Solita

This won’t fit into a tweet. And sorry, it’s about job titles so feel free to scoot off. A client...

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 17:58:00 +0000

This won’t fit into a tweet. And sorry, it’s about job titles so feel free to scoot off.

A client recently asked me why I winced when describing myself as a ‘User Experience Designer’. Well, apart from the obvious embarrassment of it being a ridiculously pompous title, it has deeper ramifications when working with teams (almost always). It suggests user experience is the domain of an individual. It excludes – or worse still excuses – others from adopting this approach. But that doesn’t make sense. UX is a flavour not an ingredient. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a designer, developer or writer, we are all fundamentally invested in the user’s experience.

Anti-totem

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 18:57:00 +0000

I enjoyed episode 69 of 99% Invisible: The Brief and Tumultuous Life of the New UC Logo. It was fascinating for all the usual reasons that designers find the religious debates around logo-reboots interesting. We sympathise with the poor misunderstood designer. We chuckle at the well meaning but ignorant opinion of the layman. Before finally returning – with a collective sigh – to where we were started. And with a shrug we accept this as the Designer’s Lot. In 25 minutes I think I passed through all five phases of the Kübler-Ross model. Sounds horrific but actually this was a great story, expertly told as always by Roman Mars and colleagues.

For those that haven’t had the pleasure, the show recounts the story of the ‘failed’ redesign of the University of California identity. Or more specifically the logo. In fact, it was even more specific than that – it was the monogram itself that seemed to get peoples’ goat.

And therein lies the problem. As the Creative Director points out, a monogram in isolation means very little. The goal is symbolism but it has to earn its meaning – firstly as part of the visual system – and eventually as a totem, emblematic of the collective experience of that brand.

Problem is, this one never had a chance. It was pushed out in the world, isolated from its system and – like a pack of wolves – the Status-Quo bias took hold. The monogram had earned its narrative, it was just the wrong one.

Metadesign at Hack Farm

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 17:01:00 +0000

A bunch of us – mainly Clearleft, but also co-conspirators Jessica, Mike, Brian and Andy – recently went on a thing called Hack Farm. We even made a site about it. And just-enough of a product. It was fun and I feel very honoured to be part of a team of enormously talented people.

I have to admit my interest in Hack Farm was weighted towards the process rather than the output itself. Part of my ever-growing interest in the conditions and environment around innovation.

Anyway I made a bunch of notes about this side of things.

Innovation (as opposed to plain old ‘good design’) can feel uncomfortable. Finding a balance between excitement/momentum/making and ambiguity/uncertainty/creativity is a challenge that someone needs to take the lead on.

Stewardship is so important here. The groups needs enough structure to avoid disorder/chaos but not so much that this it inhibits bold/exuberant thinking (often the source of the most exciting ideas). IMO, we underestimated how much stewardship was required. With hindsight, an (independent) facilitator and A LOT more preparation would have been a smart move. Think of each day as a collaborative design workshop and you’ll be getting closer to what’s required.

Design Games are, as always, your friends. We adapted versions of exercises we use with clients (especially Design Studio). But they come with a few words of warning. A lot of these games are focused on reaching consensus. However, this often comes at the expense of some of the sharper edges. At times it felt like regression toward the mean. In some ways this is desirable during client workshops but at Hack Farm we were a little too hasty to smooth those edges. Again, structure/planning/facilitation would have helped here.

People will approach the problem from different places. I tend to work outside-in, looking at big picture stuff like strategy/vision before moving on to details. Others prefer material exploration. On Hack Farm a lot of material exploration meant playing with the various APIs and data-sources already working in the UK political space. This blend of conceptual/abstract thinking with exploratory/investigative hacking was one of my personal highlights from Hack Farm. Definitely something I’d like to see more of on live projects.

Some people will struggle with this way of working. This is inevitable. After all, it’s hard to stay engaged for an entire week, especially when everything (environment/process) is unfamiliar. But it can be a little toxic for the rest of the group if there are stragglers, especially if it happens too often. Again, a good moderator will stay on top of this and adjust if needed.

I went into Hack Farm wondering whether the model could be applied to client work. The answer for me is yes, but with a lot more work. The logistics, not to mention the cost, would make this a significant investment for anyone. But the potential is clear for me. Let’s see where that goes.

"Leadership is 50 percent fiction/50 percent nonfiction. That is to say, leadership is the confidence..."

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 16:13:04 +0000

“Leadership is 50 percent fiction/50 percent nonfiction. That is to say, leadership is the confidence in knowing what you know and what you know you’ll know. It’s the ability to speak confidently, knowledgeably, and easily about the latter that sets some apart. Be comfortable with the fiction.”

- Bobulate

"Design is no longer concerned only with things. Increasingly, design is concerned with systems—and..."

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 22:40:00 +0100

“Design is no longer concerned only with things. Increasingly, design is concerned with systems—and now systems of systems or ecologies. In a sense, these systems are alive. They grow and coevolve. Designers and product managers cannot always control them. Instead, they must create conditions in which they can emerge and flourish. All this requires new thinking and new knowledge. It requires design practice to learn.”

- Hugh Dubberly

This is rude: This is not: Let’s be polite. Especially when starting relationships.

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 13:47:00 +0100

This is rude:

This is not:

Let’s be polite. Especially when starting relationships.

I stumbled on this earlier. It is, of course, a faux-leather-bound, vintage TV with a...

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 22:12:00 +0100

I stumbled on this earlier.

It is, of course, a faux-leather-bound, vintage TV with a side-protruding, retro camera lens.

I was reminded of Russell’s Wired piece about the absence of futureness.

Everywhere the current look is classic, vintage and plain. We’re dressing like artisanal leather workers with sidelines in egg collecting and a thing for moustache wax. Where are the futuristic fabrics, the exoskeletal tabards?

This is for an app – seems to be Instagram but for video – which may not be earth shatteringly innovative, but it’s still compositing video and music with a handheld telephone. On the fly.

I think we’re ready for better metaphors.

Her: Tell me when you’ve worked out what it is. Me: No, that’s kinda the point. I want...

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 09:58:00 +0100

Her: Tell me when you’ve worked out what it is.

Me: No, that’s kinda the point. I want to tell you so I can work out what it is.

James Burke says we ‘abhor complexity, and seek to simplify things whenever we can by whatever means we have at hand.’ I agree.

He also says ‘through fear of chaos we impose system on it’. I agree, again.

And we talk about the these kind of systems a lot. We heroicise them. Because the output – the system, the solution, the boxed product – is mainly what we set our sights on. And get paid for (as designers). And cry wank over with our peers.

I have no problem with this. It’s good, and worthwhile and it gets us somewhere comfortable and often meaningful.

But the last few days, to me, seem to have been less about the end and more about the getting there. Tom’s celebration of toying epitomised this for me. So did the glorious working parts of Maker Faire. And the various provocations of SF.

The divergent bit of design – where everything is half-formed, and possibly wrong, and likely to embarrass – is often forgotten. Mainly because it’s not at the end. But also because it doesn’t make for a shiny press release. Or a cohesive presentation. Or a 10 tips on how to do this better blog post.

I want to find a way of making these things more evident and more discursive. Exposing ideas at their most fertile moment, when they’re ripe for change and would benefit from nurture.

James’ Happenstance work does some of this. I love the idea of people being able to walk through the problem and see the debris of design (before it gets swept away). And eventually start to play with it themselves or just talk about it.

"Beyond a certain critical mass, a building becomes a Big Building. Such a mass can no longer be..."

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 10:26:46 +0100

““Beyond a certain critical mass, a building becomes a Big Building. Such a mass can no longer be controlled by a single architectural gesture, or even by any combination of architectural gestures. This impossibility triggers the autonomy of its parts, but that is not the same as fragmentation: the parts remain committed to the whole.””

- Brute Force Architecture and its Discontents - etc Rem Koolhaas, Bigness essay in S,M,L,XL

"They [clients] effectively pay a premium for an agency who knows what they’re doing to do that thing..."

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 09:32:56 +0100

“

They [clients] effectively pay a premium for an agency who knows what they’re doing to do that thing well. It tends not to play well for an agency to then spend the duration of the contract being actively uncertain, making hypotheses and validating them, using the client’s money to ‘learn’.

This, traditionally, is not what we pay a top class agency to do. We pay them to know stuff and to get stuff right, and to be the people we blame if it doesn’t work out well. Until clients get comfortable with this (will they ever?) it will be difficult, nigh impossible, for an agency to be properly Lean or even agile.

”

- Client/Agency Engagement is F*cked, Waterfall UX Design is a Symptom | disambiguity

"If you freeze an idea too quickly, you fall in love with it. If you refine it too quickly, you..."

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 11:31:41 +0100

“If you freeze an idea too quickly, you fall in love with it. If you refine it too quickly, you become attached to it and it becomes very hard to keep exploring, to keep looking for better. The crudeness of the early models in particular is very deliberate.”

- Jim Glymph, Gehry Partners

"Unlike products, services are often designed or modified as they are delivered; they are co-created..."

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 06:56:29 +0100

“Unlike products, services are often designed or modified as they are delivered; they are co-created with customers; and service providers must often respond in real time to customer desires and preferences. Services are contextual – where, when and how they are delivered can make a big difference. They may require specialized knowledge or skills. The value of a service comes through the interactions: it’s not the end product that matters, so much as the experience.”

- Everything is a service

"The biggest impediment to service innovation is not a lack of ideas. It’s the inability of companies..."

Thu, 17 May 2012 10:54:51 +0100

“The biggest impediment to service innovation is not a lack of ideas. It’s the inability of companies to deliver them the way they are currently structured. Service designer Ben Reason notes that “Coming up with innovative services is easy. What’s hard is getting companies to adapt.””

- Everything is a service

"Or consider this 2009 experiment, published in Science. The psychologists, at the University of..."

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 14:37:36 +0100

“

Or consider this 2009 experiment, published in Science. The psychologists, at the University of British Columbia, were interested in looking at how the color of interior walls influence the imagination. They recruited six hundred subjects, most of them undergraduates, and had them perform a variety of basic cognitive tests displayed against red, blue or neutral colored backgrounds.

The differences were striking. When people took tests in the red condition – they were surrounded by walls the color of a stop sign – they were much better at skills that required accuracy and attention to detail, such as catching spelling mistakes or keeping random numbers in short-term memory. According to the scientists, this is because people automatically associate red with danger, which makes them more alert and aware.

The color blue, however, carried a completely different set of psychological benefits. While people in the blue group performed worse on short-term memory tasks, they did far better on those requiring some imagination, such as coming up with creative uses for a brick or designing a children’s toy out of simple geometric shapes. In fact, subjects in the blue condition generated twice as many “creative outputs” as subjects in the red condition. That’s right: the color of a wall doubled our imaginative power.

”

- The Psychology of Architecture | Wired Science | Wired.com

"We’ll get to why this is important and necessary in a moment, but first we need to face up to..."

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 09:52:31 +0100

“We’ll get to why this is important and necessary in a moment, but first we need to face up to a painful fact. It is that almost everything we have done over the last two decades in the area of ICT education in British schools has been misguided and largely futile. Instead of educating children about the most revolutionary technology of their young lifetimes, we have focused on training them to use obsolescent software products. And we did this because we fell into what the philosopher Gilbert Ryle would have called a “category mistake” – an error in which things of one kind are presented as if they belonged to another. We made the mistake of thinking that learning about computing is like learning to drive a car, and since a knowledge of internal combustion technology is not essential for becoming a proficient driver, it followed that an understanding of how computers work was not important for our children. The crowning apotheosis of this category mistake is a much-vaunted “qualification” called the European Computer Driving Licence.”

- A radical manifesto for teaching computing | Education | The Observer

Audio

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 20:35:32 +0100

Audio

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 20:30:42 +0100

"Maybe tiki taka, like democratic government, is fast emerging as the only game in town, meaning we..."

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 23:32:50 +0100

“Maybe tiki taka, like democratic government, is fast emerging as the only game in town, meaning we will all soon inhabit Barney Ronay’s personal dystopia where every team plays like Barcelona, passing sideways until they reach the edge of the earth. Somehow I doubt it.”

- Keep Calm and Carry On - The Run of Play

"I see an analogy between the process of science and of evolution by natural selection. For..."

Sun, 12 Jun 2011 23:00:00 +0100

“I see an analogy between the process of science and of evolution by natural selection. For evolution, too, is characterized by periods of stasis (= normal science) punctuated by brief periods of accelerated change (= paradigm shifts) based on mutations (= anomalies) most of which are lethal (false theories) but some lead to the budding off of new species and phylogenetic trends (=paradigm shifts).”

- Vilayanur Ramachandran, Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition and professor with the Psychology from Responses | 2011 Annual Question | Edge

"Design for a world where Google is your homepage, Wikipedia is your CMS, and humans, software..."

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 10:30:54 +0100

“Design for a world where Google is your homepage, Wikipedia is your CMS, and humans, software developers and machines are your users.”

- http://www.slideshare.net/reduxd/beyond-the-polar-bear