This weekend I am buried in a seminar on how to be a more engaging public speaker. Most of us fear public speaking. We fear being embarrassed in front of crowds or not being seen as credible in what we are talking about. I too have those fears, which is why I am in the seminar.

Our homework tonight was to write our defining moment, a story about why we are talking about what we’re talking about, so here’s mine:

Having started my career as a visual designer, I was quite happy just dealing with colors, objects, and fonts. As long as clients were happy, I was happy. Though throughout that time I found I really struggled with clients who didn’t appreciate my viewpoint on design. Like most designers I felt I was the expert in all things related to the “beautification” of a product.

Then the dot com crash hit and my life changed forever. After a year of underemployment and struggling to make ends meet I landed in the mortgage industry. I was working in a call center taking calls from people who needed their mortgage loan yesterday. I came to the quick realization that people didn’t understand finance nor did I to be frank. Calls such as “now I can afford a home with this interest only loan” & “I need to pay my contractor who started a month ago; why hasn’t this loan closed?” left me more then a little concerned. This would be an ongoing theme in my life as I began the journey towards financial literacy.

Then I landed in the insurance industry working on a change program to shift resources around the company, save money, and streamline the overall business. Here I suddenly had a new voice. I was hired to work on the internal web site redesign and any other admin related tasks. Having come out of the dot com bust with experience in web design I was a perfect fit for this small group. I knocked out the redesign, creating what I would (years later) come to understand were called wireframes and user flows not specs and process flows. They began to move me around to other similar projects and before I knew it I was a business analyst bringing design thinking to business objectives and suddenly it hit me. There was something to the designers way of thinking that was a different more encompassing approach to problem solving then the traditional MBA thinking. I began to explore what this meant and eventually found my way to Interaction Design but it was that project starting as an Administrative Assistant that led me where I am today.

In process my computer crashed and on reload Firefox reloaded all my open tabs. Then as if from no where, there was music filling the air on a constant loop. I started going through each tab scrolling up and down frantically looking for the off switch. It was no where to be found. Instead I find myself reminded of Eddie Izzard’s skit about trying to get the printer to work:

No matter where I turn. I cannot find the off switch. Finally after 10 minutes of this frustration, I find the switch at the bottom of the home page!

Don’t get me wrong, there are definite distinct advantages to using sound in the right places at the right time. Jakob Nielsen points out that sound can “enhance the user experience substantially”. He adds that testing within a game environment using the same graphics but higher and lower quality sound led users to believe that the game had better graphics when better sound was utilized. However that was a game environment not a website.

When exploring the web most users are looking for information. In this case, I was looking for the amenities, price, and any reviews on the hotel. I didn’t care whether or not the hotel had a good atmosphere. After all in a hotel you mainly sleep. You aren’t looking for a home. Thus the music only frustrated me when I couldn’t locate the module to turn it off.

If you would like to use sound to create an experience than use it wisely and place it where the user can find it. The top right or even the right rail work beautifully for this purpose. The worst thing you can do to your user is frustrate them because you will lose them as a customer. Remember you never get a second chance to make a good first impression and on the web that is even more vital.

A co-worker says she explains it with the experience or shopping in a retail store.. “You know the whole process of walking into the store. Picking out items to buy and then purchasing them?” “Yes” “Well that is your user experience.”

I have often explained it in terms of building architecture. “You know how building architects create blue prints for a building?” “Yes” “I do something similar except they are called wireframes and I am considering how you as the user will move through the space of the web site or application.” This usually works for me but today led to a new insight into how to explain what it is I do.

I was at Specialtys waiting for lunch when I got talking to a couple of ladies from Tampa. They asked what I did and I told them and then the lady asked, “Oh so you feng shui technology!?” I laughed but in reality it was a brilliant insight into what we do. Our user experiences should be “peace creating”, efficient, experiences that allow users to get in and get out without a lot of frustration. Perhaps from now on I will say the I “Feng Shui the web”.

I found this link recently and find the concept interesting. We forget as designers who work digitally most of the time that we need to draw and sketch.

I thought this presentation had some great points and interesting tidbits in it especially the quote about using user experience design within unusual spaces. It just proves time and time again that design can be utilized anywhere and everywhere.

This year’s World Economic Forum features a roster of programs seeking to bring business up to speed on new thinking about innovation

The World Economic Forum, held annually in Davos, Switzerland, is a high-altitude, high-profile gathering of the globe’s business and political elites. Microsoft’s (MSFT) Bill Gates is a regular, as are Google’s (GOOG) Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page, who throw an amazing party at the Kirchner Museum every year. Bill Clinton usually hosts a late-night gab-fest, and last year it seemed like half of U.S. Congress and much of the Bush Cabinet were participating in sessions on trade and foreign policy.
Attendees at this year’s meeting, which begins on Jan. 24, will see many familiar faces. But they’ll also notice an influx of people no one would have thought qualified to join a few years ago: designers. Davos 2006, in fact, is shaping up to be a very different kind of forum. In addition to the standard topics, an unprecedented 22 sessions will focus on the general theme of “Innovation, Creativity & Design Strategy.”

A special series of six workshops is planned for CEOs. IDEO President Tim Brown will lead one on “Building a Culture of Innovation.” Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto will lead another on talent — “Who’s Choosing Whom?” Other workshops cover “What Creativity Can Do for You” and “A World Without Intellectual Property.” And I’m moderating a panel discussion on “Prepping for the Creative Economy.”

BEYOND LIP SERVICE. Frankly, it doesn’t get much better than this when it comes to a serious discussion about the use of design thinking as a management methodology. As Roger Martin puts it: “I think the reason innovation and design has percolated to the top of the WEF agenda is that big companies the world over have woken up to the fact that they have organized and controlled their firms to the point of stultification by using ERP [enterprise-resource planning], CRM [customer-relationship management], TQM [total quality management], and other reliability-oriented systems. They need to think in a fundamentally different way to reinvigorate their firms, and so they’re reaching out to design and innovation.”

In short, innovation, creativity, design — whatever you want to call it — is the new Six Sigma.

The overarching question shaping the Davos program is, How do you operationalize innovation? How do you go beyond giving lip service to creativity, which is where 95% of all U.S. corporations are today, to enabling managers and employees to truly innovate on a regular, sustained basis.

The truth is, very few top managers have a realistic idea of just how much it will cost them to shift from a culture of cost and quality measurement to a culture of continuous innovation. Nor do they have a realistic idea of how to get there. This is especially true within service companies. With its unparalleled concentration of intelligence, experience, and power, Davos could be the catalyst that corporate innovation needs.

WIKI KEY? One of the most interesting discussions will be the one on “Externalizing Innovation & Creativity.” This will deal with open-source innovation, and it’s really a question of just how much companies should “wiki” their approaches.

Eric von Hippel, professor and head of Technological Innovation & Entrepreneurship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, will be there to discuss the benefits and risks in outsourcing innovation, the sectors most likely to try it, and the most successful models. He explains, for instance, why Procter & Gamble’s (PG) outsourcing model works, while Motorola’s (MOT) experience in Taiwan backfired (its partner designed and built Motorola cell phones and then went to China to sell its own branded products that competed with Motorola). Clearly, participants will want to talk about the risk to intellectual property and the importance of finding a trusted partner in outsourcing innovation.

Von Hippel will join writer and consultant John Hagel and John Kao, CEO of Kao & Co., in a session called “Making Innovation Real.” The group will evaluate which new innovation practices bring the most value: Social networking? Idea markets? Innovation centers?

BRAIN ROTATION. In other highlights, Nike’s (NKE) Phil Knight will join Daniel Vasella, CEO of Novartis (NVS), Yale President Richard Levin, Ana Botin of Mexico’s Grupo Santander, SAP (SAP) CEO Henning Kagermann, and Merck (MRK) CEO Richard Clark for the somewhat redundantly named session, “Innovating in Innovation.” This is the nitty gritty of innovation. What are the new models, and how are they being implemented? Is it better to be a fast follower than a radical innovator? (Surprise, Apple (AAPL) was a fast follower in the digital-music field with the iPod.) What risks are associated with open innovation models? And what kind of metrics will promote, rather than crush, creativity?

The Davos program offers a meaningful snapshot — meaning, it reflects just how little most companies know about innovation, even as they embrace it as essential to their future growth and competitive strength. Successfully innovating companies can be counted on two hands, and really creative companies can be counted on one.

Yet, the global management paradigm is clearly shifting from left to right brain thinking. The new management mantra of the 21st century is breakthrough innovation via creative-design thinking. It’s replacing the old business-value proposition of incremental improvement through control that’s still being taught in most B-schools and peddled by most consulting companies (sorry, but in this era of dramatic change, just what is the value of a degree in business “administration?”).

I call this new intellectual disjuncture in management theory The Big Shift. Davos ’06 ratifies the change. ]]> http://www.designbycandlelight.com/bw-design-gets-its-due-in-davos/feed/ 0 http://www.designbycandlelight.com/technology-tuesdays-an-introduction/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=technology-tuesdays-an-introduction http://www.designbycandlelight.com/technology-tuesdays-an-introduction/#comments Tue, 04 Dec 2007 16:45:00 +0000 rphillippi http://designbycandlelight.cordelia.titaninternet.co.uk/test/?p=126 I am starting “Technology Tuesdays”. Where I will find something going on in technology I find interesting. While this will mainly focus on usability, information architecture, and other such career related topics, I will occasionally wander from those subjects to talk about other things that inspire ideas, thoughts, and conversations about the role of technology in our lives, sustainability, and other such hot topics of the day. I am using this to start vetting ideas. Should I move over to M or even if I stay here, I am being encouraged to develop ideas and talk about IA best practices and trends. Most of my thoughts at least in the beginning will come from things I have read that I find interesting or want to explore. These will in turn start to form my thoughts about IA as I hope to move into a space where I can speak at conferences, write for professional blogs, and basically move towards being a specialist in the area of User Experience. While I still hope to explore and play with development and design amongst other skills that I would like to keep fresh, the area of User Experience provides the most challenge and interest for me so it is the area I hope to specialize in.

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For today’s post I am posting some interesting links.

Milissa Tarquini’s Blasting the Myth of the Fold
When I first started my career as a web designer, I remember the old adage “design for the fold” & “don’t make the users scroll too much”. Milissa’s article argues that people are now use to scrolling and that the fold no longer has the relevance it use to. However, you still want to lay out the information and design on the page in order to encourage the user(s) to scroll to the remaining content below the fold.

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Other links of potential interest:
Future of Web Design
Mostly Flex & code based articles – It’s following some interesting things happening in code and flex development through Adobe.

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And a presentation: Design Thinking in Business

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And a video: Who is the T, in IT?

Courtesy of , who stole it from

Web 2.0 is a move away from the first model where their were a few
publishers and many consumers of information. For example a company
created a website and lots of potential people looked at it. The
barriers to creating a website (better looked at as content) were too
high for most users in this model, and lets face it your average AOL
user can just about cope with email so HTML was going to look like PhD
physics to them. What I’m driving at was that in order to publish
information in the first web model a user needed to understand markup
language, have some grasp on image creation layout and also hosting
before they were going to be ready to take on gathering their thoughts
together to publish.

Web 2.0 takes the view that every consumer of information should be able
to be a publisher as well. This is purely subjective but in my view
there are several key sites and technologies that make web2.0 available
to the masses

Picture phones and digital cameras make it much easier to gather
graphics together now, and this is as true of video content as it is for
still photography. This is completely personalised graphical content
and therefore is very focused on the user.

Flickr.com is a very easy to use and highly configurable way to make
photographs available across the web.

U-tube does the same thing with video content.

Blog hosting sites, Livejournal and Myspace provided extremely easy to
use layouts and publication mechanisms that even the tabloid reading
masses could get their heads around.

These sites (obviously there are others) should all be viewed as Web 2.0
projects and the cornerstones of the web 2.0 publication method.

The essence of web 2.0 is therefore encouraging content not simply from
brand owners but from their customers, which is why I bring the essence
of Web 2.0 for business down to the phrase that “Web 2.0 enables
companies to have a closer relationship with their customers than ever
before and brands have the opportunity to create personal relationships
with consumers. The key to this is user content and the creation of
discussions online about products and services offered by companies. A
classic web 2.0 is AOLs ‘Discuss’ project about the very fabric of the
Internet itself.

The problem is that with all this content is that with everyone
publishing there will be an absolute wealth of it out there. The
problem is how to categorise it and how to consume it.

Consuming the content is achieved via a syndication model and RSS
(Really Simple) syndication is the model of choice for the Web. No
conversation of Web 2.0 is complete without a section devoted to RSS and
RSS readers.

In the old model, a user searched for a website and entered via the
homepage through a browser. They then navigated to the section they
wanted and found the content. Some websites were updated regularly and
were read regularly by consumers but the same navigation model was used
to check for updates. What I’m getting at is that this is a lot of
wasted time spent on looking and checking for information when the
information itself is the valuable item.

RSS enables a site to be syndicated and RSS readers monitor sites for
updates automatically and then alert the user to this. The user is then
able to scan headlines to see which individual pages they want to read.
The point is that individual pages are read as they are added and
updated rather than navigated from a homepage. It saves time and
therefore is significantly more productive.

This however does not solve the problem of categorising the content.
Blogs account for a great deal of this content as they are the largest
publication method. Google therefore created the blog search engine
which ignores all other content and concentrates only on user based
content.

The biggest and most respected tool for categrosing this content is
however technorati.com. It uses the concept of tagging to add short
descriptions of what each piece created is actually about. Tags are
added to the bottom of the content with short descriptions and keywords.
This is then categorised by Technorati and can be searched. Similarly
it relates blogs sharing tags to each other in what are known as clouds.
The idea is that if two people are using the same tags as each other
then the chances are that their content is quite similar and therefore
readers of one will find the other relevant.

There are obviously new methods and improvements to categorization
coming along all the time, and many of them are led by users themselves.
One concept which is highly useful is called Declarative Living. Quite
simply this is a discipline whereby whatever you are reading and the
sources you find are published for others to see. The logic follows
that if people are interested in what you are saying, they are also
likely to be interested in your sources. This is achieved via OPML.
Every RSS Reader has a listing of blogs sites and sources which the
individual user reads. Any good RSS reader can import an OPML file and
so publishing your OPML file for others to download and install into
their own RSS reader’s list is a very good idea. The concept was first
introduced to me by James Governor who also has a blog you should read
Googel him or look for him in Technorati. My OPML file is freely
available form my blog and I would encourage you to download it
regularly as it will cite many resources for you.

There you go, introduction to Web 2.0. That’s procedurally how things
work with a little bit of technical information as well, together with
identifying the major players as viewed by Aaron Savage. The real
question though is what does this all mean for business. Advertising is
the medium that is having to adapt quickest to this but others will
follow.

Having never taken a typography class this is fun for me!