–Engage

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!

Most people who come to this blog know that I’m one of the founders of the Interaction Design Association. I was one of many people who helped start probably one of the best design organizations I have claimed an identity or relationshiop to. IxDA has done and continues to do so much for me.

At this time, IxDA has just announced a fundraiser for this week. The main purpose of the fundraiser is to support IxDA’s efforts of building a remarkable virtual community of practice. The bold initiative conceived at the very first leadership retreat in September 2005 is now rightly timed to take off.

The current incarnation of the web site is a stepping stone in that vision where the web site and discussion list converge into a knowledge & community space that brings value to the entire community. But this version is already getting old and doesn’t fulfill the needs of the organization.

So we have a design team and a plan for implementation, but because of the infrastructure needed to successfully build out this vision we need money to push the initative past what can be accomplished by well-meaning volunteers and finally hire a robust and talented team to bring the vision into being.

So that’s where you come in. Just click the badge to the left or right on my blog (depending on what page you’re viewing it on) and give a little. We have a bold goal of reaching $30k, but I think given the large numbers of people who claim they support IxDA, we should be able to hit our numbers easily.

But why?

Ok, that’s the sales pitch. But why IxDA? Why give money? Why at all?

For me it is my community. It is so much a part of who I am, but for most I am pretty certain it is not, so I’ll try to express what I hope it is for you.

1) It is one of the best sources of information on interaction design. Act (or now search) and you will get some of the best answers anywhere.

2) Pushing boundaries, inspiring, and defining — All this happening in this organization. People are taking what we’ve learned from IxD of software and applying it and mixing it up with other disciplines and practices, thus designing the behaviors of systems, eco-systems, and services that go far beyond the graphical user interface. Some of these solutions are quite inspiring. Finally offering clarity about the complex and fuzzy nature of what we do.

Anyway, that’s what I see and I hope you see value in this organization & community to just give a little! I know I did! AGAIN!

On my flight from Oslo to Copenhagen, I started a list of cultural assumptions and moraes I observed throughout the last 10 days of my stay in Scandinavia.

As a summary I’ve spend 3 days in Copenhagen, 2 days in Malmö, 3 days in Stockholm, and 2 days in Oslo. I mostly spent time with various interaction designers within these cities and from around Scandinavia.

Most of these observations happened in the course of just “living” my life day to day through my travels.

So here’s the list in no order (and remember, just my observations:

1. Mom left a baby outside in it’s stroller while she went into the cafe to get coffee. (She did ask a total stranger to watch the child.) On a side note at the airport that same day a woman went to the bathroom and asked me to watch her personal belongings.
2. Scooters (think Razor) were being used by various roles. There were different designs, but for staff who had to travel up and down the concourse, they sometimes had scooters. My favorite was the newspaper delivery guy b/c it was a 3-wheeler so the front could hold a lot of papers.
3. you push a button to open the door on a train or bus. in Oslo they had 2 buttons, 1 for most people and 1 for people who needed more time to get in (the icon was a baby pram). This was on local commuter trains, inside doors of the trains, on buses, and on long distance trains.
4. Speaking of public transit. There was an honor system with transit. yes, there were “control” agents, but in 10 days, I only got checked on the Airport Express train from Stockholm to Arland Airport.
5. Moving on to bathrooms, I’ll start w/ 2 levels of flushing. I know they do this throughout much of Europe and even Israel, but I was reminded of it often. it didn’t happen everywhere. The idea is that flushing #1 doesn’t require as much water as flushing #2.
6. Most facets for showers/bathtubs had numbers on the temperature control part of the tub and the pressure and the temp were separate controls.
7. Handheld showers were everywhere (though my last designery hotel also had a waterfall shower head and I LOVED IT!)
8. Many showers don’t have curtains. many hotels have half glass bath tubs and many hotels/bathrooms in private homes don’t have bathtubs at all and the “shower stalls” were often just a curtain and sometimes not even that. (I experienced similar stuff in Israel too.)
9. Light switches for bathrooms are outside the room quite often. Drives me fuckin’ crazy.
10. Nudity is a lot more accepted. I notice this in TV commercials mostly
11. Bike culture is huge, especially in Copenhagen, so I’ll start there.
12. in CPH bike paths are EVERYWHERE. They are so sophisticated, its really hard to explain. you just have to experience.
13. In CPH (and in Oslo) putting children on your bikes were quite common. In CPH in particular there were 3 brands of 3-wheel bikes all made locally that accommodate either children or cargo.
14. In CPH many services are done on bike including the postal delivery
15. My fave infrastructure piece in CPH was that bike paths had turning lanes. (yup! it was that crowded)
16. In CPH for sure, but also in STO and Oslo very few people except children wore helmets when riding.
17. People in CPH didn’t lock their bikes to a solid surface. They do however have a pretty standard set of locks that lock the back wheel preventing the spokes to turn around the hub. Of course, I was told that people ask why there is a high rate of bike theft.
18. In CPH there were many bike rentals but few bike shares (everyone has a bike, why do a share).
19. In Oslo bike shares were HUGE. They were also very visible in STO but both countries’ infrastructure for bikes was just being figured out.
20. Work practices felt really different too. My fave is obviously the standard 5 weeks vacation and most offices closed for 3 weeks in July. Now that I get 22 weeks vacation this isn’t as big a deal for me, but I feel for my peers who often get 2-3 weeks and often (and this seemed odd to the Scandis)  can’t even take them.
21. Universal healthcare is pretty standard. yes, they pay for it in taxes, but the safety net on healthcare is HUGE
22. But this led to an amazing discussion where I finally got to a core difference between Scandi and US. Both countries believe in individual success being rewarded. But in Scandi they believe that individual success cannot be at the expense of the community.
23. Design aesthetics were really different in each country, but “minimalism” or “centricism” was a common theme.
24. It seemed that DK was only into strict minimalism in the best modern tradition. There were even strong traditions of progressing from cheap stuff from Ikea to more inheritable or heirloom pieces.
25. In STO there was a connection to the rustic aesthetic in both architecture of homes and in furnishings.
26. Hotels were ALWAYS modern minimalist to a 1.
27. oslo had a host of electric cars and a service of car sharing setup around a model
28. i was related the great story of how Danes go indoors during the cold months, but they do so w/ their curtains open. I liked that story a lot. Then in summer they rush outside. And I can say in Oslo and CPH there were tons of people outside when the sun was out. in STO it was pouring the whole time.
29. the Scandis held their knife oddly. Hard to explain. They did hold it appropriately in their right hand, but they did it in a very different angle than I’ve seen in the US.
30. Baby strollers were almost always prams (4 large wheeled). Bugaboos, Stokki Exploris, and Quinny’s were around, but not nearly as often as these prams.
31. My friend has a VW TDI (diesel) where the car shuts off at a light. Its not a hybrid and its a tad disconcerting until you get used to it, but I’m sure it is a HUGE energy savings. My friend claims upwards of 60-70mph in his car.
32. Chip & Pin for credit cards abound.
33. People use cards for much more and the use of checks is unheard of (at least in Oslo)
34. Meals in restaurants are served in very small portions (appropriate and mostly delicious)
35. All 3 cities had robust, efficient commuter public transit at all levels.
36. OSLO and STO had GREAT!!!! Amazing!!!! bullet trains from the airport to the city center. CPH didn’t need a bullet b/c the airport was practically in the middle of the city.
37. HUGE appreciation of history
38. All 3 countries are royalists. They love their royalty.
39. On the trains there were plastic bags provided so that you can easily dispose of trash, but also as a community task take a bag with you if you see it is full.
40. On another note on plastic bags in Skane & DK there were plastic bags in the bathrooms available for fem hygiene.
41. Restaurants in museums were REALLY good! Expensive, but not that much more than similar quality. They also were almost always make an order, take a number and we’ll deliver it to you table, where the main dish was delivered, but the sides and salad were buffet style.
42. Chocolate milk in the executive lounge at the Hilton CPH. CHOCOLATE MILK! I’m sorry that is unheard of.
43. Dark chocolate hot chocolate. LOVE IT!!!! Milk + dark chocolate is a wonderfult thing.

UPDATE: 44. citizen’s acceptance of having government place controls on their lives, their economy, etc.

45. Deep connection to the outdoors, family and the combination there off.

What do you think?

One I want to add is not about Scandinavia, but a story I heard today. That we often see Asian tourists wearing surgical masks. *I* assumed that this was a person scared of getting sick from swine flu scare. What my friend told me was that it was probably someone who was sick who was probably preventing the spread of their contageon. It was a mind boggling moment.

So it seems, after the workshop I’m giving in Oslo tomorrow there is going to be a meetup of UXNet folks.

The event announcement is in Norwegian, so I’m assuming that I’m the celebrity and not the cuisine.

Link to the event. Please RSVP

Hi folks,

From Business to Buttons is over. It was a GREAT conference. I loved being with a collection of mostly senior level designers predominantly from Northern Europe (especially Sweden). I loved getting a chance to spend some time with amazing American speakers on what felt like a retreat instead of a conference.

There are 2 more videos of note I’d like to put up from the conference.

Erogonomi Design, Stockholm, Sweden

The folks at Ergonomi Design–1 of the largest, oldest and most prolific industrial and interaction design studios in Sweden–spoke about the convergence of industrial and interaction as an act of combinging 3 areas of eronomics. I won’t give away much more, but the content of this presentation was very interesting to me, from the point of view of frames by which to look at this collision.

Presentation

Scott Berkun, Seattle, WA, USA
Scott gave an exceptional closing talk on “Why Designers Fail” and what to do about it. He was a bit rushed, but pulled it off with humor and style. A great performance. in many ways it was the perfect 2nd book end of the conference that built off of the original message that Garr’s presentation so wonderfully started us off with.

Presentation

More
There are a few more videos on the site to look at as well–interviews, presentations, and surveys of the conference experience.

Appreciation
I want to thank all of the organizers and sponsors. You had a hard thing to do, pulling off this conference in a recession like this. I loved the attention to detail and the spirit that exuded from the volunteers (Students from Malmo University & Staff from InUse).

If invited, I would definitely come back again, and if i wasn’t a poor professor, I would try to come back even if uninvited. I think with some tweaking this could really be a great convergence conference.

I’m here speaking and running a workshop in Malmö, Sweden at the From Business to Buttons conference. It’s been a great time. I feel warmly welcomed by the design/UX community in Sweden. There have been some great talks (many available on video).

Garr Reynolds, Osaka Japan

The opening keynote was by Garr Reynolds, whom I now feel is a bussom buddy of mine. He gave a great presentation on giving presentations. But it turned out to be an even better presentation on the importance of simplicity.

As people who know me know, I hate talking about simple, but after a great conversation with Garr, we determined that simplicity is not the same as simplistic or simple and we definitely agreed that simplicity is very complex to achieve.

Here’s his presentation followed by an interview with him.

Presentation:

Interview

David Malouf, Savannah, GA, USA

I gave a new presentation on the importance of bring human connection to your designs. Then I did a follow up interview as well. Oh! it was quite daunting to speak after Garr Reynolds who is a Steve Jobs trained samurai of giving presentations.

The Presentation

The Interview

Matt Jones, London, England, UK
This was my first time seeing Matt Jones present. I have seen his presentations online before, but never in person. This one on Personal Informatics & the importance of visual design was excellently presented.

Presentation

Bill DeRouchey, Portland, Oregon, USA

Bill gave a new presentation for me. It is surprisingly my first time seeing Bill give any presentation (not counting our talk just a few days before at CIID). It was delivered quite well and the topic on the importance of voice in copy was quite excellent in relevance, timeliness, and delivery.

Presentation

So these are the videos I’m going to post for now.

Keep a look out for the videos from Ergonomie Design & Scott Berkum who are yet to come.

I’m excited when I look at work like that being done by these students. THIS is the work I want to be associated with. Practical and ground breaking and aesthetic. Visual, tactile and more. I’m sure other schools like CIID and Malmo are doing this type of work, but I want to take this moment to give kudos & congratulations to the work by these masters students in IxD. Congrats!!

Here’s the link to the site

For some reason I’m feeling pensive about the first part of this year. It is not quie half way over yet, but for me the entire year feels done. OH! I’m now in education. (I always avoid the use of the term academia, b/c that is not what I do. I teach for a living.)

My year started with a bang in Savannah. I was thrown in front of some of the most passionate group of designers I couldn’t have even hoped to be teaching. They were/are for the most part a brilliant bunch. They were energized, eager, critical, passionate, creative, and professional. The energy they gave me, I only hope I was able to give them back.

The year also started very awkward–new city, new job, new craft, new peers. I was so off-balance and in many ways part of my pensiveness is because I still feel pretty wobbly coming off the recent end of my spring quarter.

After just a month into this crazy year, I went off to Vancouver energized by students (did it show?) and ready to show them off, and show of some of my recent thinking about IxD pedogogy. It was fun to be at Interaction 09 | Vancouver but also hard.

IxDA is my baby. While it seems arrogant to say this out loud through 2003-2008 no single individual put more energy into the nurturing of IxDA than I did. So I feel justified in feeling a tad clingy about the organization and well somewhat annoyingly controlling. Thank G-d! the current president and I get to spend time on the beach chatting about stuff from time to time. But seriously, Interaction 09 was hard because it opitimized for me the growing rift in our discipline and possibly the soon to be future demise of our practice as anything valuably distinguishable.

The rift(s) that exist in our community seem to be those that are culturally trained in “The Valley” and those that are not. Now that culture has much more infuence than the geographic label might express. It is really about the analytical vs. the visceral sides of our communities. But it is also about those who see their task as firmly focused on a single medium and those who see their craft as being informed or nurtured within that medium, but estensible to a fairly wide range of problem areas and communication mediums.

I believe deeply in the discipline of interaction design. Robert Fabricant put it best that “behavior is our medium” and not “computing technology” but our practices are say so complex that no one can see the discipline from the practice any longer. I know I struggle in my semanicly aware mind my ability to maintain a separation between IxD as practice vs. IxD discipline, but I believe strongly whereas our practice needs to dissolve into our chosen mediums of practice, our discipline requires even more scrutiny, growth, and distinction than ever.

Yes, I truly believe that the form-giving practices truly own interaction design. Our role as mediary between the system and the “designer” is fading and over the next 5-10 years, I feel titles like IxD, UX, IA, etc. except for some proud specialists or educators is just going to fade. Interactive Design, Industrial/Product Design, Visual/Graphic Design, & Architecture all own too large of a piece of the design of behaviors already & historically and can easily learn how to augment their current practices with IxD.

My undergraduate students who minor in IxD are doing the right thing. They first and foremost engage in learning the craft of Industrial Design, and hen second the methods of medium independent design, or just plain problem solving. The great ones who take the minor seriously are best prepared to be the designers tha all organizationd need today: deep analytical thinking, problem solving and high stamina creativity across a bredth of design discplines–usually ID, GD and IxD.

Therefore, I am growingly believing that a graduate degre in interaction design that is “vocational” in its goal is missing the point. There really shouldn’t be “interaction designers”. there should just be designers who get interaction design. Graduate education then should be focused on exploring the limits, philosophy, ideals and aesthetis that is interaction design. I lean further and further away from programs like CMU and closer to programs like CIID and RCA. You should come to the masters degree already with the ability of holding down and promoting your way through your career. You should leave the masters program only after contributing to the dicourse of a great and grand discipline, and doing so with beautiful craft in at least one form-giving design discpline–e.g. ID, GD, Interactive/Software.

Well, that’s where I’m landing right now. I know many might not agree, but for my sense, this is the big enchilada.

I’m very excited about the month of June. It is a whole new experience for me. It is the beginning of my professorial career in terms of one special consideration. That is, June is my first of 3 months off in a row (+ 2 weeks in September). I tried hard to get a few paying speaking gigs and even do some consulting, but I’m new to this racquet and I need to try a bit harder. I did however manager to score a trip to Scandinavia that I was able to parlay into some paying and pro bono gigs and I have a payin gig here in Dixie after that.

In case I have fans who are interested in finding me, I thought I’d let you know everything I’m doing so if you are in that place you could decide to join me.

June 9 – Copenhagen, Denmark – Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design

I’ll be joined by Bill DeRouchey (@billder ||  http://historyofthebutton.com/) as we give dualing presentations to spark an even better conversation. I’ll be specifically speaking on the nature of interaction and if like other design disciplines if there are underlying materials that we manipulate as designers or not.

For more info go here. (Drinks & dinner will surely follow, so ping me to find me.)
Link for this event changed to better represent that both Bill & I will be presenting.

June 11 & 12 – Malmö, Sweden – From Business to Buttons conference

I’ll be participating as a speaker and a workshop leader. As a speaker I’ll be giving a talk entitled, “‘What’s goin’ on’ to ‘We’re not gonna take it.’” where I’ll continue where I left off with my Johnny Holland piece on the importance success criteria in design to connect to people’s humanity.

I’ll also be doing my Sketching for Interaction Design workshop @FBTB. I find this workshop to be a lot of fun for all involved. It’s like pictionary for designers.

For information about the conference and my talks you can simply go to http://businesstobuttons.com/ (Registration is still open).

Oh! the night before (June 10th) there is going to be an informal IxDA face-to-face meeting. Keep an eye out on Twitter for the 411.

June 16 – Oslo, Norway – Public workshop sponsored by BEKK

I’m very excited about this workshop. It is truly a evolutionary work where I get to combine the best shots of my previous workshops AND add a new bit that I’ve never done before. This is an invitation only event, though I hear if you go to this web page (in Norwegian) and beg they might let you in.

June 24 – Durham, NC – Sketching Interaction Design – Tri UPA

I’ll be doing yet another evoloved version of this important workshop for anyone who wants to understand what all this design stuff is about.

Register or get more information here.

With the currently running Design Challenge by Mozilla (Partnered with IxDA & JohnnyHolland) about Tabs I thought I’d share a core concept in doing design work. What are the latent design criteria not expressed in the request?

It is so important to understand this core component of design. It is an element that in my mind best defines how design differentiates itself from other creative endeavors. That is when listening to a request, the designer’s first goal is to ignore the direct meaning of the request and dissect its parts to understand the real problem(s) that need to be solved.

So the classic example stated in the design community is when asked to design a bridge, the designer goes back to design the best way to get from point A to point B. [I know this sentiment can be attributed to a single individual, but I can't find the reference.]

We must always remember that as designers, we don’t design for the manifest problems, but for the real problems. To put it another way, the client says they may want the text bigger, but what they are really saying is that they want the text more readable.

And bringing this back to the Mozilla Design Challenge: don’t re-design tabs, but rather figure out what tabs solves and make THAT better.