Thoughts From a Live Node in the Network

Last night's UX Speakeasy meetup was a bit of a mind bender when you stopped to consider the implications of everything Matthew Milan (CEO of Normative) tossed at the audience. After a momentary thick silence at the end of Milan's talk, the flood of questions started. Too bad the guy had to catch a red eye to Miami. We could have kept him talking late into the night.

It was all about design, but not design in any way you are likely to have thought about it before. After flipping up a rather staid and traditional definition of "design", Matthew said something to the effect of "we're still talking about making sh*t up". But that's ok, because one of his company's mantras is "Always Be Learning". A phrase worth bolding.

When you consider his suggestion that "the network" is everything connected by an IP, and that more and more we are connected to multiple IPs in a constant slurry of invisible signals zinging through the air, and technology companies are fire hosing us with new wearable or embedded everything, just like this sentence, Matthew pointed out correctly, at least for the majority of people in the developed world "we spend the majority of our time being a live node on the network".

I never thought about myself that way. This notion makes me think of the time a few weeks ago when I was on a business trip and my internal GPS had been lost on a contrail somewhere. I decided to use Google Maps to look up the location of the city I was in. I got more than I bargained for. Google Maps not only showed me the city I was in, but put a nice little label on the location of my hotel along with a tag listing the dates I was staying there. The *only* way they could have accessed that last information was by scanning my gmail account and pulling the information out of a reservation confirmation message. I was creeped out. Not cool Google. Perhaps Google thought it was being helpful but all I could think was: Get OUT of my email!

One can understand the audience member last night who said that after listening to Milan's talk he was very uncomfortable.  He felt like he was part of one big experiment. Yup, I'm afraid that he may be correct. We love our toys but through them we are live nodes dangling on the end of a virtual fish hook. To his credit, Matthew replied to the stressed out audience member "This stuff isn't supposed to make you comfortable". No attempt to cover up the ubiquitous networked nature of everything with some sugar coated marketing gobbledy gook.

For me, a message I received from Matthew's talk was that we need to wake up and pay attention to what we are designing and how we put it to use in society.

There was a good deal of talk last night about "computational design" that left me sucking on my pen and rolling my eyes upward in thought on more than one occasion. It wasn't what you might think; people and machines are to be thought of on an equal footing in our oh so networked environment. In trying to describe some aspect or other of this point, Matthew said in an unscripted moment that we should think about how to be empathetic to the machine. He then corrected himself, suggesting that "empathy" probably wasn't the right word because, well, you know ...

Not so fast. Check out this news release from the National Science Foundation about a robotics initiative which contains the quote:

 "people not only trust [the robot's] impeccable ability to crunch numbers, they also believe the robot trusts and understands them"

and

"The humans trusted the robot to make impartial decisions and do what was best for the team...As it turned out, workers preferred increased productivity over having more control"

Now that is scary. It may be too late to suggest we not have empathy for digital technology.

On a lighter note, (and at this point I need to remember the lighter moments), one of my favorite Matthew Milan quotes was "we are always putting ourselves in these crazy boxes". What made this really funny for me was that rather than going down some intense psychological route, his first item in the list was clothing!

I never thought of my clothes as a box, did you? Since that moment, I've been thinking about my shirt as a box. A box with 4 air vents to provide circulation. A box with flexible siding. A red box (today at least). I have a closet full of boxes to put myself into. And then...ok, I couldn't help but think about myself as that live node and the future of wearables and I began to have empathy for my soon to be sentient shirt.

Today my shirt might be thinking: "oh dear, not that cheap moisturizer again" or "did she forget to use deodorant today? That means she is going to drool on the underside of my sleeve. Talk about a bad hair day. Sigh...the things I put up with  in order to see the world"

Parting words from Matthew Milan included: Design Creates Culture.

"Having your head in the clouds" takes on a whole new meaning doesn't it?

UX (and related) Education Listings

As promised, this post contains a listing, with links, to the education options I presented at this evening's San Diego UX Speakeasy meetup. (More on the meetup itself in the next post)

There is an enormous selection of education and training options out there and this is only a small sampling; enough to give you some ideas and get you started. Not listed here for the most part are conferences, because although conferences often have educational activities and workshops, conferences were covered by my esteemed colleague Bennett King and a cohort of other enthusiastic people.

Minus the pithy commentary that was included in the live version, here are those links:

Interaction Design Foundation - Open Education Materials ; included here is the “Encyclopedia of Human Computer Interaction”, comprised of 40 “textbooks”. Lots of very interesting in depth reading here. Other good stuff as well on their site.

The UX Bookmark - UX books, videos. Awesome resources with in-depth info. Well maintained.

User Interface Engineering (UIE) - Virtual Seminars, Mobile Immersion, UI18 On Demand. Something for every level of engagement.

Cooper - A design and consulting firm. They have "Cooper U" offering in person courses, and also UX Boot Camp (this is the one I'd really like to attend! in my mind I'm already writing the blog post about it!)

Adaptive Path - another consultancy. Offerings include UX Week, an annual conference, and UX Intensive, a 4 day workshop held in various places around the globe.

Neilsen Norman Group - another consultancy. Offerings include Usability Weeks (one of which will be held here in San Diego next month) and a 3 day Usability Camp.

General Assembly -  A training organization with branches in several cities. Set up to resemble in some ways an academic environment. Offerings include one day events such as a hackathon, & several months long classes.Here is the Los Angeles branch.

Open2Study - Free online courses. Based out of Australia, profs are global. Wide offerings including some interesting UX courses and psychology (a hot topic in some UX circles).

Udacity - one of the famous MOOCs. Offerings across the spectrum of fields from the arts to engineering. Offerings include Computer Science, computing applications (such as web dev't and mobile and design)

Coursera - another of the famous MOOCs. Mission statement talks about providing equal access to education; they have the most demographically diverse team of technical people of all the education sites I surveyed for this presentation. Offerings include Computer Science, engineering, data/stats, programming, HCI, lots of business courses (entrepreneurship, management, marketing etc)

HackDesign - an interesting self described "experiment" for developers who want to learn design. Self-paced course that comes to your inbox.

Online User Experience Institute - lots of UX courses. Has been around quite a while compared to its competitors. 

The Stanford Design ("d") School. If you really want to go for it and get a degree. They also offer individual classes, and an interesting 90 minute crash course for pairs.

Did I miss one of your favorites? If you have a listing you'd like added, send it!

The Question of a Universal Icon Leads to Bathroom Talk

(Warning: This post is Rated PG-13)

There is this thing called The Noun Project. I find it somewhat challenging to tell from their web pages just what they do. However, my sense, based upon an activity I took part in last night with the UX Speakeasy crowd, is that has to do with ... nouns. And icons? The idea that nouns can be represented with icons. And that there are many possible representations for any given noun - in icon form. (iconic? Icon is a noun; iconic is not ("Of, relating to, or having the character of an icon." )

It is fun to play with words; with nouns. To share icons about nouns. That seems to be what The Noun Project is about. Led, in part with operatic vocalizations, by Jeannel King a Graphic Facilitator and founder of Big Picture Solutions, about 100 of us went through an enthusiastic activity where Jeannel whipped off a series of nouns with only seconds between each one and we had to draw each one. No thinking - just draw it! A round of ten words coming almost as fast as those legalese voices at the end of commercials. Draw each one with large markers "Big Fat Lines for Big Fat Ideas".

There was a certain amount of squawking at first from those who really wanted to "think" - but Thinking Was Out, and Instinct Was In. Whatever you draw is good enough - tough for those who want to get it right. To realize there is no "right".

Which was part of the point. My gut level interpretation of "banana" is not necessarily your gut level interpretation of "banana"; nor the instinctive perception of "banana" held by someone who lives in the far reaches of the Arctic. And we know that much of human behavior comes from gut level rather than cognitive decision making.

The warm up round was comprised of relatively easy nouns: cloud, money, beer, banana, house, tree. Everyone put marker to sticky note and drew their 2 second bananas. And we put them up for all to see and discuss. Although one could justifiably claim that the following rounds of nouns were harder, e.g. "user; interaction; design; context; information; usable; innovation; perception; research; input" that would be too simplistic a conclusion.

At one point the guy next to me said "Are we being mono-culture?" - because so many people put up $ for "money" and no one made a peep about it. GOOD CALL! Yes, that indeed was part of the point, as, seconds later, Jeannel drew everyone's attention to the implicit and often unconscious assumptions we make. Even on the simple things. And if we want to talk to the world, how to guard against assumptions and inherent cultural perceptions?

All of which begs the question: Is there any such thing as a universal symbol? Pulling my investigative

journalist hat on snugly I set out to discover what the crowd thought about this.

The first two people definitively said "no". There can be no symbol which is universal. So I moved on.

The next person said "yes". They seemed surprised when I then asked for an example (you'd think someone would see that coming a mile away!). After the briefest of pauses: "The Play Button". I looked quizzical (so much for being the objective reporter) but they held their ground. Their conversation partner sensed where I was going and stepped in with "it depends upon your anthropological approach". I looked more quizzical, not wanting to let them off the hook just yet. So he said "It depends upon your ethnography".

The next person said "Yes" and "math is the same in every language". Someone else also played the math card and said "+ and - are the same in every language".

Really? Is that so? If one knows one's anthropology and has done some ethnography one might question the universality of math symbols. +, - or otherwise.

The next answer, one which I got from several people, was fun to think about: "Yes". "Guy and girl

bathroom pictures".  Are Universal.


Putting my quizzical expression back on (in the name of investigative journalism) an interesting introspective then took place in which the person started thinking aloud about pants, skirts, men with skirts, putting the same symbol on both doors, and transgender bathrooms with possible symbol (icon) complications. One then wonders: Would a sufficiently transgender icon lead to unisex bathrooms? Or to some people being able to choose either bathroom but others being restricted to one or the other? Would people spend so much time trying to decipher the icon that they would stand outside the bathroom doors puzzling until their bladder burst?

This, I believe, is really what our exercise last night was meant to encourage people to do - think about the meaning behind words, the symbols we choose to use for them, the context and the audience. Do so with some depth and question assumptions and the things we take for granted. If we want to be effective communicators that is.

But just in case you think the matter is settled, the last response I received may be one of the harder to parry. I popped the question about the possibility of a noun with a universal symbol and this person enthusiastically, hopped right over the "yes" part, and not waiting to be looked at quizzically, said "PENIS!".

I leave you to imagine the conversation that followed; and invite you to draw your own conclusion about the possible universality of a symbol for the "p" word.

What is the Future of Design? (Part 2)

What should we be pursuing in mobile design right now? That question was the beginning of yet more interesting and sometimes bizarre conversation at last week's UX Speakeasy meeting (see the previous post for Part 1 of this conversation). An innocent question and a sincere one, given that in 2010 mobile sales

surpassed computer sales and this year mobile devices in use are predicted to surpass the number of computers in use.

I was interested to hear Phil Ohme state that the future of mobile is not in apps or touch screens but in the extension of those items. In other words you don't need to carry it to use it. Just what is "it"? This is where it gets interesting. You can, for example swallow something and carry it around with you. Reputedly in prototype, the idea is not at all far fetched. After all, little medical cameras that travel around in your body have been used for some time, and then there was that guy who was featured years ago in a well known technical magazine after he implanted a device in his arm and used it to open doors, turn on lights and, if I recall correctly, to somehow enhance sex? Or perhaps he was just planning to do that or hypothesizing about that. (I'm not making this up.)

Where was I...so, if we develop the ability to swallow a little computer of sorts, and it sits inside your body somewhere on a more or less permanent basis, what kinds of interesting things will result? Packaging itty bitty highly sophisticated sensors is quite possible; packaging those little sensors in such a way as to survive the human gut is already being done. We know how to send signals through the human body - piece of cake. People already swallow pills that monitor if they have taken their medication during the course of the day.

Will we someday hear our phone ringing from our stomach? (Tap your belly button once to take the call)

Amber Lundy proposed a really fascinating idea. What if someone designs the ability to swallow a news event. For example, in the morning, as you are heading out the door, coffee in one hand, bagel in the other hand (dripping butter between your fingers), you pause to swallow the morning news.

As the day wears on, the news automatically streams into your brain. Perhaps you receive the morning news; the equivalent of having picked up and read the paper. Alternatively, you have plugged into a live stream, and are updated throughout the day with headlines, breaking news, entertainment.

If you are being streamed the news, will it be entirely cognitive or will it also be experiential? Amber suggested that it could be both. Cognitive: you get the knowledge. Experiential: you get the experience. But...then...what do you think about being experientially tossed into a story about the civil war in Syria? Is that a good idea? From a societal perspective perhaps it would be. If we really understood what was going on in war zones, in natural catastrophes in remote parts of the globe, in the developing world, would we make different decisions?

Design customization will be a key component of product success or failure. One of the big topics at the meeting, mentioned in the last post, was a growing demand by consumers for customizable micro-niche media. People want to hear, see, experience, communicate on their own terms. One of the panelists commented that Facebook is experiencing a mid-life crisis.  The power of the internet and our ability to search, dig, refine, and, an often narcissistic need for instant gratification, are driving consumer demand for "I want it my way". Whether you consider this good or bad (there are valid arguments on both sides) product development is increasingly having to listen to what all the "me"s out there want.

Greg Zapar was an optimistic voice throughout the meeting, as he kept pointing out the potential for designing for "better and efficient, not just more". Something very important to keep in mind. Those of us in who work in the technical world have the opportunity to have an impact on how all this deluge of data is gathered, presented and used.

We haven't even begun to talk about ethics. Designers and developers make choices with societal impact all the time - experiential product design is, and will continue to be, no different. Someone asked if we should approach design from a "science is for science's sake" perspective and let someone else worry about how our products and systems are used. One fatalist in the crowd suggested it was pointless to think about such things because we are just small cogs in a big machine.

You probably know by now what I think about that.

What is the Future of Design? (Part 1)

I know by now that when the UX Speakeasy San Diego group gets together to discuss an issue, bizarre things will inevitably come up. We had a panel of three speakers last night (Phil Ohme from Intuit, Amber Lundy from Websense, Greg Zapar from Tenfold Social Training) and an enthusiastic audience who jumped right in to ask the tough questions and make some ... um, interesting... suggestions.

But first, I want to pass on an observation. There was a balanced mix of men and women at the event which is always a nice thing in a technical setting. At one point I was looking around and realized that in general, the men dressed super casually (lots of jeans and tshirts, rumpled collared shirts, and our trusty moderator was wearing his usual s**t kicker boots) and the women were dressed more, shall I say: stylishly? A few months ago I wrote a blog post in Global Tech Women about technical women and clothing in response to a New York Times Op Ed on the subject. Hence my alertness to this contextual issue. Everyone in the room last night was a designer of  one sort or another - what do you think their clothing choices mean? What messages were being transmitted?

Which brings us to one of the big themes I heard last night. As Phil Ohme put it, the future of design is going to be about "sharing our life bits" i.e. we share, and will be sharing more and more, what our body wants to say. Not just what we choose to say, or choose to do behaviorally. It's what we unconsciously say and do and it's going beyond the usual subliminal cues we may think of. It's not going to be just the people in the room with you who pick up on your current mood, or what pheromones you are exuding.

Whether you want to or not, you will be porting wearable computers. We are evolving at breakneck speed in the direction of global sharing of The Personal.

Think about it - we already share a ridiculous amount of information, either intentionally or otherwise. We use that GPS feature on our smartphones to check-in and alert our entire online community that we: had a cheese steak in Philly, landed at the airport in Sydney, went shopping at a mall in suburban Colorado. We use Google Wallet to buy things and at the same time share a lot more than that one purchase with Google. As Ben King (panel moderator, from Qualcomm) pointed out, both Google and our banking institutions know about our financial purchases because we do everything online, but they have completely different motives for obtaining and analyzing it.

If you decide to wear Google Glass, it will be like having Google Street View on your face (suggests Phil). Soon, will everything you see, hear, and perceive, become archived and searchable in the Cloud? Now that's a scary thought. Who owns, has rights to, can use, that information? Privacy is going to be an even huger design issue than it is now, according to Amber Lundy. People will want to turn it OFF - to pull the plug. Will products and systems be designed to allow this? Easily?

On the other hand, here is a really cool, more positive design direction suggested by Amber. As micro niche networks continue to increase in popularity - a big conversation topic in itself last night - how about creating the ability to package a .tar file of your social world and ship it to someone? Let's say you want to share with your lonely friend in Argentina a slice of your life. So you pull together a variety of information, images, data, conversations, and video into a living digital collage. Without needing a Master's degree in anything to do so. And off it goes to your friend. Customize it slightly differently and send it to your mom. Design that I say!

Chew on these ideas for a while.

There were many other mind bending topics and I'll share more of them next time.

UX Design, Classic Art and Grounded Theory

Lo and Behold: Art meets User Experience Design meets Grounded Theory. At a local brewery no less.

This month's meeting of the UX (User Experience) Speakeasy group featured Julie Morgan from Digitaria sharing a few design case studies using a tool called Optimal Workshop. Standing in front of a large tank, presumably full to the brim with fermenting beer, Julie enthusiastically popped up images of artwork ranging from Van Gogh to Gustav Klimt to Jasper Johns, with a Roman arch tossed in for good measure.

Each of these pieces of art was an analogy to something in the user design research process. A Klimt piece related to music, which related to patterns and the search for harmony in web design. An early version of Van Gogh's Potato Eaters was tied to UX sketching and a later version to the final online design. There was something about a Roman arch in there when discussing Information Architecture. I didn't catch everything she said about it, but now I'm thinking about how one little center stone at the top holds the whole thing up for centuries. Brilliant. It also connects two sides, as in the desire to bridge the gap between users and designers - one of Julie's main points last night.

You see, that is what made the classical art analogies so interesting - they got you thinking in new ways. Looking for connections and inspiration from old to new.

Such as when Grounded Theory popped into my head. As Julie was explaining the different ways a technique called Card Sorting works, and how it can be done with Open or Closed categories, I knew I had heard this before. In Grounded Theory (a well established form of Qualitative Research methodology dating from the 1960s) you can observe people in their natural setting and see what patterns emerge, what categories or activities appear, and eventually develop a behavioral hypothesis from it. This would be a purist form of Grounded Theory. Very much like a UX Designer providing users a stack of cards with labels on them about something they care about, and watching what happens as they discuss them and sort them into categories of their choosing.

Alternatively,with Closed category Card Sorting you can test a user experience hypothesis about something (e.g. "they think this way about web design XYZ...and will behave this way...") using predetermined categories. Use the same cards as in the Open approach, and watch what happens as the users try to put the cards in your categories. Maybe all will go as predicted. Maybe it won't and they push back in some way. Oops, hypothesis not true, users hate this design. Very much like going into a Grounded Theory study with a hypothesis about user behavior, seeing what happens and adjusting codes, taxonomies and theories accordingly.

Inspiration takes place in all phases of these monthly meetings. Somehow, after the formal presentation, while discussing the relationship between art, design and how the commercial world works, I found myself in a deep and meaningful conversation about how to outwit Wireless providers (yes, those organizations that provide service for your mobile phone). There is art and skill to legally outsmarting those guys. Perhaps this reflects the desire to move from Edvard Munch's "The Scream" towards Monet's "The Magpie".

Social Entrepreneurship Means Business

I've been dying to come back to the issue of social entrepreneurship as addressed in my recent post about the documentary "Design & Thinking". Early on in the film one of the business leaders interviewed said a guiding principle should be to ask yourself the following questions [slightly paraphrased]:

"What is the higher calling?"

"How can an organization consecrate itself to that higher calling?"

"...to address the world's problems?"

At first I was puzzled because I am used to hearing this kind of language in religious conversations. However, a rapid mental reset was in order. What a growing number of organizations are doing today is looking at how to conduct their business with the goal of addressing societal and environmental problems. Across industries. This can be clearly demonstrated by the accelerating number, size, and profitability of Socially Responsible Investments (SRIs). 

Notice, by the way, I didn't say "solving" the world's problems, because, and this is my thought on the matter, if you set your mind firmly on a "goal" that you "must" achieve, it is harder to stay in it for the long haul. However, every organization (as well as person) has something to contribute. It can be as concrete as evaluating the plans for the product or software you are developing and considering the ramifications of its design. Perhaps you then change certain design attributes. The film documented several organizations that are doing just that.

Thus, another mental reset is to embrace the idea, advocated in the film, that it is not about tradeoffs. It is not about "Business vs. Society". It is about holding a certain perspective on the world and how we solve problems.  It is about acquiring a broad range of skills to be able to address the complexity of the world in a product - including for-profit enterprises. 

An existing organization, cruising along, can stop and ask itself at anytime the following questions:

"Are we having an impact?"  [on the higher calling identified previously]

"If not, why not?"

"What can be done to get there?"

Aside from profiling lots of examples to prove the point, it was these dirt simple gems of questions that were one of the most important takeaways of the documentary. Anyone sitting there watching was prodded to do more than just admire the people and organizations working for change.

Anyone, in any organization, from a sole proprietorship to a global behemoth, can ask these questions.

Sketching in the Computing Classroom

Once convinced by Sketchcamp San Diego that what you draw is good enough and that you should sketch anything and everything, the next adventure is deciding where sketching fits in your professional world. Thus, it was only a matter of time before I would explore how sketching could apply directly to computer science.

I could (but won't) write a treatise on all the opportunities for the professional computer scientist to sketch. Instead, let's ponder computing education.

Instructors, consider this - why not incorporate sketching into your classroom presentations? We know that humans are very visual creatures, but that doesn't mean that all visual presentations are good presentations (Death By Powerpoint comes to mind).  Why not sketch part of your lecture as you give it, especially if you present in a large impersonal lecture hall? Take a look at my previous post for an example of this in action.

Unless you are working out a formal proof, I put it to you that there are plenty of opportunities to draw instead of write on the whiteboard, blackboard, tablet. You have to work out the details, but if you are creative enough to come up with other classroom innovations, as are many of my colleagues in the computer science education world, then you are up to the challenge of adding sketching to your pedagogical portfolio.

No, wait. Let me take back part of that last point. I'd love to see someone work out how to sketch a formal proof. Not only would it be terribly exciting but it would rock many people's world. Just think of the positive effect you could possibly have on those students who currently struggle with the abstraction of proofs.

Then there are the possibilities for collaborative sketching for software engineering students. The yawns and complaints (and subsequent below standard results) with which countless students approach the requirements gathering and specification development process are legendary. Not only do they miss the point, they can be disengaged, and just plain old lousy at client interaction. It takes practice, after all, to be a good listener and communicator.

What about reinventing the "Reqs and Specs" process to include team problem solving with the users present? Applying sketching techniques already used in the professional world, students can iterate on data interpretation and problem identification. Together they will produce a graphic illustration that captures the evolving conversation. What a great opportunity to break down barriers, achieve consensus and clarify intention.  I suspect the sketching approach to specification development would suck in students and their client users alike.

Thinking Crazy - Do It!

"So much of coming up with great ideas is allowing yourself to think crazy" spoken by someone in the film "Design & Thinking" which screened last night at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego. But can the corporate world accept this idea on a widespread basis? Can it be done without busting budgets? Important questions, addressed both directly and indirectly throughout this interesting film.

The film opened with scenes from the Occupy Movement and spent the next hour and fifteen minutes roving back and forth between New York City, San Francisco and Toronto, speaking with and observing a diverse and eclectic group of people in the design movement. I'm not sure why I'm calling it a movement, but after watching these people passionately describe what they do and what they think about the term Design Thinking, "movement" seems fitting.

There was the PhD candidate in Biology who had never heard of the term but described how he designs experiments with frogs (it seemed that no harm comes to the frogs - at least I hope so) and evolves his work through an iterative process that might sound familiar to someone from a classical design background. When he described the process of needing to be flexible and creative, it sounded rather like the many conversations during the film with people affiliated with classical design schools. These designers also spoke about following their intuition and being willing to shift course when development of a product produced unexpected feedback and results.

Moving from scientists to artists, along with CEOs, CTOs, and university faculty, one of the emerging themes in the film was: learning to be comfortable with taking risks. Realizing that you can do so at low cost. Taking risks and being willing to fail doesn't necessitate a huge budget. One of the challenges addressed throughout this film, both directly and indirectly, was how to "get a place at the table", i.e. in a number crunching bottom line world that wants algorithms for achieving success, how do you get the message across to all the relevant decision makers?

It can be done and the film showcased some wonderful examples. I loved the segment when the founder of Code For America was interviewed (was she was in her pajamas?) and spoke about the fear public officials have of putting anything up online that isn't "perfect". She made the very good point that the reason public officials are so risk averse is because we, the voting public, have made them afraid to make even the smallest mistake. No wonder they are afraid to innovate and experiment in the same way as firms in Silicon Valley. The good news however, is that organizations like Code For America are fostering cultural change in small incremental steps.

There is a lot more to say about the film's point of view on multi-disciplinarity, social entrepreneurship and having an impact. For now, consider how this might apply in your world:

"So much of coming up with great ideas is allowing yourself to think crazy"

Design Studios, Studying Design

Back in August, while attending the ICER conference, I discussed some work being done to incorporate the studio model into the computing classroom. Several people replied, sharing their own work in this area or knowledge of others' work. At least one person I spoke with believed the studio model was impractical. Interestingly enough, there is a discussion about the use of Design Studios within the UX (User Experience) community. In late August, the first of two articles in UX Magazine discussed the basics of Design Studio. The rationale for using Design Studios included the following:

"The reality of designing modern digital solutions is that no individual can solely capture all the complexity of creating a truly vibrant product with various customer engagement points, different usage patterns, and behaviors based on complex needs, goals, and customer backgrounds, all interwoven into an emergent, ubiquitous engagement tapestry. This is why innovation really is, and should be, a team sport."

The above quote reflects a key feature of UX work: obtaining a holistic view of the interactions, perceptions and ramifications of users interacting with digital artifacts. Beyond traditional user interface and graphical design issues (although those are relevant), to include all the complexities that people, as people, bring to the table and what that complexity means for their "experience" (hence the name User Experience). Cognition, affect, behavior, environmental and social factors.

The second of the articles, which came out today, provides resources and guidelines for how you can put Design Studios into action. Very interdisciplinary:

"Teams should be designed to have some balance representing various disciplines. Mix up key stakeholders representing various functions within the company. I have found that it’s crucial to include participants from sales and customer support. They bring a unique vision of the customer and the market to a process. Ideally, Design Studio should cut across executives, sales, customer support, product management, development, marketing, and experience design."

These articles are a great resource if you are interested in the implementation of design studios - either in the classroom or in your workplace.

If you follow the guidelines shared in these articles, ... what has your experience been?