Here is the talk I gave at From Business to Buttons 2014 this month in Stockholm. It was a wonderfully produced day-long event that left everyone begging for more. This talk is about how Storytelling as a framework for Interaction Design can be very useful not just in explaining design, ...

I apologize for throwing this 4000 word essay out there like this. I thought and thought and just didn't know where else to put it. I hope someone enjoys it. Yesterday a very respected colleague, who I also call friend (not in that Facebook way, but in that pre-Internet kinda-way), wrote ...

To start a conversation on creating your project's design principles you need to make sure that everyone on your team is building off of the same foundation of principles. So I start with these 3. Jakob Nielsen's 10 Heuristics Bruce "Tog" Tognazinni's First Principles of Interaction Design Dieter Ram's 10 Principles of Design Beyond ...

This week a colleague of mine challenged me to tell him if I can (and if so how can I) tell the difference between something that was designed and something that wasn't. Of course, the real answer is that I can't 100% of the time be right, but standing in the ...

I had a great time speaking and listening at RemixSouth this past weekend in Atlanta. So great to meet the people of the vibrant SE quadrant of the US who are doing great design and technology. Here are my slides from my workshop. Feel free to ask me any questions here ...

This is a thought I posted to G+ (I like it for longer thoughts like this) but feel that after 24+ hours that its withstood the initial "did I shoot that off too fast?" feeling. Enjoy! Ok, design is inherently a deconstructive/reductionist process. That means you have to create more, learn ...

... Or ... Work Hard, Rest, Repeat ... Criticism ... Repeat. This post was inspired by the recent piece by Scott Berkun, called "How to be creative - the short honest truth". In the post Scott, who has made it his life's work to observe and research how businesses, especially the ...

[This is a response to the question on Quora, "What are the characteristics of good interaction design?"] THAT is a great question and I don't think anyone has truly answered it from all the intricate points of view that go into the making of a a fantastic interaction. The area that I ...

I'm really excited that the video of my talk on designing gestures with an eye to aesthetics is finally up and about. The complete title is "The Aesthetics of Motion in the Age of Natural User Interfaces" but it's really about how to think about designing for gestures as the ...

I am very interested in learning about opportunities where I can learn, design and teach this coming summer. As a professor, I have 16wks off during the summer. As a professor, I am also severely underpaid and need to find ways to supplement my income. I've added to my site a ...

Today, Core77 published my latest article on the current state of IxD and why it will impact your practice. I would really love people to use it as a point of conversation as I believe this moment of division is a powerful time as we can do so much with these ...

Hi, I recently had a talk rejected from IxDA's Interaction 12 | Dublin conference. I'm far from bitter about it. (Mainly because I have a longer talk and a workshop accepted.) But I kinda liked the idea, or at least the premise behind it. I even had the chance to explore it ...

For the last 2+ weeks I have traded in my teacher's podium for a student's seat in the studio. I was a student at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID) Summer School. Computational Design [caption id="attachment_2041" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Click to see my collection of screens"][/caption] My first week was spent in a ...

Tonight I read an interesting interview of Andy Hertzfeld. To be honest I feel a bit ashamed that I know so little about Andy as it seems he's done some amazing & important work in UI Design, including at Apple & now at Google--for Google+. In the interview a key early ...

One of the best advantages of being a professor is getting 16wks off every summer. But that length of time quickly gets boring unless you find ways to fill it. One of the ways I like to do to fill it is to travel around the world to anywhere that ...

First, let's understand something. Evolution as Darwin and Wallace proposed it is not exactly as we understand it today. But using their model is as good as anything when you want to create a metaphor for something else. In this case that something else is a technological change & adoption. A ...

I am honored to have been invited to participate in a project to come up with a manifesto on the future of design education. ICOGRADA, which is the international organization representing Visual Design in the International Design Alliance, is leading this effort, based on their first attempt 10 years ago. ...

Last weekend I gave a talk to a group of non-designers. It's been awhile since I did that so it was a chance to flex some thinking muscles on identity and definition issues I've been exercising over the last few weeks (well since Interaction South America) in December. First here is ...

I've read a few critiques of the @Twitter for Mac client. I think Dan Saffer's is probably the best and most comprehensive. I will say that while I get the nits that Dan is making, I'm not sure I'm as critical of them. I think my problems are around my ...

When I was in Brazil I had some wonderful conversations with Jonas Löwgren. It was so fortuitous that we finally meet after conversing and collaborating across the miles so far away from both of our homes. We were sitting at breakfast 1 morning talking about interaction design (that was every morning) ...