Portable computing, including tablet PCs,  has been the hot topic since Apple’s unveiling of the iPad in January. While the iPad has gained a lot of press and generated conversation about its intended audience and potential use, other tablet devices have been overlooked. Microsoft’s Courier is one such device. Courier—the soon-to-be production version of the Codex, a rumored tablet device widely discussed in 2009—provides a tablet platform for the student, techie, and slide-show-loving grandparent alike.

Apple's iPad

So why should this matter when the iPad has made it clear they intend to be the everyman’s casual Internet device? In reading the commentary on the device there is much being said about who the device is not for. It is not for the techie. It is barely for the student. The device’s lacks the processing power or input devices for programming or graphics editing. No cameras or stylus limits the device’s use as a social and note-taking tool. The iPad is intended for the non-techie to surf the internet, read eBooks, and share basic media with friends and family.

This is where Courier steps in. Rumored to have built in camera(s) and stylus input, the device features two seven inch touchscreen monitors, making it the techie and student’s dream. Connected through a WiFi or possibly 3G network, the device can be used to coordinate chats multiple devices. The dual screen offers opportunities to have a personal and shared workspace during a chat, during which documents can be transferred from one screen to another for collaborative work. With its stylus, it’s possible to take notes with simple handwriting recognition and to track which user is performing what action on a screen.

The Courier is not the cure all, though. In their demo video, Microsoft leans too heavily on physical metaphors. Needing to flip over a picture to view the notes is a cumbersome and unnecessarily literal translation from the physical world. Tack on excessive animations and the device becomes more of a showpiece than a utility. This is, of course, a demo  to show the device’s potential—but, like Apple with the iPad, I think Microsoft is selling itself short on the device’s potential.

Imagine having a Courier or iPad next to the door in every room in your home. Connect it through the WiFi to the HVAC, lighting, and entertainment systems and you have an integrated smart home. Want to change the lighting or turn the heat on? Dont get up. Forgot to preheat the oven? Set the temperature from your living room without having to pause the YouTube video you’re watching.

As mobile devices become more powerful, a shift is occurring as manufacturers look at how they can apply this mobile technology in our everyday home-life. The iPad and Courier are just two devices that show the possibilities of a computer not limited to the desk or lap—a mobile device not constrained by our mental models of phones, PDAs, or portable devices.

Header image via gizmodo

Along with globalization/globalisation, we increasingly see folks insist on standards (or more often beat each other over the head with standards). But have we actually “standardized” what we mean when we talk about “standardization”, “rules”, and “best practice”?

Gosh, we can’t even agree how to spell “standardization”! The Daily Telegraph, the conservative London newspaper insists on “standardisation”. The Times of London, the Observer, and the Oxford English Dictionary use a “zed” as the Brits say.

So, let’s take a look at how these terms affect our work and our lives.

Defining the damned thing

At a recent business meeting, someone asked, “What are standards?” Almost immediately, some irritating iPhonista came up with this quote from the IEEE website:

“A standard is a published document that sets out specifications and procedures designed to ensure that a material, product, method, or service meets its purpose and consistently performs to its intended use.”

Pretty awful, if you ask me.

The discussion rapidly deteriorated as the historical and semantic implications of “specifications” and “norms” were pondered. Then someone asked the key question, “Why are standards important?”

And I had an epiphany: “A standard is any device that creates comfort through mutual understanding. Standards make you feel secure, safe. They give you direction and confidence when you’re faced with an unfamiliar situation.”

Eric’s comprehensive guide to standards, rules, and best practices

Standards are guidelines. They have no obligation to provide a best way of doing things, only an agreed-upon way of doing things (we’ve agreed to drive on the right in Denmark, on the left in the Botswana).

Rules come about because someone has abused a privilege and taken advantage of an undocumented situation (Speed limits are the result of this).

Best practices are simply good advice (Don’t tweet and drive). Their goal is to provide qualitative improvements. (But we’ll discuss this in a moment)

So, if standards aren’t necessarily improving quality, why bother with them? Well, consider this: when you get in a car, isn’t it nice that the opposing traffic stays on their side of the road? “Comfort through mutual understanding.” And that’s the essence of my definition.

Where do standards come from?

Get behind the wheel of an antique Ford and the chances are you’ll have problems. The Model T resembles nothing else I’ve ever driven (check out this YouTube instructional video). The 1916 Cadillac was the first car to provide basic controls and shift patterns we’d recognise today.

So what brought about standardization? The car rental industry back in the early 1920s. Can’t rent a car if folks can’t drive it, right? And who has time to teach them?

Why are shoe sizes standardized (at least within national boundaries)? To meet the needs of the mail-order industry.

Why do clocks run clockwise? Because that’s the way a sundial moves. So we draw on past experience to make new experiences easier to understand.

Standards reduce stress in unfamiliar situations

Personally, I like most standards. They guide social convention and help prevent you from making a total fool of yourself in polite company. For example, in Lithuania, napkins are kept on the table, not in your lap. In Croatia, the napkin is unfolded and placed in your lap. In Chile, paper napkins stay on the table; cloth napkins go in the lap. At McDonalds, napkins are optional no matter where you are.

But diversity of this kind is both fascinating and troublesome.

Why is airport security so different from airport to airport? “Take your shoes off” “Don’t take your shoes off.” Why are duty-free articles bought and sealed at an EU airport not allowed to pass through Switzerland? (“It’s the Americans. They make the rules.”) Is Indian “paneer” a liquid? Depends on who you ask at the Delhi airport. (Actually, it’s a kind of cheese.)

These “security concerns” are unnecessarily stressful events because of the arbitrary nature of the decisions made by front-line personnel. There is no “comfort” because we’re not experiencing standards, but merely a vague collection of rules.

Of course, once you get past check-in and security, the airports are pretty good about providing consistency. Gates are called “gates” (although they’re called “stands” if you’re a pilot). Gates are numbered with Latin numbers. Transit halls and baggage claim are generally easy to find.

So, like rental cars, we don’t need to learn how to use an airport each time we’re plunked down in one.

Not so with railway stations.

Now departing from Track 9 ¾

Don’t count on train stations to agree on much when it comes to wayfinding. For most people, the only trains they ever see take them from the airport to the center of town. But even in homogeneous Scandinavia, there’s no agreement on what the main station is called:

Oslo S (Oslo Sentralstasjon)
Stockholm C (Stockholms Centralstation)
København H (Københavns Hovedbanegården)

Even if you can navigate the Scandinavian capitols, this won’t help you anywhere else. Heaven forbid you end up in Geneva, where the central station is called “Cornavin”. London has no central station so you need to decide if Waterloo, Paddington, or Liverpool Street will bring you closest to your destination. Even Glenn Miller’s famous “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” left from New York’s Pennsylvania Station, not Grand Central.

No mention of "tracks" at the Zürich Hauptbahnhof

Standardization is a means to an end, nothing more

The rather brilliant Jared Spool and the equally brilliant Don Norman have explained that simplicity in itself should not be a goal. All of this ease-of-use crap we talk about doesn’t always hold water. Jared rightly explains that our job as user-experience designers is to keep the distance between what we need to know in order to accomplish our task, and what we already know as short as possible. I urge you to travel thousands of miles to see Jared explain this simple concept. It’s worth every cent.

Standardization helps shorten this “need-to-know”-to-“know” process. And that’s why standardization plays such an important part in our work.

The “best practice” trap

I said earlier that “best practices” represent good advice that helps bring about qualitative improvements. But there’s a key caveat: Just as you can reduce things to the lowest common denominator, best practice merely brings things up to the highest common denominator. Best practice defines the very box we want to think outside of!

My innovation lifecycle model

Best practice is the outcome following a period of innovation. Unlike invention, innovation is always planned and always solves a problem. And new periods of innovation build on the best practices that resulted from an earlier cycle.

Our challenge

How can we prevent standards from deteriorating into silly sets of rules? How can we prevent best practice from inspiring pseudo-standards that don’t actually provide comfort through mutual understanding? How can we use all of these tools to facilitate change and growth across national and cultural borders?

The discussion starts right here.

In last month’s Johnny Holland column, I made the radical recommendation that UX professionals stop making recommendations to their clients. Nick Gould, CEO of Catalyst Group, commented that this wouldn’t work for him:

My clients would fire me if I didn’t come to them with ideas / recommendations for how to address problems identified in research. But we discuss the ideas and prioritize approaches together. We have a shared stake in the outcome. Maybe we’re already doing what you’re suggesting, but I don’t really see it as eschewing recommendations completely.

Chris Fahey, who runs the UX consultancy Behavior Design, thought we were talking about the wrong approach to the process:

This is why I think it’s silly that design research and design are ever done by different people. Or that strategy and implementation are done by different people.

This is why I run a design company – we don’t make recommendations, we make plans and execute them.

The Spectrum

We could plot these strategies on a spectrum.

On the one side is Chris’s approach of designing all the way to execution, delivering a detailed specification to the tech team, solving every design detail.

On the other side is my approach of letting the clients build and maintain the entire thing on their own, only providing coaching and guidance so they do it better. Nick seems to be right in the middle, providing recommendations to help them build it out. (Nick tells me some of Catalyst Group’s projects go all the way to execution—however, most go up to research deliverables.)

The Implementation Spectrum

This spectrum doesn’t only apply to UX consultancies, like Catalyst and Behavior. If you’re a UX professional working with an internal or external client, helping them create a better design, you’ll find yourself somewhere on this spectrum. Either you design the entire thing, teach the team to do it themselves, or are somewhere in the middle.

Should We Give Clients What They Ask For?

Clients, left to their own devices, will ask for all sorts of things. Some clients want the Behavior approach—to have the UX professional provide everything they need to implement the design—solving all the issues and providing exact instructions. These aren’t recommendations-—they are marching orders. This approach works best when the design, once built, will likely not change and the client shows no interest in developing their own design skillset.
For example, Behavior designed the award-winning site supporting HBO’s project for the TV series The Alzheimer’s Project. Once deployed and the final touches applied, this site probably won’t change much. Even if it does, it’ll be a discrete project that Behavior (or someone else) can rework, soup to nuts.

In contrast to Behavior Design’s approach, at UIE we assume the client team will make all the important decisions. We help them by giving them a process that informs their decisions. We look at the skills the team has and assess where they need help. Then we work closely with them on their techniques and process, giving them a way to tackle both their current and future projects.

Over at Catalyst Group, Nick’s team works with the client’s team while conducting their research. However, as Nick said, his clients ask for recommendations, so he gives them. The client is happy to get a great set of recommendations (and I’m sure that Nick’s group produces some of the best out there), so what’s the harm? He’s doing what they want.

Obligatory Ancient Philosophy Reference

I’m sure you’ve heard some variant of this wise ancient philosophy:

If you give a child a Nintendo, he’ll play all day long.
If you teach him to build his own Nintendo, he’ll become a millionaire, date hot chicks, and eventually start a foundation solving the world’s problems.

Is giving in to the clients’ desire to receive a list of solid recommendations the best for the clients?

What Happens When You’re Gone?

When Chris and the Behavior team are done with the HBO site, they move on. The HBO team doesn’t need to change the site, so they’ll move on to other projects too. The site keeps running as long as the servers are plugged in. Everyone is happy.

When we finish our engagement with our clients, they’ve learned how to do the work themselves. They can continue researching and enhancing their designs, using the techniques and tricks we’ve taught them. We’ve done our job and they’re happy continuing on their own.

When Nick and the Catalyst team have delivered their recommendations, their client goes off and makes changes. The question I have, however, is this: are they left in a situation where the only way they can make any further changes and enhancements is to call Nick’s team back?

Unfortunately, many projects aren’t like Chris’s HBO site. They need to evolve as the business, the technology, and the customers mature. They need new features, new enhancements, and new ways of thinking about the problems they’re solving.

Are we leaving our clients with the best possible experience? Are we considering that when we first pitch the project and its deliverables?

Preachy Professional Responsibility Section

Dumping a Jenga tower of recommendations in the client’s lap only delivers a short-term solution. It doesn’t give the client the tools to survive in the world for the long-term.

Yes, they asked for it. But clients ask for lots of things we tell them we won’t give them, like that really big fluorescent green blinking tagline. Just because they ask for it doesn’t mean we should give it to them.

This is where I get preachy:

In any new project, one of the first things we, as responsible professionals, need to consider is what will happen after we leave. Are we preparing our clients for their long-term best interest? Or, are we only shooting for the short-term deliverable, figuring if they wanted something more, they would’ve asked for it?

Once Again, Do We Need To Make Recommendations?

If we’re taking the entire thing through to execution, behavior-style, we don’t have to make recommendations.

If we’re helping the team learn how to make good decisions themselves, we still don’t have to make recommendations.

The need for recommendations may just be a placebo, to help a client think they are getting one thing when we are really doing something else. Or maybe recommendations are just a way for us to sell more project work.

What this comes down to is a philosophical approach to our work in general. Are we looking at the short term, or do we want to take a long-term view?

Where do you sit on the spectrum?

Style guides are a great way to ensure user experience consistency when developing an application and a way to communicate user experience standards across an organization. They can be application specific, platform specific, and may encompass enterprise-wide standards. A style guide can help make the development of user interfaces more efficient and help ensure good user interface design practices.

Types of Style Guides

Style guides for applications usually contain specific instructions on how to design and develop an application’s UI. In some instances, code snippets may also be provided to simplify development of the application.

Example of an application style guide specifying a web page template grid

Enterprise-wide style guides may include standards specific to an organization. These style guides may overlap with company branding style guides that are often defined by marketing departments. They can outline a variety of company-wide items such as standard colors, typography, logos and language.

Example of branding color definitions found in a corporate style guide

Platform specific guidelines are often tailored to a specific platform, such as desktop, web, or mobile. These style guides often give particular guidance on how to design for that platform, such as control and content guidelines.

Example of a link control definitions in a website style guide

The style guide you choose to create can be any combination of these three types. It’s up to you to figure out what makes the most sense for you.

Style Guides Are Not UI Specifications

Style guides are different from user interface specifications:

• A specification document details the functionality of a UI design for developers building an application. It is usually more descriptive and is often accompanied by wireframes that act as blueprints for the design. In contrast, a style guide is often a general outline of the elements of a UI design.
• Style guides have a longer shelf-life than specifications documents that are often tied to a project life-cycle. When an application is first created, some elements of the initial specification document might turn into the application style guide for long-term reference.
• Elements of a style guide may be referred to from a specification. For example, the functionality of a web application enhancement would be captured in a specifications document; but the operation of standard UI controls found throughout the website would be outlined in the website style guide and referred to by the specifications document.

How to be Successful

Over the years, I have had a chance to create a variety of style guides. The format and purpose of these style guides were variable and were suited to the task at hand: such as details of the grid layout, colors and typography used in a website and a general guidebook providing guidance on the use of website user interface controls and how to write web-based content. From these experiences, I’ve learned a lot about what makes a style guide a success and I’d like to share some of these tips with you.

1. Keep the audience in mind

Style guides can be written for numerous audiences (e.g. other user experience practitioners, developers, graphic designers, business analysts, etc.) and the content should be structured to match the audience. Graphic designers would benefit from knowing the colors used in a website elements and programmers may desire knowing the code used to create a control.

2. Plan for success

When planning a style guide, seriously consider what would make your style guide successful in your organization. Would it be ensuring your company understands how to better design usable applications? Or would it be ensuring the large-scale website you are creating has a consistent user experience? Or would it be something else?

3. Keep it alive

Documents produced in traditional document formats can become stale and quickly become outdated. Successful style guides are produced in a manner that supports easy maintenance and supports a living document.

4. Define a review process

Create a process that supports modification and review of the style guide to actively ensure style guide maintenance and buy-in. You may want to have a person or group of people responsible for periodically updating a style guide.

5. Think of the platform differences

Style guides can be platform specific or neutral. Design guidelines can be different depending on the platform (i.e. Windows vs. Mac, iPhone vs. Blackberry). Consider how you want to support communicating any platform differences when creating your style guide.

6. Socialize the document in your organization

The use of your style guide should be communicated throughout all levels of your organization to ensure everyone knows the existence of the guide, understands how to use the guide, and actively works to use and maintain the guide. The more people about your style guide, the more successful you and your style guide will be.

7. Clearly define mandatory and flexible standards

User interface design is part art and part science and user interface paradigms shift quickly. Ensure that your style guides support new platforms and creative ideas by specifying what standards are mandatory and what are flexible. For example, you may want to ensure certain usability rules are strictly adhered to throughout your applications (i.e. “Sans serif fonts must be used for text that will be read on a screen”), but be more flexible in other areas (i.e. “Radio buttons should be used when a user is asked to select one item from a list of items.”)

8. Make the style guide as scannable and searchable as possible

Style guides can be very dense and contain a lot of detailed information. Search and browsing capabilities will make it easier for people to find what they are looking for in your style guide. In addition, use as many visual examples as possible to support quick scanning of style guide elements.

9. Provide real world examples

Successful styles guides often show one or more examples from real applications for illustration. If you are writing a style guide for a specific application, use examples from that application to demonstrate your point. If you are writing a style guide for a large organization with many applications, ensure that your examples encompass all of the applications you are describing.

I hope you find these tips helpful when you are creating your own style guides. Do you have any additional tips you would like to share?

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Header image by nathanborror / /CC by 2.0

Great interaction design is a delicious soup. You boil a variety of different ingredients and spices in the right proportion,  and voila – pure bliss! Unlike other branches of design, however,  it’s extremely hard to write a recipe for interaction design. By its very nature, the interaction design process needs to be fluid and dynamic.

Interaction design tingles the complete experience over time. It tastes most satisfying in conditions when multifaceted flavors and ingredients are brought together. The bigger the challenges are —the more diverse and mixed the ingredients need to be. This beautiful paradox sits at the heart of the interaction design menu, very differently from other design cuisines.

During my time as a Master’s degree student in Interaction Design at Umeå (Sweden), I often found our group repeatedly doing the following:

• Obsessing with finding the ‘perfect’ solution to a problem.
• Frequently questioning the value of having mixed, diverse groups of professionals studying Interaction Design together. Were frustrating debates stemming from disparate backgrounds and differences of opinion really the most efficient way to designing interactions?

I haven’t found ’the perfect solution’ yet, but I do believe the process is a lot more interesting. Having experienced the inherent value of a multifaceted approach professionally, I believe that mastery in the interaction design process lies in perfecting those moments when the room is packed with people who won’t share your views and probably don’t have your skills.

Mastering the science of ‘We, not I’.

The quest for perfection and the myth of genius are timeless aspirations that meet with sporadic and rare success. Genius chefs (like genius designers) never seem to be able to cook the same dish twice.  Some modern authors, such as Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers: The Story of Success, debunk the notion of genius altogether. According to Gladwell, even geniuses like Mozart, The Beatles and Bill Gates had more than 10,000 hours of practice at doing what they did—iteratively—constantly improving their craft while focused on process. I believe that a mastery of interaction design process does not rest in divine inspiration and confined sketching (read: genius!). The key probably rests in learning to churn together – a pool of motley professions, backgrounds, skills and interests. Interaction design is a team-sport at its most intense, meaningful climax, and we need to change the way we train for this sport. We need to rearrange our kitchen in order to cook this soup – and we need to do it often, depending on what we’re cooking.

The big hurdle – we’re conditioned to think and act as individuals, not as groups. Could this be the un-learning needed in order to be able to synthesize truly well-rounded experiences?

As a former architect, the process of design was inevitably intensely personal. My colleagues in architecture were all inspired by the singular genius of Corbusier, van der Rohe and Gehry. Moments of solitary and inspired sketching were thought to be the catalysts for the ‘eureka’ moment. Graphic and product design Masters of that era worked in much the same way. Processes in interaction design, on the other hand, seemed to work in quite stark opposites. After migrating to interaction design, students from very different backgrounds were thrown amidst multifaceted peer groups—something many struggled to cope with. A group of motley backgrounds, each with their own stubborn opinions, conflicting ideas, dissimilar skills oft resulted in frustrated groups and heated differences of opinion during projects. Many were left questioning the value and efficiency of such a process. Product and transportation design classmates seldom faced this problem. They were still relatively blissful in the peaceful confines of their work-spaces, diligently pursuing that perfect sketch.

Wouldn’t too many cooks in the interaction design kitchen spoil the broth?

Craters and pinholes in the design of experiences

Our worlds of experience are riddled with commonplace examples of things that we buy and use, only to discover how miserably they perform and disappoint. Products alone seldom bring us delight by existing in isolation—we want them to link well with all other touch-points that a service/experience provide - offer us the complete experience! This is especially true of experiences that marry the behavior of people with physical and digital worlds a.k.a interaction design. In recent times, even architects and urban planners have acknowledged a need to collaborate with policy makers and service providers to create harmonious experiences at architectural, interior and urban scales.

While designing interactive experiences for tomorrow, we are all keen to create usable and desirable experiences that cause viral social innovation. Once perfect solutions are understood as mere aspiration, our goals as designers become the discovery and reiteration of newer methods that reduce ‘craters into pinholes’. I use ‘craters and pinholes’ as metaphors for the relative measure of how well knit the fabric of a designed experience can or should be. My hunch is that craters get reduced to pinholes when you’re working closely and constantly within diverse, multi-faceted teams. By encouraging creative friction – rather than avoiding it, focus is made to shift alternately between the bigger picture and the smallest details.

The interaction design community today is entrusted with creating seamless experiences that focus not just on a product or user interface, but the entire system and its surroundings. This need for holistic experience is rapidly shifting the way teams are being built. A closer look at the diverse compositions of teams at the Nokias, Microsofts and even smaller global design teams across the world and  would confirm this shift in paradigm. No one product, digital experience or pretty user-interface seems to satisfy. We seem to need and delight in experiences that are complete, well-rounded.

A holistic approach to the design of experiences

A holistic approach to design is definitely not alien to us. It involves a simultaneous attention to the bigger picture and the smallest details. Any successful user experience we use today would invariably embrace this practice. Throughout history, master-builders were often architects, painters and craftsmen alike. Post 1950’s, architects and designers like Charles Eames, Mies van der Rohe and Alvar Alto designed cities and chairs with the same design philosophy infused in both. Now more than ever in increasingly complex, transient times, the need for holistic experiences is vital.

Interaction designers sculpt time and data as critical materials (to quote Matt Jones), revolving primarily around understanding the needs of users/cohabitants, technology and business. To approach such design as a ‘whole’ – we need to understand the varying concepts of time and data through the perspectives of cohabitants, technology and business interests alike. We need to become sensitive to the different tastes involved, by bringing the right ‘spices’ closer into our kitchen. A holistic solution begins when we acknowledge that all parts of the triangle have something equally valuable to add to the process. We must constantly re-think our process to become melting pots of ideas, perspectives and skills that not only drill deep, but also wide.

We must constantly re-think our process to become melting pots of ideas, perspectives and skills that not only drill deep, but also wide.

Perfecting the craft of thinking and doing as a whole.

The team I now work with (at Ergonomidesign) has solved problems through design for over 40 years in a vast number of areas. Having solved design problems of various shapes, sizes and complexity, recent clients have frequently entrusted us with transcending realms of problem solving and instead design ‘cultural innovation’. “Think about the bigger picture” is a common task that comes our way. We are increasingly thinking about systems, experiences and objects that might co-habit our World tomorrow.

As the profession of interaction has grown and evolved, so too have our own methods. Our recent projects involved the design of holistic experiences mostly focused around medical systems. However, the lessons learnt from them have been beneficial to us in all our projects. For the projects being discussed our process relied heavily on the Agile method, which necessitates iteration and constant ’design by doing’. We often found ourselves playing a game of calculated ‘musical chairs’ when it came to design discussions. Our team comprised design—strategists, product and interaction designers, cognitive scientists, communications, medical experts, programmers and a host of other professionals—an approach that proved highly fruitful in ensuring the craters were reduced to pinholes.

Here are some experiences that I’d like to share:

• Remove hierarchy, acknowledge specialization – Building multi-faceted, diverse teams bringing different skills and perspective to a project, inevitably led to more comprehensive, well-rounded solutions. This is especially valid when working on service-design or complex systems. While working on design of ‘the bigger picture’ for our medical portfolio, our team ensured that we had enough representation from cohabitants (users), designers, medical experts, technical experts etc. The constant participation of these interest groups was maintained throughout the design process—for creative input and feedback. This caused several disagreements and debates – but the outcome would always nudge us closer to the goal of holistic design. This way we methodically reduced metaphorical gaps and craters.
• Zoom in and out between the bigger picture and the smallest details- Visualize, visualize, visualize! Don’t just talk about an idea—build, test and iterate them! Once we had a motley group of professionals working together, we combined our knowledge and skill to iterate and evolve our concepts. While developing a recent natural user interface (NUI), ideation began with 1:1 scale paper prototypes on A1 sketching blocks. We used transparent papers for UI-components. Once things made sense to everyone, our UX and programming team coded blocks out so that we could test it for real. Tests were shown to specialists within the team for feedback. Our final solution was a hi-fidelity prototype meant for commercial use as well as detailed, well-rounded scenario that showed our clients the bigger picture they so desperately craved. Working with the Agile method made iteration inevitable even when the end goal was not clear (something which is common during the design process, right?) The method also ensured that we were constantly made to zoom into details of a system’s behavior.
• Alternate between individual and collective ideation sessions; create transparent channels for cross-referencing and feedback - During the project, plan enough short sessions of iteration, constantly bringing in other eyes to review and discuss parts of the idea. As a interaction designer, it is almost futile and counter-productive to spend days alone and finally showing it to someone (we tend to do this as designers sometimes).
• Bring in the perspective of inclusive design thinking (critical users) to reduce massive craters – True to our roots as Scandinavian design group, we swear by a participatory, inclusive design approach. Design groups must plan meticulously to include the creative and critical involvement of user groups throughout the process. Even though the term user research and user-tests are now commonplace, it takes great skill for interaction designers to know how and when to collaborate with users. It takes even more insight for a design manager to facilitate their ideas and feedback into the design process.

Open-source culture (among other socio-technical developments) has given the World a successful honest, democratic model where the role of the individual is invariably participatory. Accountability and transparency are the foundations in open-source systems. It is inevitable that while designing for such a World, the essence of open-source is imbibed in the design process. The multifaceted, holistic roller-coaster ride to Interaction Design is definitely an intense challenge, often catching the most experienced professionals off-guard. It requires great planning, understanding and flexibility. Like collaborative efforts in theatre and the performance arts, it involves a close feeling of synergy with those involved. It requires the individual to shed ego and become flexible role-players in diverse, dynamic groups.

In conclusion, while the perfect outcome and solution must always be an aspiration—it is a mastery of this holistic approach to interaction design that helps create the well-woven fabric of an experience. Despite initial frustration, the process inevitably enriches everyone and leads to a superior design and a more enjoyable design process.

As always a pumped, but a bit more tired from previous nights sponsored festivities, the audience kicked of the last day of the conference. After the opening keynote the winner of the student competition was announced and everybody got a chance to know a little more about the results from that.

Jeffery Blais – Designing for Mobile Experiences

One of the prediction for the coming decade was the importance of mobile technology over the next 10 years. Jeffery Blais from Sapient gave us a glimpse exactly why mobile experience will be so predominant. Mobile is for people that are constantly on the go, personal, naturally social, and used frequently. Presently, there are 4 billion people in the world that have some type of mobile subscription, and it’s projected that in 5 years, all cellphones in the United States will be a smartphone of some kind.

As designers, we have certain challenges we will face with the rise of mobile. For example, there will be a massive amount of devices available, each with their own nuances and methods of interactions – an interface design that works perfectly for one could completely fail for another.

Luckily, there are some strategies that can be adopted to deal with these challenges:

• Understanding the business goals behind the mobile channel of your product.
• Who is the audience that you are targeting?
• What kind of opportunities does this mobile channel provide?
• What does the road-map of your mobile interactions look like?

The keynote closed with tips on how to design for mobile experiences. The first step is to gain an understanding of the UI constraints: are you dealing with a full touch based screen or a tactile keyboard with a trackball? Understanding this allows you to know what the most optimum interactions are needed. In order to flush out these interactions, sketching is the best tool. An important part of this sketching activity is to detail the various states that a mobile application can take. It also lets you get down to the interactions that truly matter, and keeps the mobile experience as simple as possible.

Cindy Chastain – Thinking Like a Storyteller

Cindy Chastain's use of the classic dramaturgic model to map a use flow in the same manner

The importance of storytelling has been a recent topic of debate within the interaction design community. This was highlighted by a series of tweets that Cindy Chastain showcased at the very start of her talk. Some argued that they didn’t feel storytelling should get the level of importance as was being implied, while others argued that storytelling is pivotal to the process of interaction design. With her presentation she hoped to paint a better picture of storytelling’s role in design, and it would be safe to say she knocked it out of the park.

Perhaps the most profound nugget of knowledge that Cindy shared with the crowd was the fact that no matter what, when people use something they describe that use as a self-narrative. Everything from how it was used, to how it made them feel by using it. It’s how they convince their friends and family to either purchase a product, or avoid it. So, even if we don’t see the importance of storytelling from the perspective of our work, it’s very much there when our designs make it out into the wild.

Cindy pointed out that the best form of storytelling which we can learn from is drama. Specifically, there are six qualitative elements of drama which can be incorporated into our design process and thinking.

• Plot (events)
• Character (agents)
• Thought (ideas/themes)
• Diction (language)
• Song (pattern)
• Spectacle (The visual)

In closing, we were left with a practical exercise which ties to a design activity we already do: taking the natural flow of classic dramaturgic model, and mapping that to the flows we generate for how people will interact with our designs. This allows for us to map certain steps, people, or systems to one of the six qualitative elements listed above.

Gretchen Andersson – The Importance of Facial Features

Gretchen Andersson

The intention of Gretchen’s talk might not come through at once to the uninitiated. It connects a lot to what Chris Fahey said in his talk: “If we don’t humanize our products, our products will mechanize us.”.
Gretchen’s talk was more of a suggestion on how to hands-on work with how to convey the inner message of what we are working on.
Gretchen says we need take our heads out of the information architecture, wire framing, boxes and arrows work now and then and pay more attention to what it is we want to communicate to our users on a more emotional level. Her suggestion is to do that by using what she has chosen to name facial features. Gretchen referred to something that Jared Spool has said, that we are risking “if we don’t watch ourselves we risk ending up becoming perceived as a very boring crowd”. Gretchen referred to her recent switch to an employer that has a tradition to work more with product design, an area where these kind of emotional features are much more apparent in the design process.

She gave us long list of examples of static, physical products with obvious facial features among other from a recent commercials and then continued on to compare/discuss this to products with more interactive/experience over time related aspects.

She suggested we start by dissecting existing products with this in mind and then use that knowledge to apply it to our own products.

Kel Smith – The Use of Virtual Worlds Among People with Disabilities

Kel did a talk on what is referred to as inclusive design. In his introduction he talked about the term digital natives vs digital immigrants. In relation to this Kel suggested introducing the term digital outcasts, the people that are not considered in a design.

Several of Kel’s examples come from the online virtual world Second Life. He showed how people with all sorts of disabilities use various adaptations of it. Some of these were a digital guide dog for blind that leads you around and reads out tags to the user; a group of people in the Boston area with cerebral paresis that have experienced great personal development by sharing a Second Life avatar; and the Virtual Ability Island, a place on Second Life specifically adapted to people with disabilities.

He went on to show examples of cognitive computing where people control user interfaces and devices only through the power of the mind. Here is one example of a person controlling a robotic hand with the mind.

Some of the psychological aspects Kel talked about were how a virtual worlds adds a buffer of anonymity that facilitates connecting with other people easier or how fantasies can work as a distraction for pain management.

Kel gave a couple of pointers on what to think about when working with inclusive design, the most important being not to offend by for example using condescending wording and that there is a important difference between acting understanding and empathic rather that patronizing. Another source of information on the subject is Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 which is described in the POUR (Perceivable, Operable, Understandable and Reliable) framework.

Dan Hill – New Soft City, Closing Keynote

Dan Hill

Dan Hill gave us an image of what the future looks like, and the role designers play in it. The work he does today is dealing with the design of cities, from a bus stop to an entire metropolis. By using projects that his firm is working on today, both those that are currently being worked on and those that are purely conceptual at this point. Some concepts that have come out of his work tie directly to how things are designed and how they interact with the people around them:

• Sustainable Urbanism – Taking that which in our world that is invisible, and make it visible. Projecting real time data on the fabric of the city.
• Responsive Urbanism – Public libraries around the world offer the use of WiFi internet connection for free. People are using these spaces in order to do simple browsing to their full time jobs.
• Interactive Installation – Pieces of a building or structure that can be packed and unpacked like a playpen in order to be constructed.
• Strategic Prototyping - Create artifacts from the future to show clients and stakeholders a vision of what things will look like.
• Responsive Architecture - Cover a building with material that is capable of providing feedback in real time: Display the city’s activity as it happens.
• Landscaping Information – What is the ‘cognitive load’ of the street? When does urban data become too much?
• Urban Sensing – Is it possible to monitor mobile usage in real time? How does this affect people’s behavior if that information is displayed to the public?

Strategic Prototyping

The design of a city isn’t something that happens overnight. When his team is commissioned to design a subway system, they have to consider the fact the overall life span of that subway system is 50-100 years. Some things are considered in the design knowing that the technology may not be ready yet, but maybe in 20-30 years it will be. These designs are nothing but concepts, yet they still fit into the overall design of the system being created. Dan mentioned how in one of the previous keynotes we don’t really know what a sustainable future looks like. He has a pretty good idea though, and he sees it every day in the work that he does.

Conference Committee – Closing Remarks

All the people from both IxDA and SCAD thanked all the sponsors and participants for creating yet another successful event. As announced earlier, next year’s conference Interaction11 is going to be held in Boulder, Colorado.

The vibe at the end of this conference was positive, uplifting, and inspirational. As people walked out of the theater many goodbyes were shared, hands were shook, and hugs were shared. It’s been said that our community is one of the best there is, and it’s conferences like this that makes us proud to be a part of it.

After a night of some great parties, and even better conversation, the second day of Interaction 10 began with a preview of the new IxDA.org website redesign. The team doing the redesign covered all the great new features that are coming, and went into detail on how local groups will be able to leverage the new site for their own networks and events. The excitement from yesterday was easily carried over, and people were pumped to see what the presenters had in store for us today.

Opening keynote: Ezio Manzini – Design for social innovation and sustainability

Ezio Manzini

Today’s opening keynote, given by Ezio Manzini, built on a lot of the topics covered in yesterday’s opening keynote. The topic revolved again around the subject of sustainable design, and its role in society. Ezio started off with the message that interaction designers are some of the best people to talk to regarding this as we are young both as a profession and as designers.

Over the course of the presentation, he touched on the various signals signifying the rise of a new economy. The economy of the future isn’t some utopian idea, but rather something that exists today within the framework of the old economy. The focus of the new economy will no longer be around particular products, but rather services and interactions. And most of these interactions will be totally new to us. The signals that are directing us towards this world changing economy were summed up using real world examples that are happening right now:

• Individuals and communities are inventing new ways of living. The emphasis of this point surrounded the agriculture industry and the way economics of farming are changing. People are starting to get their produce more from farm shares and farmer markets rather than big produce stores. This act of getting back to the providers of nutritional substance allows people to become more connected with the people that provide these services, but also to their local communities.
• Digital platforms are becoming catalyzers of social change. Being better connected with those around you creating an aggregation of the social action. Based on shared values and beliefs, they are able to act on these things both within their local communities and on a larger scale.
• A new scenario is emerging. Though we may not know what a sustainable society looks like, we at least have an idea. This idea is rooted in the simple concepts of Small, Local, Open, and Connected. These concepts can be mashed up in a variety of ways to think of new ways to accomplish old tasks, and allows us to create a better framework for this new economy that is being created.

In order to ensure that the new economy works in the long run, the services and interactive products produced to fuel the economy need to satisfy people’s needs and enhance their capabilities. These new services and products also need to have a goal of enabling systems (similar to the message of engagement from yesterday’s keynote). This enabling platform needs to be accessible for normal people, effective, and most importantly create a sense of trust. In the end, there is the potential for great beauty in this enabling platform.

Shelly Evenson – Service As Design

The topic of service design has come up several times already at the conference, both in the back channels and in other presentations. Shelly’s talk was interesting as it provided a great visualization of what true Service Design is, backed up by some the work her past students have done. One of the first great points she makes is about the overall context of objects today. It used it be, 15 years ago, that to order a special pair of shoes you would have to do it via a stores product catalog. Once ordered, those shoes could take up to six weeks to arrive. Today, however, it can take a mere 24 hours from when the order was placed to when the shoes arrive at you door step. Because of this increase in turn around, peoples expectations are higher today. They are looking for more faster, and it can lead to the inability to cope very quickly with all the information we are bombarded with.

This setting of the context leads directly into why service design is so important. Service Design facilitates a multifaceted and co-produced experience, with many touch points and variety of dependencies. These touch-points included People, Product, Place, Process, and Performance, and when they all come together you have something you can call a Service. People interact with each of these touch points, and it’s the path that they take which in the end fosters some kind of experience.

Today, we are seeing more and more of a mash up of social and service. People are able to tweet about a particular service, which opens them up to being directly contacted by someone representing the company behind the service. When performing Service Design in the modern, connected, world, you are creating affordances in which for people to engage in the overall conversation. The themes that make up these affordances are People, Time, Place, Usability, Visualization, and finding and organizing. The resources we design to invoke experiences must respect these affordances, and capitalize on them in new and exciting ways.

Timo Arnall – Designing for the Web in the World

Timos itterative model

Timo is a designer leading and collaborating on international projects and research on mobile technology and media out of Oslo, Norway. Timo, being a very skilled photographer and film maker, gave a very visually pleasing presentation with lots of moving video and beautiful layered graphics. In his talk, he showed us the results and findings from his work where he and his team has explored what we do with the internet “beyond the glowing screen of computers” . He also gave us a set of basic findings in his research that can be used as a tool for successfully design these kind of products.

The talk covered a mix of examples from other already existing products and examples of projects where his team had experimented with how Near Field Communication (NFC) devices such as RFID (40 billion around the globe) can be integrated in to products. He also touched briefly on the ethical issues around the use of NFC. Some of these examples of the existing were mobile tracking applications like Nokia Sports tracker and Nike Plus. The projects made by Timo and his team are great examples of how they have experimented with NFC to create new interactions and very pleasantly looking objects with a digital interface in them. Again also beautiful examples of video and product production and several of the projects he showed you can see for yourself at Timo’s Vimeo Channel.

To finish off, Timo listed three central aspects to both evaluate how successful existing NFC objects are, and as a basis for criteria when designing new objects that can also be used as an iterative cycle.

1. Immediate tangible experience – Don’t wait with giving feedback
2. Short term connecting and sharing – Satisfaction through sharing/comparing of results
3. Long term service, data & visualization – Well working online services to mediate social space

Read more of Timo’s research at http://nearfield.org and http://aho.no

Ben Fullerton – Designing for Solitude

Not only was this session standing room only, but people took up seats on the floor wherever they could. Ben delivered one of the most interesting talks of the day, dealing not with any particular practice or process but rather a state of mind. He starts off by stating that we all have the assumption that being connected is a good thing, but that there is an alternative state that also needs attention: solitude.

In order to show the importance of solitude from a historical point of view, he discussed how Jesus, Buddha, and Muhammad all take their own solitary journey in order to reach a certain level of spirituality. Another example was an author who spent 10 years holed up in a library, completely alone, in order to write his masterpiece: it turns out that many of the great creatives all used some form of isolation in order to do some of their best work.

There’s too much stuff. We live in a stuff-a-lanche – Charlie Broker

In the past, the devices we used in our everyday life only had a single mode to them. Products of the present are becoming more and more multi modal, providing more unique types of interaction all at the same time. To combat this certain products are going back to this single mode of interaction, including a music/phone device he helped design. Rather than allow for you to access either function at the same time, there was a define toggle that turned one aspect of the device off in order to perform the other. You could either listen to music, or you could send and receive phone calls, but never at the same time. This idea can also be found in the “Quiet Cars” found on Amtrak trains. If you decide to sit in this area of the train, you are not allowed to disturb the others around you: no loud music, no friendly banter, not even excessive coughing or sneezing is allowed. All of this is in place to ensure that passengers have a place in which they can get away from everything. Allowing yourself to get away from everything, or disconnect, is Ben’s big call to action. There is nothing wrong with BEING connected, just allow yourself the freedom to disconnect too.

Kevin Cheng – Augmented reality: Is it real? Should we care?

Google search statistics for Augmented Reality

Kevin, entertaining as always, gave us a very thorough rundown on the current market of existing augmented reality applications out there. He even managed to have a live demo of a couple of them for iPhone. It was a mix of both entertaining variants and more or less useful ones.

AR is a term to describe the real-time merging of various technologies with the real world to create a mixed, augmented reality. Going on at looking at the history of augmented reality we have seen examples of this from the world of movies for over 20 years but it is not until with the computing power of mobile phones that we start to see a boom in the development of these types of applications.

Even so there is still a slight lack in accuracy with the current technology like GPS and electronic compasses so we will have to wait a bit longer before we see some more advanced applications. This might also be there reason why there are currently no established standards to how to design for AR.

By researching Google, Kevin could show a distinct increase in the search patterns for AR during the last two years. Notable was that the top five countries on the list were Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Taiwan, a clear indication that this is a region of the world to keep your eyes on in regards to AR.

Steve Baty – Lunch Discussion, UX Book Club

UX Book Club founder (as well as IXDA VP and fellow Johnny) Steve Baty organized an opportunity at lunchtime to discuss books by two of the speakers at the conference, Thoughts on Interaction by Jon Kolko and Designing for Interaction by Dan Saffer. Both authors also took the opportunity to join in in the discussions and a short Q&A after the discussions. It was a very light hearted event where Steve introduced the audience of around 150 people to the concept of  UX book club and urged us to all do the same in our home area. Anahi Bagu and Will Evans gave us a short introduction to each of the books and then we dived in to lively discussions for about 20 minutes on both the books and adjacent subjects. Finally the two authors stepped up for a short Q&A whilst the audience was chanting “Two men enter. One man leaves!”

Two men enter. One man leaves!

This is an extremely simple but yet rewarding experience that you easily can set up where you live or even at your work place. Having the authors on the spot was an added luxury but not necessary for a successful UX book club.

Chris Fahey – The Human Interface

Things to try from Chris Fahey's talk

We are cyborgs. This is the statement Chris uses to kick off his session into why human like interfaces are important and what are the danger zones that should be avoided with regards to allowing technology replace humans. For many years it has been a fear that one day technology will some how replace humans. According to Chris, the best way to alleviate this fear is to not let technology replace us, but rather having human behavior become reflected in the technology that we use.

As designers we need to capitalize on the fact the people already give objects a bit of humanity by anthropomorphism. Since this is one of our standard behaviors, it isn’t much a leap to use that knowledge in the overall design of what we create. The way to do this is by concentrating on Strong Centers, Positive and Negative Space, Roughness, and Echoes. The world of game design has been hitting these areas recently and it has been a huge success for them.
Chris’s session was wrapped up by going over the three qualia of the human interface:

• Sentience - The ability to see or feel subjectively. This is best described by the advancement of voice or facial recognition over the years.
• Intimacy – This can be facilitated with or through machines. Devices are able to better detect our presence and collect personal information about us in the background.
• Personality – We want to see the things we use have a personality. We want to see ‘faces’ in the stuff we interact with.

The final message of “If we don’t humanize our products, our products will mechanize us”  is one that we can all use posted up on our walls, or cubes, in order to remind us of the human aspects of our designs.

If we don’t humanize our products, our products will mechanize us – Chris Fahey

Closing Keynote: Paola Antonelli – Talk to Me

Tonight’s closing presentation was given by Paola Antonelle, of the Museum of Modern Arts in New York City.

Paola Antonelli. Image by Monica Ferro

She started off by explaining how objects have always spoken to her, sometimes in the most peculiar ways. Walking down the street, stop lights, TV’s, or bus signs all speak to her in a very cartoonish manner. But by having this conversation with everyday objects, she is constantly finding new things to add to her next exhibits. In truth, we all have conversations with technology, thanks to the interfaces that helps to put a face to these objects. It allows us to communicate and interact at a very personal level, both positive and negative ways. It’s important that this face is able to not only communicate, but also be functional, provide instruction, and allows us to access relevant information.

Paola then ran through an amazing range of relevant and beautiful design projects including Crossroads, Significant Objects, We Feel Fine and Josh On.
In closing, she gave us some insight on her struggle to get the ‘@’ symbol not only included in some of her exhibits, but also making it a permanent fixture of the museum. This symbol which so many of us use everyday has been around for centuries, even going so far as span languages. At some point, accountants started to use it to refer to something, such as four bags of flours @ $50.00 a bag. Why she feels that is has a place in the museum is that fact that when the email was invented, the reason the “@” was chosen was thanks to its traditional usage. The only thing that changed was its context of use.
Paola suggests that the ‘@’ sign should be treated as a design artefact because of its history and how well it translated into our technological world, therefore highlighting the role it has played over the years.

Objects have always spoken to us – Paola Antonelli

The first day of Interaction 10, hosted by SCAD in the wonderful city of Savannah, Georgia, kicked off without a hitch. Though eventually everyone was plagued by spotty, windy rain storms, the general pulse of the conference was positive and uplifting. Attendees were still talking about some of the great workshops from the day before, and they carried that energy over into today’s sessions. If one thing had to describe the overall theme of the first day it would be the importance of providing meaning in the work that we do. Below are recaps of the opening and closing keynotes, as well as some of the sessions from the day.

Nathan Shedroff – Morning Keynote

The opening keynote came with a message of why it’s important for us as designers to innovate. Drawing from his books Making Meaning and Design is the Problem,  Nathan Shedroff approached the topic from the businesses point of view and provided insight on how our skills can help them. The goal of any business is to grow, but the only type of growth that leads to continued success is organic growth. Sure, you can rebrand easy few years, but after a while people catch on to what you’re doing. The key to ensuring lasting, organic growth is providing meaning to the people that use the products or services companies provide. Innovation is the means to providing this meaning.

Meaning comes in the shape and form of the experiences we are exposed to. Luckily for us, there are a finite number of core values that describe meaning, which Nathan describes as the following:

• Accomplishment
• Beauty
• Community
• Creation
• Duty
• Enlightenment
• Freedom
• Harmony
• Justice
• Oneness
• Redemption
• Security
• Truth
• Validation
• Wonder

What makes something meaningful to one person over another is how people prioritize these core values. In order to understand how a particular group of people rank these values, it’s necessary to do a lot of qualitative research. By understanding this ranking, we are able to trigger meaning in the things we design and bring meaning to the work that we do.

The keynote wrapped up with Nathan describing how strategic design is looking for the overlap of meaning between a company, team, and customer base. If there is little to no overlap, than something is off: the wrong customers are being served or the wrong team is trying to do the job. All of these lead to the statement of “Consumerism isn’t dead, but it should be. It hasn’t served us well. But, we don’t know what to replace it with yet.” Interaction designers are poised to be the ones that come up with this new solution, as we have the models and research methods that serve us well.

Consumerism isn’t dead, but it should be. It hasn’t served us well. But, we don’t know what to replace it with yet. – Nathan Shedroff

(The presentation and related material are available on Nathan’s website – also check out the interview we did with Nathan)

Dave Gray – Knowledge Games

Any presentation that starts off with a detailed history of the AK-47 is sure to be challenging. Dave’s overview of Knowledge Games and their role in the design didn’t disappoint. The design philosophy that drove the creation of the AK-47 is the same one he is using to develop his framework around knowledge games: keep it simple, make it rugged, ensure that it is reliable, and that it is lightweight. His goal with creating knowledge games is to provide the tools that anyone can use to design better things, regardless of whether that person is a designer or not.

Don’t over think things. – Dave Gray

Dave Gray and the AK47

How do knowledge games help in the world of design? It gives us a framework for getting from point A to point B. It allows us to open up a problem, explore the problem space, and come to a closing point where we have a defined outcome. Here are some key points that we took away from this session:

• Never open something you can’t close;
• Ask questions that get people fired up, that gets them talking and brainstorming some ideas;
• Create a meaningful space in order to do work in. A space that inspires us to create, think, and collaborate;
• Sketch, everyone can draw. If you can draw basic shapes, you can draw just about anything;
• Choose what you will finally create well. Be critical and kill a lot of babies. (This came up a lot for some reason over the course of the presentation.)

Dave ended with perhaps the best message possible. “Don’t overthink things.” This is something that plagues us all sometimes, and it’s good advice to follow no matter what you happen to be doing.

Nate Bolt – Remote User Research

The popularity of performing remote user research is growing. Nate did a great job giving an overview of the value remote user research brings to the design process and highlighted some of the best tools that are available today. He is passionate about this subject, which is best highlighted by a book he is co-authoring and being published by Rosenfeld Media.

He started off by clarifying that the research user experience really cares about revolves around the behavior of people.  While the majority of all user research being done today is still in-person, remote research is gaining popularity. This is firstly because it’s easier to get someone to show up to a remote web meeting than it is to an unfamiliar office or conference room. Another advantage is that it’s easier to pause a study to iterate a design if the research is being done remotely.

If you can put it on the web, it can be studied and tested. – Nate Bolt

One of the most valued aspects of performing remote user research is mashing it up with traditional methods. Since the cost of some of these tools are so low, it’s easy to do a good mix of qualitative and quantitative research. All of the tools he covered are showcased here at RemoteUsability.com

Matt Cottam – Wooden Logic: In Search of Heirloom Electronics

Matt Cottam’s talk explored how natural materials and craft traditions can be brought to the center of interactive digital design to give modern products greater longevity and meaning. This was a very inspiring talk on how to work with electronics prototyping combined with classic wood carpenter craftsmanship.

The initial reason why Matt founded his company, Tellart, was the current disconnect we as designers have from the technology we design for. Matt compared the crafts industry in the mid to early 20th century when design was often closely related also to the technical side of the craft like the loom industry where textile designers and the loom technicians were educated in the same school. This closeness created a good setting for creating these products with longevity and meaning. Compared to today, there is a gap between interaction designers, programmers and electronics designers. What Matt is trying to do through his work is to close that gap, or at least make it smaller.

Part of his work has also been about experimenting with the patina process of objects and how to actually control it. As an example he showed models of toy boats that were put in a bag with ground coffee and then put in a river for several months, which was a very successful way of faking patina. Several of the student projects revolved around the challenge of doing user interface prototyping without computers, often with a very limited time and space, putting lots of emphasis on the presentation of the results.

Drawing examples from numerous student projects Matt has done over the last year with students at CIID, UID and his team he showed very interesting results on how to combine traditional material with modern electronics such as sensors and switches to create new unexpected combinations.

Tellart has created a client server application for iPhone that makes it extremely quick to do simple iPhone apps that communicate with hardware in literally a couple of days. The application is open source and you can read more about it at the Google code site.

All in all, the presentation showed very promising examples, if maybe not the final answers of what he wanted to achieve. You get the feeling that Matt is on to something that could potentially be big in the coming years, certainly in connection to the conference’s overall theme on creating meaning to the things we design.

Activity: Design Jam

Cupcake Carrier Sketches

The leaders of the Portland IxDA group gave a large group of people a run down on a common activity they perform at their meet ups. Jeanne Turner and Barbara Holmes created the activity of Design Jams in order avoid designers from getting burned out and over worked. The technique is borrowed from jam sessions that musicians do in order to avoid the very same things. During the jam session it isn’t about making something real, but rather about play and having fun. During the design jams, designer discuss, sketch, explore, and listen to each others ideas about how to solve a defined problem. By doing so, they learn new methods for solving the same problem and more importantly learn from each other.

The Design Jam has some simple rules that people must follow.

1. Solve real, concrete design problems
2. No limits to what can be discussed or designed
3. No stakeholders allowed. Everyone is a designer
4. Random groups each time
5. At the end everyone has to present their designs and what the contributed to the solution

With this the actual design jam started with the crowd being given one of two problems to solve: redesign luggage carrier to avoid clothes getting wrinkled while travelling, or a means to transport cupcakes without damaging the cupcakes. My group choose the cupcakes problem. After much discussion and exploration some of the top solutions came out to be using hard sugar in the icing, create scalable containers, use an edible container, generate magnetic cupcakes, and use tooth picks with gummies stuck to the top to provide additional support. The great thing about this activity was that it was simple, very interactive, and something that any group would be able to easily host for one of their meet ups.

Kendra Shimmell – Environments: The Future of Interaction Design

Kendra Shummel in action

I was told this talk was actually a bit of a wild card in the program and I can attest to that it as it was very inspiring and entertaining to see. To quote Kendra herself from the day before: “Sometimes you joke about how during a work meeting you should stand up and do improv dancing, and here I am going up on stage doing just that at an interaction design conference”.

We all need, and try, to do other things than our normal work to get perspective on things. Kendra being a trained dancer since the age of four wanted to give us a glimpse into her world of how she uses dance as an alternate way of approaching her design challenges. Kendra started up with talking about the similarities in choreography and interaction design, and how they are connected in staging activities over time in order to convey meaning. Of course in dance there are a whole lot more choreography.

For the second half of the talk, Kendra had in collaboration with Robert Wechsler from palindrome set up a motion tracking system that was hooked up to an application that that detects movements in three dimensional space. By connecting defined volumes in this space  to virtual triggers and scales, loops of sounds, talk, and noise Kendra created new music completely based on the movements from her improv dance. The whole experience is very hard to reproduce in text. All talks were recorded and will be put on the IxDA website with in the coming weeks and if you  decide to watch any of them this is definitely one of the ones you should not miss.

Nicolas Nova – Observing Failures to Provoking Them

Failure is cool. Not only was this the statement on the opening slide, but it sums up the overall session as well. Using personal experiences, Nicolas showed a packed house how vital failure is in the art of design and how much we can learn from it when we try to make it happen. The main focus of the presentation was on the failure of products, specifically automated products such as doors and light switches. What makes these products so interesting is how easy it is to observe the failures in action, showcased by a sensor used on Swedish trains for automatically opening the doors between cars.

Some of the more interesting behaviors he has witnessed involved talking to motion based sensors, and stomping on the ground when the sensors where located near the floor. These behaviors arise due to the invisible nature around automatic products, and a person’s inability to discern how they work. The failures themselves are unique since in the past they may not have ever existed, and thanks to advancements in technology we are able to view them for the first time. There are some common reasons why automatic devices fail though:

• Distinguishing the automatic from the non-automatic
• Invisible or illegible “locus of control”
• Too quick or too slow to activate
• Weather dependent calibration
• Different ‘door’ conventions (e.g. swing vs retracting doors)

A common problem that arises when these automatic devices fail is “Individual-Blame Bias.” People start to get blamed or end up blaming themselves for the failure of technology. After a while, people get fed up and will lash out in frustration at these devices. A great example he used was a robot that helps in the care of people in a hospital. This poor robot would get kicked by patients when it came around to do its duties, for simply coming in at the wrong time.

The session wrapped up by exploring a technique called the “Anti-Probe”, which is meant to provoke a failure. One of the cases he went over where he had used this technique was with regards to the use of the Wii remote. His team modified the remote calibration to make small movements to generate huge reactions while playing a game. Surprisingly, the participants actually really enjoyed this behavior since it took a little effort in order to cause such a huge reaction. These provoked failure lead to the insight of how important it is to see how people react, what new solutions they create, and how annoyed they might get when something does go wrong. This allows the team to use failure as a design tactic and to use failure as an inspiration rather than a hindrance.

Jon Kolko – Closing Keynote

Jon Kolko

Jon Kolko started by offering four pillars which our profession resides upon: experience, behavior, meaning, and culture.

According to Jon, the word ‘experience’ is special and should be used with reserve. This is because we all have one, and no matter what that experience is unique to each person involved in the experience. Factors that help shape the experience are the complexity of ourselves that we bring to it, design artefacts, natural events, and the other people surrounding the experience. This is why though designers may be given the same input and use the same process, the end solutions will be drastically different. Therefore, the key to getting people involved in experiences is through engagement: this, rather than repeatability, is key to good experiences. It’s up to designers to be less prescriptive, focus on the space between, and strive for real engagement.

An echo from his article Our Misguided Focus on Brand and User Experience, Jon again proposed why designers have the power to change culture, and that we have the ability to affect massive and acute change in society. To showcase this point, he talked about a project one of his students did where she went in search for the answer to the question “What’s the deal with deal with kids, beer, and sex?” After collecting some amazing quotes from college students, her solution to this problem was presented. In order to raise awareness of the dangers of unprotected sex, she attached condoms and important information to bottles of beer. The result was an increase in college students practising safe sex. She was able to accomplish this by empathizing with the people she was studying, and designing something that was aligned to how they actually behave.

The final point of his keynote revolved around the quote “Good design is a privilege rather than a right in today’s world.” He states that in some cases, it’s not money that is preventing people from using new technology but perceived complexity. To illustrate this point, he told the story of teachers who refused to use PC’s in their classroom due to the poor performance. The solution to this poor performance was regular maintenance of re-imaging the machines, something a standard school teach just doesn’t have the time to do. His team at frog design helped with this problem helping HP provide a machine that would re-image itself at the end of each computer session. Teachers were then able to use all the advanced tools available to them without having to deal with all the overhead of maintaining the computers. This lead to his closing message of “Designing for real cultural change starts by understanding how people currently behave”.

Designing for real cultural change starts by understanding how people currently behave. – Jon Kolko

The first day of the conference ended on a high note, poor weather notwithstanding. Day 2 has some big shoes to fill based on the sessions of today, but the promise of the session for tomorrow lead us to believe that tomorrow will be just as informative and inspiring as today was.

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All images by Brad Nunnally and Niklas Wolkert

There are many situations that I can come up with where I would have loved to get instant feedback, but couldn’t get it. In some cases it was a lack of good design or imagination that caused this. I tried to solve two of them.

Clip Watch

Right now it’s really cold outside in Japan. On my way to the station I usually take my iPhone out of my coat pocket to see what time it is. But as you may know: using an iPhone with your gloves on is a tough task. That’s why I’ve been thinking about a watch you can put on your coat or bag, which tells me time only when I need to know.

By making it look like a button, it may go well with many kinds of outer wears.

Click the face once and it displays the time and date on the glass face for a few seconds. (I figured we usually don’t need to stare at a watch for a long time.)

Solar battery panels charges electricity for the display.

Fireworks Pinpointer

Ever wondered if there was a fun way to find out your car in a huge parking lot? I hope there is a projector that throws interesting light pictures in the air. You just find the customized light beam above your car.

It’s hard to look back at 2009 and ignore the rather sudden blooming of augmented reality. What was it that made AR suddenly so popular? The rise of ‘mobile’ apps helped. But was that all there was to it? I don’t think so.You can learn so much about a culture by observing how they take in new information. It’s easier than ever to watch how the internet community responds to new things; whether it be a new president, a new episode of Fringe, the death of a pop icon, or ‘new’ technologies. When something happens you can literally watch the connected swarms absorbing the news, assimilating it into their lives, and regurgitating it in the form of comments, tweets, articles and other hip ways of communicating.

With technological innovation

This cycle of assimilation from inventor to news source and eventually the public (who then sometimes become secondary inventors) can be a frenzied and often frustrating thing to observe. Especially for user experience designers. Until the true benefit of a technology becomes its most prominent usage, it will continue to wallow in worthless gimmicky applications, and this makes me sad. If, instead of embarking on a futile development voyage, we thought about it a little bit first, we might actually be able to figure out how to make good use of a new technology in, say, under a few decades.

ARead All About It

Although the ‘news release’ of augmented reality’s invention may not have ever actually happened, the current frenzy is reminiscent of what happened when the first visions of connected personal computers starting popping up in the 60′s. That is, to put it bluntly, uninspired exhibitions of the technology with little to no regard for a particular user need or everyday application. That said, I really can’t blame people for iterating and trying to hone in on the most viable use, I just wish they could be a little more thoughtful about it, that’s all.

Parading around claims that the latest issue of your magazine is capable of telling the time, that you, the reader can control the weather, wins you no points in my book. The fact that the editor in chief says, “What you’ve seen so far is that, you can control what happens with the issue…” Excuse me, but couldn’t I already control what happens with every other issue of every other magazine I have owned? How does this augmented reality issue suddenly empower me to decide what to do with it? Does it contribute any new meaning in my life? The answer, sadly enough for Esquire’s last ditch effort to save its print embodiment, is that it doesn’t. As much as I love Robert Downey Jr.: this is a gimmick. Albeit a nicer gimmick than some of the other augmented riffraff we’ve seen of late, but it’s still a gimmick. It does not contribute to the value of your print magazine any more than a shiny coupon for a store that you don’t even have in your town.

Now I’m not saying I have all the answers

In fact, I really don’t have any answers. But if I were to think about this, I might arrive at the conclusion that instead of tacking on some fiducials that enable a computer screen-bound fashion model to shed some sweaters, Esquire maybe could have tried to enhance the reading experience of…oh I don’t know…the articles? Come on people, let’s put our heads together and figure out what to do with this goshdarn AR stuff. Why is it so hard to come up with a useful application that everyone can and wants to use?

A few months ago

I found myself optimistically answering someone else’s utterance of this same plea with specific examples of a few really cool AR applications. Just so this rant isn’t entirely ranty, here are some of my favorites:

USPS’s Priority Mail Virtual Box Simulator

You gotta love the simplicity of purpose and beautiful execution of USPS’s Priority Mail Virtual Box Simulator. This, to me it is an ideal example of a company identifying a user need (finding the right box size for some goods). It is answering that need with a technological solution that uses augmented reality, not because its popular, but because it allows for a really great in-home solution to their customer’s problem. Now, instead of trying to fix the user experience in every one of their thousands of store locations, USPS allows users to go to their site, print the USPS eagle image on a piece of paper, turn on their webcam, launch the simulator and hold the eagle icon up to your camera to see what size box to purchase. Voila, value added and problem solved.

Topps 3D Live trading cards

Whoever thought that cutting edge technology couldn’t be nostalgic is being proven wrong with Topps 3D Live trading cards. Talk about reincarnating a dead pastime. Not only do these new cards give sports fans a reason to go out and purchase new cards to supplement their dad’s handed-down mega collection, they also include games. Whether this concept successfully popularizes baseball card collecting or not, it’s certanly an admirable attempt at using new technology to add value (and a more complete service) to a nostalgic product.

Living Sasquatch

While this example may not be as clear cut about adding value to an exisiting product or service economy, the Living Sasquatch project proves once and for all, that Big Foot is indeed real, augmentedly at least.

BMW

It’s likely that this BMW augmented reality video was made almost entirely with video effects, however the concept behind it is a powerful one. A future in which life’s instructions are simply a layer ontop of reality (seen through hopefull less dorky glasses) is a future I’m excited to live in.

Zugara’s shopping tool

Zugara claims that this webcam-based shopping tool is the meeting point of augmented reality and utility. I’d actually have to agree. With the goal of enhancing the online retail shopping experience, the site allows users to ‘try on’ clothes in the comfort of their computer room, all without needing a keyboard or mouse. The tasty blend of motion capture and AR gives this concept a ton of style points.

Tellart 2008 Holiday Card

While there were no doubt several examples of AR holiday cards from the past couple years, I couldn’t help but insert this musical number, made by my multi-talented coworkers at Tellart.

AR Drum Kit

Continuing with the music theme, I really enjoy this drum kit demo for its ability to work with the parameters of AR and maintain the gestural feeling of drumming. It may not be a game changer just yet, but I think it’s one of the most interesting directions I’ve seen.

I really do believe that AR has a place in our world

Science fiction novels have long predicted a future in which everyone sports AR glasses, navigating the real world with varying layers of virtual. And this future is exciting; people SHOULD be excited. I just hope developers get all the useless crap out of there system soon so we can move on to the augmented future we all dream of. The key, I think, is to calm down, think about how to make game changing applications that users will crave, and facilitate the assimilation of new technologies into everyone’s lives in the most exciting and useful way possible.

Top image by: cubistcarborough