–Engage

I am looking for opportunities to work this summer. I have 16 weeks off where I’m available almost full time for adventures in design, mentoring, and teaching.

As a designer & mentor I’m most experienced doing work in the enterprise space within the areas of web as service, desktop applications, and embedded software. I have also done conceptual work for eco-system design across different market spaces.

The workshops I teach help individuals and teams around the following topics:
1) better more fundamental design processes
2) tips & tricks for rich internet application design
3) moving from web/software design to embedded software design
4) Design lifecycle: moving from research to design
5) Master class in IxD
6) custom classes as required by the needs of your organization

I will travel for short stints when necessary, especially for workshops, but otherwise work remotely.

“Call me!”

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::

I just had this idea. In education we have lots of opportunities for students to gain access to professional practice to prepare them for professional life: coops & internship abound.

What we don’t have are ways for faculty to stay engaged in practice that is sustainable, feasable & practical.

Sonny idea is to take advantage of the huge off time that many educators have & to pair them with industry opportunities during that time. Faculty cooperatives would be great, no?

Is anyone interested in beginning an experiment with this? I’m particularly interested in work being done in design for social change outside of sustainability efforts.

Thoughts?