Ghost in the Pixel

// Just a quick note //

Wow I thought this was really neat: three major keynotes from John Thackara, Marc Rettig, and Robert Fabricant, who each in their own way addressed issues of designing for “sustainability”.

Thackara started off a bit dour, with somber overviews of the various “grim peaks”, challenges of water, energy, health, pollution, warming, etc. aaah!! world collapse, etc. But led to a grand view of design “saving the world” so to speak. Spoke in rather lofty, broad strokes of design goodness, kinda abstract, unfulfilling sense of optimism, felt very grand and idealistic, reminded me of Bauhaus or De Stijl philosophical aims…Good conversation starter!

Fabricant from frog delivered an amazing keynote, hit all the right points, including an emotionally compelling story of designing for HIV testing in South Africa, really brought tangible closure to “social change” design challenges, by showing the physical results that were created, a real test kit for men to self-test HIV, and the humbling social/family repercussions. Truly profound and eloquently presented. A powerful speaker and just a great example of design for social good. Sign me up!!

(Slides are here)

(Here’s Fabricant’s own thoughts about the conference here)

Rettig offered an amusing and emotionally heartfelt personal story of his own journey as a designer and evolution of his firm, Fit Associates, around various social-personal problems around “sleep apnea”, as a personal vision/path. Found it quite moving and powerful for those at a career crossroads, like myself who seek something “more” than just fixing a user interface or making a bunch of wireframes. Seeking a path towards meaningful change by truly deeply madly understanding people’s behavior, life even, and figuring out ways to support and enhance their behavior. Offered various sites and names of groups/teams/people doing social change, to encourage involvement and participation. Will post list soon!

// Just a quick note //

Kim Goodwin’s closing keynote beautifully and eloquently rallied for the need for “design mentoring”, not just non-designers, but each other within the design profession to continue to grow and evolve, a virtuous cycle I presume. So much of interaction design (and the broader user experience field) involves a murky mix of methods, tools, techniques, strategies, arts of thinking, and pragmatic issues of “making good design happen”. For many folks, it’s a lot to grok and cultivate on independently on your own. But by sharing, guiding, coaching, learning, it helps both the mentor and mentee, which I’ve felt as a teacher at SJSU, and on the job for clients or with mentors like Andrei, etc. The best way to learn design is to teach and share with others, often on a 1-1 basis, shaping a mutual support structure as well…

// More soon! //

Ok a bit overstated, but I’ll just say it emphatically– Dan Saffer’s keynote address Saturday evening at the 2009 Interaction Conference in Vancouver was a nicely compact, inspiring, profound and positive statement of what needed to be said to a frankly (imho) dysfunctional organization that’s been wandering about trying to shape a coherent, holistic identity. Let’s face it, ixda is a richly diverse, motley crew of people who somehow (in whatever tenuous degree of reach and affiliation) associate themselves with “user experience” and “designing interactions”, from usability gurus to wireframe experts to user facilitation consultants to flash prototype maestros. Whew! A great diverse range of folks (and ideas, values, attitudes, etc.) which is awesome. But Dan, in my view, simply said some things that needed to be said, which many folks probably didn’t want to hear but needed to…

1. We need to stop arguing ad infinitum about design definitions and just start making good designs, basically prove yourself as a designer (regardless of titles: as he says, moving among UI to IA to IX to whatever per project/situation/context/client).

2. Aesthetics matter, period: people value beauty, and we need to cultivate this in our practice and attitude.

3. Design is just as much art as it is science: sorry cog sci/behavioral sci experts, but designing does involve a creative, expressive ingenuity beyond quantifiable studies, to provide a distinct sense of delight and wonderment in the product encounter.

4. Stop fetishizing simplicity (some things are just complex…and interestingly so) As Maeda says, some things are complex and cannot be made simple.

5. A good designer moves among frames: UCD vs. ACD vs. Genius vs. whatever designer approach, not hung up on labels…And knowing Dan from CMU (and I chatted briefly afterwards about this) he’s carefully bringing about the CMU-inspired approach to design, associated with the Buchanan philosophy of rhetoric/topoi/argument.

I sensed this immediately when he mentioned “frames” in his talk. By frames I suspect he’s closer to Buchanan’s concept of topoi (from Aristotle), which is a conceptual place of invention and possibility, not a fixed categorical definition of limited meaning. In other words, as designers, we fluidly move across different positions for a project, per the situation/context/client goals, etc. leveraging what makes sense, per our experience/judgment/understanding which of course comes with time and education.

And perhaps the most important thing, i think, is that we need to move from “design thinking” towards design thinking AND design making (paraphrasing Obama’s quote from his inaugural about the makers who helped shape this nation of opportunity/prosperity, etc.)…and as Kolko iterated in the panel discussion earlier, designers still need to make something, from posters to toasters to wireframes to prototypes to diagrams to proposals/documents. A solution must be made that takes some form–be it a napkin sketch or a diagram of a process re-vamp. If you’re just a “user facilitator”, then I’m sorry but you’re not a designer, plain and simple. Which is fine, just need to come to terms with your professional identity, and a precise/accurate sense of your value offering to clients/companies/teams, etc.

Indeed, it’s becoming my view that, well frankly there are some within ixda who kinda perhaps too easily assume the self-identity and functional role of interaction designer but really are not designers (I know, sorry!). They may be more appropriately analysts, researchers, strategists/planners, or even corporate therapists or organizational managers (And this is all good! We need that in the profession at large.) but not designers who actively and habitually sketch, imagine, empathize, express, passionately defend, and create novel engaging solutions to various problems or suggest speculative demonstrations of what could be (visions, storyboards, etc.) as improvement to daily annoyances.

I hope Saffer’s talk serves as a veritable wake-up call to everyone within this organization of great potential and world-reaching gains, to help substantiate the community’s professional value and integrity towards design excellence.

Here’s some useful, noteworthy interviews with several fairly prominent thought leaders who are practicing designers, pushing the boundaries of interaction design thought & action:

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One with Dave Malouf of SCAD, on the new IxD online ‘zine,
Johnny Holland.

Here’s one with Dan Saffer for AIGA .

And yet another one with Dan Saffer here :-)

Found one with Kim Goodwin, of Cooper, also author of an upcoming book on interaction design principles/practices.

And here’s an interview with Yahoo’s Luke Wroblewski.

Another one with LukeW on web form design issues.

Good interview with Jon Kolko on interaction design issues here.

The recent issue of Innovation, published by IDSA, features a fascinating debate pitting two design educators from very different institutions: Cranbook and IIT’s Institute of Design. The overall discussion hinges on “Design vs. Innovation” as its theme, and the differing viewpoints held by these spokespersons and their respective schools. This in fact serves as a follow-up to a debate done twenty years ago featuring Charles Owen (defender of scientific, rational methods approach from IIT/ID) and Michael McCoy (promoter of the experimentalist, visual semantics platform of Cranbrook). The debate of course continues into the 21st century, with many of the same issues, from the role of making, to teaching business leaders design, and the value of form vs. strategy.

But the one point that really got me excited is the question about the “role of intuition in design”. Hmmm! So what does each say?

Scott Klinker (Cranbrook), in referencing Charles Eames’ famous diagram of competing concerns, says “the designer can work with conviction at the overlap of these concerns. That is called informed intuition.” Continuing, Klinker says “Designers lead the public imagination with new proposals. Designers provide visions of what could be. Informed design experiments make sense of modern change and are risky, because they propose new behaviors, not just cater to observed, existing ones.”

So how about Jeremy Alexis (IIT/ID), what does he say? Disappointingly he ignores the question and does not suggest a role for intuition in ID’s rationalist methods-driven approach. Instead he delivers a sad, trite rant about “star designers” who only “design for themselves”, kinda like the Republicans’ tired old smear of Democrats as “tax and spend liberals”. Yawn. And since when was intuition suddenly equated to selfish egotism and celebrity vanity? Why the hostility against intuition? Wasn’t it Einstein who famously said “Imagination is more important than knowledge”? Hmm. Are you a Vulcan, Mr. Alexis?

Alexis explains, “When we create processes and methods that de-emphasize intuition, we will create fewer star designers. Instead we will create more designers that can operate in a competitive, profit-driven environment alongside marketing and finance. With more processes and methods, our work becomes easier to plan for and thus easier for mangers to accept.”

OK. So, from Alexis’ viewpoint it’s all about process management and making managers happy, rather than, oh I don’t know, maybe creating rewarding, engaging, memorable products & services and thus elevating customer appeal and repeat purchase, thereby driving up market share, brand value and profits? Would the ID’s heavily rationalist methods produce an iPhone, or a Wii, or Dyson or a Tivo? Doubtful. However, to be fair, the ID’s focus lately has been about training folks on re-inventing business processes and shaping new market strategies, rather than designing a new product per se. Tackling issues of social and environmental nature have also taken center-stage at the ID, which is commendable in many ways, deserving great applause!

And yet I still wonder why not a place for intuition in addressing such problems and more understanding of how to cultivate that admittedly mysterious sense for what is novel, poignant, delightful, or even whimsical. As I described earlier, I’m clearly more in Klinker’s camp, although sympathetic to Alexis’ point. It is undeniably a balance, but in my view there is a necessary role for intuition in that delicate phase just after exploratory research, during initial sketching/concepting, anticipating what’s next. While the design field overall is moving quickly towards addressing very complex problems, I still believe that one of the extraordinary qualities that we bring to the table as designers is a sense for that which is life enhancing and pleasurable and profound. And no method or formula can predictably produce that.