Adaptive Path Podcast

Peter has a conversation with UX Week 2009 presenter Scott McCloud, best known for his book Understanding Comics, and more recently for the comic explaining Google Chrome. They discuss comics, visual expression, Edward Tufte, and the importance of believing in the message.

Co-founder and President of Adaptive Path Jesse James Garrett provides an inside look at the process of creating Aurora, a concept video depicting one possible future user experience for the Web. Jesse talks about the technology trends that will shape the future Web, outlines the challenges of designing a future product, and takes the audience for a behind the scenes look at the creation of the Aurora concept video.

Architects make buildings for people. Information architects make information spaces for people. So how do you build doors, windows, and porches into information spaces? And how do you make it easy for people to find what they want in over 10,000 episodes of a daily TV show? To find out, I had tea with Audrey Chen, Senior Information Architect at Comedy Central who recently created a searchable online archive of 10 years of "The Daily Show". From 24 hour crews who watched and tagged every single episode, to the challenge of "future-proofing" information architecture systems so that they can grow and change over time, Audrey shared a glimpse into what it takes to organize and manage the massive influx of data in our world.

UX Week 2008 kicked off with an on-stage conversation between the President and founder of Adaptive Path, Peter Merholz, and industry legend Don Norman. Don wrote the founding text on user-centered design, entitied, “The Design of Everyday Things”, and also coined the term “user-experience” while at Apple in the early 1990s. They talk about the importance of the semantic differences around common issues in business like ROI from a design perspective, the necessity to look beyond the “all mighty dollar,” the importance of being passionate about your ideas, and knowing ultimately all team members want to create great products and services for other people. Don shares his insights about the UX Week presentation given by Microsoft’s Jensen Harris around the usability of the Ribbon in the latest version of MS Office as well as the exciting future that lies ahead for all in the UX field.

In this conversation, Experience Designer Leah Buley from Adaptive Path shares some of the lightweight techniques that she and her team use to explore a variety of solutions quickly and how to enlist the support of non-team members in the UX process. We talk about the video biographies of other team members at Adaptive Path and how all started out from humble beginnings – some in fields that had little to do with what we think about today as traditional UX projects – and how those experiences have helped in building great products and services. Leah outlines the advice she gives in her conference talk Being a UX Team of One. Videos from On-Stage Presentation Leah was kind enough to share the videos she used in her presentation. Thanks again, Leah! # Watch members of Adaptive Path describe their first job in User Experience # Watch as Pam Daughlin answers the question When did you first discover UX? # Watch various members at Adaptive Path share their thoughts on what’s hot in User Experience at the moment.

Senior Interaction Deisgner at Adaptive Path, Kim Lenox chats with Kevin Brooks, the Principle Staff Researcher for Motorola Labs about his workshop entitled “Storytelling for User Experience Design”. They discuss various aspects of Kevin’s presentation including the importance of structure and patterns to guide creative endeavors. One critical aspect is listening when striving to be a remarkable storyteller within your own organization. Kim shares her art school experience where the criticism of her art helped her gain the confidence necessary to be a successful Interaction Designer. Kevin also discusses his upcoming publication about storytelling with Whitney Quesenberry. Learn more about his book at Rosenfeld Media. Download Kevin’s presentation from UX Week.

Indi Young talks about the importance of continuing to ask “why” enough times to get to the core reasons for any individuals’ behavior or actions and how to convert stories into mental models. Her workshop “Unpacking Stories to Server People Better” includes these themes and more. We discuss the elegant way in which mental models can provide a visual representation of these behaviors and support elements that foster the likely repetition of any action. Indi also talks briefly about how her book from Rosenfeld media, “Mental Models – Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior,” can help others create these visual tools.

Jennifer Bove from Huge and Ben Fullerton from IDEO sat down with me shortly after their presentation to discuss ideas from “We’ll Always Have Paris – What Makes a Memorable Service Experience.” We explore the six key elements about what it takes to design services that keep people coming back for more. We probe into the dynamics of service design from real-world examples of business that provide unique experiences. One shoe company will actually order a pizza for their clients as well as order products from competitor sites to keep their customers satisfied. Jennifer and Ben outline why people get excited about intangible services in the same way they lust after the latest shiny toy that just came out on the market.

Dave Wolf, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Cynergy Systems was kind enough to join me for this conversation about his presentation “ben: A Prototype for Democracy in the 21st Century.” We talk about Cynergy’s awarding winning application “ben” at the PhizzPop competition – a National Design and Development Challenge sponsored by Microsoft. “ben” is a series of interconnected, cross-platform applications that leverage the power of Microsoft Silverlight, Windows Presentation Foundation, Live Services, Twitter, VoIP technologies.

TVs in trouble! It might be terminal, but Rod Naber and Dan Levine from Current TV urge everyone not lose hope just yet. Discussing their presentation “TV with an API! Current at the Collusion of TV and the Internet” Rod and Dan describe how using their cable and satellite TV network along with their social news website, Current is experimenting across both media, looking for a cure. In this conversation we talk about how Current got started, the power of the community in generating content for Current News, and how the Internet is allowing users to create ads for companies. All this could change the way marketing approaches innovative solutions for their customers.

Google’s Margaret Gould Stewart and Graham Jenkin discuss their experience and ideas from their UX Week workshop about managing UX teams. Topics covered in this conversation include: # Prioritization and project tracking # How to gain insight into career development paths within a user experience team # Finding out about performance management # Discovering how to tailor your own management style Margaret and Graham also tackled other tough issues during their session, such as: # Building a culture of constructive feedback # Developing leadership within a team # Effectively managing team dynamics # Evangelizing user experience practices # Managing stakeholders Margaret and Graham also had participants of their workshop develop haiku’s about the importance of working with and managing UX Teams. They were kind enough to compile this collection of Haiku’s from the workshop for you. They also provided an example of the leadership cards. These cards can be printed off and shared with members of your team about which characteristics of a leader they deem to be most essential. Not every leader will be strong in all categories, however. Such information can help leaders understand the expectations of those they are working with on a daily basis.

Jake Barton gave an emotionally powerful presentation at UX Week entitled “New Paradigms for Interaction in Physical Space”. As the interaction designers for NPR’s StoryCorps and the co-leaad designer for the National September 11th Memorial Museum at the World Trade Center, Local Projects is creating new paradigms for interaction by tackling physical space. Jake talks with me about how the interaction design process bends, accelerates and sometimes completely falls apart, when applied to the global community. You can download Jake’s Presentation from UX Week.

On the last day of UX Week I had the pleasure of chatting with Adaptive Path’s new CEO Michael Meyer about his impressions of UX Week and the opportunities that come with this new position. We discuss his past experiences as a nuclear engineer, time spent in the US Navy, as well as working at some of the leading design firms in the world such as frog and IDEO before arriving at Adaptive Path. My heart-felt thanks to Michael and the entire team at Adaptive Path for allowing Boxes and Arrows to share these conversations with the community.

Designers often talk about the results of their work, and even about the design process, but what we don't often talk about is the careful framing of a project that allowed us to do the great work in the first place. Lulu Pachuau and Bob Medcalf of the New Zealand consultancy Provoke share tools and methods Lulu learned at Adaptive Path's UX Intensive workshop and applied to a web strategy project with Industrial Research Limited.

Andrew Crow is a senior experience designer, trainer, and speaker at Adaptive Path. He has a passion for developing innovative design solutions for customers' needs.Initially a print and web designer, Andrew moved into information architecture and interaction design to promote holistic user experiences to corporate clients. Andrew has over 12 years of design, technical, and strategic experience in the technology industry.Before joining Adaptive Path, Andrew managed the web and user experience team at Princess Cruises where he led the development of an entirely new online booking system, e-ticket solution, and online branding and marketing initiatives. Prior to that, he worked with element18 and Interfocus Advertising in Los Angeles.Continually obsessed with the latest technologies in the mobile and gaming space, Andrew advises on the design of Palm, Windows Mobile and iPhone applications, social networking, and collaboration software. He is an advocate of ubiquitous computing, and approaches projects with a desire to ensure that the experience of the device fits into the overall product strategy.Past clients and employers include Ameriprise, MyRide.com, Cunard Line, ICTV, ILIO Entertainment, Millimeter Magazine, Princess Cruises, and Second Life.Andrew is a member of American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), Interaction Design Association (IxDA), and the Information Architecture Institute (IAI).We spoke to Andrew in San Francisco at the Adaptive Path Conference in April 2008.Visit Andrew's Personal Site: http://www.concretebrain.com/

Andrew Crow is a senior experience designer, trainer, and speaker at Adaptive Path. He has a passion for developing innovative design solutions for customers' needs.Initially a print and web designer, Andrew moved into information architecture and interaction design to promote holistic user experiences to corporate clients. Andrew has over 12 years of design, technical, and strategic experience in the technology industry.Before joining Adaptive Path, Andrew managed the web and user experience team at Princess Cruises where he led the development of an entirely new online booking system, e-ticket solution, and online branding and marketing initiatives. Prior to that, he worked with element18 and Interfocus Advertising in Los Angeles.Continually obsessed with the latest technologies in the mobile and gaming space, Andrew advises on the design of Palm, Windows Mobile and iPhone applications, social networking, and collaboration software. He is an advocate of ubiquitous computing, and approaches projects with a desire to ensure that the experience of the device fits into the overall product strategy.Past clients and employers include Ameriprise, MyRide.com, Cunard Line, ICTV, ILIO Entertainment, Millimeter Magazine, Princess Cruises, and Second Life.Andrew is a member of American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), Interaction Design Association (IxDA), and the Information Architecture Institute (IAI).We spoke to Andrew in San Francisco at the Adaptive Path Conference in April 2008.Visit Andrew's Personal Site: http://www.concretebrain.com/

Andrew Crow is a senior experience designer, trainer, and speaker at Adaptive Path. He has a passion for developing innovative design solutions for customers' needs.Initially a print and web designer, Andrew moved into information architecture and interaction design to promote holistic user experiences to corporate clients. Andrew has over 12 years of design, technical, and strategic experience in the technology industry.Before joining Adaptive Path, Andrew managed the web and user experience team at Princess Cruises where he led the development of an entirely new online booking system, e-ticket solution, and online branding and marketing initiatives. Prior to that, he worked with element18 and Interfocus Advertising in Los Angeles.Continually obsessed with the latest technologies in the mobile and gaming space, Andrew advises on the design of Palm, Windows Mobile and iPhone applications, social networking, and collaboration software. He is an advocate of ubiquitous computing, and approaches projects with a desire to ensure that the experience of the device fits into the overall product strategy.Past clients and employers include Ameriprise, MyRide.com, Cunard Line, ICTV, ILIO Entertainment, Millimeter Magazine, Princess Cruises, and Second Life.Andrew is a member of American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), Interaction Design Association (IxDA), and the Information Architecture Institute (IAI).We spoke to Andrew in San Francisco at the Adaptive Path Conference in April 2008.Visit Andrew's Personal Site: http://www.concretebrain.com/

Part one of our intervew with Chiara Fox from Adaptive Path.Chiara Fox is a senior information architect for Adaptive Path. Chiara has developed successful information architectures for intranets, informational websites, and e-commerce sites for Fortune 100 and 500 companies. Chiara specializes in content analysis, metadata and taxonomy development, and building architectures from the bottom up.

Part two of our intervew with Chiara Fox from Adaptive Path.Chiara Fox is a senior information architect for Adaptive Path. Chiara has developed successful information architectures for intranets, informational websites, and e-commerce sites for Fortune 100 and 500 companies. Chiara specializes in content analysis, metadata and taxonomy development, and building architectures from the bottom up.

A website costs money. It's your job, as a web professional, to make sure your website is written and designed well, that visitors can use it easily, that it's accurate, and that it's contributing to the achievement of your company's mission.

Peter Merholz and Chip Conley talk about recession planning, service design, systematizing experience design (Joie de Vivre Hotels uses a tool called "experience report cards"), team dynamics, succession planning, and all manner of things.

Peter Merholz talks with Scott Griffith about the balance of user experience and business concerns in the design of Zipcar's unique customer experience.

Brandon Schauer chats with Scott Hirsch, founding principal at Management Innovation Group, a strategy consulting firm that works with clients to understand where to play and how to win in world of rapid (and often disruptive) change in markets, technologies, and business models.

Peter Merholz chats with Don Norman, author and co-author of fourteen books, including the seminal The Design of Everyday Things, and his recently released The Design of Future Things, about what he thinks about user experience design today and what companies need to do to innovate.

Peter Merholz and Julie Peters talk about launching new Virgin brands in North America.

Jesse James Garrett and Secil Watson talk about managing customer experiences through Wells Fargo's web sites and its phone and electronic servicing channels.

Henning addresses the question "Should small businesses have mission statements too" and talks about the value of the "Elevator Pitch" technique.

Bryan and Sarah introduce you to 10 techniques used by creative management professionals to get great work from a wide range of employees.

Peter and Jared Spool discuss how the best products never offer their users an incomplete feeling experience.

Brandon lays out an experience centric approach to fostering and creating loyalty by systematically impressing your customers again and again

In this discussion about presence, identity, and attention in social web architecture the panel talks about core IA related issues.

Leah teaches techniques that any individual can use to generate and refine ideas, outlining flexible, simple activities that can be used quickly, wherever they're needed

Peter discusses how focusing on consumers' experience of new products and services through rapid prototyping and other means can inform and shape design

Dan and Kim share their experiences in how to think through the UX design process and the many tools to help guide their thinking like research-based design and injecting users directly into designs.

Brandon Schauer, David Verba and Peter Merholz provide insights about how prosperous businesses can — and should — use customer experiences to inform and shape the product development process, from start to finish.

Todd shares his thoughts on the emerging field of service design and its implications for product design.

Mike discusses how information processing is integrated into everyday objects, and the 'desktop' metaphor is obsolete. This post-desktop model of computing is known as ubiquitous computing.

Peter participates in a panel with Andy Budd of ClearLeft and Hammad Khan (persona creative) to discuss the creation of a positive user experience and the importance of user experience design.

Understanding the psychology behind how users relate to a product is the key to its lasting success. Users tend to anthropomorphize, or ascribe human personality traits to products they use. Products with long-term success have developers who recognize the identity and personality of the product they want to convey. They create integrity with the product and how their users will interact with it.

Changing working environments, complex business requirements, projects, and technologies are placing new demands on user experience designers. The site architectures, content inventories, wireframes, personas, and creative briefs that once formed the keystone of our user experience toolkit, only represent a portion of our responsibilities now. This panel will continue the skills discussion introduced by Liz Sanders in her participatory design workshop. We will examine the skills, methods, ideas, and approaches required for future user experience practitioners. Panelists will share their experience and discuss current and future challenges in building user experience groups and preparing future practitioners for success. Panel Members * Liz Sanders * Peter Merholz * Andrew Hinton * Kevin Brooks About Sarah B. Nelson Sarah B. Nelson is a design strategist for Adaptive Path. She has ten years of experience in interactive media, designing kiosks, mobile and online experiences for clients in a variety of industries. Sarah has a particular passion for practice development, conducting research into methods for improving collaboration, supporting creativity, and encouraging innovation. Sarah brings a unique blend of creative vision and technical expertise to her work. Her research-focused approach to interaction design has produced successful results for clients such as the Federal Home Loan Bank, Home Street Bank, AOL Mobile, The Metropolitan Opera, and The Royal Victorian and Albert Museum. Before joining Adaptive Path, Sarah managed the creative team and developed the user experience practice at POP, an interactive design firm in Seattle, Washington. A classically trained violinist, Sarah graduated from the Interlochen Arts Academy and received a B.A from Oberlin College in visual arts and electronic music. While completing her Masters at the Institute of Design in Chicago, Sarah focused her studies on the definition and design of complex multi-modal systems supporting collaboration and communication.

For those who manage creative organizations, the professional kitchen can provide inspiration for how to balance important principles like consistency, creative freedom and effective problem solving, all under stressful conditions. Ryan Freitas discusses these and other parallels between the worlds of the cook and the designer. Read more about Ryan’s recent article on this subject. About Ryan Freitas Ryan is a senior interaction designer for Adaptive Path, where he has worked with clients including Oracle, Flickr, Six Apart, BitTorrent, Socialtext and Sphere. With over ten years in the field, Ryan is an experienced and opinionated advocate for user-centered design, as well as an occasional writer, speaker and design award judge. After graduating with a specialization in Human Computer Interaction at UC San Diego’s School of Cognitive Science, Ryan began his career designing and coding application interfaces for the semiconductor manufacturing industry. After transitioning to a role as a senior information architect at Sapient, he refined concepts and designed web applications and platforms for clients such as Janus and Nissan. In 2000 he moved to Tokyo, where he trained Sapient’s local creative team in interaction design practices. After returning to San Francisco in 2001, Ryan freelanced as an interaction design consultant and worked with Williams’ Sonoma and the Home Depot on their retail website and kiosk designs. He joined Adaptive Path in the spring of 2005, where he now leads product strategy and design engagements. Recently, Ryan has assumed responsibility for Adaptive Path’s New Ventures program, working with startups to bring engaging and innovative offerings to market. As a writer and conference speaker, Ryan has focused on collaboration tools, online media platforms, and community building.

People love their mobile phones and they love the Internet. Based on user affinity for each, accessing Internet content on a mobile device should be a beloved and integral part of people’s lives. However, despite development and investment by carriers, handset manufacturers, and content providers, mobile web usage has not enjoyed the success that was predicted and hoped for. While many speculate the release of the iPhone will create a tipping point for internet access via a mobile device, the future of how people want to interact with internet content on the mobile phone is still relatively nascent and undefined — and rich with opportunity. In this session, you will: * Receive an overview of the current mobile web landscape * Discover research insights from mobile web field research * Learn mobile user experience design principles About Rachel Hinman Rachel Hinman is a design strategist for Adaptive Path. Her focus is on developing insights about people and using those insights to create valuable user experiences that support business goals. Rachel’s passion for people, design and business has been the driving force of her 10-year career in user experience design. Before receiving a Masters Degree in Design Planning from at the Institute of Design in Chicago, Rachel spent the first seven years of her career working as an interaction designer and user experience lead. Prior to joining Adaptive Path, she worked within Yahoo’s mobile group, employing user-centered methods to inform the design and strategy of Yahoo’s mobile products. Her clients and previous employers have included IDEO, Microsoft, Yahoo, General Motors, Clorox, and Kaiser Permanente.

Designing for a desired user experience requires an actionable understanding of the emotions associated with that desired experience. This requires user experience research. While user experience research typically focuses on analyzing “clicks” and usability, the emotional aspects of how it feels to use a website or how people wish an experience felt have great potential to inspire design teams and align entire companies. An understanding of the dreamlike experience and the interactive components that can make the dream a reality is an invaluable resource for creating meaningful websites. Everyone is always asking, “How can we connect with our user?” Well, connections are usually emotional experiences. If you can answer the question “what is the desired user experience,” then all functions within an organization can begin to work together with common goals and inspiration. Bringing the desired user experience into reality, however, requires that all functions in an organization agree upon the desired experience. In this presentation you will be introduced to a simple participatory design research approach that will not only uncover the desired user experience (aka the “connection”), it is also supported by quantitative and qualitative data. When all functions within an organization participate in the process, they “buy into” the approach and goals of the user. In this session, you will: * Learn a participatory design technique that uncovers the desired user experience * Understand how this technique can map interactive design components to emotional experiences * Realize the importance of involving all functions within an organization to participate in the research process * See how to effectively communicate this research to the organization in order to achieve “buy in” About Marty Gage For two decades, Marty has pioneered participatory design techniques that liberate the unspoken desires of user populations. Marty’s body of work crosses industrial and consumer product categories, encompassing subject matter as diverse as weapons systems and baby diapers; using multi-sensory toolkits and state-of-the-art ethnography, he has provided creative fuel for a collection of international design firms, engineering companies and corporate design teams. Marty currently heads the Design Research Practice group at lextant, a user-experience consultancy. Before lextant, Marty ran his own research firms: Rocket Surgery, which he founded in 2002; and SonicRim, co-founded in 1999. Before that, he spent ten years at Fitch, Inc., which he helped to establish as a leader in design research. Marty has won numerous design awards and has published widely on the topic of design research, including a chapter on participatory design research methods in the book, Human Factors Testing and Evaluation Methods. He has served on the jury for the Business Week-sponsored Industrial Design Excellence Awards, and is frequently asked to speak at design conferences and schools. Marty holds a BA in Psychology from Hendrix College, and he earned his MS in Human Factors Psychology from Wright State University.

There has been significant interest lately from the business community in the value of design research and design thinking. This is particularly true when it comes to the very early front-end of the design process. Generative Tools help create a shared design language that designers, researchers and other stakeholders can use to visually communicate with each other. The design language is Generative in the sense that with it, people can express an infinite number of ideas (e.g., dreams, fears, insights, opportunities) through a limited set of stimulus items. In this session, you will: * Obtain a map of the design research landscape as it has emerged over the last 20 years. * Discover the newest developments in the research industry, with an emphasis on generative design research, characterized by design-led research from a participatory mindset. * Discover the many ways in which Generative Tools can be used to inform and improve the design process. About Liz Sanders Liz is the President of MakeTools, a design research company that focuses on collective creativity. Liz is a pioneer in the use of participatory research methods in design, and her numerous design awards, patents, publications, presentations, along with her proven track record in the marketplace have established her as a global leader in the field of design research. She sees the emergence of a human-centered design revolution growing out of the current state of technology-driven innovation, and she frequently speaks about and teaches human-centered research and design to clients, colleagues and students around the world. Liz was educated as a social scientist with undergraduate degrees in psychology and anthropology, followed by a PhD in Experimental and Quantitative Psychology. Previous client relationships include 3M, AT&T, Apple, Baxter, Becton Dickinson, Coca Cola, Compaq, IBM, Intel, Iomega, Johnson Controls, Kodak, Microsoft, Motorola, Philips, Procter & Gamble, Siemens Medical Systems, Steelcase, Texas Instruments, Thermos, Thomson Consumer Electronics, Toro and Xerox. For an overview of Liz’s ideas about design, research methodology and more, visit MakeTools.

Learn the true power of the sticky note — yes, stickies! — to quickly and effectively organize data, visualize themes, and identify patterns.. We’ll start with an overview of how Adaptive Path uses sticky notes (aka: Post-Its) in user experience projects. Then, we’ll jump into a set of hands-on activities to test your stickies aptitude and gain experience in multiple methods. You’ll learn methods for rapidly visualizing and organizing data into clusters using sticky notes and how these simple, elegant, and versatile tools can help you untangle problems, set priorities, understand complex work flows, and gather feedback from others. You’ll leave with a greater appreciation for the sticky note, a killer vocabulary for how to creatively use stickies, and an enhanced ability to sort, track, and organize information. You’ll be amazed what you can do with these simple little tools. About Kate Rutter Kate Rutter is a Senior Practitioner for Adaptive Path. During her ten plus years in the Web industry, she’s honed her talent for bringing companies and customers closer together through smart strategies and inventive design. She actively embraces the term “specialized generalist.”

With the rise of YouTube, Craigslist and MySpace, there is a clear trend toward social design, or designing for the social lives of users. What isn’t so clear is how to design for different social situations that may not have appeared on the web before. To help you attack this problem, we’ll look not only at current good and poor examples of social design, but also mine social psychology to get a larger view of how to design for the social lives of users. After all, humans are social animals. Software should be social, too. In this session, you will: * Learn the advantages of investing in social features. * Discover how to expand current user-research strategies and apply social psychology to enhance the social design aspects of your next project. * Explore new ways to get people to participate in your social-design-enhanced application. About Josh Porter Joshua is a leading member of UIE’s research team and has written extensively on such topics as Web 2.0, Ajax, web standards, and on-site search systems. Josh shares many of his design thoughts and commentaries on his personal blog: Bokardo.com. Josh is responsible for overseeing the development of the User Interface Engineering’s web sites, managing UIE’s top notch team of web developers. Josh received his Master’s degree in Information Technology and his Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He brings with him extensive experience and knowledge in the areas of human factors, usability testing, and web site design and development.

Even the best design teams, methods, architecture and tools are no match for a project beset with political infighting, divided priorities or unfocused goals. To truly make an impact, product teams need to have business buy-in and a shared understanding of the project’s direction. Often, it’s up to designers to smooth the way and facilitate this consensus. By greasing the tracks in the early stages of a project, designers can gain the much-needed support of business stakeholders, avoid wasted effort, increase their influence (within their teams and the company at large), and make a more meaningful difference with their work. The key is to bridge competing viewpoints, develop a common vision and break through project roadblocks. And it all starts with the right combination of tools and techniques. In this session, you will: * Discover how to bridge competing viewpoints, develop a common vision and eliminate roadblocks on your next project. * Explore the ways in which your existing design skill-sets can be expanded to improve communication within your team and throughout you company. * Learn facilitation techniques to help engage business stakeholders and manage the conflicting priorities and lack of direction that so often derail a project. About Jess McMullin Since 1997, Jess has focused his career on understanding and developing positive user experiences for his clients and their customers. Drawing on sources ranging from social sciences and behavioral research to gaming, market analysis and future trends, Jess generates client insights that drive innovation and create better customer experiences. Jess often speaks at conferences focusing on user experience, design thinking and innovation, topics he also writes about on a regular basis. His ideas have been featured in several user-experience books, including Lou Rosenfeld and Peter Morville’s Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 2nd Ed. and Jesse James Garrett’s The Elements of User Experience. In 2003, Jess founded nForm User Experience, a boutique consultancy that counts Comcast, Ancestry.com and the Canadian Patient Safety Institute as clients. Jess also organizes CanUX, the annual Canadian User Experience Workshop in Banff, Alberta, and he is the cofounder of the international Information Architecture Institute. For Jess’s latest thoughts on business, design and innovation, visit his blog, bplusd (business + design).

Millions of people from around the world come to eBay every day, and the eBay user experience design group applies a range of design and research methodologies to understand and address the perceptions and needs of its widely varied customer base. Jeff Herman and Ann Bishop will co-lead this session, sharing some of their methods for collaborating with eBay’s customers and exploring the ways in which they use customer insights to inform specific design solutions. In this session, you will gain a better understanding of how to: * Engage customers throughout the design process. * Apply new methods to address a wide range of customer goals and needs. * Seamlessly blend design and customer research to contribute to your success. About Jeff Herman Jeff leads eBay’s UI and Visual Design group, which is responsible for the design of eBay’s sites around the world. He has over 20 years of experience as a designer at Apple, Yahoo! and the MIT Media Lab, and he has been a guest speaker at CHI, BayCHI and various university design programs. Jeff holds a master’s degree in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab and a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Texas at Austin, and he has received 10 patents. He is also on the Advisory Board of an early-stage Silicon Valley startup. About Ann Bishop Ann manages the Content Strategy practice at eBay, which is responsible for the strategic direction and execution of eBay’s interface content globally. As one of the first user experience architects at eBay, Ann continues to bring a holistic design approach to her work, and she is leading efforts to define content strategy as a design practice rooted in human-centered design methodology, including user research, concept development and execution. Ann has over 15 years experience designing interactive content for companies such as Microsoft, Travelocity and Yahoo!. She holds a BA in English from the University of California, Berkeley.

Interactive behaviors are plastic, flexible things, always subtly shifting in response to the actions of the user. As such, they can be hard to pin down on the printed page. Demos can help express the vision of the design, but the nitty-gritty details must be committed to paper if the design is to survive the development rollercoaster. The challenge is to create a document that remains useful as requirements are added and timelines shift, a document so all-inclusive, it remains relevant even after new problems arise, elevating it to a level truly worthy of an axiom dear to developers’ hearts: “RTFM.” At Cooper, a pattern language is used to structure documents and describe interactive behaviors. Patterns help designers express the design itself, break down the structure of the document into core elements (e.g., the table of contents, section headings, etc.) and lay out the page. Using Cooper projects as an example — including the company’s team structure, methodology and project scoping — along with an actual case study, this session will explore the many ways and means of documenting the wily interactive behavior. In this session, you will: * Get an overview of Cooper methodology, including team structure and project scoping. * Discover methods of documenting interactive behaviors. * Explore the use of pattern language as a tool for structuring a document and describing interactive behaviors. About Doug LeMoine Doug is the director of design communication at Cooper, an interaction design consultancy based in San Francisco. Since joining Cooper in early 2000, Doug has tackled design problems in neurosurgical planning, financial portfolio analysis, database marketing, telecommunication network construction and computer-assisted surgery. Before making the move to Cooper, Doug coordinated inner-city literacy and job-skill programs, developed exhibits at a science museum, and taught city kids about where food comes from on a fully operating educational farm. For more information about Doug and his work, visit http://douglemoine.com.

Too often in the field of interaction design, designers only look at other digital products for inspiration. But this narrow stance soon leaves designers devoid of any fresh ideas. If we were to look at the physical world around us, there are sources of inspiration that interaction designers have barely tapped. We should examine mechanical objects and observe their workings. We should look to nature, with its variety of forms and its intricate ecologies. And we should incorporate lessons from other applied arts such as architecture and film into our designs, drawing from their rich histories and products. Let’s turn our eyes to the vast and varied world we inhabit and discover what we can use. About Dan Saffer Dan Saffer is a senior interaction designer for Adaptive Path. Dan has developed successful designs for transactional and e-commerce sites, as well as for applications and devices. He’s worked with a wide variety of organizations, from startups to Fortune 100 companies.

In recent years, museums around the world have been redefining interactive experiences. Museum interactives are environmental and experiential – offering visitors opportunities to experience history, technology, culture and science in custom-designed, dedicated spaces that include artifacts, lighting, audiovisual elements, electro-mechanical technologies, graphics and scenic treatments. The International Spy Museum in Washington, DC has earned industry-wide acclaim for its interactive visitor experiences. This session, presented by the Museum’s lead exhibition designer and lead interactive developer, will explore both the overall exhibition design process and the development of specific interactives created for the Museum. In this session, you will: * Gain an understanding of museum exhibition design approaches * Learn about the process of determining what content is best conveyed through interactive exhibits * Look at interactive experiences from a different perspective * Explore the intersection of education and entertainment * Hear anecdotes describing how brainstormed ideas evolved into successful interactive visitor experiences About the International Spy Museum Learn about the authentic tradecraft that has been used throughout time and around the world. Hear spies, in their own words, describe the challenges and the “game” of spying. A spy must live a life of lies. Adopt a cover identity and learn why an operative needs one. See the credentials an agent must have to get in-or out, as in the case of six Americans exfiltrated from revolutionary Iran in 1979, courtesy of the Canadian Ambassador-and the CIA. Proceed directly to the Briefing Film where you’ll come face to face with the real world of spying. Examine over 200 spy gadgets, weapons, bugs, cameras, vehicles, and technologies. Learn about microdots and invisible ink, buttonhole cameras and submarine recording systems, bugs of all sizes and kinds, and ingenious disguise techniques developed by Hollywood for the CIA. Uncover the stories behind the spycraft, why and how these artifacts were developed, and by which side. Survey over 50 years of spy technology, developed by agencies from the OSS to the KGB, and still in use today.