Adaptive Path Blog

It’s that time of year again…a celebration of design and specifically, design in San Francisco. This year AIGA SF has kicked off the San Francisco Design Week with lots of interesting events, tours and talks.

We’re hosting an open house and studio tour on Thursday, June 18th from 5:30-9pm. C’mon over and take a walk-through of the AP space, see what UX Design looks like (the stories! The results!) and share your enthusiasm and passion for making the world better through design.

Details and rsvp info here: details on upcoming.org

Stop on over and have a beer with us!

A couple of weeks ago a group of us put on our UX Intensive Workshop in Berlin. As always, it was a great experience for everyone. Here are some photos from participants and instructors. One of our participants, Simon Doggett, even wrote up a fairly lengthy description of his experience.

As you can tell from the photos and Simon’s blog post, interacting with the amazing people that come together at these events is one of the major reasons we organize them. With that in mind, I wanted to remind folks that UX Intensive San Francisco is June 15-18 and the early-bird registration deadline is June 1st.

Do you remember the last time you had a crush? My last crush was on the guy who’s now my husband. From the moment I met Seth, I couldn’t get enough of him. I talked about him all the time. I was convinced he was perfect. When you’re designing a community-driven website, you WANT people to like it that much! Users with a crush are power-evangelists and power-contributors. You want them to want you! Seth, on the other hand, didn’t actually want ME at first… which meant several agonizing months of figuring out what it takes to “spark a crush” — as well as what NOT to do.

If you want to attract and retain users, then the principles that apply to relationships apply to you! In both relationships and web design, getting people to fall in love with you is never easy. The good news is, you don’t have to leave it to chance: There are concrete steps YOU can take to make your product or service more attractive to new users.

In this 75-minute virtual seminar — Sparking a Crush: Attracting and Retaining New Users — you will learn how to create compelling new user experiences. You’ll take away both:

• Practical relationship advice, illustrated by concrete patterns from the Web 2.0 landscape, and
• A set of strategic tools that individuals and teams can use to diagnose and address attraction issues.

By examining these patterns and tools and applying them to the imaginary startup, “Snapfood,” you’ll leave with a memorable toolkit of patterns and approaches you can put to use immediately.

I look forward to being your relationship consultant!

Wednesday, May 20
10:00 – 11:15 AM Pacific Time.

Register with the promo code BLOG and get 10% off the $129 price.

Adaptive Path has an open space where we host events to hear from interesting people and get good ideas flowing. We’ve had the honor of hosting great minds such as Charlene Li, author of Groundswell (co-hosted with the SF-American Marketing Association), A panel on Service Design hosted by our own Brandon Schauer, celebrated the launch of 90 Mobiles in 90 Days, and heard from movers and shakers about what’s Beyond the Desktop.

And recently, Adaptive Path has experienced quite a baby boom…7 in the past year. (That’s a lot of cute goin’ on.)

It seems only natural to combine these interests. So we’re happy to invite you to an evening event co-hosted with Girls in Tech on Tuesday, April 28th, from 6:30-9:30pm.

Here’s the scoop:

If you’re curently raising the next generation (or contemplating what that would be like) please join us for the AuthorChat with Sharon Meers, author of Getting to 50/50 : How Working Couples Can Have It All by Sharing It All.

It’s no secret that both women and men continuously struggle with the “work-life” balance. Whether you’re single, married or have a family, it’s difficult to be a successful business woman, a working dad, a student, a Mom, a spouse, a father, a business leader (insert your own role here) and still find time to have a life. That is why Girls in Tech is excited to announce an AuthorChat featuring Sharon Meers, co-author of GETTING TO 50/50.

This informative, yet intimate presentation will provide a recipe to helping you put together all of the equally important puzzle pieces in your life in a productive and effective manner. For moms, dads, and partners considering becoming parents, this will be a learning experience to remember!

Details:

• When: Tuesday, April 28th, 6:30pm
• Where: Adaptive Path
• Cost: $10
• Register at : http://gettingto5050authorchat.eventbrite.com/

Hope to see you there!

Will we look back on the desktop experience of today in much the same way we reflect on computer punch cards of yore? If so, when will the desktop and mouse become irrelevant? How do people who want to explore the world of technology experiences that are free from the tethers of the keyboard and mouse begin?

These along with a host of other thought-provoking questions were among the topics of discussion, debate, and jest at last week’s Beyond the Desktop panel discussion. I was honored to be in the company of six brave and talented designers who are exploring the frontier beyond the desktop and thrilled to see such active interest in this topic by the San Francisco UX community.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes of the evening:

We’re still skeptics and I think that is an important perspective to have. I wouldn’t say the technology that we work with is better than anything out there right now, it’s just different. A lot of this is still a hammer looking for a nail. People come to us and say, “we want a multi-touch application.” and we say, “Why?” The challenge for us is developing an understanding for what this technology is well suited for. ~ Daren David

We use play in a lot of our design process. We find as we design stuff, we end up opening a box of things and emulate experiences on the table that way. That is one of the big things that has changed for us – our deliverables have gotten more physical and less visual. ~ Nathan Moody

The truth with all these emergent interactions and interfaces is that the conventions haven’t been established, so you don’t actually know how to work and you end up experimenting a lot more. ~ Noah Richardson

Prototyping used to be a luxury, but these types of emergent interactions, it is an important part of the design process. ~ Daren David

Often times the technology we’re designing for is still being developed. So there’s a lot of give and take and trying to understand what is possible… so we often have to attack from both ends. ~ Jennifer Bove

How do we go from bling to kaching? This is new and shiny right now, but five years from now when this become ubiquitous, what will be the meaningful experiences? And what will be the proper uses of these kinds of technology? ~ Daren David

It really comes down to experimentation. The recognition about a lot of this stuff and the reason I think a lot of people are here is that everybody recognizes and has this feeling that there is potential in this stuff, but we don’t really know what it is.
~ Jeevan Kalanithi

The common element all these interactions share is that they’re all more sociable. ~ Brett Fitzgerald

I have two Roombas in my house and they engage in gladiatorial combat. It’s awesome. I don’t feel like they’re gonna get hurt because they look like frisbees. ~ Nathan Moody

When your Roomba saves your life you won’t feel so cavalier about them. ~ Daren David

… there was a project that reminded us how different emergent interactions can actually open up different affordances and provide accessibility to people who haven’t had it. I have a two-year-old daughter and she instinctively knows how to use my iPhone. It’s frightening. And to see her walk up to the television and try to swipe it… you realize that some of the things being created by natural user interfaces really open things up…. I tend to be fairly optimistic with respect to technology and I think there is this notion of accessibility in a lot of the work that we are doing that we can take a fair amount of pride in. ~ Noah Richardson

I would advise people who want to start exploring interactions beyond the desktop to start by looking at the applications or experiences on the desktop they are currently designing and understanding that it is an instantiation of something that is probably broader. Start thinking about what happens when a user walks away from the computer. What are other the other opportunities? ~ Jennifer Bove

For those of you unable to attend the event, here’s a video of the 90 minute discussion:

Beyond the Desktop Panel Discussion from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Sketch note by Kate Rutter

Photo credits:
Panel discussion photo courtesy of Allison McCarthy
Sketch note photo courtesy of Jennifer Bove

The Big (D)esign Conference in Dallas on May 30th promises to be a terrific experience, packed with interesting sessions in User Experience, Strategy, Social Media and Code Development. For one day and $50, it’s a great way to refresh your networking skills, learn some great stuff and hang in Dallas when the weather is good.

While you’re there, don’t miss our own Teresa Brazen, who will be speaking in the Strategy track, sharing her experiences with exploring the UX Landscape.

Teresa is the founder and host of Tea with Teresa, a podcast blog dedicated to dispelling mystery and learning more about the world together through candid conversation, jargon-free dialog and tea. Here’s a snapshot of what she’ll cover in her Big (D)esign talk:

Tools and Methods to Learn, Navigate, & Make A Name for Yourself in the UX Landscape.

Coming from outside the user experience (UX) industry and landing smack in the belly of the beast, Teresa knows how fresh eyes can be an asset. In her talk, she will present three creative approaches to understanding and navigating the sea of methods and concepts that make up the User Experience practice, while embedding yourself as a key player in the UX industry. She comes from the perspective that ‘It’s okay not to know everything about User Experience yet’ (most people don’t know what it is, anyway!) and reveals some simple, creative ways to learn about the interesting processes, methods and practices that make up the field.

Tools & Methods include:

1] Maps of Knowledge: Diagrams that allow you to visually see what you know about the industry, what you don’t know, and areas where you can supplement what you already know (if you’re already a UX professional) or what you learned in school (if you’re a soon-to-be UX professional).

2] Get to Know the Pros: Building your network is as simple as taking advantage of resources around you. Teresa will share how her podcast, TeaWithTeresa.com, allows her to learn about UX methods and practice from the people that created the field or made huge waves in the industry. She will also share key things you can do to build your own network within the field.

3] Building A Personal Brand: A personal brand means you’re known for something and helps you stand out in a crowd. Whether you’re a student or an experienced UX professional, growing your personal brand will make a difference for your career. Teresa will provide you with tools to help you uncover what you have to offer, create a mantra (What do you care about?) and will share videos from others who have created strong personal brands within the UX community.

On the Experience Design track, you’ll be able to catch AP’s Design Researcher and Manager of the Austin Office Todd Wilkens as he shares his Case Study for Redesigning MySpace.

So hop on over to Dallas at the end of May to say “Hi!”

Mobile is a realm of user experience that has long held my imagination because it’s an accessible opportunity space for designers to explore, prototype and ultimately invent new ways for people to interact with information. Mobile is a place where we can experiment; it’s a place where designers can test the tethers of the PC desktop legacy and create interactions that begin to bring Mark Weiser’s original vision of ubiquitous computing closer to reality.

There have been clear and consistent signals over the last year that indicate the technology landscape is rapidly evolving beyond the boundaries of the PC and mobile devices …

The demo from MIT’s Pattie Maes’ and Pranav Mistry’s wearable Sixth Sense device as well as David Merrill’s Siftables demo were the buzz of TED 2009. These presenters gave the audience of thought leaders insight into the exciting interactions that will be possible in the not-so-distant future.

IBM’s research scientists in India have developed a technology that will offer users the ability to talk to the Web and create ‘voice’ sites using mobile phones.

Barcodes can now hold entire video clips and games with Mobile Multi-Colour Composite, a 2D barcode technology. Better than a QR code, users don’t need internet access to discover associated media—the data is all in the picture.

These signals as well as a host of others indicate we’ve arrived at an important and magical technological inflection point. We’re entering an era – a Golden Age of sorts – that is encouraging interaction designers and user experience professionals to explore the frontier that lies beyond the desktop.

Within this broader trend, I’ll be hosting a discussion on Wednesday, April 8th at Adaptive Path titled, Beyond the Desktop: A Panel Discussion on Emergent Interaction Paradigms. I feel like the luckiest girl in the world to have the opportunity to facilitate a discussion between these thought leaders who are actively exploring this exciting frontier…

• Aza Raskin, head of User Experience at Mozilla Labs will discuss the progress of Ubiquity and represent the promising world of intent-based systems.
• Brent Fitzgerald, and Jeevan Kalanithi of Taco Lab will share their experiences developing Siftables and exploring the realm of physical computing.
• Noah Richardson, manager of Tellme’s Mobile User Experience group, will share his expertise on designing voice-driven systems and interfaces.
• Nathan Moody and Daren David of Stimulant will share their perspective on designing NUI and multi-touch interfaces for the Microsoft Surface Table and other public, multi-user computing installations.
• Jennifer Bove, a Principal at Kicker Studio, will share her perspective and expertise in designing products with gestural interfaces.

I hope you can join us. If you can, please head over to Upcoming and let us know. And if you have ideas about the panel or the topics you’d like covered, comment here or twitter with #btdpanel

I remember when the prior MIT Media Lab director Nicholas Negroponte predicted in his 1995 book Being Digital that,

“what [information] is in the air will go into the ground and what is in the ground will go into the air.”

He was talking about the wireless spectrum and broadband wiring, and he was predicting the inevitable, how information could easily travel through either channel to people. Negroponte called it “trading places.”

A current-day prediction of the inevitable could be another case of trading places and gray spaces: that of products and services. As time goes on, things that are products will become more like services (think iPods, mobile phones, and spimes), and things that are services will become more like products (think NetFlix, FedEx, or JetBlue).

This interplay creates interesting new experiences, and new challenges for designers. Services have become design-able experiences that need the same thoughtful care and attention that products do, if not more. The emergence of service design has revealed new approaches and tools to making services more human and more valuable.

Even more promising is the overabundance of services in our daily lives. Services make up a larger portion of the U.S. economy (about 68% in 2006) than products. And services have retained their value in the downturn. As BusinessWeek noted, “prices of goods fell 4.1% last year; prices of services rose 3%.”

And from electronic health records to green energy, tomorrow’s economy hinges on well designed services to help us all change from old behaviors to adopt new ones.

Within this broader trend, I’m happy to be hosting a panel in conjunction with the CMU Bay Area Alumni on March 19 at Adaptive Path titled, Seeing Tomorrow’s Services: A Panel on Service Design. I’m lucky to facilitate a discussion between three dream panelists:

• Shelley Evenson, an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at Carnegie Mellon University. Shelley’s been an early teacher and thought leader for service design in the U.S., focusing on tapping into the needs of users of the service.
• Robert Glushko is an Adjunct Full Professor at the University of California at Berkeley School of Information, and he focusins on the contribution of the service’s “back stage” where materials or information needed by the “front stage” are processed. Just read his co-authored paper on the topic with Lindsay Tabas to be impressed.
• And Christi Zuber leads an internal Innovation Consultancy at Kaiser Permanente where her and her team have co-designed numerous new services with patients and clinicians that lead to measurable improvements on patient safety and satisfaction — demonstrating that service design has a big societal impact as well.

If you’d like to join us, remember to register ahead of time. And if you have ideas about the panel or the topics we should cover, comment here or twitter with the hashtag #stspanel.

Here at Adaptive Path, I manage our Research and Development work which includes projects like Charmr, Aurora, the new event we just hosted, Managing Design Projects, and another project we’re excited to share with you soon. Separate from my work here, I’ve been pulling together an event called It’s Your Money. The event, which will be held on March 14th at the Westin Market St in San Francisco, is for recent and soon to be college graduates to come learn how to manage their finances and investments. Here’s why:

When I graduated college in 2003 and got my first job, I planned to save lots of money. But In fact, my paychecks were quickly spent on clothes, trips and many other “must haves”.

I thought I was doing a good job of managing my money by checking my bank statement every week or so. I was tracking my money, but I wasn’t managing it.

I made a New Year’s resolution in 2008 to manage my expenses. I started interacting with my purchases twice: once when I made them and a again when I categorized each expense.

I realized my car was costing me nearly $600 per month. I decided to sell it, reduced major expenses like eating out, and started to really save. After a year, I tripled my savings.

Recently, instead of being upset about the current economy, I’ve created this event to help recent and soon to be college graduates learn what I learned the hard way. At It’s Your Money, participants learn how to build a personal financial safety net, and manage their own investments.

This evening, I’ll be talking about the event on CNBC’s On The Money where I’ll be sharing my story, and what inspired this project.

In this time of economic constraint, there’s probably many business looking at efficiencies and optimizations trying to create value by trimming excess. But guess what: creating value isn’t a subtractive process.

photo by blyzz

Icky approaches like Business Process Reengineering were over-hyped and misapplied in the past because they focused on cutting back, not on the people in the processes. They asked, “what can be eliminated by new technologies and short cuts?” But as consumers we don’t think of value as the removal of waste. We think of it as the delivery of what we really need for the least sacrifice. Real consumer value isn’t something you back into and cut down to. It’s something you find, focus on, and delivery.

A while ago Peter and Jesse shared this simple diagram of how many businesses approach delivering value to their customers. They start are the core, working outward to eventually paint on the layer of experience. But that’s not how customers approach it.

Instead, they just see this:

From their perspective, the value is the experience they have with the product or service. Everything else, in fact, is just magic.

To create real value that resonates with people, businesses need to work from the outside-in.

Customer value has to be sensed and constructed from their perspective; not from the perspective of a costing spreadsheet. Reductive approaches create commodities. Put planning solutions from the customer’s perspective can create systems of solutions that are difficult to copy.

The simple way to design the customer perspective is to spend time in their world and construct solutions as they might experience them. THEN, work backwards into the organizational capabilities to support those experiences.

One great tool for thinking outside-in is the swimlanes tool created by Yvonne Shek at nForm. The basic idea is to create a new solution scenario, then map the flow of that scenario back into dependencies for the user interface, technology, and organization.

Another approach is what we’ll be sharing at our Good Design Faster workshop in April: rapidly create many ideas for new customer value, work as a multidisciplinary team to find the best integrated set of ideas to pursue, then quickly translate those ideas into prototypes that can be immediately evaluated with customers.

Designing from the outside in allows everyone in the organization to focus on the only thing that ultimately matters to customers — the experience you end up delivering. From that ultimate perspective, team members can make the smart decisions that will obviously result in great products and services.

(And if you’re interested in joining us for the Good Design Faster workshop, use BLOG when you register for 10% off.)