My Curious Life

Last night’s inaugural Ignite Portland rocked! 18 speakers, each with 20 slides and 5 minutes to present before the collective buzzer went off. The topics ranged from knitting to rewilding, giving good TXT to free beef and clean bathrooms. Unicycling, chickens, and how to be Japanese. Kudos to everyone who helped organize the event and to all of the presenters … for a first time event, it was quite impressive.

Wieden + Kennedy hosted the event in their fantastic office space downtown. The architecture of the building is wonderful, and W+K have put some nice touches on the space to make it their own. I have some questions about that, though, like what’s up with all of the “mice” on the stairs? And who are all of the people in the black ‘n whites on the entry wall? If those are the W+K staff, no wonder they’re considered an exceptional company.

Ignite was essentially a chance to be with like-minded local folks and get the ol’ grey matter fired up. The diversity of topics made for some fantastic brain food. I came home buzzing with ideas and inspiration, and while I don’t think I’ll be raising chickens anytime soon, I do have some great resources and ideas to work with for the immediate future.

All in all, a great time in a great locale with some very interesting people. I regret not mingling a bit more, but my co-conspirator Ryan did introduce me to some of the PDX Web Innovators group and start putting names with faces for a change. I’d hoped to meet Rick Turoczy of the Silicon Florist at some point and tell him thanks for keeping tabs on all the local Portland happenings, but in all that time I didn’t spot one person with a name tag that said “Rick” on it. Hey Rick, were you hiding someplace? Rick has the best collection of posts and links from the event that I’ve seen so far.

Here are links that I’ve collected to sites and presenters that were mentioned … keep your eyes on the Ignite Portland site for upcoming photos and more presentation links:

• Adam Duvander’s Simplicity Rules!
• SkinnyWhiteGirl Crystal Beasley
• Bill DeRouchey’s History of the Button (check out his slidecast from UX Week 2007)
• Urban Scout on Rewilding
• Michael Jones of the Unicycle Bastards
• Audrey Eschright on Geeks Knitting

I can’t wait to see what’s up when Ignite fires up again in January!

Dan Saffer of Adaptive Path led off the day with a great keynote on new sources of inspiration for interaction designers. He pointed to three specific sources of inspiration:

1. Architecture
2. Film
3. Mechanical devices

He did a great job of covering a ton of potential material in a very tight timeframe … lots of things to consider as inspiration in each of those areas. I was especially impressed by his insights in the realm of film … I’m not a big movie buff, nor do I get the chance to watch many movies. As a result, I’ve never really gotten a chance to study much about film, other than some basics about transitions and sound effects. Dan brought to light some interesting techniques and information about various classic and modern films that I had noticed but never understood their significance.

I highly recommend looking through his slides (PDF) … the visuals alone are inspiring.

Bill DeRouchey of Ziba followed Dan Saffer with an excellent presentation of his own on learning interaction design from everyday objects. Bill brought some humor and open-ended questioning to his presentation that was refreshing, and it was nice to see how his examples complemented the prior presentation. His site, No Ideas But In Things, is a collection of interesting and intriguing things that inspire.

Rather than ramble, catch Bill’s slides (PDF) and grab the audio, too.

Just after Bill’s session finished, I had a chance to speak to him and introduce myself. In typical fashion, I introduced myself, mentioned that I was impressed with his presentation and noted the local connection (Ziba is located in my hometown, Portland, Oregon) and then promptly ran out of things to say. Ugh! So much for good impressions.

The conference wrapped up with a presentation by Cybelle Jones of Gallagher & Associates and Robert Freeland of Quatrefoil Associates, both of whom teamed up to design the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.

While their presentation was interesting, the “field trip” to the museum was fantastic. My guess is that just about every adult male in the building reverted to a 10 year old boy, geeking out on spy gear, stories and gadgets from around the world. The museum itself is well organized and covers a lot of ground (physically and informationally). The format is such that it caters to both kids and adults, with interactive exhibits and lots of background information on all of the objects in the collection. Any subsequent trips I make to D.C. will likely include a brief stop at the museum, just for fun.

All in all, UX Week was well worth the time and money. I’ve got a notebook of ideas, sketches and trivia that will inform the work I do in the near term, as well as some longer term material to learn from. I’m looking forward to next year.

Jan Chipchase of Nokia really impressed me with some of his thoughts on research and user human centered design. Starting with the simple questions, like “Who are you?” and “How do you prove it?”, really reframes your thinking about things and our sense of identity. He posed an interesting question, too — “What do our signs say about us?” There’s so much more to our motivations and cultural clues than meets the eye … there is so much beneath the surface. It’s something we know in a way, but so often forget to ask the right questions to get to the deeper meaning. He had three things that work (in contextual research):

1. Make your colleagues smarter
2. Know who you are (and your boundaries)
3. Let go (of your assumptions and control)

There was a lot more, too, that I’ll be mulling over for a while and trying to implement in my work, though it wouldn’t hurt to have his research and travel budget!

Emily Ulrich of Steelcase presented an interesting tool called “elito” that helps capture and frame research, insights and design concepts for a team. The tool documents metaphor, observation, insight, value and concept.

Todd Wilkens of Adaptive Path was entertaining and informative once again with his presentation on Making Research Effective. I’m liking Wilkens’ Law and “research martyrdom” as highlights … not to mention the Lego Knight on the slides. Most importantly, though, he made it clear that research results need three things to be successful: value, relevance and to be actionable.

Adaptive Path exposed their weaknesses at an interesting session hosted by Bryan Mason. They have, in their own words, a “cultural tolerance for error” that is admirable and necessary in order to grow as an organization. They also have a lot of fun and learn to laugh at their own mistakes. It’s always nice to see heroes show a bit of weakness and humility … it only further proves their strength and endears them to us even more. Way to go, AP folks!

Josh Porter, formerly of UIE and now running his own shop, Bokardo Design, made a good presentation of social design influences and social psychology research. Nicely summarized and very useful. I’ve followed his blog for some time now and will continue to do so.

Kathleen Hoski and Paris Patton, of Best Buy and Sachs Insights respectively, made a great presentation of some of their joint research into multi-channel purchases. They had select video clips of customers from focus groups, video diaries and interviews. As would be expected, the video footage was very “real” and enlightening. You can’t help but chuckle when listening to customers’ “parking lot confessionals” and making comments like taking into account “the W.A.F. – Wife Approval Factor.” My only complaint, please slow down Kathleen, I really wanted to hear all that you had to say.

The day wrapped up with a discussion panel by Lori Adams and Dermont Waters of CNN.com. Humorous, entertaining and honest, it was another great presentation of the ups and downs of what good design is all about. For how large CNN is as an organization, they seemed to be fairly nimble in their redesign project. I have some fun quotes, like “teetering pile of data” and “Relaunch Protection Program” that added a special flavor to their session.

If I hadn’t jetted out the door right afterward to take a very pleasant evening trolley tour of D.C. with my wife, I would have had a chance to meet Bill DeRouchey of Ziba at the closing night party. Ziba’s the big dog of design in my own backyard, and Bill’s presentation is on my schedule for tomorrow, so I’ll just have to see if I can catch him after his presentation and say hi.

I must confess, I spent way too much time last night walking around D.C. playing tourist with my wife. It’s been about 5 years since my last trip to the D.C. area, and my wife hasn’t been here since she was in the 8th grade (and while it’s been a long time since 8th grade, I’m not at liberty to discuss her age … I do enjoy sleeping in a bed, after all). We spent about five and a half hours on foot touring D.C. and getting some great shots of the landmarks at night, like this one:

The evening ended with a late night meal at the hotel bar, entertained by some other attendees and their libations, then downloading and reviewing photos on my laptop until about 2am local time (which still only feels like 11pm … I’ll adjust to the time zone difference about the time I get back on the plane home).

End result: a fuzzy recollection of most of the sessions, with the exception of Leisa Reichelt’s talk “Waterfall Bad, Washing Machine Good”. Leisa proved to be very entertaining while touching on a subject that many people are having issues with … design/development processes. Waterfall methods are widely agreed to be a death trap by many in the design realm, but the alternatives of agile development and user-centered design (UCD) each have their weaknesses. Her proposal of a “washing machine” methodology, the best of both agile and UCD, has lots of promise. Leisa’s blog has been on my reading list for a long time, and will continue to be … there’s a great mind behind that marvelous accent.

Interesting opening by Deborah Adler of ClearRx fame, much more soft spoken and hesitant than I would have guessed. Great ideas, nice to see her prototypes and hear about the process she used to arrive at such great results.

Kevin Brooks of Motorola Labs was very engaging and entertaining, as would be expected of someone with his background as a professional oral storyteller. In fact, he’s produced a CD of stories, called Kiss of Summer, that sounds very interesting. It’s definitely on my buy list now.

Kate Rutter, “Sticky Ninja” and member of Adaptive Path, did a great job turning the humble Post-It note into a weapon of mass instruction. Were Kate left on a deserted desert island with nothing but a few packs of stickies, she’d surely be found weeks later having build a vacation resort there out of nothing but determination and stickies. I sincerely hope she has stock in 3M.

Hey, MightyGirl, was that you in the elevator? What a cutie you’ve got in the stroller! Nice to see that UX Week is a family affair.

Ryan Freitas, also of Adaptive Path, did a great presentation on the parallels between working in a professional kitchen and working as an interaction designer. His published article on the same topic in Ambidextrous magazine is a good summary of his presentation.

Jess McMullin of nForm spoke to a topic that I can relate to — The Designer as Facilitator — and had some solid suggestions about how to “grease the wheels” so to speak, and increase influence and work through business roadblocks to make good design (and implementation) happen.

Liz Sanders of MakeTools really wowed me, though, and capped the day with two sessions back-to-back — a presentation and a workshop — that explored the history of the design research landscape and where she sees things going in the future: generative tools. I have a ton of notes from her presentation, with a bunch of brain sparks in the margins. Nothing compares to seeing how she’s using these simple, but incredibly powerful toolkits to empower people (not just designers) to make meaning and create the future. Liz is tops on my list for the day … what a great way to wrap up the day and finish energized and motivated.

I’m looking forward to seeing what tomorrow brings …

Capping the whirlwind that has been the past couple of weeks, I’m in Washington, D.C. now for UX Week, which promises to be a pretty exciting and inspiring event. Adaptive Path has a great series of speakers lined up and the locale is quite nice.

I’ve followed a number of these folks’ blogs for some time now, but there’s a whole depth of communication that comes with in-person, live public speaking that you just don’t get in the written word. I’m always been amazed at how the personality of a speaker adds so much more to what they have to say … and once you’ve heard their voice in the real world, it’s easier to pick up the subtleties in their writing that you might have otherwise missed.

Come on people, let us hear your voices!

Ignore the fact that I was passed by the world’s fittest 70-year couple, a 14 year old kid with ADHD (makes him run faster I bet) and gaggles of women who were barely out of breath. Instead, focus on the fact that despite cramping up just after mile 12 and coming across the finish line with a bloody nipple (sorry for those who are faint of heart), I managed to pull off a nice, average 11 minute mile for the full length of the course and was still able to walk later in the day. For my first half marathon, I’m feeling pretty good.

All in all, I was very impressed with the Helvetia Half Marathon and its organizers. It was well organized, well staffed, fantastically supported and quite scenic. I’m definitely adding this as an annual event on my calendar. Here’s a look at the course courtesy of Runpix.info:

Assuming that I can keep up my training, my next target for this fall will be the Portland Marathon. And in the meantime, I’ll be buying stock in Bodyglide and finding a solution to the, ahem, chafing issues elsewhere, too.

Day two of WebVisions pretty much brought my brain to overload … mostly because of the chance to step away from the projects at work that have been consuming all my cycles (or more likely, killing brain cells and deadening my senses).

It’s been an opportunity to regroup and rethink a bunch of design concepts that I’ve been kicking around for months, and after all the mental stimulation and inspiration (it’s so nice to be with other people who actually practice good design and have lessons to share), I basically hit the wall by midday.

Still, the morning sessions continued the quality from yesterday …

• Lane Becker and Thor Muller (Thor, I can only imagine what you went through in school with that name) of Satisfaction Unlimited gave a fantastic presentation called Let Go! 8 Steps to Succeeding in a Post-2.0 World that is definitely worth reviewing, though the slides won’t have the full depth without Lane and Thor’s playful banter. Regardless, I came away with a full page of scribbles, ideas and thoughts that will work their way into my future design plans. The thing I took most to heart was something the dynamic duo said about control:
  

  Get accustomed to that uncomfortable feeling that things are just slightly beyond your comprehension and control. It’s a sign that you’re in the right place.

  It goes nicely with the concept of continual growth, which in my mind means that you’re only growing if you’re constantly pushing the boundaries of your current comfort zone and knowledge. Note to self: you’re getting too comfortable in your current capacity, find ways to stretch yourself.

• Chris Baum of Jaman.com and Boxes and Arrows fame gave his presentation on The Rise of Collaborative Innovation. I have to admit, I felt a bit awkward in Chris’ session, because, despite his obvious knowledge and experience, it felt quite loose and disconnected. He made some good points about T-shaped people and how a good team is built by overlapping T’s, but there was one quote (can’t recall if it was his or someone else’s) that really resonated with me:
  

  Innovation dies not by one big blow, but by little cuts (constraints) over time.

  Chris is obviously a busy guy and he had a lot of stuff to share. I’ll be tracking his blog for a bit to see what other gems he might have to share in the future.

By lunch time, my brain was full and I spent a bit of time reviewing notes from both days of the conference, then decided it was time to let things percolate … which meant shuttling things to the back of my brain and finding something to distract the loose cycles in the forefront of my brain. That distraction ended up being Spider Man 3 …

It’s been a couple of years since I attended WebVisions, but I’m glad I went this year. The event seems to get better and better over time, and just the talks from the first day were worth the price of the conference … I can’t wait to find out what tomorrow brings.

Here are the highlights of the workshop and two sessions that I attended …

• Garrett Dimon’s workshop on Improving Interface Design (PDF here) was a nice review of interaction design concepts, and he mentioned a number of fantastic books that I either own or plan to buy. The thing I loved the most were the many quotes he used in his presentation, such as this one from Khoi Van:
  

  Design groups really need a strong, diplomatic leader who can help engender a climate for good design.

  Anyone who knows me knows that I love to collect quotes, especially those that deal with design, imagination/inspiration or human behavior. Garrett’s presentation was like an all-you-can-eat buffet in that department.

• Todd Wilkens of Adaptive Path gave one of the most engaging presentations of the day on User Experience Design. He was entertaining and informative, and I couldn’t help but laugh at the four views of “users” that he posited:
  1. Homo Economicus
     More features for less money and effort
  2. Type A’s
     Completely task and goal driven – all about efficiency
  3. Sheep
     Docile, gullible and all about group think
  4. The Gullet
     Gulp up products just because they can and crap cash

  That last one was the best. Having worked for a company that saw its customers this way, I could barely contain my glee at how Todd phrased this. A+ for accuracy and the use of “crap cash” in a conference presentation.

• Sean Madden’s Social Architecture session was the most thought-provoking of the day and I spent the rest of the afternoon pondering self-organizing systems and how various technologies might play a key role in such systems, like RFID tags, mobile phones w/GPS, OpenID, metro WiFi and intelligent devices.

  I especially liked Sean’s descriptive use of calm technology (hiding complexity through intuitive systems) and beautiful seams (glimpses of what’s under the hood that are powerful, yet approachable). As a member of one of my favorite design shops, frog design, I’m not surprised at the depth and intriguing concepts that came out of his presentation.

All in all, not bad for one day … I have pages of notes, ideas and musings that will have to percolate for a bit.