You Are Not A Designer If – It would be very interesting to see a follow up to this called ‘You Are A Designer If’.

Boxes and Arrows Interactions 09 Recap -  Whitney Hess summarizes all the craziness that occurred at this years Interactions 09 conference.

Who Watches The Watchman? – Article on how old Interaction Designer truly is.

The Future of Wireframes – General history of Wireframes over the past 10 years, how they were used, how their use has changed, and how they might be used in the future.

Money is oxygen for a company, if you don’t have money you WILL die.

ROI is simply a return on investment. Whatever you put out creates some kind of value.

WIkipedia is a non-profit, but the still need money to operate.

Designers would profit from thinking about not just about helping the user but also helping the users.

Designers need to know what the key metrics are for a business and how that can effect their design.

If you are a book reseller how are you different from amazon? What do you have to offer that is better?

“A guy selling beans in a fish market is crazy, crazy like a fox!”@cwodtke

Behavior is just a function of a person and his environment. If you design the environment, you can change a persons behavior.

What is the one activity for my user to accomplish for the business to be successful?

Engineers see users as a set of problems that need to be solved equally.

Only 1% of your users are actually doing the work on Wikipedia. They are doing the heavy lifting for your business.

Group managers only make up a small % of a user group, but they monitor the site, kick people out, and do all the real work.

Deriving marketplace dynamics from ‘Hello Dolly’ – pure genius.

Advertising starts to become contextual based on what you are doing, which also reinforces the brand.

We need to ask ourselves about the rules that make sense to put into place as designers

Once you notice that demographics can make you money, you start looking at things differently.

“Your boss comes up to you and tells you that they want user generated content because it is free” @cwodtke

You need to think about how your users are connecting with each other, determine who are the word spreaders.

Money will come if you create a service that encourages users to care and become active, even if you don’t have a business model.

Free trails make it easier for users to evaluate the offering and commit to paying a fee to continue the service.

If people don’t eventually understand the value that you offer, then the card credit access will be turned off.

Having a combo business model, when the market shirts you still make money just from different offerings.

Over the users value, the user will come back for more, and eventually give something back. Content, Money, Sponsorship, etc.

You can prove through metrics that what you created actually does provide value, really hard to do without the metrics.

Customers centers are a good place to get an idea what the key metrics are.

It is easy to get caught up in user research and being an advocate for users that you loss sight of the big picture. At the end of the day, a product or service needs to give back to the business as much as it provides the users with a good experience. I think the most important aspect of Christina’s track is how a business can be structured to support multiple models. Having several models to support a business, users have more options on how they can interact with the business.

Prototyping is just a tool to communicate ideas and explore ideas.

The level of prototyping depends on the level of fidelity you need.

Fidelity has two types of dimensions: Visual Fidelity, lowest form is sketches. A sketch prototype is more than one page.

Highest Visual Prototype is colored JPG pages.

The second dimension of fidelity is functionality, how interactive the prototype needs to be.

Proof of concept allows you to test an idea in an interactive way to see if you are on the right path or not.

To get a good idea of if some of the design ideas work, it is important to test them in an interactive method.

“Slap & Map” image mapped jpgs offer a great middle ground between high visual fidelity and mid-level functionality.

Problems with production level prototyping is that it can constrain the design. As a designer we need to be free to explore.

People in development are creative, and they can offer insights into many design issues.

Content is another dimension of the fidelity of a prototype. Your prototype isn’t just about interaction, but also the content.

The screen just randomly rolled up into the ceiling for @fred_beecher, doing a great job just rolling with it though.

Content doesn’t need to be perfect, you just need plausible content the makes sense to the user when testing it.

“There is no such thing as high or low fidelity, only appropriate fidelity.” Bill Buxton

You can also test out the various concepts to see which work and which don’t.

Prototyping also allows you to have the conversation about ‘Is this what you meant?’

LVF/HFF prototypes are good for using testing as a design tools. It tells the designer if their ideas work or suck.

Proof of concept testing of isolated interactions, the design may work but it tests if the necessary interactions work as well.

Interactive prototypes supplement documentation for the development teams. Visually express the desired interactions.

HVR/LFF prototypes are good for discovering usability problems introduced by visual design.

You are able to find problems with the workflow when testing with non-savvy user groups.

HVF/HFF enable user testing as a design tool when testing new functionality into an established system.

This type of prototype gives you supplemental documentation for OFFSHORE dev teams.

“People are dumb and we like shiny and movable things” @fred_beecher

Know what questions you want your prototypes to answer, early in design the questions are structural, later questions about usability

In corporate agile mature ux organization use prototypes to show small complex proof of concepts.

Corporate-Waterfall-new to UX start off by developing detailed scenarios you want to test.

Walk through the interactive prototype using the printed documentation with developers and stakeholders.

Consulting/Agency Develop the detailed scenarios you want to test, sketch 2 oe 3 of your UX design concepts into small prototypes.

It is important to keep clients involved in the process, walk them through each prototype and gather their feedback.

Last context is when doing Hardware Devices. First step, once again, develop detailed scenarios you want to test.

Do as many iterations of a low functional fidelity prototype as you can.

Creating wireframes and prototypes are an important aspect of what an interaction designer does, and one of my personal passions. The key takeaway from this track was the methodology for the various forms of fidelity a prototype can have and the situations they are best utilized in. It is a fine line between having a detailed design and a conceptual design. Using Fred’s process for developing prototypes, a designer can better gauge when they need to do something more conceptual, or get down and dirty with the details.

Integrating Effective Prototyping Into Your Design Process

View more presentations from Fred Beecher.

Storytelling and be used as a communication tool that can lead to a design frame and used as a vehicle for engagement/response.

Comics, storyboards, scenarios, and concept narrative are the communication tools.

There was a missing component to their design process. They couldn’t nail down a final vision of what they are trying to do.

Even if we can’t tell a good story, we know if a story is good.

A theme is the subject-matter, topic, or idea on which a work of art or literature is based. It makes the story more memorable.

A theme impacts the writer and reader differently. It helps the writers with decisions, and the reader with connecting to the story.

For design a theme can put experience at the forefront of a concept, unify teams, lead to strategy, lead design solutions …

If Flickr had a theme it would be to define yourself with photos.

Mothra is the technology product, Godzilla is the user. Who do you think should win?

The yin and yang of UX are tangible and intangible. Tangible need to be expressed, intangible needs to be felt by the user.

Function, performance, ease of use + beauty, emotion, and meaning = the optimal user experience.

Unfortunately I was not able to capture the entire session via twitter due to a crummy wifi connection. This session was extremely interesting because it offers designers another tool to use in order to set a baseline for a project. Mission statements, project visions, and personas also attempt to do this, but by nature they are more analytical tools. Using a theme to drive a project design invokes creative thought and behavior. In theory, this allows designers to tackle complex problems and come up with truly amazing solutions. It will be interesting to see how other people use themes in the future, and their resulting work.

Experience Themes: An Element of Story Applied to Design

View more presentations from Cindy Chastain.

Design Rules are not commandments, but rules about recommendations and what gets recommended.

What is a rule? It is how a screen changes for different circumstances.

Rules come up as needed to full in the holes in a particular UX.

Rules are not recipes, they don’t provide steps to follow in order to accomplish something.

A rule is like an editor, that crafts the message out of a pile of footage.

An IA needs to take rule world content and fit them into a defined digital system.

A machine will make the decision about what content gets displayed, but we need to give the machine a clear set of guidelines.

Faceted based navigation follows the same rules between overall categories, even though the content is different.

Based on user selections the path they follow changes based on the business rules behind it.

Rules are not patterns, at least not how we define patterns.

There are patterns of rules that can be used in order to make a service/product successful.

You need to be able to take a pattern and define the rules necessary to be able to use that pattern successfully.

IA is a web site’s ‘language’, rules use that language in order to manufacture a user experience.

Content rules develop the pool of all the content that can be displayed.

Filters take the pool and decide the exact pieces of content that get chosen to be displayed

If the filter rules fail, have a fall back default that the system can use.

The effect of the rules need to be displayed to the user when they are invoked. I think of the Kayak.com filters with this.

Using pseudo-code as annotations is a method that can be understand by both business and technical team members.

Wireframes can also display what the content, scope, filters, and format will end up looking like.

What makes a good rule? #1 Those that are User-Centered. Getting a recommendations on stuff you care about.

Rules are unambiguous, they need to be clear about the choices that come out of them.

Rules need to be feasible, if you are not collecting the information you want to display, then the rule isn’t feasible.

The responsibility of the rule needs to be specified, is it a human or a machine making the decision?

Rules need to be able to degrade gracefully, this is where a set of defaults come into play.

We need to take our rules seriously, they govern how our products behave in front of our customers.

How are the rules documented to ensure that people follow them when implementing a product?

Creating documentation that is readable, informative, and fun is a big part of getting the rules implemented correctly.

Is it better to have a stakeholder to enforce the rules, or have an authoritative figure to enforce the rules.

Part of the feasibility of a rule is if it can be enforced or not, regardless if it is a human or machine that manage the rule

What happens if you use the rules to reverse engineer the IA from the desired rules?

It is easy to get caught up in the details of what we do, In the end we need to start with the UX and have that drive the rule

This session was great because it highlights a step in the process that happens regardless if the designer purposely defines the rules. By pointing out the importance of using Design Rules, a designer can focus on ensuring that the rules that get put into place enhance the overall user experience. This is definitely something I hope to incorporate in my own personal design process going forward.

Designing Rules ~ IA Summit 2009

View more presentations from Daniel Brown.

Vegas is setting up a program that will watch everyone while you spend money, give a WOW factor, and transcribe what you are buying.

Vegas will also find your addresses and inform everyone about what you are doing and what you are spending your money on.

Obviously this isn’t a real story, it was fake.

Facebook took great liberty about what the word ‘Friend’ means.

Showing off a piece of art that changed the art world. http://is.gd/ocJl Called The Fountain by Duchamp.

The trolley conundrum, an abstract illustration of who do you save 5 people or just one.

90% of would studied would save 5 people over just one.

Different study, would you be the cause of someones death to save 5 people, most people wouldn’t do it.

Researchers performed brain scans when they asked people these questions to see which area of the brains gets stimulated.

A lot of our behavior is coming from the Limbic system, the oldest part of our brain. Rather than the Frontal Lobe, the newest system

Frontal Lobe = Spock and the Limbic System = Kirk. I can see that.

Human morality boiled down to a fight scene between Spock and Kirk, its great because it is true

Something about a bottle of wine being $50 rather than $5.00 changes the way we taste or experience it. I wonder what @garyvee thinks

Context and Language are closer together than we take think.

Looking at the same ‘map’ from different point of views. Electrical lines, sewer systems, street lights, newsletter mentions, etc.

The newsletter map and the map of concentrations of jack o lanterns are almost mirror images of each other. Interesting.

A map has a lot of power over how we understand the territory.

In digital space, the Map creates the Territory.

There are now fuzzy boundaries between what is real and virtual. Try searching for leatherworking on google, what is the top result?

“The space we live in is less and less exclusively ‘physical’.” I see this everytime I see someone use a newer cell phone.

Digital space is very narrow when they constrain rich ideas in the physical world and assigns a term to them on a persons profile.

Something like a comma can change the meaning of something in the physical space, and in the digital world it changes the space

d vs @ on twitter complete changes the scope of a message you are sending someone. The context of the message is important.

Context shapes a persons identity. The way you behave changes if you are in the office or if you are in a nightclub.

Running into a coworker at a nightclub can confuse you as you try to place that persons identity.

Facebook went from a connection of people you knew at school to everyone you meet in your life, no matter the context.

Our identity is constructed by our surroundings, it is multi-layered and multi-faceted.

Context Collapse isn’t collapsing into nothing, just something new and unexplained.

Twitter was originally meant for the phone, but they decided to put it on the web. On the web people used it in unexpected way.

Tweetdeck is breaking what twitter was meant to be, a single feed.

Context effected everything; money, learning, family, entertainment, and news.

There are people that are not online, but their story is. Prime example is what happened in Darfur

My take away from this session is how important it is on the amount of work that needs to go into designing where and how information lives. Information can live in two locations on the web, and based on how it is displayed a person can be effected by it differently.

TheContextProblem

View more documents from andrewhinton.

His research began from his work in Papua New Guinea. Studied for a full two years in the area.

He used a sleeping bag he called his ‘Little America’ to isolate himself from all the bugs.

That’s awesome, he wrestled around with his own right arm.

In the village your entire being is defined by the face to face relationships you have with the people around you.

When there is a dispute in the village they used to just gather and resolve it, now they have a paper based court they must follow.

Media mediates relationships and when media changes the method of creating relations changes.

The winning User generated Doritos Superbowl Commercial only cost the creators $12.79, It cost Doritos over $2 million just to air.

Just played a time lapsed version of a video he created. ‘The Machine is Using Us’ http://tinyurl.com/yw8co3

Tags are a method of providing User-Generated Distribution.

User-Generated Ratings is based on who talks about your content and who links to it.

The ‘bias’ of media, talking with regards to the medium itself. This includes Intellectual, Emotional, Spatial and Temporal, sensory

The concept of an assembling line encouraged for the workers of the line to become insignificant. They are just part of the machine.

Pre-1960 Whatever = That’s what I meant. Late 60’s it turned more into ‘I don’t care’

Highly recommends ‘Mediated’ http://is.gd/obT3

During the 90’s ‘Whatever’ turned into ‘Meh’ thanks to the Simpsons.

Late 90’s to the present ‘Whatever’ has evolved again into meaning ‘I will do what I want’. Ala Eric Cartmen!

Digital Information is different. The people here are the ones trying to figure out what this information is and how to use it.

DHTML was thought to bring the web closer to its cousin the TV. Ha!

‘It’s is not supposed to be a glorified TV channel” quote from one of the ‘fathers’ of the internet.

By separating content from presentation, it was no longer required to use complex code to make your own website.

‘The medium shapes the message’ @mwesch

Video of a baby biting his big brothers finger got viewed by 30 million people and spawned tons of parodies.

Search results of all the different videos including the original. http://is.gd/oc1q

“Replay allows for a deeper level of understanding than first play.”

People want to have a connection with other people without constraints.

New forms of communication creates new forms of understanding.

Jay Rosen describes twitter as mindcasting, putting your thoughts out there.

Leisa Reichelt says twitter is creating “ambient intimacy”

Theresa Senft describes twitter users as becoming a micro- celebrity. I agree with the statement on many different levels.

Just got introduced to http://www.4chan.org, it is a simple image-based bulletin board. Going to check this out more later.

Lolcats has totally invaded all of our lives.

Thank you @mwesch for not showing us Goatse, thank you thank you thank you!!

Wow that dragonball z clip just brought me way back to my teenage years.

Being a troll on the internet is fun, if you do it respectively.

‘We are everyone and we are no one’ sums up the people on the internet. Very Neo-like saying.

Members of 4chan are described as a flock of birds, which always travel in the same direction.

Ahh the time has come to see the video ‘FlyingPenis’ I remember when this happened too on 2nd life.

Another reason why I love the internet. http://tinyurl.com/5c3kak

‘Content Collapse’ You never know where you are or who you are talking to since you can be picked up at anytime.

Retweeting LOL @whitneyhess: Wanna keep people awake and listening during your 8:30am keynote? Talk about penises and pornography

Futurists all agree on one trend, toward an ubiquitous world in short. Full list too long for twitter

IA is blending with the architecture of the real world.

‘Whatever’ is being redefined again to Doing whatever it takes.

My take away from this is that information isn’t something that we are going to have to organize and structure in some meaningful manner. We need to design method in which people access information, and we need to structure the interaction between people and the information they are seeking.