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!

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.

IDEA09 Debts of Gratitude

I’m woefully behind on this, but it’s no less important that the people who propped-up the IDEA Conference experience get recognized.

Certainly, as chair of the 2009 IDEA Conference, there’s a bit of a light shone directly on me, but the reality is that there’s no way on earth that any conference could–or should, at least–be pulled off by a single person.

Without much more preamble, these fine folks let me lead and chose to follow–often challenging and questioning steps along the way, but always supporting the event and the community it is intended for.

I’m humbled to have been so fortunate to get to work with each of them.  Please take note of these fine individuals–and even if you didn’t get to attend IDEA, send them some love for the effort they chose to invest.

Jonathan Knoll
Affectionately known as Yoni throughout this little UX community of ours, he pulled all kinds of magic helping to integrate this pathetic little membership system knows as “Memberclicks” (and that’s in its politest form) into the IDEA website. But that’s not all–he also built the whole site from code line 0, with a ridiculous amount of speed, finesse and dedication.

As a community, we’re beyond lucky to have such a dedicated resource.  You don’t have to take my word for it–ask the IxDA, ASIS and just about anyone else with an idea or a need for assistance.  Thanks, Yoni. Thanks for all the help with IDEA, and thanks for being a friend.

Brad Simpson
Speaking of friends, from work to book-writing projects (Brad did my portion of the design prep for “A Project Guide to UX Design” and may be engaged again…) to the IDEA Conference, Brad has been there. When I first started working Brad a few years ago, I don’t think we liked each other very much.  Somewhere around 6 months in to the mix, we figured something out and there’s probably not a visual designer I’ve enjoyed working with more who has also had a great impact on my own work. He’s not “just a designer”; he’s thinker and wants to know the strategy and the story and then turns it all into something breathtaking.

Michael Leis
The man has a great ‘fro and a great ability to keep the ball rolling. Michael led the charge with sponsorships and marketing, and essentially became our primary copywriter.  We had more than double the amount of sponsorships from a dollars perspective and quite a few more than double from a numbers perspective based upon the previous year’s IDEA conference.  This was a huge success and we couldn’t have come close to touching it without Michael’s guidance, leadership and occasional “caw” noises.

Abby Covert
Abby’s a success story of the IAI’s Mentoring Program.  We began the program perhaps a year ago and when I had the opportunity to hire someone, I pinged her and was lucky enough to do so at just the right time in her life. Beyond that, she was a fantastic asset to our IDEA team, helping to keep things coordinated, picking up tasks along the way that needed an owner, and frankly, just helping to save me from a pile of daunting tasks.  And if you think this is all just me being kind to her, ask around. And look and see who’s the Producer for the IA Summit in 2010.  Abby’s great–and you’re going to see a lot more of her.

Will Evans
In 2008, Will took a couple of pot shots at the IDEA Conference.  In 2009, I called him on it. He manned-up and became part of the solution.  Will was great for helping us IA the IDEA website and in helping me gut-check my feelings on some of my speaker selections. Sure, he can’t manage a passport, but he was a huge asset to IDEA and a welcome addition to the Information Architecture Institute’s board of directors.

Mario Bourque
Our man on the ground in Toronto, Mario helped us find our hotel, checked out the MaRS space for us, and kept things moving on so many different levels. The man is the king of the set-up and tear-down, managing all things on the ground and had a perfect address for us to ship everything to. Sure, that seems odd, but let me tell you what a pain it would have been without that, and without his willingness to be the packhorse and keep all things together for us locally.  Glad to have Mario as a friend and as a key part of IDEA.

Denise Phillipsen
Denise jumped in and helped us in creating some great interview questions for our speakers and manned our table at the conference like a champ.  From time to time, we even saw her acting as nanny!

Dennis Schleicher
Thanks to Dennis and UX Sears, we had a last minute sponsor that has a great interest in supporting the UX Community! Not only should you want to work with Dennis and have him put you through thinking exercises, but you also want to have Dennis on your side to do recon and support.  Dennis was, and is, awesome, and it was great to have him as a part of the conference–and to see him on stage with Matthew Milan during “Innovation Parkour”.

Austin Govella
Austin was behind the scenes humor and coordination, also helping with our speaker interview questions.  He seemed to pop up like a paintball assassin–spraying us with wisdom and humor and then disappearing back into the mist.  Probably working on some Pimpformation Architect stuff…

Greg Corrin
Greg worked with me to create interview question for our speakers, and these ended up getting published on Boxes & Arrows.  He did some great research and helped us to put some intelligent questions in front of the speakers.

Todd Zaki Warfel
Todd was instrumental in helping us locate some key speakers and helped in keeping me sane around some of my ideas for speakers. He was a great asset behind the scenes.  A guy like Todd knows conferences (he’s doing a lot of great work for Interaction 10) and has created enough workshops to be a great adviser.

Cindy Chastain
Cindy and I played tag for weeks, if not months, trying to work out some great storytelling speakers. Unfortunately, timing never seemed quite right or there were too many hurdles in the way that prevented us from ever landing one of her connections–but her willingness to help and the value of her connections were invaluable to me.

Melissa Weaver
Oh, Melissa. So often overlooked behind the scenes of the IAI and IDEA Conferences. Nearly anyone who has ever touched anything IAI-related knows of Melissa, but they don’t know how much she manages behind the scenes, and I doubt we’d be able to pull much off successfully without her.

Noreen Whysel
Noreen, like Melissa, is always doing something behind the scenes to keep things moving along smoothly. From timely updates to the IA Institute website to gentle reminders of things that need to get done (and that most likely would have been overlooked). The IA Institute and IDEA are lucky to have Noreen & Melissa!

The Information Architecture Institute Board of Directors
Everyone on the board was continually supportive and seemed to be pretty impressed with the event as I was giving status reports–none of this is or was easy, folks, and they were always positive, even in light of the downturn economy.  Andrew Hinton stepped-up and worked the IAI table at the conference and everyone was always willing to lend a hand. Great group of people to be associated with, for certain. Christian Crumlish & Livia Labate stepped-up and helped to make sure the payments were in place for the swag and the space and a/v that we needed, and they did so very timely.

The USB Party Crowd
At the very last minute, Livia Labate came through with the USB drives that we needed from Comcast Interactive as a sponsor, which helped us keep the conference affordably green.  Unfortunately, that didn’t give us tons of time to get everything together, so on Sunday evening before the conference, there were whole bunch of people smashed into my hotel room creating an assembly line production that mass-copied files on to 250 USB drives, capped them and placed them back into their handy little boxes.

In about an hour.

Amazing what you can do when you get that many IAs/UXers in a room at the same time and everyone just wants to help achieve a goal (and part of that goal, I might add, was to “get back to drinking”, but any motivation was good motivation!). Hopefully I won’t forget anyone, and those people, in no particular order were:

Gabby Hon
Joan Vermette
Andrew Hinton
Jen Bohmbach
Yoni
Mick Carvin
Jenn Carvin
Christina Wodtke
Livia Labate
Erin Malone
Gene Smith
Chris Palle
Abby Covert
Michael Leis

I’d be remiss if I didn’t make mention of Jorge Arango who politely provided encouragement during some down times of the conference–Jorge was the chair for 2008’s very successful conference in Chicago, and much of what I learned for 2009 came from working with him.

Of course, I’m certain I missed someone–I’m not trying to overlook the speakers nor the sponsors in this post; this post is about the people who put in so much effort and personal time to help our community, the IDEA Conference and the Information Architecture Institute.

And I’m truly grateful.

*I’m really hoping I didn’t miss anyone, and I’m truly sorry if I did. Please email, IM or send me a DM if I inadvertently left you, or someone else, off the list.

IDEA 2009 – Social and Experience Design in Toronto, September 15-16

As Director of Events and Marketing for the Information Architecture Institute, I’ve been more than a little busy diligently working with a fantastic team of people to put together this year’s IDEA Conference, which will be held at the MaRS Centre in Toronto.

Everyone–and I do mean everyone–on this team of exceptional individuals–has been burning the midnight oil to bring you an outstanding program at a gorgeous facility.  Oh, and at a price that is reasonable given our economic climate.  I am more than a little proud of this conference, and I really hope you’ll join us!

IDEA 2009 runs September 15 and 16 in Toronto where the world’s foremost thinkers and practitioners will share big ideas that inspire and practical solutions that improve the way people’s lives converge with technology.

Whether you’re a designer, strategist, writer, UX professional, IA, or working in anything interactive, you should attend IDEA 2009.

Create the future now

You see it at Starbucks. People gather, but they don’t talk with each other. They communicate with their networked public. Facebook could be considered the fourth largest country in the world, yet it’s dwarfed by the over 300 million Chinese who use Qzone.

IDEA 2009 explores how to design these experiences. From the psychology to create more loyal users, to the design strategies and practices that bridge the physical and virtual world. This new world is already becoming a reality for your clients, employers, and customers.

Speakers you need to see

Social and experience design isn’t your typical design issue. IDEA gathers leaders from a multitude of disciplines and perspectives to provide inspiration and practical take-aways on creating valuable experiences. Some of the speakers include:

• Jeff Dachis – CEO, Dachis Group, cofounder of Razorfish
• Christina Wodtke – Principal Instigator at LinkedIn
• Mary Newsom – Associate Editor, Charlotte Observer
• Michael Fassnacht – Executive Vice President, Worldwide Chief Strategy Officer, Draftfcb
• Christian Crumlish- Curator, Yahoo! Design Pattern Library (and co-author of the forthcoming Designing Social Interfaces)
• Luke Wroblewski – Director, Product Ideation & Design, Yahoo! Inc.
• Stephen P. Anderson – Product Strategy and Design Consultant
• Leisa Reichelt – Design Researcher & User Experience Designer working with Drupal’s open source community on Drupal 7
• Thomas Malaby – Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
• Erin Malone – Principal, Tangible UX (and co-author of the forthcoming Designing Social Interfaces)

Beyond the speakers, many of today’s brightest minds will attend and share what they know. In the intimate setting of the MaRS Centre, you’ll have the opportunity to exchange ideas and connect with leading practitioners from all over the world.

Built for today’s economy

IDEA presents the greatest combination of accessible industry leaders, valuable topics, and companies looking for professionals in the social and experience design space. You can talk directly to representatives from Critical Mass, Mad*Pow, Sapient, Usability Matters, Rosenfeld Media, and more.

All the information you need to know about the program, speakers, and sponsors can be found at the IDEA 2009 conference site. Hope to see you there!

Peachpit Interview Transcript – A Project Guide to UX Design with Russ Unger

Peachpit did a podcast interview with Carolyn Chandler and myself a couple of weeks ago, and I was fortunate enough to be able to transcribe my parts it. Below are my answers to the questions that were asked of us.

You can also listen to this online, or download a copy of the interview from Peachpit Author Talk.

What is user experience design?
In the book we define it broadly as “The creation and synchronization of the elements that affect users’ experience with a particular company (or product), with the intent of influencing their perceptions and behavior”.

That’s true–but I think that most people today tend to focus on the more digital aspects of user experience design; websites, software applications. But really, it gets down to considering all the pieces of the whole. That includes business goals and objectives, user expectations, desires and needs–oh, and what can be done within technical, time and budget constraints. All of this wrapped in the context in which the users would be interacting with it.

That’s not to say that we’re making trade-offs, per se, but that there’s rarely an environment without some degree of friction that presents you from doing what you’d do in a “perfect world”. It’s not just boxes and arrows, mind you. There’s a lot of thinking in the work that user experience designers do.

It’s almost never a perfect situation, but then again, that’s what makes it interesting!

What are some of the problems that arise when considering UX design? What challenges might other team members present?
The biggest problem that I see is when aspects of UX design aren’t considered necessary. In many cases, clients want an “expert on user experience design” to make all the decisions for them, and when they don’t agree with the proposed solutions, they sometimes may strongly suggest that a design behave a certain way–against the advice of the UX Designer. Good UX Designers know what opinions are like, so they’ll recommend that designs should be tested with users–and that step may get overlooked, resulting in a design that is either ill- or uninformed.

As far as other team members, the most frequent challenge that I’ve seen and hear of is lack of collaboration. User experience design doesn’t end when a designer is handed a wireframe, a developer is handed a functional spec and design files–it evolves. User experience designers know this, and they need to be engaged throughout the rest of the phases of the project–we’re flexible and we’re working toward the best end result, not laying down the law in document format. Collaboration helps us improve the experience and presents opportunities for us all to continue to learn from each other.

Who do you think really “gets” user experience design? Who is doing it right?
At the risk of seeming like a fanboy, I’d say that Jesse James Garret and Jared Spool really “get it”. I’ve been fortunate enough to speak to both of them over the course of the past year or so, and if nothing else, they really help me understand how far I have to go.

Jesse and Jared both have spent a lot of time observing and sharing information outward–if not pushing it to us–to pay attention beyond what’s directly in front of us. If you’ve been fortunate enough to see presentations from either of them, not only will it blow your mind, but you’ll find your way of approaching problems a bit different. Jesse and Adaptive Path have put together some pretty fantastic, well-thought and forward-thinking prototypes of web browsers and medical products and Jared has shared the findings of years of research to help us understand “real” behaviors, and the real value of research in the user experience design process.

For good measure, I have to throw in Stephen Anderson, who has given some pretty fantastic presentations around the influence and persuasion of design. He’s also a speaker at the IDEA Conference in Toronto in September this year.

You know who else? Dr. Temple Grandin. She’s written a few books that deal with her experience with Autism, but also how she puts into practice her visual thinking in order to be able to “test run” anything she’s designed. She has a great ability to put empathy into practice, and that’s something user experience designers should all strive to emulate.

Finally, Paul Arden, author of “It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be“–it’s a quick and easy read and has so many tenants that are so simple and that just sort of smack you upside the head.

What is one of the most common errors people make when designing for user experience?
There are a couple of things here–for me, when I first started out, I spent a lot more time opening a tool and getting started and then revising the heck out of the product. Now, I’m notorious for walking around with pencils and paper–I sketch everything, several times, prior to even opening up a digital tool and getting to work. And, even then, I find that I make enhancements from my sketching when I’m transferring to digital.

I also think that we tend to forget that our work isn’t about US, but it’s about the work–that is, we should not be taking offense at criticism, but taking feedback that drives us to better designs for our users. I’ve been saying it a bit more lately, and Peter Merholz mentioned it a few years back: The crit–being very critical of our designs, beating them up, taking no prisoners and attacking them, these are the things that will make our designs better in the end. We also get to be the gatekeepers of what we do with the critiques, but there’s a lot of value in even the most negative of comments. We’ve got to be able to face those head-on, and get to the point to where we request, if not require, the feedback prior to putting anything in front of a user or a client.

What advice would you offer others who are just beginning to tackle user experience design?
I believe that all user experience designers are “rotten with imperfection”–every time we get something we lust for, we choose something else to want. User experience design is similar; it does NOT end–once you’ve turned over a great finished product… well, it’s not finished. It’s time to evaluate, update and repeat, because users are pretty “rotten with imperfection”, themselves.

Embrace the rotten-ness. Don’t look forward to the end of a project, look forward to the next opportunity to improve.

Tackle the things you’ve not done before–Robert Hoekman, Jr. asked me what I think “we” are, and I said, “adaptable”. User experience designers need to be just that–it’s a young field. There’s always going to be something you’ve not tried before. Dive in. Fail, fail well, and hopefully fail in the right direction, but don’t stop asking questions and don’t stop learning from your mistakes.

Oh, and get involved in the user experience design community–the Information Architecture Institute, Interaction Design Association, UX Net, Usability Professionals Association and a whole slew of UX Book Clubs are all great organization and are all continually looking for volunteers to support their efforts. Volunteering is a great way to get experience and work with some of the top minds in the field. I can assure you I wouldn’t be where I am today without them, and I doubt I would have found my way to writing a book without being involved.

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