–Engage

I was honored to be asked to write for IDSA‘s latest issue of Innovation. This issue’s executive sponsor was Alistair Hamilton who I had the honor to work with and was edited by Don Carr of the Syracuse Univ Industrial and Interaction Design Program. The issue focused on interactivity and interaction design. You do need to be a member to get the magazine which is only in print format.

I was asked to write about my experience helping to form IxDA. This article at first was a history of IxDA’s growth, but eventually turned into a discussion of the “design principle” that I still feels sets IxDA apart from other similar professional organizations.

IDSA has given me permission to post a PDF of the article here so that I can share it beyond the IDSA membership.

I look forward to people’s comments, but would request that people not comment here, but rather comment here: http://www.papercomment.com/ so that the entire IDSA and non-IDSA community can join in as well.

Designing a Down-Up Organization (pdf)

The Interaction Design Association of today is not the IxDG or even InteractionDesigners.com of yesteryear. The organization has grown faster than the rising stock of Apple over the the short 7 years since Bruce “Tog” Tognazzini made his call to action that gave conception to this organization. This is my way to say that many of you may not know who I am, so I’m going to start with a short background bit.

In 2003 I was named David Heller. I was a UI Designer working in the Bay Area. I was a nobody who heard a call and saw it as an opportunity and to be honest a calling. For 6 years I was involved in birthing the organization through creating its first global conference. This is to say that I have a lot at stake with how IxDA continues to go and that it continues to go at all. Any success one might attribute to my career since IxDA’s founding I feel is directly related to the IxDA community. I see my future success not dependent on its existence, but definitely would be greatly aided.

As noted above the discussion list I helped found with some 600 people is now a community of practice of some 25,000+ (depending on how you do the math) with influence well beyond those numbers due to the magic of social networks. That’s a lot of growing in a very short time for a purely, 100% volunteer organization with about a $50k budget (outside of the conf) to manage infrastructure and other overhead. This all without membership fees (though we’d be no where without member and corporate financial support).

Ok, enough background …

This past February IxDA released an entire new platform for running its virtual, global community of practice. I have had limited involvement in the project (mostly in the early periods) across its 2 years in existence. IxDA did fund raising specifically for this project at various points and even allocated a large part of their profits from the conference to this project so that we can hire a dedicated technical team. Design was almost completely done by volunteers on their own time/dime.

This was NOT an easy decision for IxDA because of some of the founding “unsaid” principles of the organization that have remained in tact. The overriding principle of leaders of IxDA has been that we want the community to create the community. This is something that has been a huge part of what makes IxDA special (not unique by itself, but a contributor).

The reaction to this amazing effort has been really negative and actually toxic by way too many. Not a majority, for sure, but enough people have felt it acceptable to speak to the amazing people of this community with condescension and vitriol. For the most part I have remained out of it. I have my own issues w/ the site, but my history in the organization and my respect for those that accomplished this huge task has led me to silence (except through the official public channel of getsatisfaction.com; as is appopriate for any member of the community).

The most recent lashing out has touched a nerve for sure. The comment that seems to get under my skin the most is how can an organization dedicated to IxD put out such a bad user experience? In spirit, I’d agree with this comment, but it said with disdain and without any accountability or sense of responsibility from those who are saying it. This goes to the heart of the issue through. Which is to say, if you are not going to put up then shut up. Well, that’s what I feel on first glance.

Then I have to remember something. I have to remember that my reaction is from a person who started a 600 person discussion list and NOT a 25k member community of practice. The leaders of IxDA have said that the organization is not about consuming services and so there are no customers (paraphrasing). This is another statement I would love to agree with. Alas, I think I am finding that this is no longer possible given our scale. We can’t assume that 25,000 people in any sort of critical mass will be able to add energy to the organization as much as before.

But if that is true it has other consequences. We can’t assume that a group of volunteers on their own time/dime will be able to provide the same level of service as a pay for model. It is just not feasible to the level of scale we have achieved given the goals and needs of the organization long term. So this leaves us with 2 options:

1. Patience or Energy: Either work within the system (take the time to learn what the system is to be polite to those who created it) and wait for these things to change. This means having good faith that the people behind doing stuff have the best intentions and good heart. Or jump in and HELP and don’t be such a douchebag as to go into a friend’s house and tell them the food is bad w/o even volunteering to do the dishes!

2. Show me money or show me attention: We change the model of the organization to one that is more financially focused so that the level of quality we all want to achieve is what we can afford as an organization. This can mean having dues, or levels of membership (free & not-free). This can mean adding advertising to the site (we already have an ad model in place for the conference and many local events).

Doing this latter idea though is a major cultural shift for the organization. Our approachability and bottom-up culture would be facing challenges (not insurmountable) that we may not be prepared to face, or that would change the very nature of the organization in ways that we are not ready to live with (maybe never).

The point of this post is to address the anger and hostility. It is to get people to think before they speak with such anger about something that in the end is well not life & death and not even something you pay for and in most cases support.

I’d like to see a broader conversation about IxDA’s future. I know the board is having these conversations every day (when I say I know, it means I know the people and I know they are smart and engaged. I have no direct insights). But maybe we as a broader community need to take this opportunity to engage in this conversation. Maybe we can bring back the long dead “working group” email list for people who are interested in this conversation.

I don’t have answers because I know I do not know all that is going on. What I do know is what I see and I don’t like what my community (I say mine the same way I would say about the area surrounding my home if a criminal came into my neighbors house and I would be defending that community) is shaping up to be and despite the amazing efforts of some amazing people I am noticing more slippage and it feels like we are falling down a slippery slope.

The board of IxDA and even the local leaders who build IxDA every day are only as good as the people who contribute to the community itself. So it is only right that we as contributing members take voice and engage!

Found this great interview done by @JohnnyHolland of Mark Baskinger, Professor of Industrial Design & Interaction Design at Carnegie Mellon University. He talks beautiful about drawing and what value it gives the designer. Can’t wait to reference this as part of my “secret sauce” workshop @UxLx next month in Lisbon.

Check it out:

Mark Baskinger on Drawing Ideas and Communicating Interaction from Johnny Holland on Vimeo.

I’m working on a little project about IxDA (The Interaction Design Association). As one of its primary founders, I often am in a position to represent IxDA to a much wider audience, or to communicate with other communities as a non-official representative. It’s an awkward position to be in, but it is also fun (I must admit).

That being said, I am very aware that my view of IxDA is warped by my personal experience. So before this next venture I’m about to begin, I’d like some perspective for you all.

Below in the comments please add your story. What  has IxDA meant to you? Is there a story where the context of IxDA helps shapes some sort of epiphany, relationship, business transaction, design, joy, etc. that would not have existed at all or as easily with out IxDA in the picture?

I look forward to your stories. Be as brief or as long as you want. Some of these stories in part or in whole may be used in the project I’m working on.

And THANX! in advance.

You will have a distinct advantage reading this if you are very familiar with the highways of the East Bay of California’s San Francisco Bay Area.

I have been trying to figure out how to talk about the experience of Interaction 10 (@ixd10) for the last 2 weeks. I knew I had to blog something about it. I have had some thoughts scattered and disconnected over the Twittersphere. But the theme I feel the most is “Crossroads.”

What do I mean by crossroads? The term is usually a metaphor that implies choice between at least 2 directions, which in itself implies a splitting from one. I know as I write this that it is easy to pick apart the metaphor and I can live with that. We are not splitting from one thing to another, but really we are in the process of coalescing our already existing splits to the point where there are new affinities that now have critical mass around them to identify on their own (or soon will be).

The analog in my head will only work for people who live in the Bay Area and cross the Bay Bridge from San Francisco to the E. Bay. I’ll try to describe as best I can.

When you enter the bridge everyone is the same. There are only 4-5 lanes of traffic and except for that really rare person who gets off at Yerba Buena Island, everyone is committed for what they feel is a single destination, “The East Bay.”

Sometime around the tollbooth on the other side the signs begin the task of segmenting people. They are still on the same road, but they start to create new temporary identities based on the signposts above.

Then the splits begin. People leave for south, north (which is oddly called East & West at the same time; and we think IAs and IxDs have problems!?!), and East. This split though is not the last of it.

To the south we have a clean split (one would think) but to get there you used to have to go east first and then south (oh! the glory of the big-one back in ’89). To the East though there is a split between true east and south east (24 v. 580). How do you want to go east? The tunnel is pretty direct but the foothills are windy and picturesque. (I had to make this decision for 2 years; living at the interchange of 580 & 680.) Then to the north is a long road that eventually will split due west or continue north to hook east.

Wait! did I just end with 3 options that all head due east no matter what?

Damn! this metaphor is working out better than I thought because this is exactly how I see things going right now with the design world and interaction design. we are all committed to heading due east, but some of us temporarily whether blinded by the sunrise or just intrigued by the mountains, tunnel or coast line we pick a distinct path. This is an analog to thinking in 3D (Industrial Design), 2D (Graphic Design), information (IA), Activity (IxD/Service), space (Architecture) etc.

At some point these choices will invariably take people who continue on their journey to relatively the same point. Yes, we are getting there with a different set of experiences, and probably different communities behind us supporting us, but the arrival (again for those who keep pressing forward [not too enamored with their current place]) form something completely new and different.

What’s also true is that we make these journey’s repeatedly and each time we have the option to keep taking the same road or to experience new things. Sometimes it is good to skip the travel experience almost entirely, especially for the longer rides.

So now that I’ve beat that dead horse of a metaphor into the ground and probably only those who live or lived in the E. Bay really get it, I’ll move on. …

Interaction Design is one of the legs on this highway system. It’s destination is defined as East as much as any other design discipline. What is East? emergent, beautiful, bright, human, emotional, technological, contemporary, holistic, (and a host more). Our road way takes us on straightaways of rationality mixed with winding roads of exploring the nature of movement and activity towards accomplishments based on self-motivation. We take the tunnel because we are less concerned about “the view”, but after the tunnel we take the local streets to observe the people instead of staying just on the highway passing by.

But at some point there will be another split (you people realize I’m in Contra Costa at this point, right? along 24). We’ll hit the big mountain that inspired us this far (ha!) and we’ll have to pick north vs. south for a bit. And I think it is this split where A) my metaphor ends and B) is where IxD has stood for a little bit. This year the affinities are beginning to coalesce deeply.

The split here is between those who still want to think of interaction design as stopping at the focus of fitting people’s lives and creating efficiencies and those who want to work deeper; leaving technology to those who fetishize it; focusing not on what people want but what humanity needs.

At Interaction 10, Allan Chochinov (@chochinov) of Core77 among other attributes put up this slide!

This slide alone more than any other at Interaction 10 has stayed with me. It was more than design mumbo jumbo, it was a tacit call to arms for designers to get off their ass and start designing for real problems and not the ones that society has made up for them to design (most of those ARE now the real problems we have to design against).

The call to activism as a designer really hits the heart of the interaction designer who is taught first and foremost to have empathy, but then to convert that empathy into dispassion. We come to that empathy from a dispassionate place for the most part as if we are filling an empty vessel.

And this is going to be a part of the next big split. Not the difference between meaning and experience, or hardware vs. software (definitely not the latter). We are going to be split at our core between those who design passionately from a place of knowing the end results and want to drive people towards that result and those who feel that knowing the result breaks the rules.

I’m not sure that this split will even lead interaction designers to the same end point. Is this split of North vs. South going to lead any of us back west before we head east again? Will any of us head east at all?

I am so inspired by Jon Kolko’s new Interaction Design school in Austin and I know as I think about shaping my own design education practice I will look towards his and other great examples.

Even our winner of the IxDA Student Interaction Design Competition, Ahmed Riaz, demonstrated how altruism and driving people towards social responsibility should always be at the forefront of our designs.

I can’t wait to see how this all ends up.

February always comes in like a rocket and leaves even more quickly even on leap years (yes, I know this is not a leap year). For me coming into this February was one of the most crazy of my life (just ask my wife). Being on the ground planning a conference is so different than doing it remotely. There are certain details you can’t let go because you know the lay of the land and further people expect you to do more as well. It was indeed hectic, but also a labor of love as Interaction## always is for me. I can’t believe I have nothing to do with Interaction 11 | Boulder.  I’m determined to keep that a reality except maybe a talk or workshop.

The reality is that I have never been so burnt out on IxDA in all my life. Even 2 years ago when I “retired” from IxDA leadership I didn’t feel nearly as exhausted as I do right now. This isn’t a complaint, but just background to where the rest of this is going to go.

2 Years ago when I co-chaired Interaction08 I did so out of passion. I saw what Dan Saffer (@odannyboy)  was creating and I was inspired tremendously by the content he was creating and I knew we had a winner if only the conference got the right support. So I took the logistic steering-wheel with the amazing support from SCAD Conferencing. Arguably (not by me, ever) Dan & I re-wrote the book on what a UX organization’s conference can be like: Profitable, speakers well compensated and taken care of, well designed (& the design well executed by @danimalik & @ebacon), sponsorships that don’t buy content but still get good value, NOT in a hotel or other institutional setting, and finally GREAT (not just merely good or acceptable) food (the kind of food people talk about 2 years later).

When Bill DeRouchey (@billder) and Jennifer Bove (@jlb) took the reigns for interaction 10 (@ixd10) I was beyond excited. Bill’s attention to detail and Jennifer’s passion for content I knew would come together to create an amazing story. I also knew that Todd Zaki Warfel (@zakiwarfel) and Will Evans (@semanticwill) would do a great job with the experience design. I came in to do what I do best. Not just represent SCAD, but make sure that SCAD’s attention to memorable events shown through again re-inventing the organizational conference experience.

It was a joy working with Sue, Leslie, Heather and Alice in SCAD Conferencing. I can’t imagine a more experienced, passionate team to work with outside the IxDA organization. They were unstoppable and amazing. Just as an example of their super powers. For those not there, We tented one of the amazing historic squares here in Savannah. to do that and make it a presentation space meant using a generator for power. Well a storm hit. The tent was not the problem, but the generator. Generators and lightning don’t get a long so we had to shut down the tent’s electricity and while that was a big blow to exhibitors showing there, it was even worse for speakers unless we came up with a quick solution. Next to this square is one of the 2 amazing historic theaters that SCAD runs. That night there was going to be a performance, but it was free during the day when we needed it. So!?! Quick changearoo and a few score of phone calls later, we had a venue switch (creating an event not with 10 venues but now with 11–Think Spinal Tap, baby!).

This kind of can-do, don’t-quit, attitude epitomized everything that went into this conference again and again. Whether it was digging out a tent the day before for the Fri-night party and never giving up on our oyster roast (I still can’t believe we were shuckin’ oysters at a UX conference) or turning our industrial design space into a space age disco/rave with glow sticks to boot, we would be no where without these Four Musketeers.

So while it is true, I helped focus food choices here and there. I was not giving up the brisket and I threw myself on the tracks for the lamb sliders on Friday night or came up with the international theme for food for Saturday night, it was the connections to the caterers and the venues that really made this fantastic. These Four Musketeers were the real miracle workers.

All this is to say that great experiences required experienced talent to execute on whatever hopes embedded in the design may attempt to communicate.

If anyone is looking for a space to put on a conference and are related to art & design, I highly encourage you all to look at SCAD as a partner for such an event for no other reason but the amazing work of Sue, Leslie, Heather and Alice.

If we can give the longest ovation in the world, I would give it to these women.

::BEGIN APPLAUSE::

There are few projects over the last year that have excited me as much as this one, except maybe the work I did for the Freescale Smartbook project. But “Mate” a game project I did w/ my undergrad interaction design human factors class here at SCAD turned out so amazing. I’m so proud of this group project.

The game design has gone so well. So much detail and the game play aspects are right on target. Unfortunately, volunteer development cycles that started too late meant the game could not be ready for a full official release in time for both Interaction 10 (#ixd10) and CSCW2010 (#cscw2010). But for a few good soles (100 of you for IxD10 and another 100 for CSCW you get to play the game now in its infant form as part of this private beta.

But what is Mate? Well, the idea was based off of an invitation by Elizabeth Churchill of Yahoo! R&D wanting to create a playful information space that used game mechanics and social networking to see how information transfer can be experienced differently in a mobile platform (the iPhone). So combining geolocation tagging, rich asset creation and sharing, social networking, and game play, Mate invites and engages people to learn about Savannah, the events taking place there, and the people who are participating. Check out this early experience prototype video:

Mate: Savannah Conference Game (video prototype) from David Malouf on Vimeo.

If you really think you are a game player and can put down 4sq and Gowalla for the long weeeknd, then please sign up for the Private Beta and join us — Play Mate!

Mate: Home Screen

Mate: Map Screen

This really made me kvell!

Trustees Theater, Savannah, GA

This year as part of its completely redesigned annual global conference the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) is organizing a Student Competition searching for “Excellence in Interaction Design”. Entries have already been streaming in from students representing programs from around the world. For more information about goals and rules of the competition please go to the competition web site at http://interaction.ixda.org/student-competition .

This week we have some big announcements and a really big reminder:

Announcing Dell, Inc. as the exclusive sponsor
We are super excited to announce that Dell, Inc. global manufacture, designer and distributor of computer systems for the home and business is the exclusive sponsor of IxDA’s Student Competition. Dell’s contributions will allow for IxDA to offer full scholarships to our finalists to Savannah for the conference and to continue to compete for the grand prize which Dell will also be contributing (see below).

Grand Prizes for IxDA Student Competition
Because of the generous support by Dell, Inc. IxDA is proud to announce that not only will there be a grand prize for the winner of the student competition, but also a prize for the second place competitor as well. The grand prize winner will receive a Dell Latitude XT2 Tablet Laptop (http://bit.ly/5GQFwk). There will also be a 2nd place prize to be determined closer to the event, also provided by Dell.

So don’t miss your chance …
The deadline for submitting your entry is just around the corner. December 31, 2009 at 11:59p PST will not just be the end of a decade, but also your last chance to submit to the competition. Individuals and groups can submit process books to win a full scholarship to come to Savannah, GA, USA and a chance to compete further to win the grand prize of a Dell Latitude Tablet Laptop or a Dell Mini Netbook.

To submit please go to http://interaction.ixda.org/student-competition

For more information please feel free to contact IxDA at info@ixda.org

Today the Jury of the IxDA Student Competition announce 2 changes to the competition.

1) That the deadline is extended to 31-Dec (Happy New Year!) @ 11:59pm US/PST.

2) That we will now be accepting submissions for groups.

Get the announcement and learn all about the student competition.

Yes, I know, this contradicts my previous post about why we are only accepting individual contributions. But we must evolve. I still haven’t heard anything personally that makes me want to support “all group work” as many of my peers are teaching either in this discussion or from personal contacts. I’d love to hear more about what this newbie educator is missing.

For those that may have missed it, I’m the chair person for the first IxDA Global Student Competition in Interaction Design. Since launching the competition there have been a slew of people asking if their team of 2-a billion could enter the competition. I have even been told that for some students they really only do work in teams and thus cannot enter the competition despite having excellent projects.

I think that unlike other design disciplines’ competitions this competition is as much about the person doing the design as it is about the outcome of the design itself. We won’t just be judging a person on the final result of the design, but also on the knowledge of interaction design embedded in the design and in the person himself/herself.

In this regard, a team project would be very difficult for us to judge regarding individuals. While we recognize that a lot of work in practice does happen in teams which is why especially in early courses team projects are encouraged, much of the work we do in practice, even as team members is done as the sole interaction designer. We work with visiaul designers and engineers and industrial designers in our teams, but usually there are too few of us to go around to all be working on the same project.

In this regard though it is very difficult to judge where the lines are blurried or crossed. So for us to understand the make up of a team is beyond our scope at this time.

Maybe if the competition occurs next year we can change the competition to have some areas that include team work.

At this time though, the competition is soley for individuals. And we hope you enter!

– dave

As part of a press release that was crafted by SCAD for the Interaction 10 | Savannah conference, i was asked for a quote (well a lot of quotes) and this one was put in there:

“Interaction design is not the design of a medium but rather a philosophical shift in how to design for any medium. It answers the questions of why, how and what with a new lens and expanded impact,”

I found it interesting that after a big brain dump on what is IxDA, what is its influence, what is its partnership with SCAD in the past and now in the future and what is Interaction 10, this is the quote they chose. It’s one of those quotes that when you read it you double take as if listening to yourself on an audio recording. Ya know? that sense of disbelief that that is really you.

Then I read it again and I realized I didn’t say anything at all, because the statement is so separated from its context that it just isn’t real. So here is the full paragraph in which I was responding to this question, “What is unique about interaction design at SCAD?”

As far as I can tell SCAD is the only design school that offers interaction design as a minor to its undergrads. The program here at SCAD for the minor is geared towards bringing the design of behavior across all the design disciplines here at SCAD. By focusing on behavior regardless of medium, we have a strong opportunity to bring a new level of fidelity to all our design programs. Interaction Design is not the design of a medium but rather a philosophical shift in how to design for any medium. By concentrating on the dialog that takes place between people products & services and then the effect that those dialogs have on the behaviors of people, interaction design, answers the questions of why, how, and what with a new lens and expanded impact.

Reading that, again really helps fill in the blanks for me and is a lot more meaningful all around.

IxDA has been an honor for me to be a leader of since the very first moment I joined the Yahoo group August 2003. It has always been about learning. Whether it was learning about group building from Challis Hodge, speaking from Robert Reimann, teaching from Jared Spool, leading from Dirk Knemeyer, designing from way too many people to even imagine, IxDA has always been about putting myself in proximity to people I can learn from. Often as in the case I’m about to describe, the decision to lead was not purposefully about learning, but through design’s best tool, serendipity, it most certainly turned out that way.

A few months ago Bill DeRouchey, one of this year’s co-chairs, reminded me that I wanted to lead a Student Competition as part of IxDA’s Interaction 10 | Savannah conference coming up this February. It wasn’t so much that I had forgotten as I was actually hoping someone else would step up and take it over. I’m SOOO glad no one did.

I immediately sent out feelers to people I wanted to be on a jury. I sent some 15 invitations out and assumed that many would say, “I’m sorry, I’m too busy, but thanks for thinking of me.” What I got back were 14, “SURE!”. And more than that, I even got about 5 people at different times and for different pieces who were incredibly energized and worked really hard.

For each piece we’ve worked on, 1 person though has stood out to me as my mentor for the project. This just reminding me that the person with vision and leadership is not the smartest person in the room, but best capable of knowing who is and how to utilize them. Jonas Löwgren from Malmö University in Sweden has worked almost as tirelessly as I have. But more important than his work ethic has been his contribution to the content of the competition, and his availability to me as a reflecting board.

From Jonas, I have learned so much in this process so far, but I have to say the thing I have been trying to internalize with me the most is Jonas’ ability to synthesize and facilitate through criticism. As someone who comes from a more, let us say, direct culture, I have found that I have struggled the most at learning how to give criticism of students and peers in an approachable way.

I have noticed that Jonas’ discourse style even in his second language is one of synthesis and facilitation. What this manifests itself as is to be that person who restates with innate sensitivity what a group of people are trying to say. But it isn’t just restating, it is contextualizing and purposefully giving higher relevance to some points more than others. Then he reacts in a way which produces the “next logical step”. It is a brilliant teaching technique and one that I both appreciate as a teacher, but more importantly appreciate as a peer and student.

Of course, I have other more direct lessons through this process from all of the participants on the student competition jury and I appreciate every opportunity from all. Working closest with Jonas though has been a true pleasure and I wanted to give this public shout out.

To see what all this good leading & learning has led to, please feel free to go to http://interaction.ixda.org/student-competition and encourage all students to put themselves out there. Jonas, myself and the rest of the jury are some of the best educators and practitioners out there today and our feedback and review regardless of your likelihood of winning will be a source of review you will not have too many chances to receive.

Watch This! before continuing: (It’s an amazing video prototype that re-thinks multi-touch for the desktop.)

10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.

First Clayton, I’m incredibly impressed by this video. It shows an attention to detail in production value, theoretical analysis, and overall solutioneering that I know many can learn and be inspired by.

I have a host of questions about the video:

1. This feels overly complicated. “It feels” that way b/c it looks like (I can’t play w/ it yet, right?) a piano metaphor and at that the gestures that each finger has to be able to articulate to reach the level of expert is even more complex than that of a pianist. That being said, I just realized that most functionality is available in simple strokes and this can be a way of ramping up someone from novice to expert. I just wonder how many people will be able to make it past chopsticks.

2. I have worked in the industrial design community for quite some time now. Their reliance on tablet profile desktop screens through the use of Wacom Cintiques is quite strong. Other 3D software communities like visual effects artists, etc. are also making great use of this model. The flexibility of the the cinque to articulate between positions is the key to its success b/c it takes advantage of the reality that there are different modes of operation throughout the day. I do Alias and then I answer email. But my main point is that due to the this ability to transform the tablet is not permanent and thus the stress you suggest inherit in that design is not real. BUT! I also want to say that before we had computers we wrote. I mean w/ a pen and this meant looking down and such. We survived that, no? All that is to say that I would re-evaluate your critique of the tablet position, or your limited view of the tablet profile and re-examine it.

3. Who? who is this for? I think your video is trying to generalize experiences which may not be true. For example I have changed my entire mode of operation to be comopletely browser driven. Close to 80% of my daily interactions happen in the browser. This means that due to tabs I have 1 application open at a time with maybe 2 other widgets that I access from a sidebar (music & twitter). This model of interaction feels like it is an extreme case, which is why the person above who talks about music is totally perfect for this, b/c music has such a level of complexity of controls.

Further, is “window” operation/manipulation really that hard in the current model? I probably spend 80% of my time on the keyboard and 20% on the mouse, so what problem are you look at that requires such an intense shift in hardware and software models?

This is to ask plainly, “Is the problem that great or even really there at all?”

But another important point to this is that design needs to not just think about human mechanics, but needs to be situational. I love video prototypes, but I stress to anyone who tries it that video prototypes need to be situational. The narrative of human use is an imperative in making the medium be truly useful to a design process. So I would ask that a 2nd take on this video do just that. place a “real” person in the middle using this in their day to day life. Bumptop a similar attempt at desktop re-design has the same problem, while I think that Aurora by Adapative Path is a great example of changing the browser & hell the desktop too, by embedding real human narrative into their demonstrations.

4. the loss of direct manipulation feels to me to be the crux of the issue. What makes an iphone and other multi-touch systems “work” is direct manipulation. If multi-touch is just a remoted system like a mouse, then all you’ve done is change the point of gesturing and added an arguable level of complexity that is not required. to me it is direct manipulation and not gesturing where the greatest added benefit of touch comes to play and this doesn’t address this.

5. the keyboard. 1 area that is interesting is that you don’t address the transitional moments of shifting between keyboard (well we all know the keyboard is a problem in and of itself) and the “pointing device”. The simple and current elbow articulation to a single handed mouse not only is simple and the muscle memory easy to embed, but it has the added value of leaving 1 hand on the keyboard so that experts (ever play doom?) can gesture with both hands to create unique modes of operation. I.e. control and drag causes a copy.

But the real benefit of this mode of operation is that w/ one hand “always on the keyboard” you end up with increased efficiency of target acquisition b/c the moving hand can always use the reference point of the stationary hand when trying to find home keys when leaving the mouse.

6. the existing trackpad issues where not addressed. The main one being my wife’s pet peeve which is that she always looses her cursor with accidental taps by her wrists.

7. Why choose 1. Going back to my ID studio, the current set up has many devices: critique (pen direct touch), 3D mouse, keyboard and regular mouse.

Most importantly though, that putting yourself out there like this to criticism is HUGE. This is inspirational not only for what it offers directly but because it offers a point of discussion. I could have never done this level of articulation with someone to respond to as well produced as your demonstration. It has great thinking and there are real problems to address, or more importantly even if the problems aren’t great, there are still places where we can hope to do better.

My top list:
1. object management
2. ergonomic data entry
3. mental models of pervasive and transitive computing
4. form factors beyond (too wide, open, eh?)
5. self induced behavioral change through technology

Thanx Clayton for putting this out there! It is going straight in front of all my classes and my entire faculty today!

– dave

I’m really proud and excited about the work this class of mine is doing. Check out their 4wk progress.

I’m here at the IDSA (Industrial Design Society of America) National (or this year International) Conference. During my time here due to the very warm hearts of some of the colleagues I’ve met over the years, I’ve been included for the first time in some of the more … how shall I say this? … central group gatherings of the organization. As a point of background this is my 3rd IDSA National Conference and I’ve also been to 1 regional conference.

So why is this worthy of a blog article. Well, I had an epiphany the other night as I was doing some covert participatory observation research. The focus of my research was to gain insights into the formation and sustaining of a design professional organization for the purpose of discovering usable data points for my constant thinking about the organization that I helped formed and which is going through its own sustainability issues, Interaction Design Association (IxDA).

As I was looking on and participating in festivities among a crowd of the most devoted and hard working people of IDSA it really hit me.

Professional organizations are really just the evolution of peers discovering coalescence around a specific practice or interest and converting that, or growing that into a community of peers who then feel that they want to spread that “feeling” to a larger group of people in the form of a professional organization.

This is by no means a bad thing. It means you have a strong group of peers who are devotees to the “cause” of maintaining the quality and spirit of the original community. There are cautions, however. There can be a sense of defensiveness or exclusion on one side. The other side is that you may not really be able to maintain that core, or sustain it new peers’ energy because the initial group has not created enough of a compelling story to move beyond it’s initial intimacy-based roots.

So when I think about my organization, IxDA, I have a few thoughts:

1. Since we started out as almost an entirely virtual entity (except for small localized exceptions), we actually don’t have a single peer group driving the gravitational center of the organization in quite the same way.

This is both good and bad. It is good in that there is not really any sort of exclusion behavior, because what would we be excluding you from. I do know that there are people who do feel excluded from IxDA, but I don’t really understand where that comes from outside of excluding people who well do not practice interaction design.

The bad side as I see it is that lack of a coalesced center. We are non-defensive (well I am a little, but that’s just my nature) as a whole, and thus have a hard time saying “THIS! is who we are for any sustained period of time.

2. Our organization lacks age. We don’t have people who went through leadership cycles of college chapter > district work &/or local chapters &/or topic sections > national leadership who then became luminaries, thought leaders, “rock stars”, initiative leaders within the organization. (Not with any critical mass)

Why would Tog, Cooper, Buxton, Crampton-Smith, etc. take on any sort of leadership role within the organization? What I saw and continue to see here is luminary and veteran deep commitment to the organization.

Of course, one could say that well, we haven’t gotten there yet and that is fair, but I think there is something more. We don’t expect it. This past year at the Interaction 09 conference we only had ONE keynote speaker of 4 return to our conference from the previous year. (I understand in ’10 this may happen again, but with a different person). What struck me was that in ’09 this person had 2 qualities: 1. They were outside our target (which I love) as primarily an architecture professor (neither practicing nor focusing on IxD); 2. They were not speaking at all on their return visit to our (HIS) conference/community.  I’ll add a 3rd; his participation between conferences was not seen.

I remember being so happily surprised to see this person in ’09 in Vancouver. I really like Malcolm McCullough. I think he is brilliant and from an adjacent discipline has done more to define who we are than many inside our discipline. But that’s an aside. But I was also struck by the question, where are X, Y, Z people who are “leaders” of us all? This is not a condemnation in any way shape or form. Their support has been HUGE! and I know for one in particular it was not out of lack of desire.

But coming to the conference is very different from what I’m seeing here from 30-40 year veterans in IDSA/Industrial Design.They may not be officers, but they lead the conference, lead initiatives, support and mentor officers & district leaders, and devote themselves to the guidance and maturation of their organization (sometimes in heated ways).

I really feel that we need this. We tried to contrive this as an “Advisory Board” early in our formation, but as most contrivances, it failed. So I challenge us to figure out how to engage our most esteemed luminaries of our discipline so that they lead in more active ways. Right now, I don’t see why they would and I’d love to talk to any of “them” (sorry for the us v. them language, but I’m lacking the articulation of another way of saying this right now) and figure out what it is we need to do so that active participation is a valuable contribution to their lives and careers.

I also want to clarify that this isn’t about “luminaries” per se, and I apologize for using that semantics. But it is about the most senior among us. The execs among us who are giving tremendous leadership in their own organization without any “notoriety” at all.

3. An evolving but constrained vision for providing value to your constituents is the most important aspect of sustaining an organization. The channels change and one cannot merely engage them as a contrivance, but need to do so from a position of connectedness and thoroughness.

This is where IxDA excels. We are grassroots AND we are top down. We understand that the grass needs tending so to speak, but also know that it needs to breathe on its own. We understand that it is about building infrastructures that enable the grass to do on its own. We understand though that philosophically we need to maintain a consistent message across the local and the global.

My personal lesson here though is to not be too rigid. Find a broad enough vision and mission that isn’t more “inclusive”, but rather allows for the greatest evolution, yet maintain its accuracy. I’m not interested in including more views per se. For example, I’m not interested in broadening IxDA into a generic User Experience organization. If all you do is research & validation, or graphic design, or even industrial design (classical) then well there are other organizations and communities for that. I will bring you in so that my community is exposed to your areas as they are relevant to my own, but that is different from including you in my community. (Yes, I know a possibly controversial point.)

What I mean by being broad is to understand that for some Interaction Design means in their lives something much more narrow and specific in terms of technology & medium than it does to me. There is room for both, for sure, and quite honestly that broadness is increasing every year with inclusion of “behavior is medium” and service design as a medium that engages behavior.

I think that IxDA is in an amazing and exciting point in our young lives. Compared to IDSA we are but in childhood if not toddlerdom and we should maintain that context. We should be mindful of their flaws, and embrace their many successes. The stewardship of the current board has been beyond impressive and I will be sad to see some of them go this February. The leadership in particular of Janna Hick DeVylder (@jdevylder) has been the perfect transition from the entrepreneurial leadership like my own, to sustainable leadership. The Board is asking all the right questions for creating a NEW type of professional organization and seems to be avoiding so many of the pitfalls we can so easily fall into.

This organization was started by a “Call to Arms” by Bruce Tognazinni. Our discipline is filled with many “elder statespeople” like Bill Moggridge, Bill Verplank, Bill Buxton, Alan Cooper, Brenda Laurel, Gillian Crampton-Smith, and many more. I would love as part of the this work mentioned above we find a way to bring them home, instead of inviting them as guests. We need our elders, not just to teach us, but to model for us the very meaning of the work we hope to understand.

I think I just had an idea about how I might proactively start to do this! More soon!

I knew that a cathartic blog entry would lead to something good. Always great to find NEW moments of serendipity.

(I started this post over 3 months ago and finished it today. Sorry if it feels a tad disjointed, but I still like it. Hopefully you will gain some inspiration and motivation by it.)

In 2008 I had the pleasure of co-chairing the first Interaction Design Association (IxDA) conference, Interaction 08 | Savannah. My partner in crime, Dan Saffer, provided a tapestry weaved through his vision of what would make a great program for the interaction design community, and I had a shared vision of what the conference experience should/needs to be.

There were many success criteria that anyone sets for themselves but the overwhelming response (and associated almost 200 person waiting list) of Interaction 08 were the pre-success factors that led to more important ones later, such as rave reviews and well the number of returnees to this year’s, now 2nd annual, conference, Interaction 09 | Vancouver.

The new chairperson, Greg Petroff, under new constraints led a tremendous team of volunteers to create an even better event than its predecessor. Greg, followed much of the same parameters of programming that Dan set up, with is own unique twists, and he had a different city with different challenges & opportunities that he was able to use to his advantage to create a great total experience.

As the logistician, in my organizing of the 1st conference, I was convinced that the logistics made the event, and I was totally wrong. They frame the event, but they don’t make the event. What makes the event are the people. Hands down, this year had an energy and a sense of community that last year did not. The critical mass of Twitter & Facebook had an undeniable effect on how people not only communicated, but also related to one another before, during and now even afterwards.

People talk about the “summer camp” atmosphere of the conference, but not in a bad cliquy way. Why? Because anyone and everyone can have instant entre into the world of the camp itself. There is an almost zero barrier to entering the world of Twitter and following being such a passive act with little obtrusion to those you are following, means you can connect anonymously and assert yourself on your own terms.

But the conference was not Twitter by any means. The other piece that people brought into the conference is their voice. The voice of the conference was everywhere. The true desire to use our skills and talents towards improving the human condition was infused throughout the conference. This wasn’t by design, except to say the design was to let the natural voice of the community find itself. It came through the organic conversation between speakers and attendees and sometimes between speaker and speaker.

Being at the center of it all, I often wonder if I’m just kidding myself. Is this feeling just for me? Did all 450 or so people at the Four Seasons & Fairmont in Vancouver have any semblance of the same experience? (Please let me know if you didn’t.) I am constantly challenging this, so I don’t get too myopic in my world view.

What I hear though is that many, and I would argue most of the people I met (many of whom for the 1st time physically or virtually) had some level of contentment and connection to what was created in this gathering.

But back to the voices and what they were saying and how they were saying it. Despite the many technical difficulties the one recurring thought I have when I think about this year versus last year is that we all from keynote to lightning round speaker to hallway conversationalist matured. Our tones, our topics, our means of connecting with one another have all gotten more professional, more intelligent, more thoughtful, and more human.

The other piece of the conference that was there for me, was a sense of positivism. Not necessarily optimism, but positivism. What’s the difference? Well to me, one can still have a sense of the negative nature of the world we live in, but still feel as though they can have a positive effect towards changing it. Obviously, the sustainability folks (talked about on many other forums) have put out their call to arms to help save the world, but Dan Saffer & Kim Goodwin put out in my mind an equally important call to arms–BE DESIGNERS!

Dan Saffer’s presentation did a great job of invigorating the audience about what is at the core of what we DO and to get out there and just DO IT! Kim’s was more reflective and urged us to understand the connections between us as people/practioners as human beings, and to take on the challenges of our practice, especially the one of education.

As the next Interaction conference looms, back to Savannah, where I now call home and hosted by the Savannah College of Art & Design, which I now call employer, I see something even more new beginning to grow. A next step for the interaction design community and the user experience community as a whole.

1. The frame we are creating for Interaction 10 | Savannah is going to be completely different. The new co-chairs, Bill Derouchey and Jennifer Bove (@billder & @jlb), have been listening, but also exploring the possibilities of what we haven’t thought of before. They are designing with the help of a great team a new type of conference. One that the UX community has not seen before.

2. SCAD is working harder to make sure the logistics are even that much better than before. We have more venues (none are hotels, except for the pre-conf workshops) that really bring out the spirit of both SCAD and historical Savannah. Two venues date back to the 1700′s.

3. But this isn’t about history, but more about inspiration. This event will have new voices emerge (or old voices using new tones) that include student contests, interactive art exhibition and film documentaries.

4. Don’t just listen, but get active, engage, do. The pre-conferences aren’t going to be the only place to engage in dialog, or work with your hands. There will be inspirational talking heads, but there will also be discussions and activities to participate in both days of the conference.

There are a few things from the ’08 conference to continue to look forward to. Odds are the weather will be better than Vancouver (we have a 67% chance of better than north of Dixie weather in Feb in Savannah). And most importantly we are planning on bringing back our old caterer for a couple of the parties. Our event at Interaction 08 | Savannah won our caterer accolades in the press all around the Southeast. So she’ll be coming back.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, there is the most important thing again–the voices. There is no better voice to bring to Interaction 10 | Savannah than your own. So bring it. Make a submission of the various types of presentation and leading opportunities and rise up in chorus with the many others who will be presenting and leading this coming February.

I’d love it if peeps would leave a comment if they have even the slightest inkling that they’d like to lead something at Interaction 10 | Savannah. But more importantly go to http://interaction.ixda.org/ and submit your abstract(s) for consideration.

See ya there! (I mean here! I live here now!)

I’m just thrilled pink that Interaction 10 (The 3rd Annual Interaction Design Association (IxDA) conference on Interaction Design) will be coming back to Savannah and being hosted by the Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD). Interaction 08 | Savannah was indeed a special moment on so many levels for me: 1st IxDA conference, me being co-chair, and it being the start of my relationship with SCAD. (Videos from interaction 09 | Vancouver are available too.)

It’s return is a testament to the amazing people at SCAD and how much they put into the first event and how much they enjoyed having us. It is also a testament to how much value SCAD sees in the IxDA as the global organization for Interaction Design, how much they value interaction design as a unique and vital design discipline and how much value SCAD themselves has gotten out of their continuing and growing relationship with IxDA.

But right now, it is about you all. Any conference is first and foremost about the content, but content can only be as good as the format and structure and even interactions enabled for creating that content. This year’s co-Chairs @billder & @jlb (Bill Derouchey and Jennifer Bove) have done an amazing job of taking the best parts of previous years and listening to the IxDA community to create some amazing new format options.

Take a look at the great new web site. You will be happily surprised that there is more going on than just a bunch of talking heads. Go on! Take a look!

And you can also follow the Interaction 10 world by following @ixd10 on Twitter.

I have for the last 2 days subscribers of the various outlets of the IxDA global community have responded to the current fundraiser. It’s been spectacular to see that we have already reached close 25% of our goal. There have been donations from $2 to $300 (that’s 1 expensive cup of coffee).

I’m not sure it is clear what IxDA is asking for and what all this really means. I bet everyone understands that we’ll have a better discussion system (email, web, RSS) that is more scalable and has better usability than the current system which has been completely MacGyvered by Jeff Howard (a miracle worker).

I believe in stories as a powerful form of communication and so I’d like to share a story that I believe will help people understand what IxDA hopes to build.

A persona

Well before we can tell any story, we need a protagonist. In this case the protagonist is your average UX practitioner at an agency in Chicago. We’ll call her Rachel. Rachel has been practicing about 4 yrs in an interactive agency. She goes to local IxDA events from time to time, but also goes to UPA events as well. She went to Interaction 08 | Savannah but couldn’t make it to Interaction 09 | Vancouver because her agency cut its education budget and she has deep concerns about Interaction 10 | Savannah. When she goes t local events, she is most interested in educational events, but definitely likes having her toe in the network pool just in case things go awry at her agency.

Issue with life w/o a new IxDA

Rachel is on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn but mostly uses the IxDA email list using Gmail threading and filters. In her current use of the email list, she struggles to keep up with the noise. She isn’t an RSS feed reader, so using that system, or directly with the web site using tags have helped her. She often misses the “important” announcements about chicago related events on the global list as they are buried in the noise of the ongoing hot discussions from time to time. While her local group does have its own web site and communication system, it is not something she engages in as it is yet another destination and noise creator in her relationship to IxDA.

A new vision for Rachel

Rachel gets to her job in the morning. In her mailbox is her daily newsletter summarizing activity that she’s subscribed to using the new IxDA membership control panel. She set up her control panel to not only focus on specific “tagged” content giving it greater weight in her daily summary, but also to highlight specific “Chicago” related material in its own sidebar. In it she specifically asked for event announcements and for job announcements, but she has declined to participate in local-only discussions for the Chicago community.  The tagged content that interests her are about storytelling, social, and mobile. For each tag she’s also set it up so that she can choose which items will be emailed to her and which items only show up in her daily newsletter. The newsletter has other customizations around national/global job announcements, corporate sponsor announcements, and includes a “hot topics” section so that she doesn’t miss items that are not in her tag list but may be interesting to her. Lastly, her newsletter watches her network of “experts” that she “follows” and regardless of topic adds these threads to her newsletter, and for some she even gets their comments directly as email.

As Rachel goes throughout her day, she receives the email in Gmail threads (or Outlook, or Mac Mail). Most items she lurks on, but some she wants to declare favorites. But for her favorite is not just something to be saved, but is something to announce to her community. So from within the email itself here is a “mark as favorite” link. Clicking it brings her to a web page where not only does she see the message in a web browser, but also a list of people who also responded, tagged, or favorited. One person she sees is an expert that she decides she wants to follow more directly. She subscribes to that “expert” & then views a list of her posts and also her favorites.

After going back to her newsletter, she sees that there is an upcoming special event in Chicago–a workshop by a visiting luminary. From the newsletter she clicks on the link for the event and directly in the chicago.ixda.org web site she sees who else is attending and decides to register. The system recognizes that her corporation is a global and local sponsor and offers her the appropriate discount. She registers for the event knowing that she’ll receive an alert accordingly. As noted, Rachel is a twitter user so she tweets the event out to her network directly from the chicago.ixda.org page.

Later in the day Rachel’s boss tells her to put out a job announcement. Rachel rushes to ixda.org and finds the Post a job link. The link takes her to a structured form that allows her to enter the corporation name, title of the position, select from primary skillsets, and put in a general description. After posting the job she is given a bunch of options: post to facebook, connect via LinkedIn and to match her job post as a search query against portfolios of IxDA members who have checked that they are interested in hearing about new positions.

I can go, on and on, so I hope you are getting a picture. Now the caveat I’ll put on this is that this is not all available in 1.0 (or would this be 4.0 or whatever). But the vision is a temporary destination for us to build towards.

Here’s the dealio. This can’t be done for free. It is too complex to be done by volunteers in a timely manner and requires depth of design and programming which we need to pay for to get done right.

So as you see on the tote board, we have a big goal for support, your support. So please give what you can!