I just got back from a month of travels throughout Thailand, struck by something I didn’t expect: water bottles. Lots and lots of water bottles. On beaches. Floating in the ocean. Strewn throughout the forest around a monk’s hut. In the hands of locals and tourists alike, because the tap water isn’t safe to drink. And sadly, a lot of that plastic is being burned (I whiffed the fumes to prove it), because there isn’t a good trash/recycling infrastructure in place. Well, let’s be honest: recycling is pretty much nonexistent.
Creating collaborative environments, having empathy for your audience and removing the barriers of hierarchy are all ideas that are increasingly being embraced in the creative workplace. Prioritizing and humanizing our audience is the aspect I find most admirable in experience design. This is expected in our practice, but is it something we take deliberate interest in when we are off the clock? These practices should not be put on hold at 5pm (or 6pm). The way we work to design user experiences can make us better human beings, and in turn, make us better user experience designers.
I tried in vain to save it. Friends kindly came to its rescue, and for a while, it seemed like my little blog just…might…make it. I watched fire slowly creep back back into its eyes and, oh, how I began to hope! But, alas, in the end, neither my friends, network, nor myself could save it. WhatMovesYou.tumblr.com just didn’t have the strength to survive on its own, and I had to accept the sad, sad truth: some ideas really should die.
Painful as that reality was, I have Adaptive Path to thank…
User Experience Intensive (UXI) is happily underway in Amsterdam! Day 1 (Design Strategy) kicked off on Monday with Henning, and today the Design Research session is going strong with Paula. Andrew and I are in the wings, prepping for Day 3 (Information Architecture) and Day 4 (Interaction Design.) Last night was the official opening party for the Adaptive Path Amsterdam studio , and the room was buzzing with UX folks from across Europe.
I landed in Amsterdam yesterday and had a chance to walk around the city and drink in the canals, leany/tilty buidings and preparations for Queens Day. But what I noticed…
My spirit animal is slime mold and I’m not afraid to admit it. This stranger-than-fiction life form has become the poster child of self-organizing systems, and the experimentation is getting interesting. I’m a bona-fide member of the Slime Mold fan club, and it’s inspired a collection of thoughts about how companies can leverage the bottom-up, self-organizing methods that slime mold has mastered.
Now honestly, I’m more of a dictyosteliomycota fan. But I’m not against admiring the myxomycota branch of the family.
After all, what’s not to love about an organism that can solve mazes…
An interview with Scott Berkun, author and public speaker on
Show Length: 20 minutes
In 1956 a documentary called The Mystery of Picasso was released, showing two hours of Pablo Picasso doing what he did best: making paintings. This film gave the public a first-hand glimpse directly into this infamous artist’s creative process. Public speaker and writer Scott Berkun and I got together for tea to talk about the film and our own experiences around creativity. As both managers of creative teams and creators of work ourselves, we looked at how our processes aligned with Picasso’s…or where we could…
Superman is known for his strength and superpowers. He does all the work. He can save people all by himself without the help of anyone else. Why shouldn’t he do all that? After all he’s, “faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.” Some people may die when Superman does his work, but he is a superhero and will save the world from bad things.
Leaders on the other hand empower others. Leaders don’t do all the work on their own, but instead inspire other…
A podcast of Jesse James Garrett’s impassioned closing plenary from this year’s IA Summit is now available online via Boxes and Arrows.
Jesse’s assertion that we are all experience designers has stirred controversy within the community, and justifiably so. Professional identity is a slippery slope. However, I can’t help but feel Jesse’s important message is getting lost in these discussion threads. Arguing over the definitions of our roles and judging the value of the contributions of each does little good if it becomes divisive within our community. Instead, it distracts us from working together towards…
Getting great new experiences out into the world makes us giddy, and there is nothing we love more then being asked to contribute to the creation of new exciting experiences. In this slideshare presentation, we’ve identified five experiences from everyday life that we believe should be nurtured into existence.
Good experiences can solve many problems, from essential issues like energy efficiency to the more nuanced complexities of healthcare. The common thread running though each of these five ideas is that by addressing these challenges from the perspective of the user, we can find new approaches and unique requirements that…
