Adaptive Path Blog

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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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!

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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.

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Congratulations to Tim Brown from Hudsen Vally, New York for his great haiku on “Why Do You Design?”.

Here is his composition:

What else can I do
Your problems are my life’s joy
But in a good way

Tim, your iTunes gift card is on its way!

Thanks to everyone who participated. We were really inspired by your reasons for designing!

UPDATE
Here are the other submissions:

Design to feel free.
To create value and life.
Always communicating.
- Emily Chang

I draw the red fruit after listening
He says tom-a-to
She says tom-ah-to
- mycotn

Drawing crocus buds
I watched bees fly between roses
Drew the connections.
- Clay Newton

Design fills your heart
The client: I don’t love those colors
Not happy now at all
- Uzi Shmilovici

The intersection
Of art function and soul
Design helps us live.
- Rachel M. Murray

I make pretty things,
And people pay me for them.
What could be better?
- Dan Rubin

When an idea breaths
I guide its path to succeed
My last breath is gone.
- BJ Cook

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Ever since my Participatory Design class with Liz Sanders (http://www.maketools.com/), I’ve been dreaming of an online collaging application. Whenever I found myself scouring Flickr for hundreds of mood board or collage images or designing a diary study for remote users, the thought popped into my mind again: Why isn’t there an online collaging tool?

The one tool that seemed to have potential was in beta forever, but when I checked in the other day, I found that Scrapblog is up and working beautifully! After playing with it briefly, I was impressed. I’d found the tool I’d been looking for!

The Flex-powered interface is intuitive and fluidly responsive…

The vast collection of backgrounds and stickers express a broad diversity of moods and styles and have an Apple-caliber elegance…

You can easily import content from Flickr (and other external sites)…

And the potential for using it with participatory design research methods seems great…

Collage Activities and Mood Boards

Imagine: Instead of printing out dozens of pages of images, which still limits your research participant to whatever you’ve selected, you can open up the entire Flickr universe to the participant to create their collage. Or, if you want the participant to choose from pre-selected images, you can create a Flickr gallery and ask the participant to draw from those.

Remote Participatory Design

The interface is pretty intuitive, so with little explaining, you can now conduct collage exercises with remote research participants. While it’s unfortunately not a collaborative interface (where multiple people can work on the same collage simultaneously and see updates dynamically), it’s easier than constructing and mailing participant a collage kit! (I’d love to see some collaborative functionality built in though.)

Diary Studies

Multiple page “scrapblogs” (which are actually what the site is designed to produce) can easily be created and published both publicly and privately. I can see scrapblogs being used for or supplementing diary studies, allowing participants to tell their experience stories in a fun and creativity-inducing way.

Optimistic about this tool’s possibilities, I did a little mock study with my 15-year-old sister. I sent her a link to Scrapblog and no more instruction than, “Create a collage about MySpace and a collage about Facebook.”

In closing, I’ll share the clever creation she sent back:

View on Scrapblog

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The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, is a action-adventure game for the Nintendo DS in which you control a blond adventurer with a pajama cap and sword (pictured below) using a touch-screen stylus. I was playing it the other day when…

My fairy sidekick told me that I should try “pressing” the seal from a map I just had discovered in a dungeon (displayed on the top screen) to my map (displayed on the bottom screen).

I remembered that several hours ago, I had to scratch a secret spot on the map to reveal another seal. So I spent five minutes aligning the two maps, then scratching and tapping on the touch-screen with my stylus. Unfortunately, this did not “press” the seal onto my screen.

Next I tried drawing the seal onto my own map complete with meticulous shading. Still no reaction. Frustrated, I tried to direct my character out of the map room. But my sidekick fairy barred my exit, turned me around and repeated that all I needed to do was “press” the seal onto my map.

Ten minutes of scratching and tapping later, I was about to give up: I imagined the triumphant feeling of closing shut my DS and tossing it into a corner. Then I realized, “Wait a second, if I close my DS then the two screens (or maps) will touch!”

Scared that it might power off my game, I carefully closed the lid of my DS.

I waited.

The green power light winked. My heart fluttered. I opened it back up — puzzle solved.

.

Looking for interaction design inspiration? Forget the iPhone. Get a Nintendo DS.

(Tom Armitage alluded to this interaction in his comment to my last post.)

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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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