions that will be on taking place on Saturday, March 13th, 2009, and I’m pretty excited about that, too!
• November and December brought about the announcements of a few conferences for 2010, so I’ll be happily speaking at some of the primary User Experience conferences in the first quarter of next year. More on that later (different blog post).
• Unfortunately, I had to decline speaking at UPA (Usability Professionals Association) in Munich in May of 2010. It really stung to turn down the opportunity, but it’s difficult to, as a speaker / presenter, also pay for the conference on top of the airfare and hotel, which is all on top of the time that is invested for preparation. Side bar: I think that a lot of folks think that presenters (or at least, me, in this selfish case) have an easy task. For me, I generally put in around 1 hour per slide and I try to do about 1 slide per minute, depending upon the talk, etc. This is generally my time, above and beyond the day job and above and beyond the family / personal / volunteer time. Woe is me, right? That’s not what I’m trying to say–I bring this upon myself and I really, really enjoy how lucky and fortunate I am to be able to put ideas out there into the community. And it’s work–hard work. But it’s good work, if you can get it, and you can, if you put your mind to it, start to change the world through design.
• December winds down 2009, but winds up starting the big giant ball rolling that is the IDEA Conference for next year. Getting together a pretty kick-ass team, if I do say so myself.
• Throughout the entire year, I struggled to maintain a balance of work and personal time. It was challenging, but I do my best to sacrifice sleep over family time; there’s an abundance of caffeine at my disposal, but face to face time with my kids is something I’d never be able to get back, so it wasn’t an infrequent case that my office light burned late into the night and my eyes had bags under them, but it was worth it, and it is worth it every night at dinner time when we talk about the day, what we learned at school and explore the learnings of an almost-two-year-old. I’m hopeful to continue the trend for 2010 and to even amp it up a bit. I mean, by now, I should be used to this stuff, right?
• Also throughout September, October, November and December, Todd and I continued to work through our book proposal. We’ve been through multiple reviews by other professionals and have revised our proposal to the point where it actually kind of has a gleam to it. Now, we’re negotiating the contracts, but I dare say we’re so close to wrapping it up that we’ll be officially Writing A Book(tm) for Morgan Kaufmann in 2010. It’s going to be 4 glorious colors and on the topic of Research Methods. I think you’re going to like it, lots, and I say that knowing that Todd’s book, “Prototyping: A Practitioner’s Guide” is nothing short of amazing. I also say this because over the past year of working together from–from proposals to workshops to insane meals with top notch wines (trust me: trust Todd with your wine selections!) to contract negotiations, we find ourselves on the same page, easy to negotiate/argue with and still maintain civility and friendship. It should make for some solid book writing and new workshops and I’d say we’re pretty excited for 2010.

Wow.

That took a long time to write and is officially longer than at least a couple of chapters in “A Project Guide to UX Design”. And I’m sure I left things off and forgot to mention some people (and I’m sorry if you feel missed here!). It’s been a whirlwind and I think I’m sufficiently steeled and ready for 2010. I’m nervous and excited and it’s a big year all around.

Let’s do this.