–Engage

The Interaction Design Association (IxDA) is very pleased to announce its full slate of speakers for its first annual conference (SCAD).

Joining keynote and session speakers Alan Cooper, Bill Buxton, Sigi Moeslinger, Malcolm McCullough, Jared Spool, Regine Debatty, Dan Brown, Molly Wright Steenson, Aza Raskin, Sarah Allen, Jenny Lam, and Matt Jones are 21 international Lightning Session speakers discussing a wide range of topics:

Kars Alfrink, More Than Useful: A Framework for Playful Products
Gretchen Anderson (Lunar), Concept Ideation and IxD
Jonathan Aronwitz (Google), Effective Prototyping Methods
Chris Bernard (Microsoft), Classic Design Movements and IxD: Kissing Cousins?
Doug Bolin (Avenue A|Razorfish), Help Me! A New Approach to Support Interactions
Chris Conley (Gravity Tank), Dramatic Features in Interaction Design
Dave Cronin (Cooper), Design for Flow
Anh Dang and Nirali Patel (Avenue A|Razorfish), Designing Information
Bill DeRouchey (Ziba), Conversations with Everyday Objects
Carl DiSalvo (Georgia Tech), Interaction Design for Community Empowerment
Andrew Hieronymi (SCAD), Self-Conscious Gaming
Morten Hjerde (mBricks), Designing for the Other 99%
Saskia Idzerda (Media Catalyst), Redesigning Sony-Ericsson’s Product Catalog
Matthew McCool (Southern Polytechnic SU), Optimizing the International User Experience
Yasser Rashid (BBC), Visualizing Radio
Sajid Saiyed (Phillips), New Interaction Model for a Modular Personal Infotainment System
Michele Tepper (frog), Interaction Across Disciplines
Liu Wei (Motorola), Tangible Interaction Design
Gabriel White (frog), Ethics of Everyday Design
Susan Wyche (Georgia Tech), Fieldwork and Sketching: Translating Research Themes into Conceptual Designs

Lightning session presenters hail from the United States, The UK, The Netherlands, Norway, China, and India.

In addition to these speakers, a set of pre-conference workshops will be taught by industry experts Marc Rettig and Jenna Date, Darja Isaksson, Jeff Patton, and Todd Warfel.

For the complete schedule and to register, please see the conference website: http://interaction08.ixda.org

Early bird registration has been extended to December 15, 2008. The rates are $499 before December 15th and $599 after. Students get in at $299. 1/2 day workshops are $250 each.

Savannah is one of America’s finest small cities, filled with historic homes, cobbled streets, gothic graveyards, and pirate haunts, as well as art galleries, hip bars, and both modern and traditional Southern restaurants. Direct flights can be had from Boston, New York, Chicago, and Washington, DC. Frequent flights connect Savannah to Atlanta, a major transportation hub. Highs in February average 64F/18C.

We hope to see you there!

The Interaction08 Conference Committee

The auto industry is one of the few industries that is constantly envisioning itself sometimes as far as 20 years out. The now famous “concept cars” we love reading about or better seeing at the Auto Show make us weep with their visionary design and technology. Brands become engendered with feelings of revolution, evocativeness, forward thinking, and arrogance (in a good way). Concept cars also make us feel hopeful and optimistic about the future. “Wow! That’s what my car is going to be like in 10 years. I can’t wait!” Lastly, concept cars inspire the eco-system (if done well). The become a standard bearer for “what’s next”. It is the bar that all must reach out to and designers should be taken to task for not reaching it.

Visioneering has been around a really long time. Companies in the ID world like FuseProject have specialized in creating amazing product concepts. (Click here to see Toshiba Transformer Laptop) Works like these are inspired and inspiring.

Intel as a core part of their marketing does a lot of visioneering. Some more out there than others. Here’s a link to their UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC) and MID (Mobile Internet Device) page. On it there are videos of “today doable” concepts made to inspire manufacturers and designers for ideas that will cause them to purchase their chips. Further there is a more business-like brochure of device types for an manufacturer or designer to download.

Microsoft also does concept work even in areas where they don’t sell directly, but rather to engage imagines. Take a look at their living room “furniture pc” concept. Microsoft also supports a contest for the “next generation pc” to have the community envision for them with arguable levels of “good” design.

So visioneering is used as a model to inspire partners, guide their development and especially in a market that deals with such a large hardware and software eco-system like the one I work in in Motorola Enterprise Mobility, it is really powerful to have a vision and use it in this way.

These visions are trying to guide people for maybe 2-3 years out. But others are taking the spirit of the concept car a bit further and working it out to 5-10 years down the road.

One such vision is one by Vodofone. They put together a special web site to discuss your future with telecommunications. Unfortunately they removed it. However, this work that was presented at a recent IxDA event in SF speaks to many of those same issues and design concepts presented by Vodofone but expanded further 2 years late.. IDEO hired by Intel put together the following 3 video concepts. There are problems with it for sure, but it is definitely inspiring and inspired work:

I had my last of 6 classes of my Interaction Design of Web Applications studio workshop that I taught through Victor Lombardi’s SmartExperience.org. It was a great experience of teaching and learning on my part and it seems that my students also enjoyed themselves.

For those that don’t know, SmartExperience.org is a revolutionary new venture put out by Victor Lombardi (former IA Institute President, AA-RF alum, and current teacher at Pratt Institute and consultant with Roundarch) to address the gaping hole in the area of user experience design continuing education. The premise is based on a site that includes space for prospective and current students to propose classes and for experts/teachers to respond to the call and take on teaching. Teachers can also suggest classes and students can respond with interest and suggestions to make it better fit their needs.

This “web 2.0″ curriculum setting methodology is still pretty experimental and the reality is that most classes are created through Victor’s relationships which are many, impressive, and valuable. The course list is impressive already.

The experience as a teacher was fantastic. Victor took care of almost all logistics and financial fulfillments. And I created coursework and we both made a tiddy amount for our mutual time and efforts.

Some lessons on my part:

• Do a better job of clearly communicating your course’s purpose, goals, and methods. A few students were a bit confused about what they’d be learning.
• Be clearer about who the class is for.
• My particular class, being a studio workshop, needed more time. We tried to fit it into 6 weeks, but having extra 2 weeks would have allowed more in class studio time. Most students could not do work at home given their busy lives.
• Plan on starting 15-20min. late. Have early filler for the few students who arrive on time, like web tours or found videos relevant to the class, but not directly impacting the syllabus. It’s NYC … EVERYONE is late. Oh! and this doesn’t mean that you can go over the allotted time either.
• Make better use of the wiki. We did a good job of sharing some resources, but I think there is more to do here. I did like how the Google group worked, but I think a yahoo group with its more collaborative functionality might have been better.
• 10-15 students is about the right size but since almost no one comes to every class you can up it to 20 and have the right dynamic.
• Don’t take it personally when people don’t show up or do their homework.

I’m sure my students have some other lessons for me and I hope they give them to me.

There are some great finds on the wiki so I recommend taking a look. You can also leave your own thoughts about the class topic and whether or not you would want me to repeat it in the near future. I’m game if you are.

According to about 5 different plenary speakers at the recent Connecting conference in San Francisco, optimism is a requirement for good design. Consider me a “design culture” newbie, but I had never heard this before. There was no explanation why this was the case, but it did explain the “left leaning” tendencies of designers.

I think the desire to want to create something new requires a feeling of hopefulness which in turn implies a sense of optimism.

Though I’m constantly waiting for my mortality to demonstrate itself, I generally think of myself as a hopeful and optimistic person. I do see how being optimistic is definitely a requirement for being a progressive person politically. I mean, you have to hope for the best in people.

I can also see how being optimistic is required for creativity as well. Or why someone who harnesses their creativity would want to do so with an optimistic view of the world. I mean who wants to design the next Bilbao if you though that Armageddon was approaching, right?

I thin though that in the software design community that works under the thumb of engineering oriented folks, we are loosing our optimism. We trudge through our work putting a lot of energy forward mostly tilting at the windmills that surround us, only to discover quite often that these are indeed just windmills and we have been deterred yet again.

I’m not saying that other mediums and disciplines of design don’t face compromises or even very sad endings to their hard work. It just seems that our plight as software designers has led us towards the hole of despair and it is starting to have some consequences.

So, I just wanted to put out this opportunity to tell people to stay optimistic and hopeful and keep trying and keep creating and designing. You are doing great things indeed!

– dave

I have never felt so at home as an interaction designer at a conference as I did at Connecting. It was like coming to a big holiday dinner like Christmas, Thanksgiving or Passover at my older brother’s house. There is an immediate familiarity with everyone in the home, but as the younger black sheep rebellious child (Hmm? did I mention I’m a younger sibling) you do feel a bit different and outside it all. All the while though you feel completely unconditionally loved for who you have decided to become.

Not once as I explained IxDA to many people did anyone ever say, “Why don’t you just belong to this group?” Or other questions challenging my perceived “queer” identity.

Further, the conversations were often the same. When we weren’t talking about anything medium specific, we were talking design. Design thinking, design processes, project management, etc. – these topics felt like we were just the same people.

Now, I have been to many a UX conference and since over the last 4+ years (the time IxDA has been around) I cannot say the same thing about IAs, HCI researchers, or usability professionals. At best the feeling there is going to my cousin’s home. There is a lot more angst, less room to be yourself, as its not just about your relationship with these people but about your parents and their parents (who are siblings) setting odd agendas.

And to that experience about my identity being challenged, I can’t remember a time when I got out of a UX event without it being challenged.

There really isn’t anything to do with this analysis. It’s more of a provocation to the UX world that they should realize:
1. interaction design is a real and separate discipline
2. “design” isn’t just a word describing an artifact, or the act of creation
3. accepting someone means not trying to always wanting them to be like you

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As many of you know, I recently spoke at Connecting07 the joint ICSID World Design Congress & IDSA Annual Conference. It was an honor to speak with so many amazing speakers. Barbara Ballard of Little Springs Design & I gave a talk on Patterns. Nothing amazingly new here except two areas: 1. trying to bring the UX community back to the roots of patterns as expressed by Christopher Alexander and 2. Adding in the concept of contextual patterns.

Enjoy!

Virtual Hosting.com put me just in the top 100 UX Blogs. Yeah!!!!!
Personally, I think I am in the wrong section and they have my name wrong (as of publishing), but it’s still nice to be included.

I think they got the top 10 wrong as well. but I don’t really know what their criteria is. I mean 37Signals as #1? they aren’t really a UCD/UX blog.

I’m not sure if this is design or engineering, or just lack of focus, but there is a HUGE problem w/ iPhone mail and I don’t hear anyone else talking about it.

Ok, what’s the big deal?

Well, first a little background:

1. I use Gmail for all my email. That is 4 accounts that I use through one pretty amazing interface. I do it predominantly all on the web site of Gmail, but of course the reason I have an iPhone (one of many) is to be able to do email on my phone as well. Some might say I write more email on my iPhone than I do on my desktop/webtop

2. For people who don’t know Gmail on the iPhone is a POP experience. This has some pretty big limitations over the real Gmail experience which is more akin to an IMAP experience.

3. Gmail on POP regardless of mail client (even Outlook or Thunderbird or Mac Mail or Entourage or Eudora or Blackberry) is REALLY piss poor. Why? Because of a fundamental design flaw in Gmail’s UI logic that really doesn’t take into account the POP interaction model. That is, there is only 1 user mailbox for all email. (The exceptions seem to be SPAM and Trash are separated out). This means that just b/c you removed something from the inbox doesn’t mean that it is removed from the POP mailbox. Further, messages you send are kept in that same mailbox. Now, the latter issue is because all messages are kept in that mailbox so that a thread can be maintained called a conversation. I get that. But here is how this translates to the user experience of someone on an iPhone. (Oh! let me clarify one thing. If I was using the Java client like I was on my Treo or Blackberry this wouldn’t be a problem. This is only about using the POP service which you have to do on an iPhone, to take advantage of your contacts and to be able to do polling.)

Here’s what you get.

1. You get up in the morning and do what everyone does. You check your email. You go through and prune your inbox, read stuff, label stuff, etc. etc. (You would think that you are “done” with it; or alternatively that there would be a way to say, “I’m not done with it.”) You’ve even written a few emails, btw.

2. You start up your email client in the morning. Let’s assume that you don’t have polling on, but you are doing manual retrieval of your email. So what you get is ALL the email whether it has been read or not AND all the email you sent coming in. Now, I don’t mind EDGE too much, but having to wait for a ton of email I already read and managed is a total waste of my time. Oh! it’s a waste of my time on WiFi too.

3. Then I have to go through and prune out of my iPhone inbox all of the messages that I just downloaded that I don’t want to keep.

4. But it’s not even that simple b/c as it is downloading messages it is only downloading headers and maybe the short preview. For each message I look at I have to wait to download the whole thing again. Or worse, sometimes I start deleting before it starts downloading the previews AND as it downloads previews it STALLS!!!!! the entire client so I can’t even delete or view messages and in regards to deleting, I’m being held in limbo sometimes for 30sec. to 1min. at a time for messages I don’t even want downloaded!!!!!!!

5. Oh! and there is this neat setting where you get to globally decide how many messages you want to keep in your mailbox. But dig this! … Just b/c a message had been previously totally downloaded and viewed there is NO WAY to make sure it continues to remain on the client. It may not even be listed in the mail box anymore b/c you have 51 messages in total and the message you want is the 51st. It will only hold 50 messages in memory/cache (I guess).

Soooooo … when I’m on the train UNDERGROUND!!!! I can’t get to a message and start a reply like I was hoping to! (or you have to REALLY think a head or stand upstairs before going underground and do all your management. Uh!?! I might need to get some place people! This is a MOBILE!!!! device.

Oh, this list goes on, but the real issue I wanted to focus on is the stalling. I mean Gmail does its thing and that isn’t Apple’s issue, though it should be. But the engineering debacle here or lack of design oversight on the experience of POP email IS Apple’s fault. This is a simple issue of underestimating network management and the need for real multi-threaded support in the email client. (The Browser lacks this to, exemplified by the fact that two windows can’t be downloading at the same time. OR! one background window can’t be downloading while a foreground window is being viewed and not downloading even.)

Now don’t get me wrong. The total experience is a billion times better than any phone I have ever had, but I just expect more and want more and well NEED more!!!!

So Apple, I’m hoping that patch 1.2 fixes email and that it comes out REALLY soon.

Gmail … WTF! can you just admit that you didn’t get it right and fix it!

You might be aware of Michael Wesch’s first YouTube hit … “The Machine is Us/ing Us” that helps everyone understand Web 2.0 … but he’s just come out with 2 more amazing videos explaining other relevant topics: the state of Students today and the revolution about the meaning and relationship of information.

I know others have blogged about these, but I feel that especially the “Vision of Students Today” is so great that it could definitely use another trackback. So here they are:

“A Vision of Students Today”

“Information R/evolution”

Enjoy!

Recently, I’ve hit a situation where I had to really think about my current skills and my current abilities in terms of my career and I think I have some lessons learned for folks.

Background
At my current employer, Motorola Enterprise Mobility, my boss left. All for good reasons and under good terms. Sometimes people have to move on. But it left me without that one person who was really guiding me. Understanding everything I do, and able to engage my work at a level that I haven’t had in my career previously. I’ve always been the “big wig” in UX design wherever I was previously. So of course, my company (see previous post) is looking to replace my former boss (he is irreplaceable though).

Many including myself have asked, “Why don’t you take the position, Dave?”

And thus begins the lessons learned.

Lessons learned
1. Management has many facets and just because you are good at what you do it doesn’t mean that are really ready for all that goes into managing a group, and a collection of humans who are also good at what you do.

I would go further to say that not everyone is actually management material. There are other growth opportunities, especially if you see growth meaning “more money” or “more respect” or “more responsibility/accountability”.

I have been a manager on 2 separate occassions and while I feel I directed my direct reports well to turn out good designs using their own ideas and energy, I don’t think I managed them as human beings particularly well and to be honest i really don’t like managing human resources all that much.

2. Know your limitations and know what is really needed
I really feel that despite my command of theory and critique, and my ability to conceptualize and connect, I’m actually not a great designer. It’s a big thing to admit to oneself, but an important thing to realize (if it is true).

Of course, a statement like that is laden with “what is a designer?” So I guess, I’ll go there for a moment. To me a designer is someone who can at the appropriate level of details at any moment not only conceive of great ideas, but also communicate those ideas by modeling the ideas through form. Yup, I said form. Interaction while theoretically can be articulated without form, it cannot be communicated without embodiment.

What does this mean for me?
I’m a good HTML prototyper and I have basic Flash and now Blend skills, but none of them can make up for my lack of visual design skills. Yup! You HAVE TO know visual design as a craft person and not just theory in order to really be a great (manager/director level) interaction designer. Prototyping is a great nice to have because it gives you control, but a good manager can higher that skillset in if they evangelize prototyping well enough.

So until I’m really able to pull off the kind of visual communication necessary to make my point without silly distractions, I don’t think it really makes sense for me to step up into a manager or director position yet.

Thought leadership, a role I revel in, is all well and good, but it is not a position from which one can take on true leadership of a design group.

So a SmartExperience.org class I would appreciate is Visual Design Studio for interaction designers. Maybe someone like James Spar can teach it? James? I can’t go to college at this stage in my life and most continuing ed programs teach Photoshop. They don’t teach you want your should do with it.

So for now, i’m passing on the management of UX position at Motorola Enterprise Mobility. And I’m confident it is the right decision.

I do think that if I went to grad school in Industrial Design like I thought to do (as my followers may remember) about 3 years ago, I would be ready to NOW take on this role. Of course, now 3 years later and with a baby and a wife in grad school, going to get my masters is not in the cards right now.

Motorola Enterprise Mobility (FKA Symbol Technologies) has an amazing dynamic design studio and we are looking for a top tier interaction design manager.

Well, who here wants to be part of this exciting opportunity at one of the most successful groups in Motorola. This ain’t for you fashion-atis interested in RAZRs. This job is to manage the interaction design team and work in close collaboration with industrial design and design research on setting the strategy and agenda for user experience design of our entire eco-system of enterprise mobility products from simple bar-code scanners (actually not as simple as you might think) to our full line of mobile rugged data capture enabled computing systems to our line of enterprise productivity assistants (EDAs) that help bring the back off and street to the total enterprise lifecycle.

Check out the job description here

You can also apply there.
Resumes sent to me personally may or may not get proper review.

I’ll be headed to the World Design Congress (IDSA/ICSID) the middle of this month and there is some pretty exciting stuff going on while I’m there.

Arrive Tue the 16th
I’ve go no plans … Let me know if you don’t either. I REALLY want to head over to the E. Bay and get me some Zachary’s. If you don’t know what it is, just trust me!

Wed the 17th
Not a lot of plans. I hope to be schmoozin’ with folks like yourself and working on my talks.
I’m sure I’ll be at the opening reception.

Thur the 18th
Attending the conference, but that night is a big night. 2 good events:
IxDA: Where Industrial and Interaction Design Meet, Oct. 18

Frog Design Mind Party (invitation required, I think)
Jump into the Pond – 8-midnight

Fri the 19th
I have two talks:
First I’m co-moderating an interview with the team from Google Earth.

Interactive Design Section: Google Earth – A Remarkable Story of a High Wire Innovation Act in the Global Digital Circus
Featured Guests: Beth Ellyn O’Mullan and Olga Khroustaleva, Google Earth UX Team; Moderators: David Malouf and Philippe Cailloux; Host – Bill Mak, IDSA, Interactive Design Section Chair
Come and listen to and engage with Beth Ellyn O’Mullan and Olga Khroustaleva, Interaction Design and Research leads for Google Earth, a unique interactive experience that perfectly fits into the conference theme. We look forward to a fascinating conversation about the design challenges behind Google Earth.

Second, I’m co-presenting with Barbara Ballard on Patterns as a design tool.

Re-Examining Patterns as a Design Tool: Lessons from Interaction Design and New Ideas
Barbara Ballard, Little Springs Design and David Malouf, Interaction Design Association (IxDA)
Patterns are observed repeated solutions used within the similar related contexts across different systems. Christopher Alexander first described their use as a way to enhance the practice of architecture. The concept of defining repeatable units to create efficiencies in any sort of production goes back to the Ford Model-T and further; however, the way that designers use patterns is not to create homogenized widgets in a factory setting, but rather as a means of discovery and reflection and alignment. This session will further define how patterns are used in design using explicit examples from interaction design, further adding more examples from mobile experience design. The speakers will then explore new types of intangible patterns that in concert with existing tangible patterns designers can create new combinations of solutions heretofore not discovered. This seminar format talk is appropriate for any designer interested in interaction design, the use of patterns in interaction design, and their cross-over use in the industrial design of digitally intelligent devices.

Luna Studio’s party: re:fresh party – (invitation required)
7:30-10:30p @ the C|Net Offices

Sat the 20th
Attending the conference and going to the closing reception.