Adaptive Path Blog

I pulled together a slidecast, with audio, of “10 Tips for Managing a Creative Environment.” Bryan Mason and I gave this talk at SXSW 2008 Interactive. I’ve already described the talk here (we gave a version of it at Web 2.0 Expo SF in April) but the SXSW folks recently made the audio available.

| View | Upload your own

Share This

A while back I was talking with Jeff Veen about working at Adaptive Path, and he said something that has always stayed with me. He said “People here not only like to think about things…they really like to make things.”

So, for all you Makers in the Bay Area, don’t miss the 3rd annual Maker’s Faire this weekend!

Sponsored by O’Reilly Media (publishers of Make Magazine and Craft Magazine) the Maker Faire is a two-day, family-friendly event that celebrates the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset. It’s for creative, resourceful people of all ages and backgrounds who like to tinker and love to make things.

I went the first year, and it was a marvel: CNC for couples, hacking disposable cameras, knitting madness, fire art and tons of electronic little glowy things you can build yourself. It’s a downpour of creativity and audacity. This year promises to be chock-full of interesting people, ideas, projects, plans and tools. So head down to the San Mateo Fairgrounds and make out like a bandit.

See you there!

Share This

At our recent MX Conference, we set out to capture emerging insights from the speakers using our graphic recording skills. With 4-5 colored markers fanning out from between our fingers at any given moment (picture a wolverine claw), we illuminated the speakers’ talks with memorable visuals and colorful typography. (Pictures coming soon.) On the last day of the conference, as I was running around with a pack of sticky notes trying to identify common themes across talks, it occurred to me: What if the conference participants were involved in this process?

At every conference I’ve attended, I’ve heard people express that they get as much out of interacting with other attendees as from the speakers. Everyone has a story to tell, but there’s only so much people can articulate in response to the FAQ, “What did you think of the talk?” It’s made me think: As design researchers, we often use hands-on, participatory techniques to draw latent insights out of our participants. Why don’t we use these same strategies to draw out and capture conference participants’ ideas?

What are some activities that could encourage deeper conversations and equip people to document their thoughts? What could conferences do to give people something to “triangulate” around — besides the wonderful food? Here are a few I’ve seen (not only at conferences, but at social events, college dorm walls, our office bathroom, etc.):

Graffiti Wall: Put up a giant piece of paper with some initial structure and encourage collaborative graphic recording — where participants can add their own notes, sketches and insights to a giant mural. Stickers and collaging images and words could be provided as well.

Open Whiteboards: Write questions on giant sticky notes (e.g., “What is service design?”) and put them in the halls where people can write on it during breaks. It could give people something to talk about while providing a forum for expression.

Five Minute Madness: We do this in our staff meetings: Someone makes an audacious statement that they may or may not agree with (e.g., “Experience Designer is a meaningless job title.”), and we discuss it for five minutes. Something like this could also be done on giant pieces of paper.

Projected Messages: Have a computer hooked up to a projector where people can type (or Twitter) ideas and thoughts and see them projected. Providing a question or conversation prompt, as described in Open Whiteboards and Five Minute Madness, might encourage participation.

Birds of a Feather: Place a “topic card” on each of the dining tables, such as “design research” or “managing internal experience teams” and encourage people to find a table with a topic that interests them.

Thinking about conferences you’ve attended (or planned), have you seen (or thought of) any other interesting strategies for helping people get their thoughts out there?

Update: UX Evangelist David Crow explores these ideas further on his blog.

Share This

Bryan Mason and I gave a talk last Thursday at Web 2.0 Expo ‘08 San Francisco called “10 Tips for Managing a Creative Environment.” As we promised attendees of that talk, we have posted the slides here. We will soon be posting a slidecast of the same talk with audio from SXSW.

For the talk, Bryan and I talked with several creative groups, including the Neo-Futurists, the writers of Avenue Q, a writing collective called The Job Factory, and Ryan Freitas about his experiences working at Aqua, a San Francisco restaurant. We also drew on our own experiences in stage management and classical music. We chose these groups primarily because they, like design teams, create as groups, are schedule-focused, and are trying to do something different with the creative process.

From the research, we looked for common problems and techniques the groups used to deal with those problems. During the presentation, we share the stories and techniques we found.

Share This

Last weekend, the LA Times staff went on a retreat to map out their future. What was interesting to me is the output of that retreat.

This poster has all the hallmarks of a graphic recording exercise and is likely the result of a roomful of people and an intense discussion led or recorded by a graphic illustrator.

A few months ago, several of us had a chance to participate in a graphic facilitation workshop, put on by The Grove. I can barely draw a stick figure, so it was a great opportunity to broaden my horizons. Over the course of two days, a dozen of us learned a multitude of tricks for simple, evocative drawing. It was a remarkable experience to learn how to capture ideas with figures instead of just words.

One of the useful things about graphically facilitating - or recording - a discussion is that the creation of a poster during the discussion serves a few purposes. First, people remember things better if they can tie an idea to a picture. Second, in some cases it is very useful to have an instant artifact showing the outcome of a discussion, whether it’s the brainstorm or a roadmap.

Some of my co-workers who are much handier with a marker than I will be graphically recording some of the talks at MX next week, so those of you attending will get a chance to see the process up close.

Even more about graphic facilitation: The Center for Graphic Facilitation

Share This

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.

Share This

At UX Week 2007 and UXI Vancouver 2007, I did a presentation on where to look for ideas when designing. I finally got around to posting the slides. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to see the video clips here, but I urge you to track them down if you can.

| View | Upload your own

Share This

A friend just clued me in to the Feltron Annual Report (the 2007 edition recently came out).

How have I not stumbled across this marvelous example of information visualization before? The Feltron Annual Report is designer Nicholas Felton’s report of his last year, a detailed catalog of personal minutia like amount of coffee consumed, music listened to, books read, locations visited, public transport taken, and lots more. Best of all, it’s full of fascinating charts, graphs, and numbers — all well considered and beautifully rendered.

I think this would be fascinating to anyone (check it out!), but it’s particularly interesting to me because I’ve recently given myself a personal project to improve my visual skills and sensibilities.

Unlike others at Adaptive Path, I don’t have a formal background in fine art, industrial design, etc. I come from the very left brained world of library and information science. While I love that Adaptive Path is a home for people with lots of different types of backgrounds, I’ve seen the benefits that come with being able to visualize a concept quickly and communicate precisely what you mean with a modicum of aesthetic integrity. Even better if you can do it with a sharpie and a sticky note.

My self improvement project has been slow going. I started with Betty Edward’s classic Drawing From the Right Side of the Brain. I realized that I am actually capable of doing a passable drawing of something when it’s sitting in front of me. The challenge is to be able to visualize something in my head and then render it on paper. I think this has something to do with why I like the Feltron Annual Report so much. It’s not just clever and gorgeous and a sterling example of good infographics, it also gives you a little insight into Nicholas Felton’s life in ways that I wouldn’t have thought to to ask, but which he clearly had a vision for how to communicate.

So now I’m working my way through a rapid viz workbook, which promises to teach me to transform the ideas that are in my head into something visual and tangible, but it too has been a challenge. I’ve hit a wall at elementary perspective drawing. Anyone out there know how to draw in two point perspective? Tips and tricks are most welcome.

Share This

Leah and I have been piloting some new approaches to get around some of our frustrations with the limitations of wireframes:

• they can focus time and attention on all the wrong details and activities
• they constrain creativity
• they split up designers and teams to work alone

We call our approach “sketchboards,” a technique that allows designers and teams to explore and evaluate a range of concepts, getting to better UX solutions faster. We’ve found that this approach:

• allows us to iterate faster towards more creative solutions
• better supports the design of flows and highly interactive experiences
• incorporates the input of the entire team; our clients and partners love it
• defines what we need to document in wireframes, or just skip ahead and begin prototyping

The video below takes you quickly through the sketchboard technique, but be sure to read the essay that contains more details, templates, and examples.

Leah and I will be sharing this as an agile-friendly approach in a workshop titled “Good Design Faster” at UXWeek 2008. Come join us!

Share This

I’ll admit that often times when I start a new design for a logo, web site, or interface, I will look for inspiration. Sometimes I’ll look to the competitors, thumb through design books or browse websites.

Often I will see a body of work that I want to “borrow” from because I like the style or it’s already solved some of the design challenges I am facing. Truthfully, there are some design solutions out there that just work with simple adaptation.

But, what happens when you are challenged to come up with something totally new? Something that has not been done before because it’s a new product, or because the technology hadn’t existed or the interaction is original? What if you want to stay uninfluenced by past design decisions or familiar things that will force the user to recall “something else that looked like that”?

What do you do or where do you go that doesn’t remind you of anything?

How can you escape being influenced by something that has already been done? What if you don’t want your logo to look like every other Web 2.0 logo, or your interaction design to be just like the iPhone?

My immediate reaction is to look at other industries. Building architecture or landscape design can sometimes give insights to balance and structure. Fashion also provides a huge escape for me. Clothing designers find amazing solutions to everyday needs for a huge variety of consumers.

Other times, physically removing myself from my normal surroundings helps rid the influences of past experiences and projects. I love getting out to open sea whenever I can – there is nothing out there to remind me of anything. Other cities and cultures can provide a much needed cloak to things that you’re used to. I love places that can be just familiar enough so that you don’t get overwhelmed. Places like Tokyo and London, or even Las Vegas provide a different take on the reality that normally guides me.

But you don’t have to travel the world, or go shopping to escape. Sometimes, just getting up from your desk, moving your chair into the sunlight, or even outside, can provide a different view of your workspace. Find a nice, warm coffee shop, or a park bench.

Shaking things up from time to time can give you just enough different perspective so that your designs continue to be unique, continue to challenge convention and continue to provide you with the creative freedom that you need.

Share This