Podcasts about ux week

In this episode, Ty Hatch, who started sketchnoting as a practice to pay attention and stay awake shares why he still loves the art and his work on creating headshot illustrations and creating sketchnotes for meetings and conferences.Sponsored by ConceptsThis episode of the Sketchnote Army Podcast is brought to you by Concepts, a perfect tool for sketchnoting, available on iOS, Windows, and Android.Concepts' vector-based drawing feature gives you the power to adjust your drawings — any time you like. You can nudge the curve of a line, swap out one brush for another, or change stroke thickness and color at any stage of your drawing — saving hours and hours of rework.Vectors provide clean, crisp, high-resolution output for your sketchnotes at any size you need — large or small. Never worry about fuzzy sketchnotes again.Concepts is a powerful, flexible tool that's ideal for sketchnoting.SEARCH “Concepts” in your favorite app store to give it a try.Running OrderIntroWelcomeWho is Ty Hatch?Origin StoryTy's current workSponsor: ConceptsTipsToolsWhere to find TyOutroLinksAmazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.Ty's websiteTy on TwitterTy on InstagramTy on LinkedInTy on MastodonTy on PinterestTy on Artist Trading CardsTy On DribbleUX Week 2008 SketchnotesInktoberTy's Son's Pokémon DrawingsToolsAmazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast. Mechanical pencilBallpoint Rotring 600 pencilKaweco fountain penPost-It-NotesGlobal Art Materials SketchbookMoleskine Art sketchbookSketchnote Idea bookPaper by WeTransferiPad ProApple pencilProcreate Adobe FrescoTipsEverybody is creative in their own way, and that's okay.Enjoy what you do. You can like a range of different things, and that's okay.Set boundaries for the things that are really important to you, in your life that are not work-related. Set those boundaries, talk about them, and live your life in a way that reflects your priorities. CreditsProducer: Alec PulianasTheme music: Jon SchiedermayerShownotes and transcripts: Esther OdoroSubscribe to the Sketchnote Army PodcastYou can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube or your favorite podcast listening source.Support the PodcastTo support the creation, production and hosting of the Sketchnote Army Podcast, buy one of Mike Rohde's bestselling books. Use code ROHDE40 at Peachpit.com for 40% off!Episode TranscriptMike Rohde: Hey everyone, this is Mike, and I'm here with Ty Hatch. Ty, welcome to the show. It's so good to have you.Ty Hatch: Thanks, Mike. It's great to be here.MR: Ty, we've known each other for years and years. We were talking about when we thought we connected, you had a pretty pinpoint accurate time-point.TH: Yeah. It's funny. Back in 2008, I went to a UX Week, which was a conference put on by, for those that remember Adaptive Path, I think they got purchased and became the in-house UX department for Capital One a few years ago. I was there and I was like, "I need to pay attention." Did some sketch notes, or just did notes, I wasn't thinking about it. Got an email from you after I posted them up on the OG photo-sharing Flickr, and you're like, "Hey, can I put these into my Sketch Note Army?" And so, we just stayed in touch throughout the years since then, so.MR: Yep. Well, that leads right into telling us a little bit about who you are and what you do.TH: You bet. I am a UX manager for O.C. Tanner, which is an employee recognition company. I help create the space for employee recognition. I Work with a team. I have three people on my team. We're part of a larger experience group, and we focus on how can people feel appreciated at work by the employers. It's a really fun thing to do. I also, as you know, do sketch notes at times and random doodles and whatnot when the time allows. That's me. I enjoy UX design. It's a fun problem space to be in.MR: Well, I can relate to that as a UX principle, UX designer. I find it fascinating as well. I focus on software, but there are tons of opportunities to make things better, always, seems like. It's good to hear you're focusing on that, and that's such a critical space, especially now with all the challenges of hiring people and maintaining employees, and having them not leave by recognition. Huge, huge opportunities there, I would think.TH: Yeah. It's huge. You, like me, it's hard to feel sometimes like you're moving the needle and you're making a difference for people. One of the things that really gets me going is knowing that the work that I'm doing is actually helping people feel that appreciation, that they get that recognition from not only their peers, but from their leaders and whatnot.MR: Yep. Super important. It's something that often goes under the radar and managers might not think much about it, but is so critical. Often it doesn't cost you much other than time and a little bit of thoughtfulness. So, that's really cool. I would love to hear a little bit more about how you ended up in the space where you are both professionally, but also as a sketchnoter. Had you always drawn since you were a little kid? What's been your history? Let's start from when you're just a little guy.TH: I spent a lot of time outdoors growing up. I grew up in Southern Idaho and southeastern Washington. Miles outside of my small town. There wasn't much to do there. We were too far out to get TV reception. We often joked we got matching ants on our TV screen because this was back in the days before cable. We had terrible TV reception on our black and white TV. We did have indoor plumbing, and electricity, so that was always good.My brother and I, we would leave the house, go out in the backyard. We didn't have neighbors at the time, and so, we would just go out sometime after breakfast and typically we'd come back around dinnertime 'cause we were hungry. We would always have some sort of adventure and whatnot. I think at some point, a friend of ours introduced us to Dungeons and Dragons and I became a really big fantasy nut.This was the early days of D&D. I used to have a first edition, Monster Manual and Player CanBall and DMS Guide and all that. We colored them, I coloring books 'cause they were all just black and white illustrations. I loved it. Got into reading books and whatnot. Wanted to play football, but didn't seem to get enough interest for college people. We were in a small town, nobody really knows what's going on with a small town.I served a mission for my church for a couple years and then returned home. I was visiting my grandparent's house, and this is probably my favorite story about what got me into what I do today is there was this really awesome a couple of these burly looking pirates on it. I was like, "Well, this is cool, visual stimuli to get someone board at grandma and grandpa's house, right? It said the white family, I said, "Oh, that's a Piratey name."I was like, "Oh, let's read about these pirates." It wasn't pirates. It was a story about the artistic legacy of NC Wyatt and his son Andrew, and his grandson Jamie. I just got hooked and in fact, I have a self-portrait from that issue that I took out of the magazine. I think I found a couple copies over the years. But there was a really little self-portrait that he did that I have hanging on my wall.There was some painters tape. And I was like, "Oh, you get paid doing art? What? Completely radical concept for me. I'd always loved comic books. My brother and I collected comics over the years. I figured, I was like, "Oh, what can I do with art?" I started exploring the different art-related careers and I stumbled upon graphic design because as I learned about illustration as a career, I was like, "That's really competitive. I don't know that I'm good enough to compete there, but I can definitely think visually and solve problems." So, I tended toward that.That was about the time I was a junior at state school in Washington State where I'd met my wife and I applied for an art school in Portland and I'm like, "There's no way they'll let me in." But surprisingly, they did. I finished a BFA in graphic design. My senior capstone project there at the time was a website, this is what? 1998 I wanna say. Right about the time my oldest was born. And my senior project was an informational website on typography, which is still out there.I did a really quick redesign of it the next year 'cause it was a hideous thing when I got looking at it in reality. But it's still fitting there, 20-some-odd years later. It was an informational website about typography. Cause actually, I fell in love with typography in school. That's one of the things I absolutely loved. I was like, "Oh, could I make money doing typography?" I was like, "No, I can't." Type is another one of those professions, it's a very niche specialty.MR: Yeah. You can do it, but you have to really work at it.TH: Yeah. But I love design. I love the visual solving of problems and communicating clearly with design. For several years, I did that and slowly over time morphed into more of an interaction UX designer. Just as the industry changed, I'm like, "This is a good thing. This can provide for me and my family and I enjoy doing it." You slowly over the years gravitated into technology and doing UX.That was the thing that got me where I'm at. Particularly doing sketchnotes, like the sketch note that I did at UX Week was the first time that I actually shared anything that I'd done like that. I would do 'em in my sketchbooks 'cause it helped me process what was being communicated, presentations that I would go to.I really took off though, I wanna say about 2014, 2015 when I got my first iPad. There's this little app that was really cool. I'm like, "This is cool." I was trying to use it with my finger, but the company that made the app, which is Paper. The company at the time was called, FiftyThree.MR: FiftyThree. Yep.TH: I think I got one of their styluses, which looked like a carpenter's pencil. I was like, "This is cool." But I didn't like the drag of the rubber on it, but it made my finger drawings not as crappy. I'd used that stylus. I tried to play around with it a bit more. Then Apple introduced the pencil and it was a game changer for me.I've dabbled a bit with other applications, but the Paper is still my go-to when it comes to sketchiness because of how it works. I still maintain sketchbooks. I have one now. It's more random skulls and patterns and headshots. Like you see I participate in October each year, which is a drawing challenge. If you go over into my Instagram, you'll see that I have a few. I think I actually made it through all 31 days this year.MR: You did.TH: Which is like maybe the second or third time that I've done it. I've completed Inktober. But that's just fun. It's a good challenge to just do random headshots. I enjoy the personalities that come out of those headshots. That's a bit of how I got into it, what I've been doing.MR: Wow. And now, do you still do sketchnoting from time to time?TH: I do. I haven't had as much with the pandemic. Right before the pandemic, I was actually doing a fair amount of it. I was getting contacted by conferences to help with that. I did a Mind the Product conference and did a plural site live as well. They were a lot of fun. Did the thing with—what I like about—my particular process with sketchnotes is I prefer being in person at any one event 'cause processing that real-time is the thing that I did. I've tried to do it with different random, YouTube presentations and stuff like that, but I don't get quite the energy and the vibe off of a live event.MR: Interesting. When I look at your style, I see you have a very unique ink style, I dunno how to describe it, but it looks like you're using a brush pen or something. There is some single-line work, right, but there's some that looks like it's kind of thick and thin. What is the tool that you're using to achieve that? I assume you're still on Paper, right?TH: Yeah. Looking at the ink over stuff, I typically, I'll pencil it out, I'll sketch out in pencil and then I just use fine liners. I use a fine linear and then like a 0.8. Sometimes I'll go in with the smaller one. One little tool that I saw, a Kaweco.MR: Oh, yeah.TH: I was like, I put it in my cart and it's really hard to justify that experience. Not a cheap thing, hey. But it got low enough and I'm like, okay, it was my birthday. And I was like, I told my wife, "I'm gonna splurge and get this." And like, okay. I love it. I haven't done much drawing with it. I got an extra broad nib and it's a little too thick for me. My pen addiction, my writing instrument addiction is breathing and well, and I collect art supplies when I'm trying to figure out something I wanna do. I ordered a broad nib off of Jet pens, which is not a good site if you like ready instruments. It's not good for your wallet. It's a great size.MR: Great site, and yeah, you spend a lot of money there pretty easily.TH: Oh yeah.MR: Paper now is owned by, WeTransfer the file transfer company, and still is maintained and has had some updates. Like you, I use Procreate for illustration work, but if I'm doing sketch notes, I go right to Paper. At this point, it feels really natural, the tools, I'm very aware of them. When you do sketchnoting in Paper, what are the tools that you like to use there? I'm just curious about that. Looking at, just have one of your samples up here on my screen. Looks like you're—TH: I have an iPad Pro that I use with an Apple pencil. Typically, when I do it, I'll—what I love about Paper is the intuitiveness of the tools. They have a paintbrush, they have a ink pen or fountain pen. They have a couple different types of markers and a pencil. Typically, I like to do a little sketch of the presenter. And so, if you look at it, you'll see that most frequently. Then notes around the topics they're talking about.Often, I'll get the sketch of the presenter. I do that in the quiet moments of their presentation. I'll either use the ink pen, the fountain pen version, a medium nib. It's relatively inexpensive to pay for the pro version for Procreate or for the Paper.MR: Right. It's $12 a year, I think.TH: Yeah. I'm more than happy to pay that 'cause it's given me a lot of opportunities. The thing that I love is the color mixing. They've nailed color mixing like nobody else has, and I think it's one of the best things that they've done in software. I'll use that or I'll use a one the fine liner to do the block letters and whatnot.Every now and then, I have little people pop up that are just a head body and arms, legs to sometimes self-characters and concepts that the designers are doing. Because the thing that I found really interesting with sketch notes is that it's that real-time synthesizing of the concepts that they're presenting that I get the most out of 'em. Largely, it started as a selfish practice to pay attention and stay awake, but I found that I still love doing that because it really helps me to get something outta these presentations as well. But yeah, Paper is hands down the most intuitive tool, I think, for just sketching out in general. I love it.MR: I agree. Well, we're talking a little bit about Sketchnoting specifically. We've done who you are and what you do. We got your story of your origin. Tell us a little bit about something you're working on now, whether it's work or personal that you're excited about that you can share with us.TH: Well, let's see. One of the things I'm really excited about, I have no clue how to do it, is I want to try and figure out how I can work a little bit more in conversational device. Conversational device seem to be taken a lot. There's the ChatGPT bot that everybody's talking about. All these AI-based tools, which have their place, I think. But how can I build a conversational way to present my work or to present myself?I've done some really terrible things. Experiments that will never see the light of day. One of the things I love about design is that's experimentation is part of trying to figure out a solution. You and I both know as designers, it's like, you can't really come up with a good solution unless you know what the problem is. And so, trying to figure that out from my perspective, like, okay, how can I make something like this happen and in a way that I can somehow manage, right?I will fully admit to being an old school. It's like my personal psych is there. I think I got a redesign out last year that I'm really happy with. That was the seven-year cycle of refreshing a personal site. It seems like seven to eight years is about the time it takes for me to get around to saying, "I should probably redesign my personal site." And actually, finding the time to do it.I want to, being able to maintain that in a way because with all the different social media things, it's really hard to improvise where your content is in a good way. 'Cause if you post on social media, you don't have a real centralized location for any of the content that you can put out. You have to say, "I'm gonna focus on this platform."That's really the dangerous thing, I think. How do you position yourself not only as a working professional, a design professional like we're as an artist you know, and give yourself a home where people know, "Oh, if I go here, I'll be able to find and go look at all the other things."'Cause as much as I love social media and Instagram, I'm tired of seeing an ad every third post in Instagram as I scroll through my feed. Then you have other social media services that kinda self-destruct. I want to have a good centralized location, and I haven't been able to get that fully done yet.'Cause as much as everybody loves WordPress and it powers so many sites, you have to really want to put in that time and effort to make WordPress work. There's other platforms and stuff too, but it's like, how can you make your content your own and have it in a place that everybody can know, "Okay, if I go here, I'll find their stuff." I'm trying to figure that out for myself.MR: That's something that challenged me as well. Years ago, I decided to go to Squarespace just because I could build what I wanted and not think too much about it, and constrained me a lot. Paper does provide, and it's grown to meet my needs over time. That's been really good to secure as well. I had an instance where I ran websites on WordPress and didn't update, and someone was running a legal pharmaceutical site buried in my website, and I was like, "All right. Not doing that anymore."I was out on WordPress self-hosting and switched to Squarespace, and it's been a good experience. But yeah, I felt the same way you talk about, you know, scrolling through Instagram, it feels like more and more of its ads and less and less of its actual content. I have to really fight through the ads to actually get to my friends for interesting things, and that's frustrating. Someone's going to hopefully solve that problem soon.TH: There's a lot of different platforms out there, you know, Mastodon is taking off, but it's like, in my mind, it's a little too complex for the normal person. Just about everything, you have to feed the algorithm. You have to continually be putting stuff out there to maintain any audience. People have lives outside of posting on social media.One thing I think in general that people don't think about too much is I have a life that is very important to me with my family, and it's like, I'm not gonna be posting all the time for these different platforms. It's great. I love doing it, but it's like, that's not my primary, one of my key focuses.MR: That's the question everybody has to ask, right, to what am I gonna feed this thing? What are its expectations of me? 'Cause sometimes you come to realize that these platforms have expectations for what they want you to do that doesn't align with what you wanna do. You have to make that decision because you only get so much time. It keeps going away. That's really fascinating. Well, I hope that redesigning your website goes well. I know what that feels like. I haven't done it for a while, so I know what a challenge it is.TH: I appreciate that. One thing I'm really interested in trying out, and maybe I'll be doing it a little bit this week a bit if I can, is AWS has this thing called Amplify Studio where they've pre-built some components and whatnot, in React powered by a Figma template. And so, you change your components in the Figma template, connect your account, and you should be able to launch out some app or whatever.I have the template, it's been taunting and mocking me for several months since I discovered it. An inanimate software can't do that. AI might be able to do that, but inanimate software doesn't necessarily do that as you're constant saying, "Hey, you got this, are you gonna do something at some point?"MR: For those who don't know, Figma is a design tool, vector-based design tool where many designers build often their prototypes and their mockups with. What Ty's talking about is he would build a mockup of his site and then use React, which is kind of a backend technology, I think is a fair way to describe it populated by—TH: It's a JavaScript framework—MR: Framework, that's the word I was looking for.TH: Yeah. Just help build out components. AWS is Amazon Web Services, which is the—basically simple way of looking at it is they provide a lot of the Cloud hosting services for a lot of providers. When your services aren't working, there might be an AWS outage somewhere causing some of that stuff. When the internet services go down, sometimes there's outage with some of these cloud providers—MR: Well later in the show, we'll definitely have a link to your website. Maybe by the time this episode launches, you'll have a new site up there that people can look at.TH: It gives me a goal to work on.MR: There you go. There you go. Let's take a little shift now and talk about tools. We've hinted at some, you talked about Paper by WeTransfer as a digital tool. Let's jump back into analog, and more specifically, are there brands of pens that you like, brands of paper, notebooks, pencils, so that people who are listening can dig them up and maybe experiment a little bit?TH: Absolutely. Right now, if I look at my desk, I have a mechanical pencil, and I'll send you some links so you can put these in show notes. It's a mechanical pencil, 0.51 with a metal coral is by Uni. The nice thing is, when you have a metal pencil, you'll often have this little nib that kinda gets bent and breaks. But what's nice about this pencil is that it retracts. It's fairly affordable. I think it's like maybe about 15 bucks. It's not a polymer is on the back of it.I also love fine liners. I've gotten the rounds with a whole bunch, I have some, Copics. The current one that I'm using is a Uni pen fine liner. I've found that I really like these really good waterproof so I can lay down watercolor washes or alcohol on so on. I got this one earlier this year. We did a team offsite. We got a rotating 600.MR: Those beautiful pens.TH: It was a Ballpoint. I'm not such a huge fan of ballpoint pens. But I discovered that Kaweco makes a gel pin insert refill, and so, I got a Kaweco gel pen insert in there. Then have a Kaweco fountain little porch fountain pen. The thing that amazes me-- yeah, it's tinier than I thought it was, but the thing I love about it is that the ink just flows and it's beautiful. It's really great.As far as what do I draw on, in the day, it's often post notes, making lists, and whatnot. I have sketchbooks. Right now, I'm using one. I've been experimenting a little bit with what I want to use for sketchbooks and stuff. This one's by a company, Global Art materials. It's just a generic kinda sketchbook.For years and years, I've used Moleskin's Art sketchbooks, which are great. I love that size. I got a eight by eight, or seven and a half by seven and a half watercolor sketchbook. I found that that was a little too precious. I was like, "Oh, I gotta do art in this stuff." I got the Kickstarter for "The Sketchnote Idea Book."MR: Thank you.TH: I love it, Mike. It's fantastic. The pages are bright white, which I absolutely love and they held all sorts of things. I got some watercolor in my old one. I have one somewhere, an Emergency Kit in case I have to go somewhere. I have another one somewhere that I'm like, lemme experiment with this stuff, and then maybe I'll get back to the Idea book. I found that that notebook that you guys put together was really one of my favorites in recent years.MR: Great.TH: The quality of the paper and the whiteness and the thickness made it really, really flexible. The only thing for me is maybe it was a hair too big, a little too wide. I like a little bit smaller, but I absolutely love the paper quality you guys did on that. Then like sketch notes or not sketch notes, but on the Ink Tobra drawings, I found a five by seven Strathmore 400 pad of paper that's really thick that I absolutely love.All of the years, and 2021s, I only did like 16 of them. I have all those originals hanging out on a piece of paper somewhere. One my goals with my personal site is to be able to set up a way to sell some of these 'cause that's fun or good if this is just sitting and collecting dust in your house. If you do it, I think that one of the real choices of making art is sharing it with people and helping them appreciate it. One of the things I wanna get going as well.MR: That sounds good. As far as digital, you talked about, of course, Paper. We got into that a little bit already. Are there any other tools that you like to play with? Or is that your go-to for pretty much everything?TH: I do have Procreate on my iPad. My kids use it a lot more than I do. One thing I found is I don't like the glossy slide of the Apple pencil on just a make a screen so I have a textured screen protector on it to give it that textural fill of paper. I found that that makes a huge difference for making marks on iPad. That's really it. I've toyed with, Adobe Fresco, Concepts app. There's one that the Icon Factory does, I can't remember it's Ben's go-to tool.MR: I think Ben Crothers likes that—Ben Norris likes that one.TH: Norris, yeah. I dabbled that a little bit. What I like about Paper is the ability to go from pencil to ink to watercolor. The brush that they have in Paper is fantastic. How you can lay your color, make it deeper and rich if you want.I haven't been able to get Procreate to do that. Procreate's a fantastic tool. I love it. But for Sketch notes, to me, it feels like it's a little too powerful. What I love about Paper is Paper's really good at just capturing your flow of thinking, whereas you have to be a lot more deliberate in your usage of Procreate. Although, if you're a Concept artist or somebody that's doing stuff like that, then absolutely that's a great place.My son does a lot of—he loves Pokemon, he loves Mario. He's been doing it. He's gonna be turning 25 this next year. And I'm like, "Dude, you could do commissions of people's Pokemon on teams." He does this fantastic stuff. I'll send you a link to his Pokemon stuff. He'll do characters and whatnot. He's drawn so many Mario things. He's drawn hundreds of Pokemon and he gets them scaled. I just absolutely love looking at his stuff. I'm like, "Dude, you could probably do something with this. "But he's like, "Yeah, I know Dad, but I do this for fun." Which is great.MR: That sounds like a great variety of tools. You had quite a span. Some that I hadn't thought about, especially the Kaweco. I think it was the Kaweco insert that goes into the Rotring, I think you talked about. 'Cause I'm not a ballpoint fan either. There's a Schaffer insert that I use in my Retro 51s that I really like too. Probably a similar insert, I suppose.TH: I really like the Kaweco one. There's another one that seems to get pretty good reviews that I've seen on, I wanna call it Otto.MR: Oh yeah. Otto. I've had otto. Yeah, those are great. That's Japanese, I think.TH: Mark-making on a budget is a big deal for me. It's not necessarily the tools that make the person, it's what you do with the tools that you have. I think having a widely available set of tools is really important, but also making sure that they're budget-friendly, right?MR: Mm-hmm.TH: Is an important thing too.MR: Yep. I totally agree. Let's make one last shift into tips. The way I frame this is to imagine someone's listening. Maybe they're kind of at a plateau, or they just need some inspiration, little inspiration, little boost. What'd be three tips you would give that person to encourage them in their sketchnoting or visual thinking or just thinking, doing visual work experience.TH: The first tip, and I think this is a pretty important one. I've had a lot of people, when they find out I'm a designer, they throw, "Oh, I'm not artistic." And to me, it's not about being artistic. It's about being creative. I like to tell people everyone's creative in their own way. How you express your creativity is going to be different than how I express my creativity.My creativity comes out in the form of sketch notes and these random headshot illustrations that I do. Your creativity may be that you are a fantastic accountant and you can come up with really great ways to make things better and more efficient. Other people may just be fantastic books or bakers. Everybody expresses their creativity differently.It's not about being artistic, it's about expressing yourself in the work that you do. I think it's perfectly okay to admire for somebody's work and say, "Oh, that's fantastic," and be a fan of it, but also not beat yourself up like, "Oh, I'm not that good at because I can't draw like my sorority and illustrate all these school books." I can draw my own thing and I can be happy with it. And so, I think my first one would be, everybody is creative in their own way, and that's okay.With that, it goes to what I would say is my second tip is enjoy what you do. That it's really hard, I think, especially today for people to feel like, oh, I can enjoy this. I think you need to give yourself permission to enjoy those things that you find pleasing. There's so many things out there today, it's easy to get overwhelmed with them.I think it's okay to be nerdy and geeky or really into sports or, you can like a range of different things. If my kids were tell you what I like, they'd rattle off a list of dozens of things 'cause I don't think it's good to limit yourself to liking just one thing. You can like a range of different things, and that's okay. That would be my second one.The third one is, there's a script quote from Iron Glass. You've probably heard this. You can find a YouTube video on it somewhere, but he's talking about the work that you want to do when you—everybody has a particular taste and style in their head that they imagine. But then when you try and do it, it doesn't meet those mental expectations, but you can get there by working at it.I really think that everybody's capable of doing really great stuff, but you need to work to get to that point. Don't give up, but that's the whole—and I think follow your passion is really bad advice, but I think do what you enjoy because it may be that you may not enjoy your job which is providing for you and maybe your family. But if there's something outside of that that brings you joy and that you enjoy doing, do that in a way that helps you be happy.Over time, what you do with that will match what you see in your head. There may be opportunities that come up as a result of doing that because you never know. Opportunity—I forget who said this quote. Opportunity is often masked as hard work. If you're not doing the work to prepare for the thing that you want to do when that opportunity comes, you're gonna be ill-prepared to do that, that you want to do.And so, it's important to do the things that you feel are important that you love and you'll have an opportunity at some point. Timing is really important. I'll do a fourth one because this one I feel—and I've mentioned a little bit. You need set boundaries for yourself on what you do. You need to be able to say, this is what's important to me, and these other things aren't so important.And so, when it comes down to it, you know, I won't be doing this, this, or this because it conflicts with my more important thing. For me, personally, my most important thing is my family, and everything that I do, I do—I love design. I find that an extremely fulfilling, rewarding career, but it's a means to be able to provide for the family and make sure that they're taken care of.I think that a lot of people are like, this is my hustle. This is my thing. If you put so much of yourself into that, that you identify that with that, and if that thing goes away, where are you left? Set the boundaries for the things that are really important to you in your life that are not work-related. Because I can guarantee you everybody has something that's very important to them, that it's not work-related.Set those boundaries, talk about those boundaries, and live your life in a way that reflects your priorities because as you do that, people will see that, they'll understand that, they'll respect that. And as you do those things and you express yourself through whatever creative means you have, you'll gain those opportunities to be able to do those things and then lead a more fulfilling life and that you're you're happy with. You won't be living with regrets if you do those things.MR: I love the fourth tip. That's really great. Really encouraging. Well, thank you for all those tips and we appreciate your wisdom for all of us here. It seems like just minutes and suddenly we're near the end of the show. I'd love to hear where's the best place for people to find you? Websites, social media, whatever you think would be the best place to start and connect.TH: You bet. I do have a personal site as we were talking about. It's at tyhatch.com. That's gonna be where you can find me. I have links off to all my socials. I'm on Twitter for however long that's still up. I'm on Instagram. You can find me at both of those. Most social media, you can find me at Ty Hatch. Instagram, Twitter, those have been my mainstays. I do have a profile on Mastodon as well. You can find me there tyhatch@mastodon.online. And then also most of my schedule archive of at this point in time lives over on Pinterest. You go to pinterest.com/tyhatch.com/sketchnotes. I think I have a collection of about 300 different sketch notes that I've done.MR: Oh, that's great.TH: You can find me there. I'm always happy to field any questions. If you see something you like, send me a note. Say, "Hey Ty, I really like this sketch. Do you have it?" And if it's something from October, happy to do that. I did a thing years ago, oh gosh, it's been almost 10 years. Really, Mike, I'm getting old. I did this thing about 10 years ago called Artist Trading Cards, or ATC. I think it might still be up if you go to apcs.tyhatch.I did a bunch of Artist Trading Cards. It started off ostensibly as like, "I'm gonna do a little Christmas present for coworkers." And it turned into a four-month project that I had a daily post of thumb little sketch that I did. I'm happy to sell these or trade with you if you want to trade physical objects. There's a whole range of those out there as well. It's fun. I enjoy doing random doodles and I think some point, there will be an opportunity for 'em, but until then I get to enjoy them.TH: Yep.MR: Cool. Well, we'll definitely get show notes put into the episode. So if you're anything in or any of these things pique your interest, you can go check it out. We have links to it. And thanks so much, Ty for being on the show. I'm so appreciate the work you do and the representation you put into the world and your leadership really need people like you doing that. And I'm so glad that you do it.TH: Thanks, Mike. It's been a pleasure. It's been fantastic talking with you today.MR: You too. Well, and for everyone listening, that'll wrap another episode of "The Sketchnote Army Podcast." Till the next episode, this is Mike. Talk to you soon. All right. I'm gonna stop my recording.

Connection is at the very heart of storytelling… and our lives.  What does it really look like to create meaningful connections with other people—including friends, teammates, colleagues, employees, community members, and the audience you want to reach? If there's a go-to expert on this subject, it's Kat Vellos.  Kat is a trusted name on the power of cultivating meaningful friendships.  In her former career, Kat made software more user-friendly at large companies you've heard of, but these days she makes life more friendly for the thousands of people and work teams who use her guidance to cultivate fulfilling friendships and colleagueships. Kat's a speaker, facilitator, and author of the book, We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships. Her writing is read in over 100 countries and she's been interviewed by The New York Times, NPR, Communication Arts, The Good Life Project, and many more.  I met Kat years ago at a conference (UX Week) when she attended my workshop on storytelling for designers, and in 2022 she presented as an expert guest at my Storytelling Mastery Summit. When I started this podcast I *knew* I had to have her on as a guest.  In our discussion, we cover… The three little words you should probably use WAY less often. How to carve out a niche or specialty for yourself simply by asking questions… and why it's better to follow your curiosity rather than “follow your passion”. Why friendship matters, both in and out of the workplace. What healthy teams and “colleagueships” look like, and how to cultivate healthy relationships in the workplace. Why bonds among people and healthy colleagueships are essential for teams and businesses to thrive. Why it really is “lonely at the top”, why leaders often suffer loneliness in silence, and how to get support.  What to do if you feel lonely or disconnected at work. How to walk the line of connecting authentically, while still remaining professional and reserved "enough" in a leadership role.   For introverts: How to connect with other people — and even market yourself! — AND protect your energy and battery life.  All that and more! If you want to connect with other people authentically and effectively, be sure to listen to this episode.  And, be sure to find Kat at www.Katvellos.com or at www.weshouldgettogether.com

Abby Covert is an information architect, writer and community organizer with two decades of experience helping people make sense of messes. In addition to being an active mentor to those new to sensemaking, she has also served the design community as President of the Information Architecture Institute, co-chair of Information Architecture Summit, and Executive Producer of the I.D.E.A Conference. Abby is a founding faculty member of School of Visual Arts' Products of Design graduate program. She also managed the team that helped Rosenfeld Media to start both the Design Operations Summit and Advancing Research Conference. Her most proud achievement is having come up with the idea for World Information Architecture Day, bringing accessibly priced education to thousands in their local communities annually. In addition to running events, you may have seen her presenting her work on stage at: Blend, Business to Buttons, Confab, Creative Mornings, Designing for Digital, EdUI, EMACTL, EuroIA, Generate, GIANT, IA Summit, IA Conference, Italian IA Conference, Interactions, Midwest UX, Mind the Product, Momentum, Plain Language Summit, SearchLOVE, STC Summit, TalkUX, UI21, UI22, UX Cambridge, UX Ottawa, UX Lisbon, UX Tokyo, UX Week, Webstock, Wharton Web Conference, World IA Day Abby has written two books for her students. In 2014 she published How to Make Sense of Any Mess, a book to teach IA to everybody. In 2022, she released her much anticipated follow-up, Stuck? Diagrams Help. She currently spends her time making things that help you to make the unclear, clear, many of which she makes available for free on her website abbycovert.com or at accessible price points in her popular Etsy shop AbbytheIA. Abby lives and writes from Melbourne, Florida where her most important job title is ‘Mom'. Episode Notes Products & Guides for SensemakersHow to Make Sense of Any MessSTUCK? Diagrams HelpMy Monthly Email List Related Episodes Episode #223: Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic Episode #203: Alli Torban Episode #198: Scott Berkun Episode #145: RJ Andrews Episode #2: Dear Data iTunes Spotify

Jaime Levy shares the importance (and danger ⚡) of putting yourself into your work, how UX going mainstream has changed the field, and wonders, “where are all of our design heroes?”. Highlights include: ⭐ How is the mainstreaming of UX changing the field? ⭐ Why is it important to put yourself into your work? ⭐ How far do we have to go to create a meaningful career? ⭐ Why did you stop teaching UX at university? ⭐ How do you reconcile being burned out with being an overachiever? ====== Who is Jaime Levy? Jaime is a world-leading UX and Product Strategist, based in Los Angeles, California. For more than 30 years she has been a pioneer of digital products and services, working for Fortune 500 companies and award-winning agencies, across many sectors. The author of the best selling book, “UX Strategy: Product Strategy Techniques for Devising Innovative Solutions”, which has been translated into 9 languages and is now in its second edition - Jaime knows a thing or two about UX strategy. A passionate and longstanding contributor to the UX community, Jaime regularly delivers workshops, online masterclasses, and speeches at conferences, such as Interaction Latin America, From Business to Buttons, and UX Week, on top of her consulting engagements.  ====== Find Jaime here:   Website: https://jaimelevy.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimerlevy/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/JaimeRLevy/    Buy the book:   UX Strategy - Product Strategy Techniques for Devising Innovative Digital Solutions:  https://www.userexperiencestrategy.com/   ====== Liked what you heard and want to hear more? Subscribe and support the show by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts (or wherever you listen). Follow us on our other social channels for more great Brave UX content! YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/TheSpaceInBetween/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-space-in-between/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thespaceinbetw__n/  ====== Hosted by Brendan Jarvis: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanjarvis/ Website: https://thespaceinbetween.co.nz/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/brendanjarvis/

In this episode of Surfacing, Andy and Lisa talk to the speaker, author, and creativity evangelist Denise Jacobs. They discuss Denise's evolution from digital maker to becoming a creative support system for the digital maker community, her book Banish Your Inner Critic, and Denise's latest project focusing on leaders of digital makers. Episode Transcript   About Denise Jacobs Denise Jacobs’ expertise lies at the intersection of creativity, confidence, and achievement. Denise keynotes conferences and consults with tech companies worldwide, giving a Creative Dose™ – an injection of inspiration, relevant content, and immediately applicable tools to help people do their best work. Through her company, The Creative Dose, she helps individuals and teams to hack their creative brains, banish their inner critic, and develop powerful communication and speaking skills in order to enable them to unblock creativity, cultivate collaboration, and ignite innovation. Through working with Denise, employees become engaged contributors, synergistic collaborators, and authentic leaders. Denise has presented at events and organizations worldwide such as Google, Facebook, Automattic, GitHub, FastWeb.It, the BBC, South By Southwest Interactive, Brand Minds, Forbes8, Mind The Product, The Agile Alliance, NDC Oslo, UX Week, The Society for Technical Communications, various chapters of The American Marketing Association, Creative Mornings, The Future of Storytelling, The Future of Web Design, Inbound, and TEDxRheinMain. Denise is the author of Banish Your Inner Critic, the premier handbook on silencing self-doubt to unleash creativity and do your best work. A Web Design & Development industry veteran, Denise is also the author of The CSS Detective Guide, the principal book on troubleshooting CSS code, and is co-author to the Smashing Book #3: Redesign the Web, as well as the book, InterAct with Web Standards: A holistic guide to web design. Denise is an instructor for the Stanford Continuing Studies Program and has been a guest lecturer in courses at Stanford University‘s Design Program. She is also a  LinkedIn Learning course instructor, with two of her courses in the Microsoft and LinkedIn Global Skills Initiative’s Soft Skills and Graphic Design critical learning paths. Denise’s passion projects include Rawk The Web, a movement focused on changing the face of the tech industry by increasing the numbers of visible diverse tech experts, and The Creativity (R)Evolution, a movement to spread the force of creativity as a vehicle for personal transformation and world-wide positive change. Denise's website  Denise on Twitter Denise on Instagram  Denise on LinkedIn  Denise's Facebook fan page  Denise Book – Banish Your Inner Critic  Denise Book – The CSS Detective Guide  Denise’s LinkedIn Learning Courses: Banish Your Inner Critic  Creative Collaboration  Business Case for Creativity  Creativity for All – Hacking  Denise’s craft courses – bath product making, etc. Artist Hilma af Klint   James Altucher  on being an idea machine Dashner Design & Restoration on YouTube 

Andrew Hinton is the Senior Manager of Design Strategy and Research at Honeywell. He is a seasoned public speaker who has graced the stage at the IA Conference, UX Lisbon, UX Week, and the IA Summit. He is also the author of the must-read information architecture book, "Understanding Context." In this episode of the podcast, Sophia and Andrew discuss the meaning of embodied cognition, the pitfalls of being a physical creature in a digital environment, and why sometimes, creating inconsistency can help you be consistent. LINKS: Follow Andrew on Twitter: https://twitter.com/inkblurt Keep up with Andrew on his website: https://andrewhinton.com/ Buy yourself a copy of "Understanding Context": https://amzn.to/3sAZ3k1 --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/ooux/support

When stakeholders have access to real-time data about millions of user interactions, how can qualitative researchers articulate the value of small-sample studies for product and business strategy? Katy Mogal, UX Research Lead at Google Assistant, joins Lou to offer a preview of the case study she’ll share at Advancing Research 2021 (https://rosenfeldmedia.com/advancing-research-2021/sessions/but-do-your-insights-scale/), including learnings about how human-centered researchers can effectively collaborate with functions like data science and business strategy, and how to persuade analytically-minded stakeholders to embrace rich qualitative data about people’s needs and motivations as an input to business strategy. Katy recommends: • Ideo University’s course “ Insights for Innovation” https://www.ideou.com/products/insights-for-innovation • Jump Associates’ workshop on how to move from data to insights through a synthesis process: https://www.jumpassociates.com/learning-posts/insight-action-making-connection/ Register for AR2021: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/advancing-research-2021/register/ About Katy: Katy is on a mission to help product teams develop and ship experiences that make people’s lives better, through building and leading research teams that deliver synthesized insights with a strategic point of view. While working in marketing at Warner Bros. in London, Katy became fascinated with the idea of using survey and analytics data to understand and build for human needs. After graduating from the Wharton School she joined strategic consultancy Lieberman Research Worldwide as an account manager, where she led insights-based strategy engagements for clients including Nike, Weight Watchers and Viacom. Later she moved to Cheskin Research, a design and marketing consultancy that was a pioneer in applying ethnographic research to problems of design strategy. Exposure to a wide variety of data types, and experience bringing them together to tell a holistic story of user needs, became a theme that has run through her career in research and insights. She went on to build and lead UX and Design research teams at Fitbit, Facebook and most recently at Google, where she currently leads research teams on Google Assistant. Katy’s current focus is on developing the research function as a strategic partner to UX, Product Management and Engineering, and as a force for culture change in product organizations. Her side hustles include teaching product design and design research courses at Stanford Continuing Studies and California College of the Arts, and frequent speaking engagements at conferences such as UX Week, UX Lisbon, FlUXible and People Nerds. In her spare time Katy enjoys throwing weights around at the CrossFit gym in San Francisco’s Mission District, where she lives with her husband, son and two rescue dogs.

I have really enjoyed talking with some members of the Capital One Digital Team this month, and what better way to wrap up the month than to talk about the woman who helped make all this possible -- Alana Washington! As the strategy lead on the data experience design (DXD) team at Capital One, she not only works with engineers on data visualization, but she's also building out a data journalism practice also! We talked more about Alana's work and she talked about her nontraditional path into tech, her work with organizing UX Week 2018, and the importance of fairness in artificial intelligence and machine learning for people of color. Alana also gave some great information for designers looking to enter the AI/ML space, and gave her predictions on where AI is going into the future. Thank you so much for Alana for all your hard work at Capital One, as well as helping to organize this exciting month of interviews! Alana Washington's Website Alana Washington on LinkedIn Alana Washington on Twitter Get your tickets today for "The State of the Internet 2019", a live conversation with Glitch CEO Anil Dash, Matt Mitchell of CryptoHarlem and Tactical Tech, and Maurice Cherry of Revision Path! (It's also the night of our 6th anniversary, so come out and celebrate!) For tickets, visit our event page on Eventbrite! Big thanks to Capital One for sponsoring this month of Revision Path. The Capital One Digital team is a diverse group of people who work together to build great products for the enterprise and to disrupt how people interact with their money, their bank, and their financial lives. Curious about what they're working on and how they're growing? Check them out at capitalonecareers.com or at their Medium community at medium.com/capitalonedesign. Like this episode? Then subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Subscribe and leave us a 5-star rating and a review! Thanks so much to all of you who have already rated and reviewed us! Revision Path is brought to you by Glitch and sponsored by Facebook Design, Google Design, and Mailchimp. Powered by Simplecast. Sign up today for a 14-day free trial! You can also follow Revision Path on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Come chat with us! And thanks for listening!

San Fransisco-based user experience designer Jesse James Garret joins us this week to share which elements make a good experience, discuss the influence attending a (design) conference can have on your thinking and how annual UX Week grow out to one of the most important design conferences​ around. UX Week San Fransisco, 21 - 24 August 2018, San Fransisco. Get 10% discount on your tickets using promo-code "UX18NeonM" Listen to more episodes on www.neonmoire.com/interviews If you have questions, we love to get your feedback on Twitter https://twitter.com/neonmoire And of course, if you enjoyed this episode please let Jesse James Garet know via Twitter at https://twitter.com/jjg --- Guest Links: Personal site: http://www.jjg.net/ UX Week: https://uxweek.com  Adaptive Path: http://www.adaptivepath.com/ --- Show Notes: UX Week http://uxweek.com/ Adaptive Path http://www.adaptivepath.com/ Capital One https://www.capitalone.com/ The Elements of User Experience https://goo.gl/YHjkCY South by Southwest https://www.sxsw.com/ --- Neon Moiré: Neon Monday our weekly email newsletter: https://neonmoire.com/subscribe Like us on Facebook: https://facebook.com/neonmoire Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/neonmoire Follow us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/neonmoire --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/neonmoireshow/message

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

Search on the web is ubiquitous. Everyone knows and uses Google. Most websites include a way to search the content within their pages and web users are often classified as either searchers or browsers. For many companies, search is considered a solved problem—you get an engine, point it at your content, add an entry box to your global navigation and you are done. This couldn’t be further from the truth. As experience designers, we have an obligation to understand how search works so we can craft an experience that enhances the lives of our users. For too long we have lived at the mercy of vendors and IT departments and their directives of how search should work. We need to understand what goes on under the search covers so we can put the focus back where it belongs—on the person using the tool, not the tool itself. About Chiara Fox Chiara Fox is a senior information architect for Adaptive Path. Chiara has developed successful information architectures for intranets, informational websites, and e-commerce sites. She’s worked with Fortune 100 and 500 companies such as PeopleSoft, AT&T, Square D, L.L. Bean, and Hewlett-Packard.

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.

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.

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.

Web technologies in various stages of adoption are having tremendous impact on the way we all communicate and collaborate online. Ryan Freitas of Adaptive Path provides an overview of how online collaboration has evolved in the presence of wikis, syndication and blogs. He also looks at the impact on how teams work together to use these tools internally, and how they can be utilized to communicate effectively with audiences worldwide. In addition, Freitas surveys the horizon for the next generation of collaboration technologies, and attempts to auger what they might mean for all of us. One of the major issues is how best to evaluate collaboration tools. Freitas reviews some useful methods, including whether the tool works appropriately and how easily it can be used immediately. he believes that collaboration is about fostering ideas so that you can get to a point of coordination.

Kathan Brown, author of the book "Magical Secrets About Thinking Creatively: The Art of Etching and the Truth of Life," discusses how her art publishing group Crown Point Press is helping bring artists together and redefine the communication of their ideas. In a conversation with Janice Fraser, at the Adaptive Path User Experience Week, Brown tells her story of art and working with artists. Fraser, who is CEO and founding partner of Adaptive Path, discusses with Brown that in today's busy world there is little time for examining what leadership is - from a user experience point of view - in the art world. An answer to some of those concerns is the work by Brown, who recounts her experiences with artists, how they approach art as a magical, almost miraculous process. Cooperation is a primary concern at Crown Point Press, where cooperation between artists is critical. Collaboration between artists and printers is another challenge when trying to present art in the best possible way. By recounting experiences with artists and broad movements in the art world, Brown explains the magic behind creating art and what place the arts has taken in today's world.

Many Adaptive Path projects have been successes, such as the recent acquisition of Measure Map by Google. But in each successful career happened mistakes that led to an understanding how not to be successful. Leading heads of Adaptive Path give examples how projects went wrong because of their personal mistakes. But, best of all, you also get to hear what they learned from that failure. You can understand by example what they understood by painful failure. One of the biggest mistakes, already addressed by the existence of this panel, is not allowing people to communicate failure. Where failure is non-existent, less questions are asked. Some failures might even be inevitable, such as bold goals in an early stage of the project. They might never be reached in time, but they help you to get started. Communication can be a source of mistakes in software projects. There is always the danger of not listening to critics or warnings. But, maybe even worse, you might be listening to the wrong people. Or you might be talking to the wrong people. The panel encourages to cultivate criticism, communicate in the open and identify the true stakeholders before too much work and money has been spent. Furthermore, they arrive at statements some might find too bold for everyday business, but could pay off in the long term: Do not take over every project. Instead, develop guidelines other than earning money that help you decide. You can also try to consider the emotional attachments some stakeholders might have to the status quo.

What are content audits and content maps, and why should they matter to companies who publish information on the Web? Chiara Fox, a senior information architect for Adaptive Path, defines the art of Content Analysis in the scope of web application design and migration. She identifies several milestones and key deliverables that most companies can use on their next (re)design project. Content analysis is a core component of the information architect's toolkit. Content analysis is the examination of the content and features that make up a website. Through a content audit, or sampling of representative pieces of content, an information architect can understand the relationships, interdependencies and patterns that exist within the current content on the site. This process also allows the information architect to understand requirements and constraints inherent in the content. Content genres, or types, can be identified and used to create a content map of the site and site templates. The content map provides the basic building blocks for gap analysis, which maps user tasks with the content genres.

When his company, Adaptive Path, was engaged by a financial services firm to redesign their website that let customers perform retail banking transactions, Peter Merholz, Director of Practice Development, went into the homes of users asking them questions about their usage of the existing website, the kinds of reports they recieved, how they used their computer etc. Designers, according to Merholz, must broaden their peripheral vision to other domains outside their own. A website designer, by habit thinks like a website designer. The task of designing a print document would be quite new and challenging for such a person. However, if designers thought beyond their domains, they would get a better grip on the nuances of design in general and deliver a richer experience to users.

If you ask Dan's parents what they think their son does for a living, they might say he's in advertising or that he's a computer programmer. Pressed further, they develop somewhat of a blank staring response when asked what their son does as an Interaction Designer. With that type of response in mind, both from his parents and from many people outside of the Interaction Design community, Dan Saffer presents a definition of his trade. From the highest level, Interaction Design is all about communication. Dan's presentation starts from there and further breaks the communication into three layers. The first layer takes the perspective of the technology itself; what is it, how does it work, and what problems can it solve. The second layer focuses on behavior; what happens when a user pushes this button, and what behaviors will the user exhibit as a result. The third layer is all about people and how they will use a technology to interact with one another. Dan takes time to define exactly what an interaction is. He identifies some of the attributes of an interaction that designers measure while they create products and services around the interaction. He discusses some of the history of Interaction Design, and some of the people involved in the discipline early on. Lastly, Dan takes a moment to map out the many disciplines that make up the User Experience universe and identifies where, he thinks, Interaction Design fits into this large community.

Most of us who practice user experience design are generalists. We need to know enough about technology to work with engineers. We need to know enough about visual design to work with designers.

CNN.com recently unveiled the latest evolution in online news: an intuitive, integrated Web site that gives users the global, national, and local news they find most relevant to them. The goal of this undertaking was to enhance and simplify online news for consumers to allow them to interact with news in more ways than ever before.

Every document created by web designers contains many layers of information. Too few layers, and the ideas within lose context and meaning. Too many, and the important ideas become obscured. Choosing the right ideas to include can make or break a document, or even the entire project.

Many museums present exhibitions about architecture and design. In doing so, they typically treat buildings and other designed objects much as they do paintings, drawings, or sculptures — as individual creative works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or craftsmanship.

Every now and again, a project just jumps the rails — all the best intentions and planning just don’t stack up to the unanticipated challenges. After the dust settles, all we can do is learn from our mistakes and move on.

Apart from information discovery and aggregation, not much has been written about how semantic technology can be leveraged to improve user experience as a whole. This is unfortunate for a technology where the “semantic” is often overshadowed by the “web.”

Flow diagrams are a key component of an interaction design specification. Jesse James Garrett’s Visual Vocabulary uses a set of simple shapes to diagram user flow and illustrate basic relationships between webpages.

This session will focus on the ways in which human-centered researchers team with colleagues across disciplines to transform a mass of data -- field observations, contextual interviews, secondary research and anecdotal stories -- into actionable design principles.

We listen to stories for enlightenment and tell stories for education and entertainment. Everyday people are convinced, impressed, enlightened, discouraged, encouraged and swayed by the stories others tell in the workplace. In business time may be money, but the power of a good story, well told at the right time, has changed the course of individual careers, corporations and entire industries.

As the technology for supporting more personalized experiences becomes available, we’re entering a new era of “adaptive interfaces,” where functionality is revealed over time and interface elements change based on individual usage. We can create interfaces that respond, suggest or change based on actual usage data.

Creating engaging and enjoyable user experiences requires a solid understanding of the people your product or service is meant to serve. Unfortunately, many companies don’t really understand their customers — even companies with large research groups. But understanding people takes more than simply hiring researchers armed with PhDs and the latest methodologies. […]

Businesses that pay attention to the entire spectrum of customer interaction, and actually get it right (at least most of the time), win their customers’ attention and loyalty. And the key to creating a business that addresses the entire spectrum of user experience is to build empathy with your customers.

As Ajax, RIA’s and Agile methods become ever more common, we increasingly hear about the value of prototypes for design and development. Unfortunately, choosing the right prototype can be an exercise in uncertainty. To get a better handle on the prototype process, we will survey several different types of prototypes, with special focus on the appropriate […]

Like every other design discipline, an important component of self-education is learning to critically examine what others have produced. And when it comes to interaction design, there are plenty of good and bad examples to guide us.

User and usability testing of mobile applications requires an understanding of when to use devices, emulators, laboratories and field testing. This session targets user-experience professionals, teaching them how to expand and adjust their current testing procedures to address mobile applications and websites.

There are dozens of development platforms in the mobile sphere. And 1,700 different devices on the market, each with its own rendering idiosyncrasies. Of course you also have to contend with carrier influence and distribution.

Creative Project Leads and Team Managers face numerous challenges in a corporate environment. Often their working styles or problem-solving skills differ from the methods used in other departments, creating communication and collaboration issues.

The cluster of practices and professions we’ve come to think of as supporting User-Experience Design is still a new, strange territory for many of us. How does a person’s discipline define that person’s work? What skills, methods and tools should be the purview of a given role? It turns out that these are age-old issues […]