Category: General Stuff

Recently I’ve been helping screen and interview design candidates for our team at Citrix. Having now seen a range of portfolios with flaws and weaknesses galore, I feel compelled to offer up a few specific tips to ensure the best portfolio material is being shown and explained well. Here are some tips in no particular order…(and this is really an evolving list that I shall build over time)

---

* Foremost: Show your best work, and make sure it represents YOU and YOUR design skills.

* Relatedly, make sure your work is relevant to the company/domain/role you’re applying for. If the role is designing a media management app for iPad, your suite of web ad banners probably isn’t suitable.

* Don’t send giant PDFs and PPTs clogging the inbox. Those files get lost in the file system, inbox, etc. Just send a URL.

* Have a website. Seriously, it’s 2010. If you’re gonna be a UI designer, your work needs to be easily viewable online. Either your own website, or something hosted on Coroflot, Flickr, etc.

* A blog is not a substitute for your portfolio. And unless you want me to read your tweets and facebook posts, don’t send those links either. I don’t know you yet, and they’re not germane to assessing your abilities to design.

* Remember that your online portfolio (versus what is shown in-person at the job interview itself) is a teaser that invites me to call you up to learn more, piques curiosity/interest, etc. So show your best, but don’t show everything you’ve ever done.

* Please don’t create a fancy-shmancy Flash site with intros/animations, crazy effects, etc. It overpowers your work. Let your work stand on its own. If it’s good, you won’t need the Flash as a crutch. (speaking personally, if I see a Flash site, I immediately close it and move on to the next candidate, esp if i see “intros”, etc. I’m simply way too busy.)

** Sidenote: if i see a Flash site, I wonder could this have been done in HTML/CSS/Javascript. Was there something particularly unique that required Flash??

* If your prototypes are in Flash, that’s fine, just indicate that clearly and separately. (For ex: Click here to see a Flash demo of a mobile banking app, etc.)

* Clearly label what the project/client/problem is for each image in your portfolio…CONCISELY! No need for paragraphs of text.

* Finally…remember, the reviewer is most likely viewing your work in-between meetings, design sessions, or after work at the end of a long day. With little time to spare, so just made it quick and easy and engaging.

** One more thing ;-) Even if you’re applying for “interaction designer”, make sure your portfolio shows some good taste, aesthetic quality, and looks professional. Clean legible type, judicious graphics, etc. Don’t overdo it with leopard prints, wacky fonts, ugly color combos, and all that.

Hi folks, I’m looking for rockstar designers to join me at Citrix in Santa Clara :-)

I recently joined as a principal designer to help our VP of Design (who came from Salesforce) create design excellence in the enterprise. We’ve got a mandate from the CEO to “simplify, unify, and consumerize” our geeky IT apps into products that are cool, sleek, and reinventing how people work. This means apps for iPad & Android, as well as Mac/Win using Flex or Silverlight, and in-browser for thin client/net PCs, for users in business, education, and healthcare. It’s all that “virtual and cloud computing” stuff that’s hot now! A great time to invent what this software can be with good design.

We need design talent with stunning visual skills and sharp analytical abilities who love to dig into complex products, to arrive at elegant smart solutions. Passion, imagination, camaraderie, and adaptability are key. And of course many of you know I come from the Andrei Herasimchuk school of “design making” and the Buchanan/CMU school of “design thinking”, which I’m advocating to shape a robust design culture. Want to be a part of it? Enabling this is a small but thriving team of designers & researchers from PayPal, Adobe, and Ebay. Lots of experience and enthusiasm!

So forget about crummy old dinosaur enterprise UI. This is a bold pursuit of world-class design quality that competes at the level of Apple, Dyson, Virgin, and Nike. Are you up for the challenge? Read on…

---

Visual Designers: Superbly skilled in typography, color, grids, icons, etc. Imaginative sense of ideating/creating the whole interface, not just production of buttons/icons. Armed with an amazing sense of style, always exploring what’s next. Can create gorgeous, pixel-perfect comps and crisply detailed assets. Craftsmanship is an absolute must! Mastery of standard Adobe toolset. Prototyping is a big plus! Grasps the rigors of product development, UI freeze, perforce/SVN, and can handle all that equally well when deadlines get hot. Also key: clearly articulating the rationale for emotive aspects of visuals to executives.

Interaction Designers: Keen analysis of the user’s journey, from macro-level flow and architecture to micro-level UI mechanics & states & edge cases. Able to drive an eco-system POV as well as apply/invent patterns for UI elements. Able to quickly iterate and persuasively explain holistic flow diagrams, meaningful wireframes/storyboards, and gritty spec details. Collaborative brainstorming is key. Prototyping is a big plus! Always challenging assumptions about behavior, flow, and value to the user. Mindful of business goals and tech constraints. Knows how to balance PMs and Devs/engineers. Knows when to do research studies versus tapping your reservoir of past judgment. Must have total product design experience (not just making websites).

---

And if you are one of those rare hybrids who does pixel-perfect visuals AND interaction design, even better! No silos on the Citrix Product Design team. We all want to make great products and have fun while doing it!

If you’ve got the chops, please contact me directly, uday.gajendar@citrix.com, with a link to your amazing online portfolio and resume. Thanks!

At the risk of indulging in fanboy-esque hyperbole, I just couldn’t resist the title nor the alluring touch of interacting with such a novel, groundbreaking product that actually makes the year 2010 feel like the 2010 we’ve all imagined! No, we don’t have flying cars or jetpacks or robot servants, but we do have a svelte (albeit heavier than expected), speedy, futuristic amalgam of hi-technology and hi-lifestyle experience–the Apple iPad. Indeed, 2010 may well become the year we evolve a new form of computing, which I term “magical computing” ;-)

By magical, I mean enchanting and wondrous, not “pull a rabbit out of a hat” or make the Great Wall of China disappear into thin air. That’s just cheesy. Magical is instead deeply emotional and humanistic, expressive and experiential, tapping into a latent sense of delight that is rare to behold and eager to be shared with others.

First, the iPad is simply irresistible: The speed, fluidity, slickness, and gorgeous visual quality are an absolute delight, and I want to find every excuse I can to keep wanting to use this, as part of my daily routines. In fact, as a response to those who’ve wondered if iPad replaces a laptop, I’m actually wondering why the heck would I ever want to go back to a laptop?? (except for maybe extensive tasks like designing interfaces, requiring detailed pixel-level control or extensive typing, like…ahem…this blog post ;-)

What is also evocative and inspiring is the fact this slate of a computer can literally be anything you want it to be, depending on the apps. The catchy tagline “There’s an App for that” captured this potent quality for the iPhone. And no doubt the iPhone has ignited the critical sparks for this “magical computing” era. Now, given the form factor of the iPad, being larger, enables it going even further, becoming a full musical instrument, a turntable mixer, cash register, multimedia recipe book, hyper-textbooks for kids, home automation manager, you name it…the possibilities are endless!

And that’s what makes the iPad so special and powerful, that it is the conduit, a vehicle for unlimited range of potential uses for any number of folks, particularly verticals (think medical, financial, supply/warehousing, archit/construction, etc.). UCD experts always ask: what’s the use case? With the iPad the use cases are emergent and will evolve with discovery of potential, not pre-ordained in some requirements doc. Another aspect of the magic, thus requiring foresight, imagination and creative insight. While Tablet PC computing has been around for years, it just really never caught on, presumably because it was focused on replicating the MS Office/Windows experience writ small, cramming pre-determined use cases into a crappy package that didn’t perform well…instead of serving as a platform for fulfilling human desires, whatever they may be.

The iPad is nothing short of “magical” in this regard, much like the nifty tools and trinkets Harry Potter picked up along his journeys. Unlimited possibility, defying (or more accurately, elevating) expectations, producing outcomes that delight and satisfy, and…it just works naturally and intuitively. Pick it up and go, with your fingers.

Other qualities that will re-shape perceptions of computing, changing our lifestyles further:

** The iPad as a remote portable viewer: with apps like Citrix Receiver and GoToMeeting you can just log into your main computer system/desktop from anywhere, using the natural multitouch gestures, having convenient access to your work or home content from anywhere.

** Much as been written about e-books and magazines. Having used it now, it’s quite simply brilliant. Robust stunning image and text quality with full page flip/navigation abilities and archiving via the cloud, why go back to tree-killing print publications that lose money? The possibilities for truly pushing the notion of “hypermedia” are just now being hinted at. From Tim-Berners Lee’s simple linking of research docs to William Gibson’s “consensual hallucination…a constellation of lights”, and beyond. We are on the cusp of some amazing interactive and kinetic storytelling!

** Streaming TV and movies via Netflix and ABC. But imagine streaming web conferences and recorded lab sessions or classroom lectures. Again, the notion of a portable sleek viewer with “augmented reality” aspects for contextual information, networked sources, social sharing.

** The ecosystem of iPhone as a touchpad or input device for the iPad, which hooks into your iMac or HDTV (via Apple TV)–whoa! Very compelling and integrative experiences are possible. Telesurgery? IT administration? Robotics? Or just controlling your home systems from a single touchpoint?

** And of course the full and growing range of UI affordances, patterns, interactions as documented by Bill Scott, Luke W, and others online. Novel ways of visualizing and interacting with data, pushing the communicative potential.

These points and of course, the inevitable technical evolution (megapixel camera, Hi-Def resolution, video/webcam, etc.) suggest moving towards a new age of expectations & perceptions of computing, beyond the traditional desktop-keyboard-mouse stationary setup. We may be at the dawn of magical computing, that is emotionally resonant, sensually irresistible, behaviorally breaking paradigms, and functionally mutable…all the while in the elegant, unassuming form of an aluminum & glass slate, compellingly portable and convenient.

A friend just briefly told me about a BMW tagline he heard on TV: What you make people feel is just as important as what you make.

This raises a vital point about the shaping of customers’ emotions in delivering a compelling engagement with your product or service–emotions matter, not just a little, but just as much as what you’re selling! Indeed, this really is the company’s deep driving serious responsibility, in line with the brand promise. Emotions are at the heart of the personal perception, interpretation, experiential co-creation, and personal sense-making of a company’s offering because in the end it’s about the HUMAN encounter which resonates in the hearts and minds of yours customers. You’ve got to care about customer’s emotions to create products they will LOVE. Product managers and engineers may battle over features and performance, but if the story of the product doesn’t fit the human expectations of use and value, nor deliver a powerful degree of comfort, delight, trust, happiness–it’s all for nought. No matter how long the feature list or how many cross-promotional marketing deals, your customer has to feel connected to the product/service, embrace it into their lives, and enjoy using it as if they could never imagine life without it. And the opposite is true as well–if your product instills anger, frustration, hatred, paranoia, fear and distrust then you have violated the unspoken, tacit underpinnings of that human encounter, negating the product’s value which no feature list or price deal can rectify.

Emotions matter just as much as the product/service you’re making. Perhaps while writing the product’s functional requirements there needs to be a description of its “emotional requirements”– Wouldn’t that be something!

Ever since having graduated from Carnegie Mellon in 2001 (almost a decade ago! sigh) and roaming across the Valley through various companies, I’ve been asked many times what exactly did I learn from the CMU design program, particularly the infamous seminar taught by Dick Buchanan, former head of the design school. Well, at long last I’m finally sitting down to articulate some of that :-)

Now, admittedly it’s not a nicely compact summary of UI patterns and formulas. No rules of how to arrange buttons or A/B tested page designs. Instead, the knowledge imparted involved a wonderfully diverse, mystifying, enlightening, and stimulating exploration of concepts & methods that enable an architectonic approach to design: rhetorical, strategic, pluralistic. Whoa!

Quick movie reference: Remember in The Matrix when Neo first met Morpheus and how Morpheus prefaced the “journey down the rabbit hole” with his radical insight and knowledge of what awaits Neo? The whole “splinter in the mind driving you mad” speech? Yep, walking into Dick’s seminar was like that. Totally mind-blowing and radically different from your typical UCD/HCI/IxD seminar, by far!

Here are the key nuggets that I took away and which still serve as the foundation of my own personally evolved approach as a designer, which I have illustrated as a series of diagrams, per Buchanan’s whiteboard notes. These diagrams require some…meditation ;-) They were amusingly referred to as the “triangles and crosses” by students and alums, for good reason.

---

Critical takeaway from Buchanan’s grad seminar

1. Four interpretations of the concept of “interaction”: The seminar was based upon an extensive understanding of the concept of interaction, which required a deeply thought-provoking survey of theories from philosophy, psychology, cybernetics, mathematics, semiotics and rhetoric. What are the range of possible relationships between people, objects, environments, and cultures? What are the range of interpretations of data and reality? What are the sources of meaning and how it becomes expressed and mediated?

We examined four such interpretations: existentialist (person to person), essentialist (person to environment), entitative (person to objects), and ontological (person to cosmos or cultural/spiritual ideals). The terms were a kind of special language with rather esoteric origins reaching back to Buchanan’s mentor, Richard McKeon and his examination of how to interpret various systems of thought (eg, “philosophic pluralism”).

But what’s important for designers are the opposing types of interactions and how interaction and communication interrelate to shape a human experience of the “other”–a person, an object, an environment, or a culture. Each interpretation or mode presents a specific outlook on reality and meaning (ie, existentialist projection of self’s meaning vs essentialist meaning arises from a “doing and undergoing” with the context), while in actual design practice we mix up in varying levels each of these interpretations. Ultimately, they help decipher the complexities of reality and suss out the problems to be tackled.

2. The nature of a product: What indeed is a “product”? There are certain core elements that are commonly defined, per writings from Moholy-Nagy of the Bauhaus. A product has a form, materials, function, and also agency (tools & skills) that make the product embodied and actualized for usage by someone for some purpose. Each of these terms are meant to be open for interpretation and playfulness of meaning. For example, what is “form”? Is it the physical shape? Or perhaps the “shape of the activity”, a dramatic performance with a beginning, middle, and end? Again, the idea is to provide a conceptual toolkit to help designers thrown into complex situations, parcelling out the issues at an essential level of abstraction and simplicity.

3. The elements of an argument: At the heart of the Buchanan approach to design is the notion of rhetorical argument–persuasive communication based upon discovery and invention of arguments that shape attitudes and behaviors, like a well-composed speech. There is a multi-lateral, coordinated appeal to functional or rational logic, the speaker’s own credibility and personality, and the audience’s sense of empathy and emotional sway. This balanced blend of what is useful, usable, and desirable enables the creation of a “well-designed product” and positive experience overall.

4. The liberal arts as related to design: Buchanan was educated in the arts & methods of rhetoric per his studies with McKeon at Chicago (and McKeon himself studied with John Dewey at Columbia–indicating a strong intellectual lineage!). He perceived a deep connection between the four liberal arts (rhetoric, poetics, grammar, and dialectic) and design thinking/making. This breakthrough insight was critical to the course’s fundamental nature and the goal of evolving a generation of design leaders schooled in broad-based liberal education, again to aptly dive into complex situations and distill issues into essences via the arts of strategic conversation, deliberation, argument for whatever context.

---

Obviously, these are not the expected lessons from a seminar on design–no particular “rules” of good web design or metrics for how to organize tabs and buttons. Those are mere tactics, exceptionally diverse and learnable from a book at Borders, frankly. The aspiration instead is towards creating leaders armed with conceptual toolkits that can dissect any complex problem (from software to organizational design to process design to sustainable design issues) with profound confidence and intellectual rigor.