–Engage

“Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.” - Steve Jobs

Why It’s Not Damning to Define the Thing

This was originally published by ACM Interactions magazine in their May-June, 2013 Edition as part of their Confessions column. I re-print it here with their permission as columns like these are not made available to the public as a whole. Thank you ACM for allowing me to do this. Why It's ...

Teaching is a pre-req to learning

Today I entered my teaching space for the first time in months. This time I am just teaching for a week. And I'm teaching in a foreign country. This offers a new set of challenges and opportunities. So far the biggest challenge of being a visiting foreign instructor is about ...

Describing my consulting practice. Opinions welcome.

I've been thinking about how to market my consulting practice better (yes, I know it needs it's own voice outside of this space.) I've been trying to describe all weekend to people at RemixSouth what I want to be doing and I think I've been getting better at it. So ...

Slides from my IxD Workshop at RemixSouth

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 ...

Is design being evolved out of existance?

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 ...

3 Steps to creativity – Wash, Rinse, Repeat (Get Flattered/Insulted)

... 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 ...

They actually did it behind my back! (New EBS system for Wireless Phones to be released)

So late last year I had an epiphany. I'm barely ever watching standard TV anymore. But I live in a place that has a ton (compared to Brooklyn; my previous residence) of EAS announcements come over my TV screen. I'm on the Internet usually: Apple TV, Netflix, Hulu, etc. So ...

Dave in Print 2x in 1 week.

[Note: Clicking on the images in this article will bring up the full-sized images that I made available here. No image is larger than 7mb.] It's rare these days to find your words in ink on paper. I almost never have that opportunity, but I was invited last year to be ...

Modkit Micro looks amazing!

Modkit is a drag & drop visual programming tool for micro-controllers like Arduino. They've decided to run it as a Kickstarter and are already above their goal. This looks just like what I needed. Now I just need a great Arduino project to practice with. I also really appreciate the community and ...

Studio = Serendipity by Design

[Today, I read a great piece by Mark Boulton (@markboulton) on his experience past & present with design critiques and how they've sorta been lost in the web design (and by extension I'll add the UX community). I've had this 1-2 written piece on the design studio and Mark's post ...

Finally! Video of my Interaction12 Presentation on Mobile & Aesthetics

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 ...

A wonderful presentation about understanding IA by Peter Morville in prezi format

.prezi-player { width: 500px; } .prezi-player-links { text-align: center; }Understanding Information Architecture on Prezi

Is “the server” beyond the app?

This will be a short post. ... Recently there has been a lot of hoopla about privacy especially around the recent "breech of trust" by one of my favorite apps, Path. I'm one of the people and looking at my Path stream I'm not alone, who seemed to just not care. ...

In search of opportunities

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 ...

Artifacts from my Interaction12 experience

Just so everything is in one place here are the artifacts from my experience and contribution at Interaction12 in Dublin. Fun stuff first Here are the 2 photo albums of my trip before the conference and during the conference. Fun times, indeed! Pictures from my trip to Western Ireland Pictures from the Workshop Day ...

Great Post on Emotional Design

One of my new favorite resources on the web is Interaction-Design.org. Their growing Encyclopedia (more compendium) has an entry that plays right in my interests: Emotional Design - or Affective Computing. (post is here) Check out the intro video with the author Professor Kristina Höök.  

Contextual Design on Interaction-Design.org

Wow! another amazing chapter has been released about Contextual Design by the authors of the book with the same name. As someone who used this book for 3 years teaching contextual research methods, this chapter is very welcome in that it has updated the core since that release and consolidates ...

Alternative IxD to QR Codes

Hiya readers, I'm assuming you all know what a QR code is. If not, go to wikipedia and search it. I have been in a bunch of debates about the value of QRs and whether they are good IxD. I'm not here to do that again. What I am interested in if ...

Observation as skill

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 ...

Facebook and Google (well specifically Google +) psst! Over here … Port 343 … Shhh!

[In the spirt of Jon Stewarts refrain of the NJ Accented advice counselor that always invites wayward media and political people to camera 3, I offer this ...] Ok, we get it. There is a huge challenge facing the people using social networks like your applications today. Totally get it. 5-1 ...

Why It’s Not Damning to Define the Thing

This was originally published by ACM Interactions magazine in their May-June, 2013 Edition as part of their Confessions column. I re-print it here with their permission as columns like these are not made available to the public as a whole. Thank you ACM for allowing me to do this. Why It's ...

Coordination vs. Collaboration

Recently I've been made aware of different ways of thinking about "collaboration". It kinda took me for surprise be specially given the geo-social contexts, but there is no ignoring it. What I learned as two completely different activities some use the same word for or more correctly use the term ...

Report from Up to All Of Us

I'm currently on a plane heading back home after a short weekend with a group of mostly instructional designers who are at a new type of unconference (something I've never experienced before). It felt more like a retreat than a conference due to the setting and the style of interaction ...
December 12th 2012
Tags: education, general thoughts One Comment

As Corona says, “Change your Latitude [Longitude]” – Travel is awesome.

Today I sparked a bit of a conversation after I tweeted: Everyone who is creative should move every 5-10 years; to minimally find a way to live somewhere else for a yr (sabbatical). http://twitter.com/daveixd/status/278919010391826432 Why do I put such importance on travel? What value does it give a creative person? And to the ...

Today Johnny Holland says Goodbye and I am sad & grateful

Today Johnny Holland, the amazing Interaction Design online magazine says goodbye. This news makes me feel both sad and grateful. Johnny Holland (JH) has been a rare place that allowed me to include my voice where other magazines rejected the types of topics I was interested in discussing: esoteric, foundational, semantic, ...

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