Adaptive Path Blog

Among the podcasts I subscribe to is BusinessWeek’s “Innovation of the Week,” featuring interviews with people on the subject of design and innovation. So I was excited when BusinessWeek reporter Matt Vella asked me to talk with him about our MX 2008 conference, and our new book. You can listen to the interview.

Just a quick note that after tomorrow, the registration prices for our UX Intensive  Minneapolis and UX Week 2008 events goes up. UX Intensive offers 4 days of intense training on core user experience practice. UX Week mixes inspiration with information, offering sessions on a variety of essential topics, half-day workshops on subjects like storytelling and sketching, and field trips to museums to learn how experiences work in other realms.

Use the promotional code BLOG and get an extra 10% off!

Join us to celebrate the release of our book, Subject To Change: Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain World: Adaptive Path on Design. The party will be here at our offices:


363 Brannan St., San Francisco, CA
May 13th from 6-9pm


We’ll start off with some mingling, then the four authors will give a short talk followed by a book signing and more mingling. Adaptive Snacks will be providing light appetizers. Please join us! RSVP Here.


A little bit about the book:
To achieve success in today’s ever-changing and unpredictable markets, competitive businesses need to rethink and reframe their strategies across the board. Instead of approaching new product development from the inside out, companies have to begin by looking at the process from the outside in, beginning with the customer experience.


It’s a new way of thinking-and working-that can transform companies struggling to adapt to today’s environment into innovative, agile, and commercially successful organizations. Read more


Don Norman said he liked it:
“Short, but powerful. Easy to read, yet profound.
I’ve been searching for just this book: the one perfect book that summarizes the essence of modern product design. This is it. The lessons are as powerful as they are simple: The product is NOT the goal. Successful products are systems. Focus on the experience. This requires empathy, agile product management, real understanding of the target audience. This book practices what it preaches. I will use it in my courses for MBA students. You should use it for, well, for everyone. Short, simple, persuasive, and powerful.”


Don Norman
Co-Founder Nielsen Norman group
Author of “Emotional Design” and “Design of Future Things”


Buy the book on Amazon.

The schedule for UX Week 2008 continues to form, and with every update, there are amazing new speakers.

We have added a number of main-stage speakers. There is design critic, science fiction author, and all-around mindblower Bruce Sterling, the information architect for TheDailyShow.com Audrey Chen, and human-robot interaction designer Aaron Powers. Peter Samis, curator at SFMOMA, will discuss the design of the whole visitor experience for their upcoming Frida Kahlo exhibition. And Katherine Jones and Randall Macon from Milkshake Media, will talk about their experience designing brands that build community, including Lance Armstrong’s LIVESTRONG Foundation.

We’ve also added workshops. Adaptive Path founder and book author Indi Young will teach how to Unpack Stories to Serve People Better. CMU Design professor Mark Baskinger will follow up his excellent article in the latest Interactions magazine with a workshop on Drawing Ideas: Quick Sketching for Interaction Design.

The workshops are new to UX Week this year. On Day 1 and Day 2 we’re having seven of them run simultaneously — you’ll have to choose one each day. We are giving preferential choice based on when you register. The earlier you register, the better chance you’ll get your top choice! We will launch a workshop picker closer to the event.

Also, Sign up by April 30 and save $400 off the full registration price. Use the promotional code BLOG and receive an additional 10% off!

To give an additional taste of what’s to come, you should see Johnny C. Lee’s presentation from TED. It’s only 6 minutes long (we’ll have him on stage much longer.)

And here’s a recent talk by Bruce Sterling at an Interaction Design conference in Germany.

It’s easy to forget when hearing someone give a presentation that the talk is a product too. And like products, the designer doesn’t always know what’s going to happen when the talk meets the users (the audience). Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. And like a product, good designers go back and revise the beta. Put out a better version.

This is a long preamble to saying that Kim Lenox and me have taught the interaction design day at UX Intensive four times now: in Chicago, Amsterdam, Vancouver, and San Francisco and each time was different. We’ve spent the last year tweaking the content until we (and the audience) were happy with it. As it turns out, it’s tricky to teach interaction design in a day. We went from a nearly all-lecture day to one that is mostly a hands-on, activity-centered workshop that tries to create a studio environment. It even requires having a first-aid kit on hand! I’m really happy how the day has evolved.

If you are interested in learning (or brushing up on your existing) IxD skillz, we hope you’ll join us at UX Intensive Minneapolis in June. Use the discount code BLOG and get 10% off admission!

Our forthcoming book, Subject to Change: Creating Great Products and Services in an Uncertain World, lands in bookstores (on- and offline) any day now. We’ve gotten our first copies in the office, and it looks great. (We know some of you have been waiting for a while… there was a printing problem with the first run, which set us back a little… But we’re on track now!)

I need to share with you the testimonial Don Norman wrote about the book:

Short, but powerful. Easy to read, yet profound.

I’ve been searching for just this book: the one perfect book that summarizes the essence of modern product design. This is it. The lessons are as powerful as they are simple: The product is NOT the goal. Successful products are systems. Focus on the experience. This requires empathy, agile product management, real understanding of the target audience. This book practices what it preaches. I will use it in my courses for MBA students. You should use it for, well, for everyone. Short, simple, persuasive, and powerful.

That excited us.

Also, Derrick Story from O’Reilly just posted a podcast interview/discussion with Brandon, David, and me. It hits on the high points of the book.You can preview the first chapter of the book.

We can’t help but find this post flattering. When we send our ideas out into the big, bad world, there’s nothing better than discovering that people are listening and appreciate what we contribute. When I first came to Adaptive Path, I was impressed by how much people write and are willing to put their ideas out there. It can be damn scary. What I was also surprised at is why this works here at Adaptive Path: Sharing is an innate and encouraged part of our culture, even if the idea is half-baked, or…well…wrong. This doesn’t mean that we don’t have the usual fears around writing and sharing ideas. As part of my role, I help people flesh out their ideas and turn them into things like essays and R&D projects. In coaching people through that process, I have discovered that there are two main reasons why people don’t share their ideas:

• The ‘duh, everyone already knows this’

• Ahh! writing about ideas and sharing ideas with the world is scary

Here’s my sage advice for when I encounter these fears:

What’s obvious to you, probably isn’t obvious to everyone else. And if for some reason it is, it will just make them feel smarter about what they know — and who doesn’t like to help people feel smart? If it is something new, well, than someone just learned something new.

The worst thing that will happen if you share your idea, is that someone (or a whole bunch of people) will criticize it. The good news about that concern: That’s when it truly gets exciting. Take Todd Wilkens piece about Crackberry for example. If you read the comments, you’ll notice it was terribly unpopular with a lot of people. But once it took flight, it started an important conversation where people in various roles shared perspectives from several industries. It also got camera crews from three networks broadcasting from our offices.

There’s a lot of activity around Adaptive Path these days. With the impending release of our book Subject to Change, our upcoming events rapidly selling out, our growing presence in Austin, and our expanding range of interesting projects for clients around the world — there’s more going on here than ever.

Right now, all three of us (Peter, Jesse, and Bryan) work as a team to keep Adaptive Path growing culturally, creatively, and financially. But with all the opportunities opening up for the company, we’ve decided the time is right to add a new perspective to the mix. That’s why we’re announcing today that we’re on the lookout for a CEO to add to our executive team.

We don’t want to replace any of the current executives. We want someone with a unique mix of business experience, operational savvy, and leadership qualities. We’d like someone to help us build on our successes, and make the most of our exceptional opportunities, without sacrificing the culture and values that have made our success possible.

We figured there’s a good chance that Adaptive Path’s ideal CEO either already reads this blog, or knows someone who does. So if you think you know the right person for this job (even if that’s you), send an email to bryan dot mason at adaptivepath dot com. We’d love to hear from you!

On the evening of April 9, we’re hosting a presentation by Jan Chipchase (who spoke at UX Week 2007) and Duncan Burns from Nokia Design. The description:

Street Hacks: From Design Research to Prototype to

How long have you been using your current cell phone? And what happened to your previous model? If you live in a country like India, China or Ghana the answer is likely to involve the vibrant used phone market and, somewhere along the line the informal repair cultures - guys on the street who appear able to fix pretty much anything using little more than a flat surface a screwdriver and knowledge.

This presentation will highlight the mobile phone hacking skills available on the streets of cities from Accra and beyond, the sophisticated ecosystem of reverse engineered repair manuals and highlight how it challenges our thinking about what it means to make, distribute our products. The presentation will introduce Remade - a phone made from upcycled and recycled products.

Brandon will offer up a preview of his forthcoming IA Summit 2008 presentation:

The Long Wow

Customer loyalty — the idea that a customer will return to you repeatedly — is a hot topic these days. It’s been in the spotlight ever since business author Frederick Riechfield introduced the “Net Promoter Score,” a simple calculation used to measure the loyalty of your customers.

Although it’s become easier to measure customer loyalty, it’s just not that simple to create it. Rewards cards, frequent-whatever-programs, and other artificial attempts at customer loyalty just get in the way. Instead, engaging customers in more meaningful relationships over time is what builds true loyalty. And that is where well-planned, notably great experiences can play a big role in business.

This presentation lays out an experience-centric approach to fostering and creating loyalty by systematically impressing your customers again and again. The Long Wow challenges creators of customer experiences to plan across channels, time, and disciplines to identify a progression of seduceable moments.

Doors open at 6pm, Brandon speaks at 6:30, Jan and Duncan at 7:15.

Adaptive Path is at 363 Brannan Street in San Francisco.

Please let us know you’re coming by marking us “Attending” or “Watching” on the event page on Upcoming.

The LA Times story on topless meetings, featuring commentary from Todd and Dan, spurred a number of television news crews to our offices yesterday. The one that gives us the most play came from local NBC affiliate channel 11:

CBS affiliate channel 5 was the most sensationalist:

It even made it to ABC Nightly News with Charles Gibson, who were wise to include our friends at Dogster, because, hey, dogs make for great video!

Congrats to Dan on his coinage (even if it doesn’t have only 4 letters.)