The Importance of Failure for Designers – Part 2

In Part 1, I showcased the first two methods for dealing with failure and learning from it. Part 2 will focus on activities that can be during a retrospective, or stand alone. These next two methods have a certain risk associated with them due to the emotions that can arise during the resulting conversations. If done successfully however, the passion these emotions invoke can help solidify the lessons that are available to be learned.

Adventures of Loki and Tristan

It’s been just about 3 months since Tristan has joined our world, and everyone in our household is finally getting settled down with the new addition. My wife and I made it through the transition fairly well, and I can state with much pride that I’m able to successfully work on a computer with an infant AND a dog in my lap. Speaking of our dog, Loki, he seems to be the one taking it the hardest making the adjustment.

The Importance of Failure for Designers – Part 1

I’ve recently been working on a framework to help designers deal with failure. Failure can occur many times over the course of a project, and knowing how to use that failure effectively helps a team continue to work without losing steam. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be posting the methods I’ve identified two at a time that form the framework. The goal of these posts is to gather feedback on the value of these methods, and any suggestions you want to see that will help flush them out. In other words, have a nice virtual conversation around how to scare off the bogeyman that is Failure.

Advanced Prototyping Using Blend 3

The key to any advanced prototypes using Blend 3 w/ Skecthflow is using the SketchFlow Animation Panel, the more advanced States panel, or by adding common interactive behavior to controls. Now, if you happen to have any Flash background, setting up animations will feel very comfortable for you. Below are my thoughts on how to set up some of the behavior that is exhibited by another Silverlight Prototype I put together. (Please explore the prototype to see how feedback and annotations work.)

Prototyping with Blend 3 and Sketchflow

My first introduction to Blend wasn’t a pleasant one, so bad that when Blend2 came out I promptly ignored it. However, while attending the Day of .Net Conference I sat in on a demo of Blend 3 with Sketchflow. It was impressive to see the improvement that has been made in the Blend, and with the addition of Sketchflow.  To dive deep into the capabilities of Blend, I downloaded the trial version and set out to create a prototype for a future design of this blog (and do some R&D for how to use this on my project team). Below are some thoughts I had while cranking out this concept.

User Experience Doesn’t Equal User Interface – Presentation

I know the majority of my readers are UX designers, so most of this will preaching to the choir. But, I promised the attendees an online version of my slides with what I  wanted to say during the presentation. For you seasoned presenters I look forward to any feedback you might have on the quality of the presentation and the content. Hope you enjoy!

SMCSTL – Evolution of the Web – A Panel

The Social Media Club of St. Louis is meeting on August 20^th to discuss how IT has had to deal with the changes of the web over the course of the past 10 years. With the raise of Web 2.0 and the theoretical discussions going on about the Semantic Web (Web 3.0) throws a lot of wrenches in the gears of an IT department.

How do you learn from failing?

The art of designing is one filled with failing early and failing often. These iterations allow a designer to learn from their mistakes to get to a proper solution. Learning from your failures is real challenge though, especially if there is a close personal connection to a design. The slippery slope is when we don’t learn from our failures, for we are destined to make the same mistakes all over again. The act of ‘sucking less than I did last time’ is an art that any designer needs to learn if they hope to be successfully.

What would you share with a room full of developers?

Later this month I will be speaking at Day of .Net, a local developer conference here in St. Louis. The topic of my presentation is ‘UX != User Interface’. I hope to clear the room on what User Experience is and how it helps developers effectively do their jobs. Since I don’t have nearly all the answers, I am hoping the User Experience community will provide me with a few talking points that are important to them.

Links 7/1 – 7/10

Seeing Things Differently – It is always best to keep in mind the people that always need a little help.

Designing A Unified Experience – Kim Goodwin gives an outstanding overview of design. Great video to check out.

Todd Zaki Warfel – redUX DC ‘09 – Todd gives us a great run down of the workshop he gave on prototyping at the IA Summit back in March.