connecting*the*dots

(originally uploaded by hockadilly)

This is one of those stake in the ground type posts, or put differently, a kick in the ass — my own ass.

I went through a bunch of tests with no clear diagnosis after passing out in 1999 (multiple times) and again in 2003, and I’m coming to the conclusion that on a sub-conscious level, I simply decided to stop being physically active. Instead of continuing to play ball and hit the gym with any degree of regularity and follow up with my doctors, I dove into my work and convinced myself that was a solution.

Well, it wasn’t… and it’s about time for a change.

Since I won’t be posting before pictures as motivation — this is a lifestyle change, not a reality show (and I wouldn’t do that to you anyway) — the following is a list of the behavioral changes I plan on making:

1. Pay ridiculous attention to everything I put into my mouth — cutting way back on sweets, soda, fatty foods and fried foods and upping my intake of non-processed foods.
2. Put in 25mins cardio and 25mins lifting each day, whether I’m at home or on the road.
3. Play more often (basketball, batting cages, dog park, etc.). In other words: get some friggin’ sunlight
4. Schedule a full-physical and, quite possibly, a meeting with a therapist. I’ve got so much going on right now — building two businesses, managing a number of clients, etc. — I could use an objective voice in my ear from time to time.

I guess I’m making this public to put some much needed pressure on myself to follow through — hopefully it works.

Sometimes you have to make it all about you.

UPDATE: I’m going to use the comment thread on this post to document the highs and lows over the first three months or so.

Haunting.

(via The Wooster Collective)

(stencil created, shot and uploaded by asboluv)

Update: The original artist makes contact in the comments:

when I did this stencil I had some text to accompany it which simply read:

BUSH BABY

during the act of spraying it onto the wall in my local town (Ipswich UK, where it still remains today) I broke the stencil with the text so only the image went up which in retrospect is more powerfull on its own than with the text which would have had a more direct and obvious message

[…]

I’m more proud of the fact that after 35 years of living on this planet and now working 9 to 5 and living the life of a parent, husband, car owner and home owner I still have the passion, anger and inspiration to want to challenge and comment what is going on in the world by sitting down for a few hours designing this stencil and getting up at 4am to spray it up on the street!

[…]

If you’re an interaction designer, think about the process of generating design personae while listening to Gladwell.

Red state / blue state political maps now have a behavioral map to further support the simplistic notions of a two-party system!

Don’t get me wrong, I find the visceral imprint of this study from the school of information at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor fascinating, but I’m hoping that as we further our attempts to understand one another through similar human behavior studies using our interactions on the web, we’ll look to use less obvious attributes than political party affiliations as a control.

Blogging is a strange beast.

I was on ScriptingNews yesterday, reading Dave Winer’s spot-on post about Google web clips. Frankly, it surprised me that it was a new feature to him, as I’ve had it displayed above my Gmail client for what seems months now. Maybe Google is releasing features in chunks of user groups? I digress…

Just as I began to create a post about the differences in my mental model when I’m searching for information and performing specific tasks to accomplish a specific goal within an application (with the former being the proper place for RSS advertisements [which is what they are] and the latter a place that should be free of such junk), I happened upon his post which used an out of context quote from Tara Hunt’s post as a lead into a somewhat self-aggrandizing post. Well, that shifted my posting focus.

Within 10 minutes I had moved from one blog to another, uncovering the gist of what her quote actually referenced. In the end, I found myself watching a 3 minute-long clip of Mena Trott and Ben Metcalfe going at it at Les Blogs conference in Paris. This somewhat common interaction in the midst of a conference (speaker and attendee getting worked up in debate) was different because it came into being due to the backchannel IRC conversation being presented behind Mena, which led her to call Ben out of the audience to back up his off-comment.

So instead of dropping a UX post, I found myself clued into who Ben Metcalfe is and this practice of presenting IRC conversations "to add texture" to a conference presentation—a practice which, I feel, is completely fucked up. Don’t agree? Feel free to create more noise for the sphere to devour. Monitoring the sheer amount of conversations that posted following the Mena-Ben exchange has been almost humorous. Yes, this post is my second referencing the “event.”

Look, blogging is empowering; it connects us individual human beings, allowing us to have a voice within the mass markets of consumerism. To Dave’s point, it’s also a hell of a lot more than that, as human behavior is impossible to predict or map out. The great thing about the blogoshere is that there is little to no organization or editorial control across blogs, but a snapshot of the conversation across the blogosphere might tell a different story.

We’ve already moved beyond the purist definition of a blog (or a web-log) into a sphere peppered with collaborative blogs, some laced with specific editorial agendas, others serving as a virtual world for friends in the real to pool their perspectives of the world. This evolution begs a bunch of questions to be asked:

• What happens to these voices in this ecosystem as the blogosphere continues to evolve?
• Is there a tipping point for these new blogs to leave the support system of the blogosphere and enter the capitalistic fray of the mainstream media?
• What signifies that initial shift; a weekly email between contributors agreeing upon editorial direction and goals, possibly?
• How about an advertsing or revenue model that only subtly effects the subject matter of posts?
• A blog isn’t a blog simply because of it’s posting and interactive features… or is it?

Are we moving towards creating more brand in the ether or is it the first step to creating grass roots, organized, activism with a catchy name to evoke information scent within the greased-palm structure of the mainstream media?

Oh, and about social tagging…

So it’s Friday night and I find myself cruising around the web after a night out and a tooth brushing away before a night in. In my travels, I landed on JJG’s blog and subsequently stumbled into his Ajax essay on the Adaptive site. I’ve got to admit something; before tonight, I’ve never read one iota about Ajax. The only real conversation I’ve had on the topic was a recent conversation with a client-side developer pal and after reading Jesse’s well defined description of the approach and the benefits. My initial reaction was pretty much, "well, duh!"

I don’t say that to offend Jesse, nor downplay the great client-side work anyone is doing right now, it’s just that I’ve been immersed in online application design for years now and have always tried to communicate these types of solutions to developers. I say "these types of solutions" lightly, as I’m primarily a designer, not a developer, so from my perspective these communication calls have been screaming to be stiched together for a while now. All said, I refuse to rake engineers over the coals. We’re here now.

Jesse spoke to the difficulties of designing online applications due to the technical workarounds which have been historically necessary to successfully support innovative interface behavior. While I agree with the level of difficulty, I disagree with the approach to design, for while practicing interaction design, I don’t model persona scenarios based on technological constraints. As David Fore of Cooper exhorts, the period of scenario modeling should be a period of making magic. That’s how innovation occurs while supporting user needs. I’d much rather engage an engineer in a position to support a brilliant solution than bland, useless features/interface behaviors. So first, come up with the right behaviors, then encourage technology to make it come to life.

Okay, that could come off as a bit pushy, unrealistic and non-tech savvy. One has to understand the constraints of the media when designing for it right? Sure. But not at the cost of potentially handcuffing a more useful experience by limiting possibilities. So how can one design for the user, while considering possibilities of Ajax?

While at Ameritrade, when the opportunity to start the UX Group came my way, I was lucky to be able to convince management to include our relatively small client-side development team in the mix. That brief organizational commitment created a huge opportunity for me to espouse innovation and collaboration across both designers and developers. I didn’t know how long the group structure would last, so I instantly switched up working from the level of context scenarios and began to approach the issue holistically.

We must have used the phrase "push the browser until it pushes back" more times in our weekly staff meetings than "war against terror" has been used in the White House over the past few years. Come hell or highwater, our (paying) client behaviors needed to be supported in our online applications, so in turn, I refused to limit us to any narrow definitions of client-side technology. Thankfully, my CSD guys (and gal) latched onto my mantra with vigor and did the heavy lifting to evolve our conversations into their domain (code), while myself and the IxD’s returned to the iteration of modeling user needs into interface behavior. Did they use the Ajax approach per se? No, but they pretty much pushed the browser until their SOP—which supported the design team’s further pursuit of forward thinking behavioral patterns—is now reflected in some of the latest Ajax app behaviors, such as Gmail. Business as usual of design and development at Ameritrade started to evolve.

Were the solutions as soundly executed across the board as the current Google attempts in leveraging the Ajax approach? I’d have to say no again, as we were performing Ajax-type workarounds on the fly. But the mere fact that the team addressed dynamic interface scenarios on a case-by-case basis, with dynamic executions on the presentation layer, led our marketing group to center their next campaign around the slogan, "Welcome to the 21st Century. Now trade like it." The ripple
effect of the progressive experience design was contained, as it only applied to the authenticated, Apex trading platform, but Barrons seemed to notice it by giving us a 4 star rating (up from 2.5 stars the previous year).

A switch to a complete Ajax approach at Ameritrade today would entail a short period of refactoring, but would make the current authenticated interface move from "singing" to "harmonizing."

As long as the IT politicians and system managers keep their paws out of coding philosophy, Ajax should mark the sweet spot of the golden age of presenting complex scenario relationships as simplified behavioral experience in the browser. Elegance in action. Personally speaking, I just never want to hear "that’s not feasible" again when proposing the design for such a dynamic solution.

Remember Belushi’s reaction to the insipid acuistic guitar love song in Animal House? Exactly.

What do you instantly think of when you read the word "fence?"

Unless you’re my friend Fleur (she’s a fan of the romantic sports), you probably lean towards the world of "things that stick in the ground and enclose other things" and you would be correct in thinking such, as fences do just that; they enclose, divide and protect areas and organisms for various purposes. Now, if we can agree to such a broad (yet particular) definition, we should be able to agree that fences define parameters of use, for if one can’t get past the fence, one can’t engage with anything outside (or inside) of its parameters.

So why am I fixated on the definition of a fence? Well, a good deal of tactical user experience design within authenticated environments is centered around the concept of defining parameters; as experiences that support specific goals rely on the thoughtful crafting of usage parameters. If that’s a vague concept, think about it in terms of designing site navigation behavior:

• Does the top/down navigation live in a consistent pane in the interface?
• If it’s located at the top of the screen, how does it behave?
• Does it expand onRollover or onClick?
• Does it display horizontally or vertically?
• Does it use rollovers for greater affordance?
• How does color and behavior reinforce the brand?
• Where is bottom/up exploration located?

Before we get too granular, let’s step back outside for a moment and think about how we might design the use of a fence in the real.

The placement of a fence’s corner posts could be determined based purely on property lines, or relative requirements based on the needs of the owner. The height of the fence, and its types of rails or wires, could be designed based on security requirements, or based purely on style. One thing is for sure; when these attributes are specified, usage parameters are in place and an experience is established. These specific choices define our cognitive perception of a fence that keeps sheep grazing within a field; a fence that protects property in the midst of urban renewal; a fence that surrounds a house at the end of a cul-de-sac.

Design is an iterative process, a constant remodeling based upon the objectives and desires of a business and user, and the perspective, and ultimately, the epiphany of the designer. But moving from good design to great design requires an effort of reduction to reach an elegant solution, where less is more and the complex takes form in simplistic presentation.

So the sheep are now grazing behind an elegant, rustic, utilitarian, wood fence. You’ve designed the perfect experience to meet the usage parameters of your client. Congratulations. But don’t pat yourself on the back for long. Your farmer client is now telling you that his sheep are going to be racing for cash on the property and that 25 other farmers are going to be using the property for similar, yet different purposes… and each are going to be equal owners, with equal say in decisions.

You now have 25 clients to please.

Parameters now seem passe, as each owner has slightly different needs and they’re starting to bicker. Your approach to good design (reduction and elegance), as applied to the original usage parameters, must now be redefined as well. So can you satisfy each of you client’s requirements with one static, structured, definition of a fence? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean design parameters go out the window.

An even more difficult challenge now lies on the horizon: How do you broker the creation of apropos usage parameters moving forward, through the creation of both useful and usable customization options? You need to meet their needs, but not by making "fences" too complicated or by coming in too close to their limited operating budget. How does one iterate the elegant reduction of the addition of customization?

Hmm… how indeed.

Stereotype vs. Archetype

So how does one remove the externally perceived reality of an imposed stereotype, in order to move towards the desired end-state of an archetypal experience?

In the fluff and soft world of Design.

If you’re trying to design an archetypal experience, you must be able to cast a broad enough net to observe participatory stereotypes in motion. From the synthesis of these observations come patterns of behavior based on goals, and understanding goal based behavior creates context and probability of action. If these findings match the archetypal DNA of numerous constituencies and drivers to be supported in a value equation, then only the application remains.

• Apply this to interface, and you’ll have an archetypal UCD, HCI, etc.
• Apply this to a business organization and you’ll have an archetypal organization, methodology, management team, talent pool, etc.
• Apply this to government and…

Design is the new black, the new MBA… but we all knew that already, right?