Adaptive Path Blog

What is it like to use a mobile phone if you’ve never used any technology like a computer, an ATM, or a remote control? How can you make a call on a mobile phone if you don’t know how to read or write? How can mobile phones improve people’s lives in areas where traditional infrastructure is scarce? We went to rural India to learn how people in these areas use mobile phones and how mobile infrastructure is impacting their lives. Based on our research, we have developed design principles and mobile phone interface concepts for emerging markets.

On May 28th from 6:00-8:00PM at Adaptive Path we will present the concepts we’ve created, and the findings from the primary research of our latest R&D project. Please join us for an evening of sharing and discussion about how design can increase the positive impact of technology on the lives of people in emerging markets. Panelist include: Rachel Hinman, Natasha Alani, rural India Design Researcher, Brian Cronin, Alexa Andrzejewski, and Rachel Glaves.

Please RSVP on Upcoming, if you’re coming.

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!

Last week, Tim O’Reilly delivered a short address at the Web 2.0 Expo where he offered insight into the five applications he believes point the way for the evolution of the web.

Two themes stood out: sensors will surpass humans in front of their keyboards as the primary data source on the web and Moore’s Law will need to be applied to humanity’s greatest problems. (via ReadWriteWeb)

He cited Google Voice Search on the iPhone, an application that combines both voice and sensor input, as an important technology to watch.

One of our panelists – Noah Richardson, manager of Tellme’s Mobile User Experience group – will share his expertise designing voice-driven systems and interfaces.

He’ll be joined by the following all-star lineup:

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

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

We’re continually updating the UX Week 2009 website with new speakers and content. We’ve recently added Martyn Ware and Noel Franus from Sonic ID, who will be presenting and teaching about how to incorporate audio into experience design, and Kristina Halvorson, who will teach a workshop on content strategy and user experience.

Last year, Nathan Moody and Darren David from Stimulant spoke on the main stage about large-scale multitouch interfaces, and this year they’ll teach a workshop on how to design for them. Additionally, we’re happy to have Michal Migurski and Tom Carden from Stamen Design return with the highly-rated workshop Live, Vast and Deep: Web-native Information Visualization.

TED.com recently published a presentation by UX Week 2009 speaker Scott McCloud that he gave at TED in 2005. It’s an excellent presentation, and should give you a taste of what to expect from him:

Sign up by January 31st to take advantage of our extremely discounted early bird registration price!

Earlier this week I got to see what Brian Cronin will be sharing at the end of our Managing Design Projects event, coming up on February 5, 2009, and I got really excited at the end of his presentation. This past year or so I’ve spent some time talking to experts in the field about managing visual design, and sharing ideas about project management. But in my conversation with Brian, he had me commit to something that I’m going to do to expand my practice of program management, and I’ve been bubbling with excitement ever since (yes, I said bubbling). I look forward to sharing with you, on the day of the event, what I’ve committed to, and learning from you all what you’re going to do to expand your practice.

If you’re a program, project, or product manager, come learn about conflict management, facilitation, client relationship management and much much more. Creating a community, and having you all meet each other, is just as important to us as the event itself, so please join us at the beautiful Ft. Mason in San Francisco! Pricing increases to $295 tomorrow, so register today.

Though UX Week 2009 doesn’t happen for a while now (15-18 September 2009), we’re well into our planning. In 2008, some of our audience’s favorite speakers were folks from outside of user experience design — Jane McGonigal talking about games (video), Michael B. Johnson sharing Pixar’s process (no video — he revealed behind-the-scenes stuff!), Jay Torrence talking about how his theater troupe operates (video). So, we’ve decided to explore that further, and for 2009, we’re looking laterally to all manner of disciplines outside of design, though which all influence our work.

We were able to land three amazing speakers before this year’s end. I’ve already blogged about (and interviewed) Scott McCloud, the mad scientist of comics.

There’s also Erin McKean, lexicographer extraordinaire. We’ll pair her with an information architect and have them talk about the experience of words. If you’ve never seen Erin speak before, I suggest this TED talk.

And, we’ll have Genevieve Bell. Though currently titled as the Director of User Experience within Intel’s Digital Home group, her Ph.D. is in cultural anthropology. She’ll bridge the gap between experience design and anthropology, and help us understand just how we should be thinking about this “ethnography” thing.

The structure for UX Week 2009 will be similar to 2008 — single-track Main Stage presentations in the morning, and an array of hands-on workshops in the afternoon.

UX Week 2008 was our best yet, but I’m confident we’ll top it in 2009. Register now for the insanely low price of $1895 ($2,995 regular price), and use the promotional code RNSB and get an additional 15% off (lowering the price to $1610.75).

We are in the extremely early stages of planning UX Week 2009, our flagship conference on all matters related to user experience design (in fact, we’re so early, we have almost nothing on that page).

A theme for UX Week 2009 is “Looking laterally”, and inviting speakers from fields outside of design who have influenced our work. Someone who has had a huge impact on how I think about design and the creative process is comics creator Scott McCloud, best known for his book Understanding Comics, and more recently for the comic explaining Google Chrome.

Scott will present at UX Week 2009, and he was kind enough to chat with me about comics, visual expression, Edward Tufte, and the importance of believing in the message. You can listen to our conversation on Adaptive Path’s podcast (iTunes, RSS), or download it directly.

Register for UX Week 2009, or any of our upcoming events, by December 31st, and use the promotion code RNSB and you’ll get 15% off the current (discounted) registration price.

If you want to get a sense of UX Week 2009 will be like, peruse the videos from UX Week 2008.

I’ll be presenting Mobile User Experience, What Web Designers Need to Know at WebDirections North in Denver, Colorado this February. In addition to a stellar line up of speakers presenting content on designing and developing for the web, there’s also a group of folks presenting content that’s sure to be relevant for mobile:

Brian Fling of Fling Media will be presenting The Mobile Web: A Crash Course and hosting the workshop Creating Mobile 2.0 Web Applications in less than a day.

Ryan Sarver will be presenting Building Location Aware Web Applications, which will give folks insight into the tools available to bring location to their web site or mobile applications.

And who could resist joining me in heckling my former colleague, Dan Saffer, now of Kicker Studio, as he presents and hosts a workshop on Tap is the New Click, timely content on designing gestural interfaces.

WebDirections North looks to be a great conference in the Mile-High City February 5-7.

Use this code: WDN09DRH when you register and save $50 before December 15th.

We are all looking for ways to pinch pennies these days. A tip? Our events are always cheaper the earlier you register — sometimes as much as half the regular price. Our latest round of early bird pricing ends tomorrow.

• UX Intensive Copenhagen - October 13-16 – Marriott Copenhagen
  $2,395 & $745 (regular price $2,595 & $845)
• UX Intensive Austin - December 8-11 – Sheraton Austin
  $1,595 & $595 (regular price $2,495 & $745)
• MX: Managing Experience 2009 – March 1-3 – Intercontinental San Francisco
  $1,395 & $445 pre-con. workshop (regular price $1,995 & $545)
  We’ll be talking more about MX in the months to come. Until then, see this year’s highlights here.
• UX Week 2009 - September 15-18 – The Palace Hotel San Francisco
  $1,495 (regular price $2,995).
  We recently posted some videos from this year’s UX Week. Click on the link above to have a look.

Our virtual seminars are always easy on the wallet at only $129. Join Leah Buley on November 12th for her 75 minute talk: How to Be a UX Team of One: Tips and Tricks for Successful User Experience Design With or Without a Team.

Register by midnight on Tuesday (PST) to get these rates. Use code ‘BLOG’ for an additional 10% off the registration price.