My Curious Life

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.