February 2012
2 posts
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“I am a firm believer that artists and designers have a real role to play as...”
– John Maeda #hellYeah!
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““85% of Tumblr users post more than 20 times a month on average.”
...”
– The Guardian —> Interview: David Karp, founder of Tumblr, on realising his dream
(I feel so meta posting this in Tumblr :) ).
January 2012
6 posts
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My Personal Work and UX Philosophies
Inspired by Scott Berkun’s emphasis on building good relationships in his excellent talk on the top mistakes UX designers make, I’ve decided to make public an edited version of my job search “cheat sheet.” I originally drafted it last month in preparation for an interview. Now, in addition to researching the specific company I’m interviewing for, and drafting...
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Scott Berkun: The Top Mistakes UX Designers Make
As I tweeted earlier, the ability to craft and facilitate a truly interactive talk (not just one billed as “interactive”) is difficult — few can actually pull it off. Scott Berkun (@berkun) made it look easy at his Puget Sound SIGCHI talk on The Top Mistakes UX Designers Make. The night was my first time volunteering with PSSIGCHI after Josh LaMar invited me to get involved...
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Analyzing How Agencies Describe and Present UX
I’ve been poking around, looking at how different agencies describe User Experience (UX), and whether or not they call it UX explicitly. Though obvious to UXers, you can sure learn a lot about how an agency thinks about itself from its information architecture! I analyzed the information architecture and content related to describing UX for POP, ZAAZ, Razorfish, Forum One, and Neudesic....
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“We map the terrain of domains using research and empathy, see opportunity...”
– Sarah Brooks on what Interaction Designers and User Experience Designers do. Sarah has issue with her definition —”Wait. That’s as vague as the rest of the descriptions that drive me nuts. ” — but I happen to like it. :)
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Redesigning success with an artist identity
About three months ago, I was transformed by a talk Sharon Ann Lee gave on redesigning success. Lee is a cultural trend analyst and author who runs “a think tank/studio on trends, culture and creativity.” Her talk has been buzzing around in my mind since watching it. Lee recommends: 1) know your numbers 2) live in the power zone 3) create a poetic vision of your life. Because a...
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December 2011
9 posts
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The Real Power of Mobile
[Note: This is the final of five posts related to Nam-Ho Park’s talk and blog post on Mobile Storytelling. Links to my other posts are at the bottom of the page.]
Nam-ho ends his post with thought-provoking questions about the potential of mobile as it relates to identity and collective storytelling:
Our identity is the story we repeat to ourselves. If that is so, what is the story we repeat to...
Enriching our Environment: Collective Stories and...
[Note: This is the fourth of five posts related to Nam-Ho Park’s talk and blog post on Mobile Storytelling. Links to my other posts are at the bottom of the page.]
Nam-ho has a very interesting section in his write-up entitled, “Collective Stories.” Here’s a snip:
Daum Communication, a leading internet services provider in Korea offers a map service with a streetview option, much like Google...
Ushahidi and Mapping Random Acts of Kindness
[Note: This is the third of five posts related to Nam-Ho Park’s talk and blog post on Mobile Storytelling. Links to my other posts are at the bottom of the page.]
I’ve long been a fan of Ushahidi and was pleased to see Nam-ho discuss it in his talk and write-up:
Usahidi, an interactive map-based information collection tool was born out of a need to capture and report post-election violence...
Maps, Place, and Emotional Design
[Note: This is the second of five posts related to Nam-Ho Park’s talk and blog post on Mobile Storytelling. Links to my other posts are at the bottom of the page.]
As Nam-ho illustrates, home and place are deeply emotional. Read what happens when his father looks for the house he grew up in:
When I showed Google Earth for the first time to my dad on an iPad, the first thing he did was to look...
Reflections on Mobile Storytelling
Besides being incredibly easy to use, and the gorgeous way archived posts are displayed, I love that Tumblr feels like a safe place to sketch out and test loose ideas. Its designed to allow users to post interesting quotes, videos, photos, or links they come across, or to quickly post ideas of their own. The culture surrounding Tumblr doesn’t always expect ideas to be fully formed or...
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The Digital Public Sphere: What About Art?
Note: This post originally started as a comment on Jonathan Stay’s excellent piece, What should the digital public sphere do? I reference and quote a lot of his ideas. I recommend reading it first — not only because my post will make more sense — but because reading it will make your mind happy.
—————
The Digital Public Sphere
Thank you, Jonathan....
November 2011
14 posts
4 tags
Kevin Wong: 8 lessons as a UX professional
Kevin Wong gave an informative and engaging talk, “8 lessons as a UX professional,” at the University of Washington’s Information School in late October. Since graduating with his BS in Informatics from UW in 2007, he’s worked as a user researcher (and designer) at the design firm, Artefact. The purpose of the talk was to give iSchool students some context about what it...
Informational Interview with Artefact's Kevin Wong
In late October, Kevin Wong gave a great talk at University of Washington’s Information School about his experience as a UX professional. Kevin is a user researcher (and designer) at Artefact, a design company that I’ve been watching for about a year or so. He received his BS in Informatics from the iSchool in 2007 and has worked at Artefact since graduating. The purpose of the talk...
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“Carl Sagan; a man who can say something as absurd as “we are made of star...”
– CreedOfHeresy’s ode to Carl Sagan in the YouTube comments of “We Are all Connected.” Randomly finding comments like this one is reason #342 why I love the Internetz.
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What Makes a Good Mentee?
I’ve been curious about the idea of mentorship lately. What makes a good mentee? A good mentor? While there are probably some tried and true answers to this question, my hunch is that it depends significantly on the particular people involved in a mentee/montorship relationship. What works well for one person may not work well for another. Personalities, communication styles, availability — all...
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HTML5 and CSS3
[Update 11/23/11, 6:38pm: The slides, resources, and demos of the HTML5 webcamp are now up.]
Last Friday I went to a webcamp on HTML5 at Microsoft, facilitated by Doris Chen. Because of some technical issues (like not having a big enough screen for those of us sitting farther back to be able to see), I didn’t learn quite as much as I had hoped. It did bring to mind Jen Matson’s...
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Genevieve Bell On Culture and Interaction Design
Johnny Holland has a fantastic interview with anthropologist and researcher, Genevieve Bell who is the director of Interaction and Experience Research at Intel.
Storytelling and social participation, this woman is speaking my language!
Currently, we are exploring changing notions of storytelling and social participation; charting the shift in use of cameras, phones, and televisions; and hacking...
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Hacking Design Research with... Design
In October, I discovered an intriguing post by Kevin Walker, “Design Research and Research Design,” and tweeted my key takeaways. While interesting, it’s somewhat of a long read, which makes it perfect for an experiment I’m trying out: augmenting Twitter with Tumblr. The reasons behind this experiment are to: 1) cut to the chase of meaty articles, yet provide a bit more...
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Musings on agency, design, and empathy-inducing...
Futurist Jamais Cascio has long been one of my very favorite thinkers about technology, society, and cultural transformation. I first discovered his writing when I worked at Grist (I was there from 2004-2007), and he was writing for Worldchanging, which he co-founded. My BA is in Sociology, and as an undergrad I was particularly interested in the study of social change movements. Jamais deeply...
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Jamais Cascio on Not Giving Up
Reading Jamais makes my brain happy:
“Our technologies are not going to rob us (or relieve us) of our humanity. Our technologies are part of what makes us human, and are the clear expression of our uniquely human minds. They both manifest and enable human culture; we co-evolve with them, and have done so for hundreds of thousands of years. The technologies of the future will make us...
October 2011
1 post
