Adaptive Path Blog

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.

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…

The hint told me to blow out the candle. I needed to blow out the candle to solve a puzzle.

Confused, I wiggled and moved my stylus across the screen to control my character: I ran into the candle, slashed at the air with my sword, and did a rolling attack. No results. I tried a spin slash. I threw some rocks at it. Nothing. I circled back and checked the hint. It just told me to blow out the candle again.

And then I had an epiphany: I took my stylus away from the touch-screen and blew.

More precisely, I blew into the microphone and out went the candle. Puzzle solved.

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

(Stay tuned for an interaction that surprised me even more in Part 2 of “Forget the iPhone. Get a Nintendo DS.” Coming soon.)

I’ll admit to being a total information visualization junkie.

When I’m stuck in a rut, shifting things around unlocks new perspectives. Reframing a problem can fundamentally change how I think about the situation and freshen my eyes to new possibilities. And having a full palette of visualization options is a great way to mix it up and uncover new patterns.

So, when I found the Periodic Table of Visualization Methods, I got all verklempt. It’s a compelling way to preview different visualizations, and the organizing principle of the periodic table allows for a lot of metadata to be embedded in the summary view for quick reference.

Thanks to Ralph Lengler & Martin J. Eppler of visual-literacy.org for this nice gift.

For many people, brainstorming seems to be a largely useless pursuit—meandering sessions, filled with bad ideas, rammed down your throat by a loud mouth who should have stayed in his cubicle. Brainstorming also seemed to be used during times of panic: the “what the heck are we going to do, the deadline is tomorrow” kind of brainstorming. Painful.

I, too, used to be in the anti-brainstorming camp. I now know that those frustrating, unproductive sessions were just poorly conceived and poorly run. Unfortunately, this is the experience some people have with brainstorming. This makes me sad.

Marc Andreeson, in his post Why brainstorming is a bad idea posted a nice quote from the Medici Effect demonstrating that teams using brainstorming techniques were often less effective at generating ideas than people working on the same problem in different rooms. The quoted study looked at both quality and quantity of ideas.

I’m with Scott Berkun (In defense of brainstorming) on this, though. While it may be true that many times—even the vast majority of times—group brainstorming sessions fail to produce useful results, poor facilitation, lack of focus, inappropriate choice of method, and poor team dynamics lead to most of those failures. (This is why we have sessions at UX Week on facilitation, team building, and collective creativity…)

At Adaptive Path, we use a variety of idea generation methods. From loose and fast brainstorming to highly structured idea generation sessions with clients to impromptu problem solving sessions, we sometimes get great ideas out of the group and sometimes not. The key, though, is that we regularly use these techniques — we practice, we learn, we fail, we try it again.

The theme of UX Week’s Day Four is Interaction Design in the Field. Just to give you a taste of what it will be like, I had a conversation with one of the speakers, Bill DeRouchey, recently. An excerpt:

Bill: Interaction designers, of course, should be trying to deconstruct everything around them to better train themselves as interaction designers. And the fun thing about that is we’re completely surrounded by examples, it’s all the devices in our daily lives. It’s the cell phones, microwaves, ATM machines, computers, printers, and so on. We’re surrounded by buttons and icons and little blinky lights that can give us examples of how people think about devices and interaction design because there’s one thing that’s definitely true, people don’t approach the product from a void. They’re taking the learnings that they’ve experienced with other products and they apply them to a new product: that’s why you tend to see the same icons over and over that mean the same thing; they have a stock meaning within the language of interaction design. An arrow tilted on its side and pointing to the right means play because it always means play, and because people know it means play when they approach a new device and they see that, they think, “That’s play.” It’s such a simple thing, but it comes down to the core of a visual language that we all share, and I think it’s important to try to deconstruct that language so we know how people are approaching a new product, a new device. So we can make it intuitive and they can tap into what they already know.

Read the full interview and I’ll see you at UX Week!

I was asked to write up a list of favorite design-related books for the newsletter site Freepint. I have no idea when such a thing would be published, and I realized it was ideally suited to the AP Blog. Enjoy! (These are *personal* choices and don’t reflect the views of Adaptive Path blah blah… and add your favorites to the comments…)

The Design of Everyday Things, Donald Norman. It’s almost hoary to mention it, but it’s one of the few books that changed my life. I’ve written more about it here

Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud. A brilliant long-form essay on the nature of creativity, how humans process visual information, and the power of narrative.

Designing for People, Henry Dreyfuss. Written over 50 years old by America’s pre-eminent industrial designer, it lays out a user-centered design philosophy long before the phrase “user-centered design” entered our professional language. Refreshing clear, straightforward, and free of the BS that clouds much design writing.

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and Envisioning Information, Edward Tufte. These two are required reading for any one involved in communicating visually. (His later two you can pass on.)

Who Built America?, The American Social History Project. This CD-ROM, based on a textbook, set the standard for what a multimedia digital book should be. Developed in 1993, it’s marriage of text, sound, imagery, and, video, along with it’s engagement with archival sources, still inspires.

The Architecture of Happiness, Alain de Botton. The most recent book on the list, but definitely worth inclusion. A delightful book-length essay on the power that architecture has on our emotional state, fabulously illustrated with perfectly-selected photos.

How Buildings Learn, Stewart Brand. This is one of those books that every IA has read, even though it has nothing to do with IA. Stewart looks at how buildings evolve over time, and his book serves as a reminder that all of us are creating things that people are going to *use*.

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 2nd Edition, Lou Rosenfeld and Peter Morville. Still the best “web design” book out there, with a strong focus on what it actually takes to build great sites. And I’m not saying this just because I was a technical editor.

Interface Culture, Steven Johnson. Getting a little long in the tooth, but Johnson’s book is the first extended piece of critical writing on the subject of interface and interaction design from the viewpoint of a non-designer. Valuable in recognizing how interface engage with the culture that creates them.

The Cluetrain Manifesto (multiple authors). Written in the midst of Web 1.0, this tract on what it means for businesses to meaningfully engage in business online contains deep truths that still frighten most organizations.

Design Research, edited by Brenda Laurel. About half to two-thirds of this isn’t all that valuable, but the remainder of the book more than makes up for it. Brenda probes the boundaries of research, which is essential as we design for an increasingly uncertain world.

Shaping Things, Bruce Sterling. What happens when everything is, well, information? Bruce delves into the subject of spimes and reorients your view of things in the world. And, hey, I even dug the (oft-criticized) graphic design.

And heck, why just books? Why not also, The Films of Charles and Ray Eames? So good. So insightful.

(And, of course, there are the books written by my colleagues… but those go without saying…)

What would happen if you not only designed for users but you designed with them? Would outcomes be more relevant to users? Would you increase the odds of adoption? What role does the designer then play?

Participatory Design, like User-Centered Design, keeps users at the center of design activities. However, rather than treating users as test subjects, Participatory Design explicitly involves users in the design process with generative techniques like games, collage, role-playing, etc. that help users articulate ideas, thoughts, feelings and beliefs.

Many of the techniques used in participatory design can also be used when working with stakeholders, clients, or team members who have interest in design but are not necessarily trained in its techniques. At Adaptive Path, hands-on workshops are a fundamental component of our project work, from defining scope and direction, to visioning and concepting. We find them to be a highly efficient way to collaborate and build alignment.

We are bringing several speakers to UX Week to discuss tools, techniques, and issues associated with participatory design. Liz Sanders, founder of maketools.com, is a pioneer in generative tools and collective creativity. We are excited to have her give a double session, both giving a talk on theory and practice, then taking us through a hands-on workshop. It promises to be an engaging session. Other speakers who incorporate participatory design activities into their work include Jess McMullin from nForm, Marty Gage from Lextant, and Kate Rutter from Adaptive Path. The full schedule (almost complete!) can be found here.

I have a new favorite thing: portable whiteboards.

I generally cruise the dry-erase supplies section of the office-sundries stores when I’m shopping, just to see if anything new and exciting has come out. And recently, I found this: cling-able dry erase sheets that stick to darn near everything!

I got a box of Easy Chart Dry Erase Sheets and put them up around Adaptive Path. And really, these are terrific.

Why do these rock?

1. They are movable. You can move ‘em… use ‘em… erase ‘em… move ‘em again…reuse ‘em and generally make any room a creative whiteboard space. This means that any flat, mostly clean surface can be a whiteboard. And that means that you can bring your creative juices to bear just about anywhere.
2. They stick great. Jesse tested them on: regular painted walls, glass, concrete columns, wood and bulletin boards and they clung just fine. Apparently the only thing they *don’t* stick to is another whiteboard. Go figure.
3. They are a nice size: 23″ x 30″. This is smaller than most whiteboards (especially compared to the Adaptive Path monoliths) but perfect for creativity in tight places. And you can put up them together if you need more space.
4. They are foldable. That’s right, I’ve carried one in my purse folded up in a Ziploc bag for the past month (taking it out every couple of days, using it and re-folding) and with a few shakes and a smooth to get the kinks out, it works just fine. Now if only whiteboard markers were as portable…
5. You can make a template out of them. Draw a standard screen size in permanent marker and prototype away. When you erase, the whiteboard marker comes off, but the permanent template stays on. Good for Elevator Pitch working sessions, device prototyping and screen sketching.

When combined with the yummy Tul dry erase markers, these are a match made in heaven. Go portable with your creativity!

Details: Easy Chart Dry Erase Sheets, made by Venture Products LLC. They come on a roll, and you tear off each sheet, kinda like a garbarge bag. About $20 for a box of 12. I got mine at OfficeMax.

Caveat: I’ve searched all the usual office supply suspects, and I can’t find an online source for these. I have a call into the manufacturer and when I hear back, I’ll update the post. If you track down a place to order online, please post a comment. Otherwise, sneaker-buying is recommended.

I recently had the opportunity to “design my city” through a participative design activity. I live in the very small city of Emeryville, which is just across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco. The weird and wonderful thing about this town is that it has all the scope of a major urban city, but not the scale…it’s about 1.2 square miles, and has about 7,000 residents. That said, some pretty big companies live there, too.

Emeryville is revising the General Plan to define growth and the urban fabric for the next 20 years, and as part of the process, they held participatory design workshops for community residents. The workshops were designed and managed by MIG (Moore Iacofano Goltsman, Inc.) a firm that works in urban planning and design.

At Adaptive Path, we use participatory design methods, so it was interesting to be on the other side of the table. Some of the things that made the experience work…

• The participants were engaged and passionate about the topic at hand. We were asked to “Design Your City”…what’s not to love? The printed materials all had this phrase and call to action printed on them, just in case we forgot.
• Introduction about the status of the project and the goals of the evening. A 30-minute presentation outlined the big picture of the project, provided definition, outlined the goals and set the expectations of the evening.
• Warm-up exercise. They started us off with a very easy task: look at slides and rate what you think of the image…don’t overthink it. It put folks in the mood of thinking and responding.
• Clear, concise directions for the main participative activity. It was complex, no doubt. But clearly described so that participants knew what was expected, how to contribute and what the goals were.
• Great materials. Big maps (super-big, actually), prepared printed materials, nicely designed handouts. The whole production was very professional, without being cold.
• Small group sessions. For the main activity, the group of 35 broke into 4 groups of about 10. Each group had 2 facilitators: one to guide and one to capture thoughts/ideas of the groups.
• Food. Seriously, don’t ever consider doing an evening activity without providing food.

Overall, it was thought-provoking and educational. Working with neighbors and meeting community members is fascinating, and group dynamics always play out when neighbors get involved with urban planning. That said, it was well designed, well-run and well-received. And it opened my eyes to the power of participation in complex design challenges.

For more on participatory design, check out maketools.com, a site created by Liz Sanders.

One of the most satisfying things about being at AP is having the opportunity to work with lots of smart people on a wide variety of challenging projects. But as the company has grown, we’ve hit some inevitable limits: any one of our designers or strategists might work on, at most, half a dozen projects in a year, and each of those project teams is likely to comprise only three or four people. As a result, some of us go a long time as colleagues without ever actually working together.

We’re fighting this through a practice we call open design sessions. We have a couple of standing meeting times during the week that are reserved for project teams to open up their process to the rest of the company. Anyone can attend and participate, and by having the sessions at regular times we allow people to easily plan this participation into the rest of their work schedule.

These sessions can go many different ways. Sometimes teams gather up the toughest design problems they’ve got and ask for help cracking them. Other sessions simply draw the group into whatever problem the team is facing at the moment. Sometimes we’re trying to poke holes in research analysis, other times we’re using multiple whiteboards to explore design possibilities.

We often do collaborative work sessions with our clients in the course of our regular project work. When we’ve combined these with open design sessions — bringing together the project team, the client, and the rest of Adaptive Path to collaborate on solving a problem — we’ve seen enormous benefits to everyone involved.

For project teams, open design sessions give them the opportunity to solicit a fresh perspective on their challenges, and maybe break some of the assumptions they have about their constraints. For others, the insights from these sessions can be carried back to their own projects, suggesting either new design approaches or new methods for reaching solutions. For everyone at AP, they enable us to learn from each other, as well as allowing us to talk from first-hand experience about the work we’re doing, rather than relating second-hand information overheard around the office. And for our clients, it’s a chance to benefit from the talents of our whole company, not just the few we’re able to dedicate to a project team.

Are you opening up your design process? Share your experiences in the comments.