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.

Chicago Interactive Design & Development Group – May 19, 2009

May 19, 2009, Carolyn Chandler (my co-author for A Project Guide to UX Design) presented at the Chicago Interactive Design & Development Group’s monthly meet-up. We presented our joint presentation (which is really Carolyn’s that we worked me in to), “Learning to Love Tension, Disruption & Chaos” that we had presented a couple of weeks ago at the Voices That Matter Web Design Conference in San Francisco.

It’s amazing what a difference 2 weeks can make! It’s also pretty amazing that we each only knew 1 person in the room–quite a few people less than we knew in San Francisco, and Chicago’s our home town! Not only that, I think we both were recovering from being a bit rattled from our presentation in San Francisco.

To be honest, the room was a bit flat–and that’s not to blame anyone, but it was a room with people in the web design space, on the last day of a conference and 2 fairly unknown authors.

Right after the always entertaining Jared Spool, too.

Hey, Jared’s one of those wicked-awesome, keynote-giving type of guys.

Hey, I’ve been hitting the stage and giving a handful of presentations this year and Jared’s been doing this for… let’s just say a bit more than I have. But, you know, sometimes the room can make a lot of difference.

That’s not to say we fell flat on our faces–there were some pretty good questions at VTM, but it felt dry. Regardless, I felt much better about my own abilities as a speaker (and a few people have been twittering my talk from the IA Summit on Heuristic Analysis for the Pitch Process in a positive light and that’s been a welcome boost to my own morale). Back to the local Meetup…

The room was pretty packed–it looked like around 50-60 people showed up, counting the late stragglers. We gave our presentations, felt the room was a bit more alive–and it was pretty nice to be in a room where everyone wasn’t staring down at a laptop. We also had some really great questions and genuinely interested people.

My portion of our discussion was on disruption, and Steve Portigal has been kind enough to work through this discussion. He provided some pretty good insights around how to re-frame problems, and that really helped me provide anecdotes that help others understand the value of disruption. Disruption can be something as simple as performing design testing with users, forcing very critical internal design reviews of your own work, or even getting your butt out of your chair and experiencing the environments where your end result will live (I give some examples using AMC’s touch screen kiosk and shower knobs that tend to paint the picture pretty clearly). We shouldn’t be afraid of someone knocking us off course–we should embrace it! We should be heading it off at the pass and encouraging it early on so we can get knocked out of our comfort zone and force us to be a bit more creative in the way we design. Disruption can be your friend.

Carolyn did a great job of talking about Chaos and Tension and how to work with them within the design process–there were some great questions around how to reign in chaos and how to wrestle with the tension to keep it balanced.

This group was outstanding–and it’s important to note that it’s been around for quite awhile. Judi Wunderlich, of Wunderland Group, has been setting up the local meetups. I’ve yet to be able to attend, and I can tell you that it’s been entirely my loss. The large group was attentive, interested and engaged and it was absolutely my pleasure and privilege to be asked to present to such an awesome audience.

Without Judi’s efforts, I’m not certain we’d have this type of meetup, and it’s important to recognize how lucky we are to have her support in our interactive community. Thanks, Judi!

This is been a rare local appearance–I’m really happy that I was able to take part, and look forward to getting more locally engaged. Support your local scene–they’re support is pretty fantastic!

Remembering to Think About It, Giving Back to It

I’ve been very fortunate of late–I was chosen by SXSW (South by Southwest) to present a Core Conversation on the topic of “Friendship is Dead” with David Armano (It was originally submitted as a panel with Bill DeRouchey, Matthew Milan and David Armano).

I’ve been very lucky in that I was also voted by the membership of the Information Architecture Institute to serve on their Board of Directors, of which I am the Director of Events and Marketing. Why I bring this up will make more sense in the next paragraph, I promise.

When I was chosen to speak at SXSW, one of the first things that came to mind was if there was a way that I could help support the IAI membership, so I asked Hugh Forrest if there was anything that could be worked out between the two organizations.  It turns out that there was something that could be worked out, and SXSW has provided the IAI with 2 free passes to the Interactive portion of the conference in the form of a scholarship that you can win by answering some questions.

You can enter to win one of these scholarships by answering a few easy questions in essay format online at:

http://iainstitute.org/en/learn/education/sxsw_scholarship.php

This is a pretty serious opportunity! SXSW is pretty commonly known as one of “the” conferences to attend–and this will be my first one to attend, and I’m pretty excited about it!  You don’t have to go to see me to win (although if you win, I’d enjoy meeting you while we’re in the same place!), but it would be great if you sought out some of the folks from the IAI that will be there:

• Journey to the Center of Design – Jared Spool
• From Freelance to Agency: Start Small, Stay Small – Whitney Hess, Jeffrey Zeldman
• Social Patterns and Antipatterns For the Win – Christian Crumlish
• Wireframes for the Wicked – Nick Finck & Donna Spencer
• Friendship is Dead – Russ Unger

(And if I’ve missed anyone, please let me know so I can add them!)

Okay, so that’s really cool stuff, and I’m really excited that the IAI is able to do this and that a couple of deserving people can go see something cool that they wouldn’t normally get to do. That’s awesome!

But…

The big point here is this:  If you belong to an organization and you are fortunate enough to find yourself in the position to attend a conference, put on a conference or know someone at the conference, or any other event or occurrence,  just take a moment to remember that/those organization(s) and see if there is a way that you can bring something back that could benefit other people who may not be as fortunate as you, me or anyone else lucky enough to attend.

The worst thing that can happen is that you can simply be told “No”. That’s not big deal–it’s something that was never yours to begin with.

But! If someone says yes, then there is opportunity! There is a chance you can help someone get more out of their membership–but more importantly, more out of their career.  There is karma galore, and maybe that’s not your think, but goodwill has a pretty good way of finding its way back to people who are giving of it.

Some of the people I’ve come to know the best over the years and I’ve learned to count on, seek out for advice, rant and rave to or just shoot the breeze with via a late night IM or Skype session, I’ve found through the IAI and IxDA.

I don’t think that’s any small amount of coincidence.

And I’m working to find new ways to give more back–for all of us. Giving back on my own would be a bit selfish–I’d love to share that awesome feeling that I’ve gotten just from being able to put together a scholarship that people can take advantage of.

The really cool part?  Just yesterday I got an email from someone else interested in this scholarship business–interested in helping us provide more scholarship opportunities.  Other people are seeing the benefits for their events, as well as the communities that we’re all a part of!

That’s just a little bit more of the awesomeness that is snowballing out of risking a simple question.

So please, whenever you hear of an event, or an opportunity to help someone else out–even generally speaking, but especially for our various communities within User Experience–remember the organizations and the members who could benefit from any event–small, large, local or across the globe.

All of these organizations help provide community and opportunities to connect with other professionals, mentors, people with similar passions, people who can help you solve problems and even communities where you can find your place.

It’s easy to forget that, especially when you’re paying a membership fee and you may be inclined to think that someone else is paid to do that.  In the case of the IAI, I can tell you with sincerity that we (board members, volunteers) are not paid.  I’m pretty certain that the fine folks on the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) board of directors are not either. I’m not putting that out there because I feel that I deserve pay or any other sort of reward.

Far, far from it.

If anything, I feel as if I am the steward of a role for an organization that has given me so very much–from a great community of professionals that I often believe are so far out of my league in this industry to some of the same people who I’m fortunate enough to call “friend” and “mentor” or “advisor”.  I have a global group of connections–there are few places that I could travel to without feeling as if there is someone nearby that I know and could meet with for coffee, dinner, or just a great conversation.

That, is fortunate. Oh–and if you’re in these organizations, you, too, are fortunate. This greater community of User Experience professionals are so very helpful, even when they’re wildly busy. They’re passionate about what they do, about the growth and maturation of the field, and they’re willing to lead by example and impart their knowledge and wisdom to anyone who is willing to ask for it.

That, is something I cherish and intend to do whatever I can to try and help foster and see that whatever stagnation may be happening comes to an end. We have so many tools available to us–any of us–that breaks down the distances between us.  Tools that help us create communities that are tighter, closer-knit than ever before.  I think 2009 will be a year of exploring and finding the tools that fit and bringing people closer together, helping them no longer be islands. I hope so. I’m going to do my best, which probably involves losing a bit of sleep, to see that it does happen–but it’s worth it, and it’s fun to tinker and have a group of people who are willing to do that with you.

Gosh! I think I just claimed that it’s fun to find failure with a group of like-minded folks.

Will you help find failures with me?

(Imagine how awesome the successes will be!)

Friendship is Dead – See You at SXSW! (Core Conversation)

Way back in May I started noodling with the notion of a panel for SXSW in 2009.

I’d say a few thousand people started noodling with the same notion, and then about 1300 of us took the plunge and submitted panels and topics to the Interactive part of SXSW.

My panel topic was “Friendship is Dead” and it is meant to be an exploration of how the word “friendship” came to be and around how our online social networks have begun to erode away at what friendship has meant. Friendship has become increasingly NOT dependent upon location and has odd sort of ways of being defined now, and it seems that the word itself gets tossed around loosely as a noun or a verb (She’s my friend, Friend me on Facebook and I’ll add you) and that once ever-valuable handshake seems to be dying away.

On the submission, I wrote:

So what is a friend anymore? Is it a checkbox or something to collect? Have social networking tools diluted the meaning of “friend” to be someone to add to your collection? Or do these tools allow you to connect with people you’ve never met before? How does friendship differ offline and online?

And, it apparently was not picked as a panel.

They selected somewhere around 200 of us in three different rounds.  I received the first two rounds of rejections, but never really noticed that I didn’t receive the third–I just noticed that I did not make the cut when the last round was posted.

However, on November 25th around 1:30p CST, I was just returning from lunch and got an email that pretty much knocked me on my rear end. Here’s the (minorly edited) email I received:

Hey Russ,

Greetings. I hope that you are well and that you are having a great November. Any big plans for Turkey Day?

As you are probably aware, we received more than 1300 panel proposals for the 2009 South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival. Most of these ideas are extremely impressive in their analysis of current (and future!) issues in the new media landscape. Unfortunately, we only have the physical space at the Austin Convention Center to host about 200 of these proposals.

To this end, we really like the “Friendship is Dead” idea that you submitted. While the panel program is now pretty much full we would very much like for you to present this idea as a Core Conversation.

WHAT IS IT?
Like panels, Core Conversations last for 60 minutes. What is different however is that Core Conversations remove the traditional speaker / audience interface. Instead, imagine one person in a chair (you) surrounded by 30-50 attendees who are intensely interested in your topic. Your role here is less to give a presentation and more to direct a conversation (as the title implies) about the topic at hand.

VERY POPULAR IN 2008
Introduced last spring at SXSW, Core Conversations proved to be an extremely popular part of the event. But, don’t take my word for it. This is what Scott McDaniel of SurveyGizmo says about the Core Conversation he led at the 2008 event: “We were blown away by our attendance at GTD for Startups. We counted about 50 people there and most off them stood for the entire session. Because it was more intimate than a panel, our crowd really interacted with both questions and their own tips. We felt even we learned a lot from the session. If you have a good topic people care about, you’ll get both a great turnout and a great discussion.”

WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN NOW
If you want to be a part of the Core Conversation program for 2009, then please respond to this e-mail ASAP with a simple “Yes, I’m on board to do a Core Conversation.” At that point, we will get you a little more information on this program, as well as send you comp information.

As always, please fire away if you have questions.

Best regards,

Hugh Forrest

SXSW Interactive Festival
March 13-17, 2009
Austin, TX

http://www.sxsw.com/interactive

So, uh, yeah.

That is, “YEAH!!”

I’m still a bit taken aback by even the remote consideration for such a thing, but I’m excited as hell about it.

The Core Conversations at SXSW appear to be something that has growing interest, and while it does not allow me to hang out with all of the insanely brilliant panel members I had selected to work with, it still allows me to talk about a topic that I think is growing more and more relevant. While I will miss my partners in crime: Matthew Milan, Bill DeRouchey & David Armano (this just in! David & I will be unveiling our Felix & Oscar routine together!), I believe that the topic is relevant and will spark some great conversation.

If you’re at SXSW, I hope you’ll join me us.

If you’re not at SXSW, I’m nearly 100% positive that we’ll find a way to have a little fun with this and engage as many people around the world as possible.

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.

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!

Book 'em, Dano

I’m writing a book.

About User Experience Design.

For Peachpit Press.

With my long-time friend Carolyn Chandler.

(I had started this blog post with the background first, but let’s face it, the news is better than the back story!)

Ever since the IA Summit back in March, my life has been an absolute whirlwind. No single event has energized me more and excited me more about the career that I am in. There are so many kind, talented people in this field–there’s never a loss for someone willing to offer input and/or advice–and only out of the interest in helping a colleague succeed.

It makes me feel lucky even to be in this field.

If I had a nickel for every time I sent out a private message to someone on twitter, shot an email off to someone I’ve never met but have bonded with through the various social, etc. tools out there or sent an IM or text message to all the other folks, I’d be more than willing to buy us all our very own chumby.

The good news–for me–is that I’ve not had to pay those nickels. The bad news–for you–is that I’ve never gotten paid those nickels. So, you know… No chumby for you.

It was a couple of months back that I sat down and started to put together some of the thoughts that were banging through my head. I had been mentoring a few people through the IA Institute and there were some common themes bubbling up and they seemed to be in line with some of my own experiences. As a mentor, I hope to guide my mentees through some of the challenges as best as I can, hopefully avoiding some of unfortunate situations that I’ve been through.

Frankly, I’ve made a lot of mistakes. Some embarassing. Some financially unpleasant. Some caused bridges to be burned. Some bridges did a fine enough job burning themselves without any real help from me. Some were filled with a lot of disappointment.

In all cases, I made sure that I learned with every failure, no matter how microscopic and no matter how much it banged up and bruised my ego. There were a lot of times where I questioned whether or not I had what it takes to be in the business of business at all.

Like most things in life, however, tomorrow is always a new day, and all of those heartbreaking challenges led me to new lessons and new opportunities, and eventually, those painful situations started to be a thing of the past. Don’t get me wrong, there are always going to be bumps in the roads, but the bumps are a lot more managable these days and I’ve got an arsenal of all those experiences to help me out.

I thought that, much like some of the mentees I’ve worked with, many other people might share a lot of the challenges that I have had. I thought that, perhaps, I could spare them some of that pain, embarassment, bridge burning and even some of that financial discomfort.

I’m a nice guy, right?

(Yeah, well, take that with the humor it was intended with, please!)

I started putting together the outline for a book based upon those experiences and lessons learned. My thoughts were pretty simple–put this all into a nice little tidy package where someone could open it up and jump to any section and get the right information that they would need to appropriately arm themselves to handle the UX task at hand.

As I was writing the outline, I sent a networking email to Carolyn and we got into the “What’s up?” game with each other. I ended up sharing my outline with her and she had some fantastic feedback. Frankly, she also added a couple of ideas that were beyond my comfort zone and experience, but that also fit perfectly between the covers of the book that I was thinking of.

Carolyn is kind, brilliant, and generous to a fault. She offered to step-up and take on authoring challenges of some of the chapters for me–out of the kindness of her heart, and out of interest in being involved in such a cool project.

I would be foolish to turn down such a generous offer, so I didn’t. I didn’t stop there; we had been brilliantly playing off of each other in the back-and-forth of the outline, we had a built-in respect and sort of a nurturing and guiding toward each other’s content.

It was pretty cool and pretty exciting to process to be a part of.

So I asked her to simply be the co-author of the book.

She accepted.

We started putting together an outline and started going back and forth between some peers, asking questions, doing the research, making connections and, as of right now, we have officially signed with Peachpit Press to write a book that was tentatively titled:

User Experience Design for Small Teams with Large Responsibilities

We’re pretty sure that’s going to change (try saying it 10x fast!), but the book itself is underway. We’re going to cover a lot of a UXD process and a couple of other fun things that will help guide individuals who are new to the field, new to freelancing or who need some guidance through a project.

I am very excited about this opportunity and very lucky to have such an awesome co-author. I would also be remiss if I didn’t thank a bunch of people (who are not Carolyn), in no particular order: Bill DeRouchey, Christina Wodtke, Dan Brown, Lou Rosenfeld, Steve Baty, Donna Spencer, Wil Wheaton, Xian Crumlish, Mario Bourque, David Armano, Troy Lucht, Tom Napper, Brad Simpson, Kevin Cheng, Chris Miller and Kurt Karlenzig. All of these folks (and I hope I haven’t forgotten anyone; apologies if I have!) happily offered advices, reviewed notes, kicked me in the seat of my pants and/or criticized and praised where it was needed just to get this to point.

I can’t imagine what they’re on the hook for next, but when you’ve got even a moment of time to bend the ear of folks of this caliber, you should consider yourself pretty blessed.

I know I do.

How Do You Display Your Samples of Work?

I started out this year by trying to find the right ways to rewrite a disastrous resume, explain what IA UXD is and now I’m trying to figure out the best way to tackle something that I’ve heard a lot of people (besides myself) in User Experience Design face challenges with:

How do I show samples of my work / my portfolio?

Almost anyone who is going to be interested in engaging you will want to see a portfolio of work in some form. The challenge lies not only in how to show that work, but when and where.  I happen to be pretty particular about these sorts of things and I have ideas about an approach that works best for everyone invloved. 

First and foremost is the how.  How do you show this work?  I can’t imagine that someone actually wants to receive the 26mb zip file with everything you’ve ever done. Full disclosure: I’ve sent that file out before and as I type this, I’m feeling more than a little embarassed by it. 

I like to have control over the situation. If samples of work are going to make or break the situation, then it is best to be present when the samples are being reviewed.  If that is not an option, you have to make a judgment call, and that’s never fun to do.  You have to also ask yourself some questions about the party asking you to do this–what is their motivation? Why do they need to see samples of work before they’ll discuss an opportunity with you? Will they send you samples of their work so that you can determine whether or not their work product is at the same level as yours?

That last question is a doozy, but it’s also a fair question to consider. The interview process is two-way, that should never be forgotten, and if you bring more to the table than the company can currently provide to its own clients or you will offer a significant improvement to an internal workflow and/or process, that’s a negotiation point that could be the difference between being hired as a Senior Information Architect and a Director of User Experience.

Not so much of a doozy now, is it?

The when and where aspects come next.  You’ve got to figure out what works best for you and what you’re willing to provide. I’m not the only person who has sent off nice samples of work only to never get another call back. I’m sure I’m not the only one who was seen their work product (or at least a very close cousin of it) show up from a previous prospective employer later in their career.

The ideal situation is to be present, in-person with whomever is going to review your work.  There is always more to the story than any particular piece of work is going to show. Many not-so-great decisions are made regardless of the recommendation of a good UX designer and you should be given the opportunity to explain it.  Plus, you need to allow the other party to ask the I-swear-if-I-get-asked-it-one-more-time-I’ll-scream-instead-of-simply-fake-laugh-and-answer-it question of, “When does the UX process end?”.

In the unfortunate event that you are not allowed to be present, you should present your work product in a fashion that shows your skill, provides some insight and doesn’t give away the whole magilla. This is why it makes sense to take a step back and analyze what your various work product is, organize it and prepare it to be seen by the right people and with enough information to move you along to the next phase of whatever (interview, sales) process that you are in.

Enough of this palaver. On with the show!

I started talking with peers in the IA/UX community about this dilemma. The general response was similar to what I’ve already discussed. The other response was that none of us really want to read someone else’s white paper about how involved they were in a project–those things serve a purpose that is generally not in an interview or sales pitch. Save the tree.

My approach, based upon previous experience as a mediocre designer, my desire to not give anyone else a free ride on my sweat and to gain control over how work product is displayed. The solution: Password-protected samples, with screenshots and summaries.

Pretty simple, pretty straight-forward and pretty well-received by a number of peers and other UX/IA managers.

First, I created a login screen. Sounds pretty simple–and it was:

As I went through the process and had a couple of people reviewing it, I decided to add a “Samples” tab in the top-right corner of the screen. This only appears if in the samples section and not on the rest of the site. To the rest of the world, it simply does not exist–and I’m okay with that. You’ll need to make that decision for yourself, obviously.

After much deliberation (see all that rambling above), I decided that my best approach was to categorize the work product that I have into logical sections, mostly based upon the types of deliverables I’ve been asked to provide samples of. The sections that I ended up with are:

Presentations
Personas
Site Maps
Wireframes
Other Documentation & Deliverables (Content Matrix, Annotations, Functional Requirements and Prototypes)

Once logged-in, a user would see a single-page listing of all of the deliverable types, a sampling of key deliverables and, for posterity, the ability to download resume versions. Each deliverable displays a thumbnail image, a title and 2-3 descriptive sentences about the project.

Additional peer review provided me with unanimous feedback: The amount and the voice of the content were perfect for what I set out to achieve. No one felt as if they were being overwhelmed–a couple of people even said that they enjoyed reviewing the samples because they felt they were in an easy, conversational review that was painless to get through.

I’d pay for that kind of feedback. That’s a beauty of the IA/UX community–I’ve never met a more willing, insightful and generous group of people.

When a user selects a specific deliverable from the main page, they are displayed the corresponding detail page. The detail pages display a recant of the overview of the project, 1-3 screenshots of the deliverable and a caption for each of the screenshots. I also provided navigation at the bottom of the page to allow users to view the page and quickly move on to the next sample.

I still have a page that links to full deliverables available–but that’s available for me. I don’t feel like it’s fair to anyone I’ve worked with / for to freely expose the work product that I’ve done while working with them. How you choose to manage this is up to you; I feel as if this solution works best–for me.  This allows me to  maintain control over who is seeing what, and when.

As always, your mileage may vary, and “it depends” on what will work for you.

What About That Login Page?
Great question! I’m glad you asked.

I spent a fair amount of time searching for the right solution–there are many, many out there and they range from “Wow, you really need to be an expert” to the equivalent of trying to translate hieroglyphics.

Then, I found what may have been the easiest solution to meet my needs. The only catch is that you will need to have access to your PHPMyAdmin / MySQL database so you can add usernames and passwords, but if you’re able to build this out, building out the ability to manage users should not be too difficult.

I found the PHP Loging Script Tutorial at PHP Easy Step. I found that building my pages took me less than an hour and that the only thing extra I needed to do was to make sure that you re checking for an active session on each page so that users cannot deep link to any of your samples without you being aware of it. That code is:

< ?
session_start();
if(!session_is_registered(myusername)){
header(“YOUR LOGIN PAGE HERE”);
}
?>

Of course, you do not need to use your login page upon a failure, you can just throw users to any page or other website that you’d like.

This concludes my lessons learned–hopefully you are able to find these useful. I’m more than willing to help you put together a login/password page in the event you find yourself hitting brick walls.

So, Whatever Happened to that Presentation, Anyway?

Good question.

Fortunately, I’ve got a pretty good answer, too.

I finished the presentation–well, the first portion of the presentation. The more I reviewed my presentation about User Experience Design: An Overview, the more I realized that it’s a pretty “okay” presentation. It’s almost a “corporate” presentation. It has too much information on it–and not enough message.

That presentation is now the Handout for the real presentation, which I’m currently working on, more or less in my spare time–which has dwindled as I’m trying to wrap up a first semester in Business Administration by Monday. You can get this handout (presentation) at from my SlideShare account here:

What is User Experience Design: An Overview

Keep in mind that I target the Advertising industry with my handout (presentation), but I think it can pretty easily apply to a lot of different areas. The choice is obviously not mine, but yours, if you choose to borrow. Please just let me know, eh?

All of that stated, the next steps are fairly simple for me. I’m going to make the presentation a lot more visually appealing to a broader audience–I want the core of the message to stick with the most people. I want the depth of the presentation–the handout–to resonate with the people who are invested enough to require a deeper understanding. I want them to talk to engage me in a deeper conversation that possibly leads to action.

That next version of the presentation is coming from Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds. I urge you to take a look. I’d also recommend checking out the work of Stephen Collins at acidlabs.

I’ll post an update when I can make progress on the much more visual version of this presentation.

For next time: How do we display our “portfolio” as UX Designers?