Interaction Design Class at SFSU
I have created an archive for the class I taught this summer at San Francisco State University. I was so pleased with the quality and creativity of the class.
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I have created an archive for the class I taught this summer at San Francisco State University. I was so pleased with the quality and creativity of the class.
true innovation comes not from making more stuff, but by making more interesting and efficient ways to use the stuff we have.
Conference Report: 99% Conference
Where: The Times Center, New York
When: April 15-16
“Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration” — Thomas Edison
When I saw that two of my favorite speakers were speaking in one of my favorite cities sponsored by one of my favorite websites and one of my favorite topics, how could I possibly say no?
The 99% website and conference is loosely based community based on the notion that creativity and great ideas are only 1% of the equation and 99% of success in any creative endeavor is based on the execution of that idea. In other words, game changing ideas, innovation and success in any endeavor requires more than thinking about it, it’s about trying something out, seeing if it works and then moving on to iterate, iterate, iterate.
Some themes and takeaways:
1. Excellent creative/technology/innovation requires 100% 1% Creativity (this is the talent that you are blessed with and either have it or you don't), and 99% on execution of the idea. Just having an idea or just being creative is not enough; you also have to be able to make that thing come to life and be real and tangible. (Scott Belsky, Author of Making Ideas Happen)
2. “Innovative people tend to fail more” - Frans Johanssen, Author of Medici Effect. Therefore, You will fail and fail often. That's okay And yes, this will include failure sometimes but it will also be opportunities to learn and be better the next time
3. Find a partner a team to complement your team’s talents this helps to lighten the load, add fresh ideas, and challenge your notions and to complement your skills. Find people who can do the things you can’t do yourself and enable you do make something you couldn’t make yourself.
4. “Pay attention to what grabs you and won’t let go” - Eve Blossom, CEO. Look for what gives you inspiration, something that gives you pause and keeps you up at night with curiosity. Get the root cause of a problem to find an opportunity.
5. Understand your customer, product AND the market and be honest about your product. Find out who is using it? What is the larger market? Where is the market going? Develop a strategy and stick to it, use this as a roadmap and guiding principle and make sure it’s so easy your mother can understand it. (Leslie Koch, President Governors Island)
Creative leadership is awkward, but required in today’s business environment. More than ever before design thinking, service design and user-centered design is becoming a requirement in today’s business climate because of designs inherent holistic approach. Listening to customers can help you solve the problem you didn’t know you had and create an opportunity to create a game-changing idea or just something that makes life a little easier, and a little nicer – but you have to start somewhere.
“Most ideas that change the world start small” - Frans Johanssen, Author of Medici Effect.
“Just do it” – Nike Ad
Aynne Valencia is a Design Leader based in San Francisco. She specializes in creating next-gen products and services that center around social interactions and mobility. She presents on topics related to design, social networks, and pervasive computing.
She likes tofu.
I attended a talk last night for the book "The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It", it seems like it'll be a good a book and I hope to get to it soon.
One topic that stood out for me was the notion of Generative vs Tethered systems. My cursory understanding of this is that generative systems do not assign a particular meaning or strict path to a desired outcome. Think things like Google Health or Android as an example of this..
Tethered systems are ones that are proprietary and limit the possible ways one could interact with them. Examples of this might be a application or device for a specific task or even developing for the iPhone, as while anyone can make an application, in order for mass distribution it requires a specific platform target, approval from Apple and must meet a set of criteria .
By extension I think there are some pretty accessible examples of generative vs. tethered systems and some that are more hybrid in nature from the experiential standpoint I can think of. Flickr is a great example of this kind of hybrid web application. At its core there is a very simple things it does: enables you to upload a picture or video and share it. But the creative and social aspects happens after the photo is uploaded. Once uploaded the system is very open, you can use your photo and others photos in many ways on many channels. However, the photo ultimately lives on Flickr. Flickr has the power to delete your photo, shut down your account, or even hold your photos hostage if you don't comply to their rules.
I think this is what we see more of as we become more dependent on systems to house our information and I think it will be interesting to see how we deal with this paradox of having more freedom and control to create meaning through cloud-based information while losing control of our information and privacy. Being exposed to more memes on social networks and at some point wondering what idea and opinion is authentically your own and what was gleaned from your peers because it is popular opinion.
Will this make us more creative or less creative? It will be interesting to see what happens.
I am pleased to be on the other side of the hot seat this month with my former AKQA colleagues Mauro Cavelletti and Guillermo Torres as a panelist for the November IxDA-SF Event: The New Mad Men come from Silicon valley.
From the site:
The future of advertising is in digital media, as people stop reading newspapers and people turn off their TVs in favor of Facebook, advertising agencies are struggling to redefine themselves as fast as the audience their trying to reach. In the last few years we have seen agencies build IxD teams from scratch, which has been a great opportunity for IxD designers. But it has been a challenge for designers to insert themselves in the copywriter/art director led process.In this talk we will discuss why the IxD community needs to take notice and take this as a great a great opportunity for our discipline to move forward and learn from fellow creatives. We'll share winning strategies for including design thinking in an industry known for creating more problems than solving them.
Robert Fabricant's talk from Interaction09 Conference
Focus on impact and measured impact on behavior
Robert Fabricant - Behavior is our Medium from Interaction Design Association on Vimeo.
It made a big difference. A B-school class would have started with a focus on market size and used financial analysis to understand it. This D-school class began with consumers and used ethnography, the latest management tool, to learn about them. Business school students would have developed a single new product to sell. The D-schoolers aimed at creating a prototype with possible features that might appeal to consumers. B-school students would have stopped when they completed the first good product idea. The D-schoolers went back again and again to come up with a panoply of possible winners.
from the article The Talent Hunt, Business Week
Wish I could have gone this year..
I have been thinking about my career lately and trying to narrow down exactly what I do.
And it occurred to me that it would be impossible for to narrow down what I do into one category.
The skills and activities I think are valuable run wide and tall, they cross discipline boundaries and enable a holistic experience.
CONCEPTUAL DESIGN
User Journey Development
Wire-frame Development
Information Architecture through Site-map Creation
Mental Model Visualizations
DESIGN PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Facilitating brainstorms
Writing design process plan
Working with client to define deliverables
Setting milestones
Client communications
DESIGN RESEARCH
“Thinking out Loud” usability
Persona creation
Contextual Inquiry through focus groups and observation
Co-design sessions with users
Focus Groups
Low-high fidelity prototype creation
VISUAL DESIGN
Design of look and feel within technical and brand guidelines
Icon Creation
Stylesheets
Production of relevant visual assets for web-ready use.
Information Design
System visualization
Yesterday a designer friend was talking about his shop and he said some stuff that really inspired me I will paraphrase what he said but I tried to imagine it as a statement. Its a bit twee and sentimental but I think I want to craft a similar “goal statement” for how I would want interaction designers and (future) product designers to be perceived.
Our technology team is awesome because they have a passion for technology. They are really energetic about the creation process and they are create to have participating in the design process because they actively influence the design by helping suggesting things we hadn’t though of before.They are completely integrated in our creative process and I consider them enablers. They are proactive in socializing new technology and are truly
partners, not a serviceThey rarely so no but they do speak up and tell us we’re insane when they need to, keep us in check and help us all come up with a better solution.
Design Lead
Your experience design lead should be a seasoned user experience professional will work closely with you and the team to gather requirements, present designs, guide the internal team of interaction, visual, user research and prototypers to ensure the highest quality solution that meets your business needs and the users experiential and usability goals. This ensures delivering solutions that are smart and beautiful.
Strategist or Initial Researcher Strategists use qualitative and quantitative research to monitor macro trends and monitor brand appropriate information and consumer research.
Interaction Designer (s) Highly skilled interaction design professionals are well-versed at synthesizing users behavioral goals, overall system considerations and information design to execute on simple, eleqant interface and experience design.
User Researcher The user researcher will facilitate user testing sessions, work to develop test scenarios, scripts or focus group, design research and collaborative design activities.
Visual Designer (s) Visual design creates the look, icon sets and follows or creates brand guidelines to create clean and compelling visual presentation.
Prototyper(s)/Motion Designers Typically this is someone with front-end development, flash or other creative development experience. This person helps to create low to high fidelity click-thrus to fully testable prototypes to finished product.
When UX Research is Evil
Usually when you design and conduct a user research study, you're focused on keeping the methods sound, recruiting good users, and asking the right questions, which is already a tall order. Unfortunately, no matter how well you conduct your studies, your methods have little to do with how the research ultimately gets used. Everyone's a little bit to blame for this: researchers can do evil by conducting useless research and presenting it ineffectively; clients can do evil by misconstruing findings, or by undervaluing research to begin with.
This talk will cover the ways that research can be misconducted, misinterpreted, and misunderstood, and on the other hand, how you can involve your clients in your research, to show them how and why it's done, and get inspired to think about design problems through the eyes of real users.
Time: April 28, 2009 from 6:30pm to 8pm
Location: Hot Studio
Street: 585 Howard Street, First Floor
City/Town: San Francisco
to rsvp visit ixdasf.org
"Design is the organized arrangement of one or more elements and principles (eg. line colour or texture) for a purpose."
but as we know Design is not always about reason and logic or what it easy.
It is also about emotion, instinct and universal principles and of color, typography, balance and gestalt .
Emotion causes the wow - and the subtleties are the thing that moves the needle from things people use to things people *love* to use.
People don't buy cars like The Cooper Mini because of logic - there are lots of little cars in the world - people buy them and love them because... they are cute, iconic and cool. iPod not the most usable thing in the world, it probably would have killed off in a focus group the first round - but it succeeds because it is appealing on a visceral level. People create the logic to justify the decision if the whole of the experience is compelling enough. Its human nature.
There are tools designers can use such as design principles documents to avoid falling into this trap of analysis paralysis because it can help to frame design decisions and create a mechanism to have something entire teams can use as a way to "gut check" design.
I found this:
"Seven years is a long time to run a company without a classically trained designer. COMPANY NAME had plenty of designers on staff then, but most of them had backgrounds in CS or HCI. And none of them were in high-up, respected leadership positions. Without a person at (or near) the helm who thoroughly understands the principles and elements of Design, a company eventually runs out of reasons for design decisions. With every new design decision, critics cry foul. Without conviction, doubt creeps in. Instincts fail. “Is this the right move?” When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems. Reduce each decision to a simple logic problem. Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data. Data in your favor? Ok, launch it. Data shows negative effects? Back to the drawing board. And that data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions."
A great idea. Wattson.
I recently came to know of an interesting project called Dutch Dialogues focused on finding new urban planning/architecture/social design solutions for the rebuilding of New Orleans.
Some key takeaways:
1. Work with the terrain you have. Louisiana has water. Rather than trying to fight nature, how can this be made to work as an advantage to the residents and improve the landscape.
2. Think holistically, traditionally different agencies have been responsible for different yet interconnected parts of the system. By consolidating departments and leveraging the deep subject matter expertise of certain areas and functions better solutions can emerge.
Last night I had the opportunity to attend an event featuring the designer of Barak Obama’s logo and the UX Designer of Obama’s campaign.
Barak Obama’s campaign was historical for many reasons but I suspect one the main reasons for it’s unprecedented success was the infusion of user-centered design throughout the campaign.
Some tips and tricks I gleaned from the talk:
Know that your design will be out in the world your work will be used in ways you hadn’t expected. Make assets down-loadable so the public can create professional quality materials from their home printers.
Control color – this is the first thing people see and have a visceral reaction to. Use web-safe colors and make the design flexible to look good in Black and white and without the need for extensive color correction
Design for many platforms and create consistency: online ads, mobile, tv, video, email, micro-sites, badges, social networks,...think about how your experience will be across all these platforms.
Throw out the “above the fold” mentality – use information design and color. Don’t let anyone talk you out of whitespace.
Trust your instinct advocate for good experience at all times even if it means going against convention or your personal taste
Whenever possible geo-target content
Get to know analytics use statistics to A/B test and get empirical evidence for anything you aren't sure about or has contention with the team.
No robot language When designing forms ask questions. “What is your email address?” Vs “Enter email address”
Inspiration and Quotes: IxDA Speakers
Music: Walk Slowly, Supercar
I, along with Josh Williams am one of the local leaders for the IxDA (Interaction Design Association).
The site I did interaction design for Nike Lab is featured on Apple Pro!
The Smithsonian is hosting an installation/ARG called Ghost of a Chance..
True public art..
I love this..
very exciting.
My friend and I are in the midst of making a new tool for iPhone 2.
Its a location based, intuitive, ambient, multi directional, subjective activity wayfinder.
Written in Coca called Heatmap.mobi.
Screenshots and more info on the way... off to code and design now.
Now it's almost over...
The Lost Ring is getting more mentions in the press.
I was Senior Interaction Designer for this pretty massive project..
Today's find:
Mentioned in a show I found by perusing Twitter.
More of The Lost Ring in The Guardian.uk
Jane , the game creatorhas it on her blog.
And a fan and player has a wiki on the experience.
Info on ARGnet.
Artistic and intellectual work requires the consumer to find he answer for him or herself.
Finding the answer on your own is the only true way to understanding.
Use yourself to talk about what is around you.
For designers this means using yourself, giving of yourself.
You need heart to make impact and create change.
You need intellect to persuade.
Culture is international
The only cultural division is stupidity and willful ignorance vs. empathy and consciousness.
Education and culture give us the possibility to be less stupid.
Freedom requires basic needs being met.
An interactive fiber optic sculpture that responds to the viewers emotions.
Beautiful!
The site I worked on is Flash Site of the Day on Favourite Website Awards!
One of the projects I did the ID work for is now live.
NikeLab!
The project I worked on has yet more press.
This time en Italiano.
From one of my favorite talks at the IASummit 2007
An article about the project I worked on on Christian Science Monitor...
"If a designer asks for more time, they aren't being lazy, they are trying to figure out the variables in the potential solutions so that you don't have to deal with regression and you can truly layer on additional features in a way that will not break the system or the interaction behavioral patterns being established from a well thought out master plan, which if done right, will be flexible enough to accommodate future features.
The simplest way to achieve this is to really have business objectives clearly spelled out before design begins. If you hear complaints from designers, or anybody on a team, it usually means folks aren't sure of what they are aiming for. Understanding team dependencies is important, and can be tackled at different speeds depending on the size of the team/ organization."
- from a poster on LinkedIn
There is a very interesting thread going on LinkedIn What Do You Never Want to Never Hear A Designer Say Again. From the sound of the comments on the thread (with the exception of the quote above) it is unfortunately clear that there is still misconceptions about what a good designer can bring to the table.
I think a reoccurring theme is the notion that designers do not need to know about or are not privy to the business objectives.
While it is true traditional visual/graphic/motion designers are not taught or used to this kind of information, this is rapidly changing and designers quite often have years of business experience, and have traversed in large organizations.
Another great quote:
"What intrigues me about most of these answers is that they all seem to come *after* the opportunities for planning and communication. So... if there was a breakdown along the line, is it all on the designer? Usually not. "
I sincerely hope this is just a sign of growing pains in the industry and things will get better as people who work in that nebulous area currently called "interaction, UX, product design" and live in that are between visual design, research, strategy, technology and product management are more frequently seen.
This month Coroflot has an article on designers and sketching called Questioning the Cult of the Sketch. .
As someone who has been in the design business for longer than i care to admit here, I can say sketching is an invaluable tool, hand lettering and photography are also excellent are also invaluable skills.
Lots of paper, some good pencils and pens and a fast scanner are necessary.
are online and listed on Experientia's site
Since I was too busy running around with the other AIGA-SF volunteers working at the event to see many of the sessions..
here is a wrap up from Media Bistro.
Found in an old notebook I have:
Some character sets:
Arabic
Cyrillic
Latin
Greek
Roman
Slavic
Use
given name:
family name:
to express first, last name for localization
Year Formats:
Gregorian: 2007
Japan (emperor) 19 Heisei era
Taiwan 2550 (Buddhist year)
Hebrew 96 (1911 based)
Hijri - Islam
Lunar- Asia
ISO 86-01 universal standard for numerical data.
For time zones use GMT/UTC + Offset
Examples of how numbers are expressed:
England: 15,345.67
Japan: 15.345,67
Switzerland: 15'345,67
France: 15 345,67
India 15,34,567.89
Phone numbers:
USA +1 (555) 555-1212
France: 33.1.6172.8075
Japan and Russian address go from Least Granular to Most granular top to bottom:
Japan
104-0032 Tokyo
Hacchorbori 3-11-11
Miki Building
Shibuya
Toyko
for efficient internationalization:
- avoid using text in images
- don't use flags for countries
- Make room for expansion
- Make the design flexible and sparse
115% for Japanese
124% for Korean
Hinigan- Kanji - Japanese idiographs
Double Byte characters
radicals - 214 radicals
A-Z Pick list will not localize well.
Unicode.org
ASCII
latin-1
Latin-2
Greek Cyrillic
Thai
CJK
Korean
UTF-8 is most used on the web.
Virtual revolution –
Celebrities vs. spectators vying for attention
This is the currency and resource
See article about this on Washington Post
Thomas De Zengotita Draper Grad School New York.
Affects of print on modernity
Next to food drink and sleep the need to be significant the need for attention
There is only so much that fits on the screen of human consciousness.
People are staging their own lives and are the stars.
Me worlds – flatter people in their network- keep attention on yourself
Mediated world
Flattery of representation –representations of all things by their nature address you.
To call attention to itself and pay attention to you
The rise of the flattered self
Rise of mediated entities addressing us
The flattered self is deluded into thinking he or she is the center of the universe.
Reflecting back to us about who we are.
Announcing to yourself who you are
The age of fusion
Fashion, music, entertainment
genre-breaking
fact-fiction mashups
a large phenomenon
all the little creators
there no Picassos anymore…
everyone thinks they are a little Picasso and everyone is trying to be original and feel special
everyone is special
everyone is making stuff out of what is around them
hundred and millions of people trying to be original.
You are not a unique flower (my note)
There is no such things as real experience it has always been mediated via language
Sheer quantity
Quantity, quality, ubiquity
Difference between now and before post-modern turn
Realizing that everything is mediate became common sense.
(in the 1960’s this really happened)
Media puts distance between experience.
The one who makes himself
agermensch ubermensch
environment of options
Decartes - the modern individual -
project of self-making
we make the world we live in
we make the ourselves
Whats left of reality and if we lost it what was it to begin with?
Everything is Miscellaneous
When worlds collide – Second Life:
Stephany Filimon – Linden Lab
Comfortable mixed reality
Social Virtual World – virtual currency linden dollar
CSI-NY had a virtual crime scene and interactive crime solving activity happen on Second Life.
Fashion is a huge industry in SL
Only the money is real in Second Life.
Job Ha.net
Mixed reality fundraisers
Spectrum of acceptance
People who like it
Usually intentional
Extension of real to virtual
Association with real-world identity
Well understood some precedent
People who like voice in virtual worlds
Often unintentional
Intrusion of real upon virtual
Primarily s “fantasy user”
Skepticism of association with real world identtty
Not well understood little or no precedent
Center for Interactive Spaces – Denmark
Responsive vs reactive technologies.
Personal Training
Asymptote –
Trust on the web-
Peer to peer trust –
Mutual incremental disclosure
Share information over time
Second channel
Move information from unverified sources to known communication touch points
Verifying network messages via email strengthens the credibility of both channels.
Seven strategies for creating Individual Trust
Individual endorsement
LinkedIn provide venues for feedback that allow users to keep each other honest
Institutional reputation
Leverage strength of external authority affiliate with larger institutions
Wisdom of crowds
Aggregate a large number of people’s evaluations
eBay feedback sense of reputation.
Visual verification
Use of personal non-public photo and other media – photos on Facebook to ensure a profile belongs to the person
Faith in Humanity
The craigslist approach…
Using Pragmatist Philosophy to Design for Aesthetic Experience -
form and material
natural and instrumental
overall impact
embodied and intellectual
socio-cultural effects
continuity thesis
primacy of practice
and a critique about the conference
Observed in Design Observer:
"designers are either empathizers or egotists. Most of us are empathizers; we want to please our clients and we are happy to forgo some personal gratification in favour of giving them what they are expecting. But egotists are only interested in getting what they want: they have a fundamentalist certainty about themselves and their abilities. Their work is often better than the work of the empathisers."
A video I am working on.
It is meant to be projected against sheets.
Six projectors playing simultaneously with the contrast slightly adjusted on all.
I often get asked why I am taking classes and going back to school.
What is this thing you keep talking about?
Why do you think you need to go back to school?
To which I always answer: because I want to work on stuff that doesn't (always) involve a keyboard or a monitor or even a computer.
At least in the way we have been used to interfaces thus far.
This could be interacting with a touch screen or a device that has different ways of inputing or retrieving data.
I guess I am a Web 4.0 person living in a Web 2.0 world...
I found a passage from a book that says what I am going to study much more eloquently than I ever could:
"In the next few years, emerging practices in interactive architecture are set to transform the built environment. ‘Smart’ design was once regarded as the preserve of museum exhibits or Jumbotrom advertising screens, but 'multi-mediated' interactive design has started entering into every domain of public and private life as a spatial medium, interactive architecture is revolutionizing and reinventing our work, leisure and domestic spaces.
Fast-changing social contexts are dominated by the blurring of boundaries between work and play, information retrieval and use. Pliable and responsive digital environments raise the haptic and intuitive threshold of public and private space by harnessing physical and mental responses. Will interactive architecture embrace a wider scope of functions and experiences – from sensing mechanisms, to the info-lounge, to the ambient home environment and the holistic hospital – through customizable design possibilities? "
- from 4dspace: Interactive Architecture by Lucy Bullivant
A quote from a friend's blog:
"if you managed to open a door successfully today, hug your local designer... or at least buy them a cocktail."
_ Erik Gibb
