Adaptive Path Newsletter for August 1, 2007

Jeff Veen Discusses the State of the Industry with Vitamin

Jeff Veen, Adaptive Path founder and emeritus, ruminates on the state of the industry, how designing for the web has changed, life at Google (and how Measure Map is playing out), and how to measure the impact of usability checks.

Dan Discusses Interaction Design in the Field with Bill DeRouchey

Dan Saffer, Senior Interaction Designer at Adaptive Path, discusses interaction design in the field with Bill DeRouchey, as well as his upcoming UX Week presentation, Learning Interaction Design From Everyday Objects.

Dan Saffer [DS]: I am here with Bill DeRouchey, an interaction designer at Ziba Design in Portland, Oregon. Welcome Bill. Why don’t you start off by telling us a little bit about yourself, your background and how did you become an interaction designer?

Bill DeRouchey [BD]: Good morning Dan, thank you. I think like a lot of people, I came to be an interaction designer pretty organically. For the past fifteen years or so, I’ve had various positions, whether it’s web master, writer, product marketer, product manager. I’ve done coding on the side, and eventually I moved over to information architecture. I realized that’s what I had been trying to do in my previous four jobs. And the challenge of, “Oh, I’ve got all this information, how do I structure it?”

Then I came onboard at Ziba Design as an information architect to tackle web sites and how to structure online interfaces — not online interface but products interfaces. Eventually that translated over into interaction design.

DS: It’s really only been the last couple years that there’s been the formalized role and especially education programs.

BD: Absolutely. They have some great ones out there, but it’s definitely not critical mass quite yet.

DS: So what then is your role at Ziba as an interaction designer?

BD: We have an interaction design group, there are seven of us, and we’re doing a variety of projects. My role is essentially either being the sole person on a project or leading the interaction design component of a project.

I figure out what the core challenge is: trying to frame the problem, trying to understand how people think about the particular device or problem. What’s the mental model? We’ll go out into the field sometimes and look at what people are doing, assimilate that, and then design a solution around it. Where I commonly come in is around the structure-side of solving the interaction design problem, mostly because my background in information architecture. I think more in terms of structure and flow; I’m not the guy that’s going to give you the beautiful Flash prototype. I can make a nice, crude Flash prototype, but the gorgeous Flash prototype is for other folks. My role is really the flow of the motion, behavior, and the understanding from the user standpoint.

DS: What kind of products have you worked on?

BD: It’s been roughly about two-thirds physical products and the other one-third could be anything from web sites, service design problems. I’ve been involved in naming structure challenges. But as far as consumer or physical products, there’s been satellite radios, consumer printers, home medical devices, security devices, and of course there’s a whole bunch of other really cool stuff that I can’t talk about. But of course, like any good design agency, we get some really fun challenges.

Be sure to read the rest of Dan’s interview of Ziba’s Bill DeRouchey and register for UX Week. As always, our newsletter subscribers are welcome to use discount code “NEWS” for a 15% discount.

Ryan Sees Parallels in Cooking and Design in Ambidextrous

Here’s a look at Ryan Freitas’ upcoming article in Ambidextrous Magazine, comparing the design environment and the professional kitchen: Chefs organize their cooks and their space with a few key principles in mind: maximizing consistency of product, ensuring creative freedom to experiment, and encouraging effective problem solving under incredibly stressful conditions… For those who manage creative organizations, the professional kitchen can provide inspiration for how to balance these principles effectively.

MX East’s Program Is Complete

The MX East program is now available for your viewing pleasure featuring presenters such as Khoi Vinh, design director for The New York Times; Mark Jones from IDEO; Ryan Armbruster from the Mayo Clinic’s SPARC Innovation Program; and other top-rated speakers. Join us October 22-23 at Normandy Farm, just 35 minutes from the Philadelphia airport.

Register for the complete package and receive discounted on-site hotel rates. Use promotional code “NEWS” for a 15% discount.

Be sure to listen to the available podcasts from MX San Francisco for a taste of what transpired.

Microsoft Provides Goodies for UX Week 2007

Last week we announced Microsoft as a Platinum sponsor for UX Week 2007. We just heard that they will provide every UX Week 2007 attendee with a fully licensed copy of Microsoft(R) Expression Studio after the event! Expression Studio is a suite of tools for user experience and creative designers to bring vision to reality and to boost developer collaboration of rich user experiences for the web. Each attendee will receive a retail box of Expression Studio shipped to their registration address within 30-days of UX Week. Be sure to visit the Microsoft Silverlight Lounge at the event to confirm your address and for additional details.

We’d like to thank Microsoft for their generosity and support of UX Week 2007.

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