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.

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This week I had the opportunity to talk with Adaptive Path’s old friend Matt Jones, Co-founder and Designer of Dopplr. He’s one of our featured speakers at next month’s MX conference. Some excerpts from our conversation over instant messenger follow, and the whole interview can be found over at my own blog, the Second Verse. Matt and I share a mutual love for some very particular (peculiar?) subjects, so the interview explores some unpredictable territory: the Situationists, Jack Kirby inventions, Grant Morrison, movement in hyperspace, and what the success of the iPhone means to the rest of the mobile device industry. Matt was kind enough to share a ton of information about his perspective and his influences - I hope you enjoy reading the interview.

Also, be sure to remember to register by March 31st for MX - On April 1st, the price goes up. MX is on April 20-22 in San Francisco, the price right now is $1,495. After March 31st, the price jumps to $1,595. (You also get a free iPod Shuffle when you register for MX by March 31st). So register today!

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Stephen P. Anderson, formerly Principal User Experience Architect for Sabre and currently Vice President of Design at Viewzi, will be speaking at MX San Francisco on how to get visionary ideas made into realities. He uses George Lucas’ work on Star Wars as inspiration and a practical example. We had a conversation over e-mail about changing organizational culture, managing design teams, and doing things that have never been done before.

Todd Wilkens [TW]: Well, Stephen, even though your talk is all about visionary ideas, let’s get the ball rolling with a practical question: What got you so interested in how visionary ideas get pushed through an organization? Why and how has this been relevant to you? What made this an itch you needed to scratch?

Stephen Anderson [SA]: As a consultant, you see a lot of really great ideas that, for whatever reason, never get implemented. Or when they do, there is little resemblance between what actually gets produced and the original concepts. In 2006, I moved from the world of consulting to become a UX director at a large, enterprise company. Needless to say, it was a real eye-opener. I think I went in with a rather naive faith in the power of prototypes and ‘leading with an inspiring product vision’. While I still value this approach, I quickly learned that there is much more to pushing visionary ideas through an organization.

For starters, if you want to bring a great product/service experience to market, you have to first change the company culture. This is basic — and critical. So many other forces are at play inside large organizations — competition, politics, procedure, history. It’s about much more than creating business value. In fact, the biggest shock for me was discovering how internal business units compete with each other in ways that hurt the larger organization…

Read the full interview.

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I’ve been invited to speak at the Live Web event today here in San Francisco. People like Om Malik, Jason Calacanis, Michael Arrington, others and me. Ought to be interesting. Hopefully they will be recording it for podcast release.

Among the topics the roundtable will be talking about are:

• As asynchronous social networks experience tremendous growth, what can we expect from synchronous applications?
• Will synchronous applications and the Live Web require different standards for advertising display and measurement?
• How can synchronous applications companies stimulate third-party developer innovation on our platforms?

I’ll be approaching any conversation from the perspective of designing for the user and the overall experience. Some of the blind assumptions I’m bringing to the table are:

Does asynchronous behavior create a richer environment for people to live in online?
Is context the most important thing to be aware of when advertising in an asynchronous environment?

Discuss.

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Brandon, Sarah and I had the pleasure of speaking with Jeff Parks and the I.A. Consultants podcast after our mini-workshop at the VizThink conference. In our discussion, we discuss five elements which “illustrate” why pictures are a powerful way to communicate with multi-disciplinary teams, including:

1. Disambiguation
2. Efficiency
3. Emotion
4. Telling a Story
5. Leadership

Check it out on the web here. It’s also available via iTunes.

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Internally to Adaptive Path, we have a series of mailing lists that help us keep in touch with each other, discuss design topics or even just talk about current issues.

A recent post came from Dan Saffer where he pointed us all to these tongue-in-cheek stickers that could be used to call out “bad design”. These stickers offer warning label-style comments such as “Consult a typographer” or “Severe lack of creativity” and “Good idea wasted by poor execution”.

Dan’s intention was to share a funny take on the honest frustration that many designers feel when they see design that could have been better. The result he got on the mailing list was a very typical and spirited debate. Rather that writing a post about the stickers myself, I thought I’d just share the conversation.

First, here is the site: http://www.design-police.org/

Dan: We need a set of these. And to make a set for IxD/IA!

Kim: Absolutely brilliant. We should definitely make some for IxD/IA!

Peter: I’m sorry. This is the kind of holier-than-thou crap about inconsequential bullshit that has encouraged marginalizing designers because they behave as a bunch of mindless aesthetes with no concern for issues other than appropriate typography, and little interest in things that actually matter.

Dan: Since when is good visual design inconsequential bullshit? Aesthetics matter, and good typography and composition are essential parts of that. It’s all part of a chain: bad type –> bad visuals –> bad experience. Ignore this stuff and you get sloppy, ugly work.

Is it more mindless to not care about how something looks, or to practice good visual design? Good experiences are made up of good details.

Jesse: I completely agree with Dan that aesthetics matter, but to Peter’s point, if I were a bettin’ man, I wouldn’t wager that “Kern this!” is the most important or valuable message a client needs to hear.

Dan: Oh god no, I’d never use these for a client. I assumed these were stickers for internal reviews.

Peter: I’m not saying aesthetics aren’t important. I’m saying that the attitude exhibited by this set of stickers is indicative of a mindless condescension that has lead to the marginalization of the practice of visual design. It’s no different than “usability engineers” who decry the state of the Web and want to impose their small-minded ruleset.

While your point (”bad type –> bad visuals –> bad experience”) has validity, what it doesn’t recognize is that tone matters. And this catty attempt at humor represented by this design-police is exactly why they are ignored.

Kim: I saw these as a joke - funny, haha, humorous, poking fun in the same way the video “make the logo bigger” is funny. I never saw these as a serious endeavor or something to be used in a professional setting.

Creating them for IxD and IA would be a way of poking fun at ourselves and the things that we continually hear in our practice.

I cannot tell you how many times my husband (a print advertising graphic designer) looks at print ads with disgust and espouses “Man, they need to kern that!” He thought the stickers were funny, but was disappointed that they lacked the traditional copy editor marks, using text instead.

Andrew: I’m not a fan of these. I remember a while back when there was so much discussion about make Design a licensable practice. I thought it was arrogant then, I think it’s still an offensive idea.

That’s not to say that these stickers (which were created as an obvious joke) embody this sentiment. I simply feel that there might be a more positive way to express the inside joke. I love the KERN hoodie from Veer. I think not only is it clever, but it conveys a wink-wink to other designers without offending the ignorant. These stickers seem to take the joke a little too far.

Like Kim’s husband, I’ve done it a thousand times where I get angry at poor typography, incorrect color balance in duotones, mis-registration or poor copy. Jannine’s heard an earful. But, if I were ever to express that to that designer or that secretary, I’d probably try a more educative and sympathetic approach.

That’s not to say we can’t have our fun with poor design. There is a some seriously shitty work out there. So, if the spirit of things like this are meant to be playful or as an inside joke, there’s fun in that.

What’s the interaction design equivalent version of the KERN hoodie?

Kate: Interesting points. While I agree with Peter that the “I’m entitled to judge because I know more and better than you” is mean-spirited and plays to the worst of egoist-designers-as-gods, there is the opportunity to have something like stickers that highlight moving toward a greater good.

For example, “legible from space” and “Microscope required” are a comment on “hey, buddy! Folks aren’t going to read this because of a *serious* flaw that you oughtta fix.” That’s more like the Billboard Liberation League’s public service messages than the League of Self-Appointed Extraordinary Designers self-serving know-it-all.

I’d be happy to have similar stickers (depending on message) and I would use them. But I also want a set that celebrate effective design. Red=no. Green=yes. We should support honest celebration of good things…not center ourselves on being police and judges.

Domino magazine has stickers that you can use to tag ideas you like. It’s helpful and warm and engaging. If we could bring a “make the world better” smile into the stickers, it would make them much more human…more like us.

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There you have it. A brief insight into what we talk about at the office. I’d love to hear your thoughts about the stickers, on criticising design or if you’d like to hear more of our ramblings.

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We’ve just posted an hour-long conversation I had with Don Norman [MP3]. This is a prelude to the conversation we’ll be having on stage at UX Week 2008.

I really enjoyed this chat. If we did The Believer-style keywords for it, they would read:

adaptive cruise control, ubiquitous computing, human plus machine, “user experience,” “affordances,” asking the right questions, coupling design with operations, busting down silos, TiVo has never made any money, Palm, many reasons for the Newton’s failure, boss as an absolute dictator, Henry Dreyfuss and John Deere, design evolving from craft to profession, systems thinking, “T-shaped people,” observing the world, water bottle caps.

Sound interesting? Take a listen!

And, if you register for UX Week 2008 by December 31st, the price is only $1,695 (compared to the $2,495 full price). And use the promotional code BLOG for an additional 10% off!

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Chris Conley of Gravity Tank and the Institute of Design spends his time educating young designers as well as clients the finer points of design, business and the process of building a creative and sustainable culture. I had a chance to sit down with him and talk about what it takes to grow and sustain creative excellence within organizations. Here are some highlights:

There is a tacit assumption that making is a production activity rather than a critical, informative one. Anyone who has ever been a part of a productive R&D team realizes that trying things and doing experiments is the fastest way to break into new territory. By putting a priority on thinking and talking (through email, meetings, and PowerPoint) our work activities and environments have become sterile and devoid of the tangible aspects of what were in business to create! You can’t tell by going into the offices of most companies what business they are actually in! Consider how challenging that inherently makes it for new people in the organization to understand and contribute creatively….

The “new” way of working is to re-train the organization. I put scare quotes around it because it is exactly how we used to work. You remember photos from the 50s of all of our great companies like General Motors, Lockheed, IBM? The photos were of folks in rooms full of prototypes, drawings on the tables, and walls that were blackboards with sketches and drawings. They were building the businesses. That’s gone. Somehow, we’ve convinced ourselves that tangible things don’t matter.

Check out the entire interview here. Don’t forget, when you register for MX East, use the promotional code BLOG for an additional 10% off.

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Okay, here’s the deal. You have one week to write a haiku about why you design. Submit the haiku via direct message on Twitter. Whichever one makes us cry (or laugh) the most receives a $10 iTunes gift card. (It’s really more for fun, but free music is nice, too.)

Submissions via comments to this post will not be accepted. It needs to be via Twitter. You can sign up at here. Follow “adaptivepath” or just Message us (d adaptivepath).

UPDATE: Some people are having trouble with sending Direct Messages. Alternatively, you can submit using “@adaptivepath” in the beginning of your message. To Twitter, that becomes a Reply. We’ll see them and add your submission to the collection.

Rules for Haiku are found here. We’re looking for the more modern version of Haiku in the 5-7-5 pattern.

You have until midnight on Friday, September 14, 2007.

UPDATE: Entry is closed. Thanks to all who submitted. We’ll announce the winner on Monday, 9/17.

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We’ve submitted a few panel suggestions for SXSW 2008. If you’d like to see these topics discussed, log into the SXSW Panel Picker and let them know.

Do You Have to Disappear Completely to Get Things Done?
Ryan Freitas
With all the work of managing your identity and presence online, how is anyone supposed to get any actual work done? We’ll talk to a number of accomplished designers and entrepreneurs about how they keep up their appearance online while managing to stay focused and get things done.

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Is Usability a Strategy for Mediocrity?
Todd Wilkens
Usability is an important component of successful design. But it’s just one out of many. Great products must also be desirable, delightful, engaging, meaningful, etc. Can “usability” be a successful strategy and rallying cry to meet these ends? Is ‘usability’ as a profession up to the task given its general focus on evaluation, efficiency, tasks, and errors?

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10 Tips for Managing a Creative Environment
Bryan Mason & Sarah Nelson
Stage Managers wrangle directors, designers, writers, and actors every day, under strict union guidelines. Editors cajole writers into producing on time(ish) for each week’s publication. Conductors balance the needs of dozens of musicians while staying true to the needs of the music. These disciplines can teach us how to set up and support creative environments that are conducive to excellent design and development.

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Bringing Your Web-Based Service to Mobile
Ryan Freitas
The iPhone launch put a magnifying glass on applications that are serving (and growing!) their audiences via mobile offerings. From SMS to widgets to full-fledged applications, we’ll discuss what makes sense when bringing ostensibly web-based applications to mobile, and what it takes to get them launched.

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Feeding the Creativity Beast
Dan Saffer
We talk a lot about methods and techniques in design, but not enough about creativity and sources of inspiration when coming up with design concepts. This panel will look at how some successful designers draw inspiration from sources such as architecture, comic books, objects, nature, and everything in between.

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Agile User Experience — Bigger! Better! Faster! More!
Dan Harrelson (with Austin Govella of Comcast Interactive Media)
Agile development likes to move fast. Sometimes design and IA seem to move s-o s-l-o-w. With experts from each camp, we’ll discuss how user experience and design fit with agile development, when they need time apart, and how to organize cross-functional, agile teams that deliver outstanding products.

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