Link Wrangling

Round-up, wrangle- same difference. And after all, I am from an infamous rodeo town. Not that I condone any wrangling beyond that of untamed links.

In Austin this weekend? Come check out the Austin Handmade Market on South Congress from noon-6. The market showcases local talent’s wares.

Share Some Candy,  “a curated collective of inspiring design finds and art” is fun to browse through to find exciting artists and inspiration in their work.

A custom paper cut artist by the name of Julene that creates beautiful, detailed work.

If you haven’t heard of Blik surface graphics, it’s about time you checked it out for all your wall decorating needs.

I’ve discovered ModCloth and am in love with their apartment section- perfect for quirky gifts.

And finally, a little darkly humored whimsy for your day brought to you by fruit and sharpies.

I, Technophobe

I had a dream some time ago that I was at work, idly pushing pixels,  when the Vice President ran out of his office to notify us that the machines had become self-aware and to take cover. The rest is a haze, reminiscent of Terminator 2 and full of dream logic (or lack thereof). Robots are after us with cold menace and horrifying precision. The only thing we have to use against them is our irrational, human unpredictability.

I wrote this all off as a nightmare induced by stress and late night consumption of Doritos, but shortly thereafter I began to wonder. All in one week, my technology went haywire. My computer was fried due to a faulty power supply, my USB thumb drive died, and my laptop battery was completely kaput. What was this? Some kind of rebellion? Did I need to invest in a bandanna and get ready for the coming time of myself against the machines?

I’ve been a user experience designer for awhile now, but despite my professional bravado I’m a bit of a technophobe. For me, looking at a computer stripped of its casing is on par with viewing an open cadaver.What’s that for? What are those complex patterns? The sight of the innards is overwhelming.

I don’t know all the inner workings of a computer, and though it might sound like blissful ignorance, I don’t want to know how it works. I just want it to work and continue to work. It’s there to do my bidding- not to be labored over and appeased with constant maintenance. It seems like my computer is always demanding new parts and my continuous parade of pleas. Who is the boss here? Aren’t you meant to help me?

That’s what I do as a UX designer; I make sure that people like myself never have to write out a command line, that they don’t have to crack open an instruction manual to make something they need to use everyday work. It should work, you shouldn’t have to figure it out, and I am here to protect you. So I expect the same from my PC and am continually disappointed. It expects me to solve quibbles between conflicting parts and know sequences to reset it and make it work. I enlist my friend to help me with this aspect. He explains and I try my best to understand his instructions and terminology, but it never sticks. I’m too impatient, and despite everything much prefer to maintain the illusion that it’s all ill-tempered entity executing my queries.

Part of my problem is I’m forcing this anthropomorphism upon my machines  and am sure that they’re just trying to spite me. My method of fixing technology usually goes in stages: denial, anger, bargaining, anger, and at long last, acceptance and shoving it in the dark recesses of my closet until someone much more logical comes along and fixes it. I can’t tell you how many nights in college were spent pleading with my printer to please spit out my essay. I would compliment it, make deals with it, and when all else failed, threatened to give it to Goodwill.

So much science fiction has been dedicated to the idea that one day our technology will get the better of us and surely conquer the human race; that the complicated voodoo that makes it operate will go beyond even our greatest scientists and it will destroy us all with a satisfied, evil whir of gears and gizmos. Despite my phobias and imaginative unconscious, I don’t really fear this day anymore. When it comes, I’ll put on my warpaint, tie my hair back with the red bandanna, and go before the unstoppable destructors with my mouth forming a guilt trip like they’ve never heard. And ashamed, they’ll shuffle back from whence they came and once again listen to their true masters.

However illogical, this is my trump card against the machines.

Calculating Delight

Last Saturday I attended the first ever Big (D)esign ’09 in Dallas. I was impressed with the caliber and content of the speakers . I’d rather not do one of those quick summaries where I regurgitate the highlights because I feel that the ideas I was exposed to deserve a little more illumination than that- so I’ll try to do a few more posts on the presentations that fascinated me the most.

One of the ideas I enjoyed was presented by Stephen P. Anderson in a lecture entitled “The Art and Science of Seductive Interactions.” I went in thinking he’d just present some basic interaction patterns. Instead, he stayed true to his title and discussed how you can consistently produce interactions that ‘seduce’ your audience through study and ingenuity.

Creating a popular, viral product or application isn’t a lucky accident (well, at least in most cases). It’s an engineered and carefully planned experience. You can have a well designed, very usable product but people may not be sticking around long on your site or your competition is overtaking you. Why is that? It’s because you haven’t tapped into what surprises, delights, and holds people’s attention by understanding how humans work.

Anderson proposed that if you understand your audience and what makes them tick by studying psychology, social sciences, and interactions that you find intriguing you can produce consistent, strong results. In order to take a product from good to great, you must know what interactions are  intriguing to your users and why.

Never forget that you are a user yourself. Do you ever experience something that delights you and makes you want to explore the site or application more? Then ask yourself why. Is it because your friends use it? It’s mentally stimulating? Is it because they incorporated a fun game? The majority of us are on the internet quite often so there’s no reason not to make an effort to study what works for us, what does not, and why. By making this effort, your ability to design fantastic products will grow by leaps and bounds.

If you’re interested in learning more about the happenings at Big (D)esign, check out the twitter feed from that day- there are also some links to recap posts .

Sleek and Shiny vs. Steam

I was reading this article by Rachel Hinman of Adaptive Path and was intrigued by their efforts to make a mobile device that would do well in less tech savvy markets such as rural India. Hinman noted that the sleek, streamlined design of devices such as the iPhone deter exploration and tangible interaction. She goes on to say that her design team turned to the style of Steampunk. “It’s an aesthetic that invites the touch of the human hand and it encourages engagement and fosters curiosity and play.”

I love the aesthetic of steampunk for it’s whimsy and nostalgia, but I realized that there’s another reason. It’s exactly as Hinman describes- it makes me want to explore and tinker with the item. It’s a very visceral aesthetic, which we lack in the digital age. More and more there’s what I would call the Apple Aesthetic, which is one button- if you’re lucky. You have to rely on the gizmo’s internal screen to lead you around by the nose- you can’t just hit a button and have it do what you want (I should note here that I am, at heart, a curmudgeon).

To me it feels flimsy and almost unreal. And if the devices internal computer seizes up, you’re out of luck. With that in mind, Adaptive Path’s idea of adding tangible interactions would, to some degree, be welcome in tech-savvy markets. While the typical American wouldn’t want all the buttons and gauges they’ve included, I would think something with a bit of “real” interaction would be welcome. Though we all oohed and aahed when the iPhone first came out, I mourn the loss of a few buttons to mash when I need something quick. Not to mention the tactile benefit of feeling buttons when you’re trying to call someone and drive at the same time…

My grumbles might fall on deaf ears as I’m taken into the sleek and shiny future, but I don’t think I’m alone in saying I would like the best of both worlds. If technology is capable of anything, then it can certainly give me a few buttons.

Building Blueprints

Once, in an ill-fated attempt at a ‘get to know you’ game, someone asked me what I did. “I’m a user experience designer.” “And what is that?” His irreverent manner made me shrug and reply with a short, “I design user experiences.”

Everyone laughed, but I wasn’t making a true attempt at being sarcastic. I just took for granted that it was pretty obvious what I did. Did he really want to know about all the gory details? The research, the wireframes, the personas, the dull backache I was developing from hunching over my sketchpad? I figured probably  not, but my conclusion could have been influenced by the fact that I was eager to end my moment in the spotlight in a room full of strangers.

I faced the task of defining my position again in a meeting with the developers on my team. They wanted me to handle the front-end code for our new project, but I was skeptical. While I’m certainly not prejudiced against learning something new, I also didn’t want to lose focus on the design and architecture. I didn’t find it necessary to handle the code as there were ten developers on my team, so I told them politely that I would support them, but I wouldn’t write up the code myself- I had other tasks that needed my focus. When they protested, I tried to use a methaphor.

“I’m like the architect. I define the flow of the house and how everything connects so that the owners will be pleased with the results. Now, I can get in there with a hammer and help build it, but I might lose sight of my focus, and we could very possibly end up with a house that has no bathroom.”

“We can add the bathroom later,” one developer offered.

“That’s true…but the way that the house is built, we might not have room for a traditional bathroom and end up slapping on an outhouse.”

I don’t know if the metaphor helped them see my point of view, resent me for not taking up work they thought I was supposed to do, or just think of me as a weirdo- but it seemed to help them realize that we were a large enough company to focus on our own areas while supporting each other, but not taking on each other’s duties. After all, we had specialized in something for a reason- we were good at it. And in my mind, we should each focus on our strengths and help others to interpret our work in order to create a collective vision.

Every now and then I have to get in the middle of that code and hammer away at it until it does my bidding, but I’m always glad to lay down the hammer and pick up the sketch pad. Call me a pencil pusher if you will, but at least we won’t find ourselves settling for an outhouse.

The Good, the Bad, and the Excuses

Well, looks like my days of freelancing are over for the time being. I got a wonderful job with some awesome people, and I aim to keep it. But I’ll still use this blog to bounce around personal ideas (naturally, I will not be posting about work). More than likely I’ll have a few book reviews and subject matter such as that. But as always, posts will be infrequent. Sigh. where’s my blogging spirit?

As promised, here’s the mock-up for the home page of that artist’s site. It’s bound to change, though. Click for full view.

Rush

Sorry I haven’t written in so long. I’ve been engaged in quite a few rush jobs, so I’ll post some links to those once they’re off the development server and have gone live. One is a flash site that took a lot of graphics work, so I’ll be happy to have that done. The next big thing is a large e-learning course, so hopefully that will be a more steady, and less harried, process.

Unfortunately, as you may have noticed, the portfolio has also taken a backseat. But…trust me, it’s still floating around in my head, careening about with the other ideas that live in there.

Something more substantial will be along shortly, promise.

The Fun and Perils of ActionScript

I’m trying to get better acquainted with ActionScript, because although I can do some really fun stuff with it, I’m not yet able to say, Alright, I want to do this- this is how I’ll write out my code. Basically, I can’t hand-code it, and I think it’s a given that before you can claim you know how to do something in the world of coding, you should be able to hand-code an impressive amount.

Another peril of never hand-coding is that you lose it- you become reliant on a program to prompt you or write it for you. That’s how I feel about Dreamweaver. Convenient yes, a time-saver, yes. But it’s shouldn’t become a crutch. Maybe I’m just full of false pride, but I can’t let a program write it for me (as in using Dreamweaver’s CSS wizard).

But back to ActionScript. It’s pretty amazing what it can do. When you make things move with ActionScript, the first thing that pops into your head is ‘I’m a genius’ or that you’ve discovered some new breed of technological magic. I never really understood what people meant when they said it was ‘powerful’ until I started using it myself to make things float around by using mathematical formulas in the code.

Naturally, I got ahead of myself and accidentally started working my way through a book entitled “ActionScript Animation” instead of a basic ActionScript book. I was wondering why I was so far in over my head when I realized that I was basically working through intermediate to advanced programming with no basis for how a programming language works. Luckily Tim was helping me through it, but I stopped and decided to take a step back when I realized that I had completely jumped over the basics.

So, right now I’m working on a) ActionScript b) my Portfolio and c) reading The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garrett (pretty awesome name, eh?). I’ll have to talk about that book another time. For now, I’m sure your head is lolling on the keyboard and you’re praying for an easy and quick death. Scurry away from mine blog, and be free.