IDEA 2008: An Interview with Andrew Hinton

My second interview with a speaker for the IDEA Conference is with Andrew Hinton. The IDEA Conference is in Chicago from October 7-8 (just in case you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past few months–or in case this is the first time you’ve ever seen anything I’ve written, as an alternative).

Andrew Hinton, on the other hand, spends most of his time in the Philadelphia-area. I’ve mentioned a few times–to Andrew and others–that he looks astonishingly just like his photo. In this day and age, there are a lot of photos out there that often capture a best side of people that doesn’t seem to exist, but Andrew’s pretty captures exactly him.

It’s really not that big of deal, and I’m not sure why this has amused me for so long, so I’ll apologize and move on to more interesting things–like my interview with Andrew.

For starters, you should know that Andrew Hinton is one of those guys that I often refer to as “so damn smart it that the things he easily discusses often makes my head hurt”.  That’s a compliment, and I consider myself lucky to get to work on this project for IDEA.

Andrew is also a father, and from brief side conversations with him since I’ve had the fortune to make his acquaintance, it is very clear that that particular part of his life is the most important and the part he cherishes the most.  Parenthood is difficult enough with all the rest of life getting in the way, and to be good at being a good parent and finding ways in a world that constantly tries to divide our attention, it can be next to impossible.  This is not only one of the biggest compliments I can pass along, and it is also reason enough for him to earn your respect.

And if you’re fortunate enough to get to see him present, he will sufficiently handle the rest.

I feel as if I’ve lauded enough praise, so now I’ll tease the interview that will be live on Boxes & Arrows later.

RU: What would you recommend to people who are just getting started in the field and who are interested in becoming more active in the industry—or who just want to follow in your footsteps.

AH: It means a lot to get involved in your community of practice. You don’t realize what an impact it makes on people around you, but it’s huge. Find some problem that needs solving that tickles your fancy, some skill or service that the community could benefit from that you get a kick out of working on, and dive in. Lurking is fine at times, but if you want to be “active in the industry” you have to engage. You can engage the conversation at any level, as long as you have a sense of humor & perspective about it. And read all kinds of stuff—don’t just read “design” crap all the time. We all breathe each other’s air way too much, and it’s important to get ideas from outside the UX bubble.

As for my footsteps, I don’t recommend them—mainly because I don’t know that I could’ve walked those steps on purpose if I’d tried. Which is to say, follow what obsesses and excites you, whatever crazy path that might take you down, and there’s probably somebody somewhere willing to pay you for doing it well.

Andrew Hinton will be speaking at the IDEA Conference on the topic of “Context”. You’ll probably want to be in Chicago from October 7-8 to learn more about that.

First 30 commenters get invited to the IDEA BBQ FTW.

Passive-Blind Voyeuristic Social

That title alone makes me feel like this entire post should be written by a slew of people who are a whole heck of a lot smarter than me, so I apologize in advance if you stumbled across this and thought you were going to get something highly academic.

It seems to me that there is a perception that “being social” means that you have to actually engage other users actively.

I do not think that is true.

I think that you can be socially involved with someone by quietly watching them–lurking, if you will.  In fact, “lurking” has been going on in email discussion lists, online forums and, dare I mention it, BBSes for years and years.

Lurking, I believe, is sitting back and watching the conversation–letting it all happen around you, without anyone knowing you’re even there.  However, with lurking, you also begin to understand the behavioral patterns and personalities of others.

Just by watching.

Seems kind of passive, if not voyeuristic to me.

So, if someone serves you up content based upon the actions of others who share similar traits with you, or have identified similar likes and aspirations, then it would seem to me that is rather blindly doing so–you don’t know who those other people are, just that they’re like you.

It’s like seeing a bunch of nameless, faceless “you”-types running around and doing their business and getting content served to you based upon their–and your–collective actions.

So, Passive-Blind Voyeuristic Social would be sitting back and watching content as it is served to you based upon actions that others, identified as being similar to you, and then acting upon it, which in turn influences someone else’s results as they do the same.

Or, at least, so I think it is. Sure, there’s a good chance that someone else has already thought of this and has a better definition, but this kind of works for me right now, and it makes sense to me as another way in which we can interact–socially–without having to actually cross any lines of “faux friendship” and add to our ever-growing lists of contacts that we may not actually even know.

It’s a great way to provide context and direction to users without forcing them to reveal themselves to each other.

There is an unbelievable amount of power in the following statement:

People <like you> who <do something> also <do something else that you’re not doing>.

Don’t you want to know? iTunes has been doing it for us for quite awhile (and have since taken quite a few nickels from my coin purse), but that is very loosely based upon qualities of music–and not “qualities of Russ”; there’s an opportunity to go a little deeper and deliver content to our users that don’t require them to becoming visibly engaged.

I’m going to go ponder this for a bit. I’d welcome additional thoughts.

Note: Search engines have been offering up “What People Are Searching For Now” types of content since, like, forever.  This is different as it is actually based upon some identifiers that you have selected, and have in common with others, without actually having to engage them.

IDEA 2008: An Interview with Bill DeRouchey

If you do not know by now, IDEA 2008 is going to be in Chicago on October 7-8, with a pre-conference on October 6th, put on by MAYA Design.  The conference is going to fantastic–we’ve recently added Jesse James Garrett to speak about the Aurora concept browser.

Behind the scenes, I’ve been the “Event Coordinator”–and while it has not always been clear to me what that is (it’s mostly “do as much as I can in every situation possible–fast!)–and it has been a lot of fun working a little deeper with the Information Architecture Institute and getting to understand “how things work” a bit more.

One of the roles I took on was to interview some of the talent.  We’ve got a great line up for IDEA 2008, including:

• David Armano
• Jason Kunesh
• Dave Gray
• Elliot Malkin
• Edwin von Gal
• Jesse James Garrett
• Chris Crawford
• Albert Canas
• Jason Fried
• Aradhana Goel
• Bill DeRouchey
• Andrew Hinton

My first interview was with Mr. Bill DeRouchey.

Many moons ago, Bill and I happened to have been up late on the same night. It may have been a weekend–well, it was any night, really, as we’re always up late.  Christian Crumlish had turned me on to some Brian Eno music and I was asking about alternatives. I don’t even recall what the selection was, but Bill made it–he set up a muxtape for me so I could find some new tunes to work/study by.

I checked out his website, watched is presentation from Interaction08 and we started some email chatter.  Before long, we were doing random emails, talking about book ideas, swapping war stories and a bunch of general back-and-forth humor.

We built some trust.

We became friends.

We hashed out a panel for SXSW called “Friendship is Dead” (and you should vote for it, please!).

We reviewed secret paperwork for each other.

We (gasp!) even spoke on the phone!

And I even asked Bill his thoughts about this in the interview that is now live on Boxes & Arrows:

RU: Over the course of 2008, you and I have become “friends”—at least I’d say that, and I believe you’ve said that. We most likely will not meet face-to-face until October at IDEA in Chicago, yet I’d say we have built a level of trust and respect for each other—we’ve even worked “virtually” on putting together a panel presentation for SXSW together. How do you think that happened, and who should we blame?

This fascinates me too. It’s true. We’ve never met face to face and we’ve only talked on the phone once, but we’ve had enough online interaction to build both trust and friendship. How the hell is that possible? Tracing it back is an interesting case study. On Twitter, I noticed a few friends (people I have met f2f and trust) keep talking to @russu. Okay, I’ll see what this guy is up to. Seems harmless enough, okay, follow. Then we made some connection on music, and the conversation developed from there. But is this really different at all from meeting people in the “real world”? You meet through mutual friends, connect on something simple, and then just keep talking. That’s the beauty of Twitter. People are giving you many opportunities to connect in some way. Sometimes it clicks and you make a new friend. If you never actually meet, so what? Yes, it’d be a shame, but geography should never be a barrier to connecting with other people.

Please take a moment and read the entire interview, and get to know Bill DeRouchey a bit better!

SXSW Panels of Interest

I personally submitted one panel for SXSW and actively participated in the submission of 2 others.  Beyond these, I also have several friends / peers / colleagues that have also submitted their own.

Each of these is worth seeing on their own merits, but they all also need your votes so that the rest of the SXSW-attending world can get to see them as well. Please take a few moments of your valuable time and vote positive for these panels!

Friendship is Dead - Russ Unger, David Armano, Bill DeRouchey, Matt Milan

Your Name Sucks! - Kit Seeborg, Christian Crumlish, Andrew Hinton, Russ Unger & Dave Taylor

Social Patterns and Antipatterns For The Win! - Christian Crumlish, [and others, yours truly participated in]

Micro-Interactions in a 2.0 World - David Armano

Engaging Youth: Getting Them Off the Sofa - Bill Bulman

Learning From Broadcast to Make Immersive, Evocative UX - Michael Leis

See What I Mean: Using Comics to Communicate - Kevin Cheng

Being a UX Team of One - Leah Buley

Are Women Taken More Seriously on the Web? - Laura Roeder

Old Media Finds New Voice Through Twitter - Colonel Tribune / Robert Quigley

Influencing Internet Legislative Changes: Why and How - Sachin Agarwal

The Problem With Design Research - Robert Hoekman, Jr.

The 7 Rules for Great Web Application Design - Robert Hoekman, Jr.

Try Making Yourself More Interesting - Brian Oberkirch

User Experience 2009: More Crap You Already Know - Dan Willis

Let’s Get Social: Moving From Me to We - Aaron Strout

Fly, Peacock, Fly: Generative Visuals Without a Line of Code - Mario Klingemann

From Global to Mobile: What’s Next in Local, Contextual Search - Don Turnbull

The Street is a Platform - Andrew Huff

Don’t Be A Dick: Creating Sustainable Work Environments - Dave Lippman, SISU

Good Design, Powerful Content Management - Guild Copeland, SISU

Crowdsourcing: Shark Jumped or Wave of the Future? - Ross Kimbarovsky, CROWDSpring

Is Spec Work Evil? The Online Creative Community Speaks - Mike Samson, CROWDSpring

Managing Your Online Identity Outside the Walled Garden - Joshua Porter

Designing for Sign-Up - Joshua Porter

Mobile 2.0: The Next Frontier - Chris Bernard

Okay, that’s a lot, but there are some pretty great people with some pretty great ideas.  They’d all appreciate your votes (as would I!).  Check them out, sign-up for SXSW and please vote up the great panel ideas!

If I have left anyone off, it was definitely an accident.  Please share your favorites and/or my oversights!

SXSW Registration & Hotels

SXSW Registration is now open.

So what, right?

Well, I’ve never been before, but those “in the know” (as well as the fine folks who send the SXSW Panel Submission emails) say that if you intend on attending that you should sign-up now and book your hotel right away.

That’s no easy task, for what it’s worth.

The hotel registration form has a drop down that coincides with a Google Map. The hotels are listed in order of proximity to SXSW, but you cannot see the prices unless you sift through each of the hotels.

One by one.

That’s not fun.

Fortunately for you, I decided that I should not be the only one to go through this hell, so I’ve copied down all of the hotels–in order of closest to farthest to/from SXSW, along with the prices for 1-4 occupants.

Without any additional ramblings from me:

*Note: Not all hotels may be available due to registrations filling up quickly!