Prototyping is Like An Onion – It Has Layers

Recently, I’ve had to create several in-depth interactive prototypes, and keeping all the various designs and interactions straight was a bit of a daunting task. Especially when the level of interactive fidelity was high. To ensure that I hooked up every piece of interaction and wrote every logic case needed, I took the development of the prototypes step by step, or layer by interactive layer. This post is  a brief description of the process I followed. I’d be interested to know how this relates to your own process and any other comments you might have.

Contextual Vibes

Why doesn’t the iPhone allow you to customize the vibration sequence based on the context of the notification? This has been bugging me for awhile, but thanks to Eduardo Ortiz and Diego Pulido I’m bugged enough by it now to write about it. During a standard work day, my phone stays in the silent mode more often than not. Between SMS message, Boxcar Notifications, and emails my phone buzzes a lot. Now I’m like many people and I keep my personal email open all day so I can easily switch it when I need to. Feeling an email “buzz” come from my leg would tell me to check this tab rather than pull out my phone. The more I think about this type of use, the more I want this feature.

The Philosophy of Function

As I mentioned in my previous post, I recently was reminded of papers I wrote back in college for some philosophy courses that oddly deal directly with my professional life as a User Experience Designer. This next paper really resonated with my internal Interaction Designer, as it deals mainly with function and behavior.   Please bare in mind that my skills as a writer were not the greatest back then and I’m slightly embarrassed at the state in which I found them, regardless I hope you enjoy.

The Physical and Non-Physical World

Last weekend at the IA Summit, I was reminded of some papers I wrote back in college on various areas of philosophy. I was surprised to realize that many of these papers oddly enough dealt with the very thing I find myself doing everyday as a User Experience Designer. Below is the first of several papers I’ll be posting from this time in my life, please bare in mind that my skills as a writer were not the greatest back then and I’m slightly embarrassed at the state in which I found them.

Why I AM a Designer

Disclaimer: This is NOT meant to be a statement of general definition. I wrote this article to myself, in an act of self reflection. Since I’m an open person, I felt it was necessary to put this out there for the world to see and comment on.

Do you consider an architect a designer? Is the work of an industrial designer design? If you answer yes to either of these questions, than why is it that some people define the act of design for the digital world to only belonging to the visual side of things? I’ve recently been criticized for calling myself a designer, a user experience designer to be exact. One of my favorite quotes regarding the ambiguous definition of design is “Design’s fundamental role is problem solver”. While this is a great definition of design, it doesn’t really help to justify calling myself a designer, even though my primary role is to solve problems. (Note: The actual title that is prescribed to me is meaningless. What matters to me is the fact that I am recognized as designer, and that the work that I do is design.)

6 Months Down, 6 to go

Ok so the title isn’t 100% accurate since it’s actually been 7 months, but it should go to show how behind I am with my fatherhood writings. The first half of Tristan’s first year has been crazy, hectic, and completely wonderful. Being able to sit back and watch him figure out how to do something is enlightening. Observing him learning reminds me how to learn things too, something I’ve forgotten somewhere along the way.

Innovate St. Louis

Later this month, the very first St. Louis Innovation Camp will be held. This is a unique event in St. Louis, hosted and organized by a group of people that are tired of seeing all the crazy cool things happen on one of the coasts. For a long time now there has been a ton of untapped talent in the St. Louis  area, and those that really do shine normally end up getting whisked away to one of the those alluring coastal cities. Hopefully, St. Louis can finally peek it’s head out of the bushes and show those other cities it knows how to play with the big dogs too.

Thoughts on Selling User Experience

Based on several articles I’ve read over the past months, and the session Eric Reiss gave at last years IA Summit on ‘ROI: Speaking the Language of Business‘, I wrote out this mind dump of how I think about selling User Experience. These ideas are fairly rough and are intended to see how closely my thought process aligns with that of my peers. Hope you enjoy!

2010 New Year’s Resolutions

I’m normally not one for making New Year Resolutions simply because I know I wouldn’t be able to follow through with them. By posting them here, it’s my hope that I can use this post as a prolonged ‘To-Do’ list for the new year and be a gentle reminder that I always have something I could be working on. Between now and Dec. 31st, I’m going to be adding things to this post as they come to me. I know some of these resolutions will require the help of other people, so I’ll need to step out of my comfort zone a bit and be more willing to ask for help from my peers. Hopefully, by the end of 2010 I will have made some headway on this pesky things and be a better person for it.

Conversation on Failure

I recently had the pleasure of being a guest on Jeff Parks i.a. podcast. This was my first time being both interviewed and recorded, and kudos to Jeff for making it an awesome experience! The conversation we had revolved around failure and why it’s so important for designers. The topics include concepts I brought up in my three part posting on the importance of failure, and feedback we received on the wiki he set up. Thank you to Christian Crumlish, Daniel Szuc, Jan Jursa, Valeska O’Leary, and Eric Reiss for that feedback btw! You can listen to the podcast either here or via iTunes. Hope you enjoy!