3 Waves and 5 C’s of Computing
Posted on | March 1, 2010 | No Comments
Over on the Adaptive Path blog, I just posted “Apple iPad and the 3 Waves and 5 C’s of Computing Use” about the evolution of interaction paradigms and the way we use computers. Long-time readers of peterme.com who have steel trap memories will recognize its roots in a 9-year-old peterme.com post, “Way New Interfaces, Revisited.” It’s funny how slowly things actually change.
Just what role do conferences play nowadays?
Posted on | February 19, 2010 | 4 Comments
Having attended TED last week, where people spend $6,000 + travel/lodging seemingly in order to watch talks which will be posted online for free, I found myself again wondering just what role conferences and events play. This is not of mere academic interest — Adaptive Path earns a substantial portion of its revenue through its public events, I’ve helped organize professional industry events such as the IA Summit, the IA Institute’s IDEA, and DUX, and I speak at 4-6 events a year.
Given the ascent of the Web, one could have expected conferences to wither, as you can find online much of the information presented at conferences. Why bother traveling all over the country and spending all that money when you can pretty much keep up with any field through online means? Particularly when so many events now share their sessions freely on the Web?
Just the opposite seems to have happened. We’re lousy with conferences. In my industry alone there is UX Week and MX (put on by Adaptive Path), the IA Summit, Interaction from the IxDA, UPA’s annual event, the Design Research Conference, SxSW Interactive, IDEA, and this isn’t including the newer events from overseas such as UX London and UX-LX. In the “Big Think” space, there’s TED, and now Pop!Tech, Lift, and The e.g.. It seems that the internet has made people more aware of these opportunities for gathering, and instead of supplanting them, have made attendance even more desirable.
If it’s not about the content, then it must be about the people attending, right? In the case of TED, that is almost certainly true — many, if not most, of the folks spending $6,000 are able to write it off as a business expense.
About 5 years ago, there was a lot of discussion about unconferences, events with no set agenda beyond a high-level theme, and instead of canned presentations planned ahead of time, the schedule is determined after everyone has arrived, and people lead conversations on specific topics. While the unconference movement still exists, it has not taken over the way that many thought it would. It turns out you need more than just the right people.
While the cliche that “best content happens in the hallways” is largely true of conferences, those conversations require the canned presentations. They provide the seed for the ongoing dialogue. They’re the “social object” around which conversation and community revolve.
What the Web has done is made very clear what kinds of conversations are happening at different events, and if you want to be part of those larger discussions, you know you ought to get there.
I think a lot about how Adaptive Path’s events should evolve… UX Week is the event I’m most involved with, and I want to make sure it stays fresh, lively, and relevant. We continue to tinker with a mix of presentations, workshops, and social events, trying to strike the best balance between inspiration, information, skills-building, and networking. And I wonder what I’m missing, what other elements we should introduce (e.g., design charette’s like Design Engaged, where you get 30-40 people in a room, and have them do/make something.).
David Byrne at TED – The venue determines the music
Posted on | February 11, 2010 | 4 Comments
I enjoyed David Byrne’s talk at TED today. He put forth a theory of creativity that runs contrary to the romantic model. Instead of thinking of creativity as a thing that emerges from the force of soemone’s specific artistic bent, he walked through the history of music and showed how music styles have been highly determined by the venue in which it was played — gregorian chants in the cathedrals, lilting Mozart pieces in parlors, subtle classical in giant concert halls, punchy rhythmic music in small venues where you have to be heard over the crowd, crooners and singers abetted by the microphone to whisper in your ear. Creators think ahead to the space in which the music will be heard, and create for that venue.
I think there’s a strong analogy to the evolution of the moving picture, from those strangely lascivious brief dramas of the nickelodeon to the Academy ratio of the silver screen, widescreen efforts leading to visual spectacles, television shows where close-ups have dominated, etc. The space of the filmic presentation guides the creator as to what they will make.
Sun CEO’s haiku tweet resignation announcement
Posted on | February 4, 2010 | No Comments
I love that Jonathan Schwartz tweeted the announcement that he was leaving Sun, including this haiku: “Financial crisis/Stalled too many customers/CEO no more”.
Two things about it:
- You’ve got to appreciate someone who can keep a sense of humor in what must be a pretty difficult time (though perhaps I detect a sigh of relief?)
- People assume that a CEO’s role is complex, but, as his succinct comment makes clear, it’s fundamentally simple. Not easy, but straightforward. Understanding what executives want is no mystery.
Information Landscapes – From where we’ve come
Posted on | February 4, 2010 | No Comments
I’ve been following the evolution of information visualization since I first blogged in 1998. Well, even before then, Muriel Cooper was leading her students at MIT’s Media Lab to probe on new ways of interacting with textual information. You can see the work she presented at TED5 in 1994, the same year that the Web really took root, in this post from David Young’s blog. But don’t just watch the video — there’s also a link to an in-depth profile of Muriel written by my friend Janet Abrams, and a link to Lisa Strausfeld’s 1995 CHI paper on visualizing financial data. (15 years later, Lisa continues to blaze trails at Pentagram.
Sorry about the rss feed problems folks.
Posted on | February 1, 2010 | No Comments
Working out some kinks. Nothing to see here.
Two blogs in one: peterme.com and peterme’s linkblog
Posted on | January 21, 2010 | 3 Comments
Since the start of the year, I’ve been trying out some new stuff for peterme.com, and I’ve gotten it to a point where it’s time to share.
People reading peterme.com via RSS (Google Reader or some such) would have noticed a bunch of links in the feed. This was an attempt on my part to see if I could get back to old school linkblogging, the kind I did when I maintained this site by hand. I have now separated the link blog into a separate feed, which you can either read in normal web on the sidebar of my home page, or subscribe to its RSS feed. The feed for just the main peterme.com posts is still available here.
Or, if you want to see both in one feed stream, subscribe to this feed.
OK. Enough housekeeping.
Don’t allow yourself to be abused by employers (What I would tell interaction design students, #4 in a series)
Posted on | January 21, 2010 | 4 Comments
We are entering the season of college recruiting. Across the country, design schools are inviting potential employers to meet their students. Students are burnishing their portfolios, preparing their spiels, all the while trying to maintain their overburdened academic load.
One of the things that saddens me about many designers is how little professional self-esteem they have. As long as they get to occasionally work on cool projects, they’re willing to put up with remarkable abuse. I suspect many don’t realize that it doesn’t have to be that way. So, to all the students out there looking for work, when the recruiter offers you the opening, “What questions do you have about us?”, ask questions like:
How many hours a week do you regularly expect people to work?
From what I’ve seen, most design firms, particularly name design firms, expect team members to regularly put in 60- or 70-hour weeks. They do this either because: a) they bill you out hourly, and so want you to generate as much revenue as possible or b) they’re terrible at planning projects, and overcommit within a particular timeframe. The problem is, if you’re a full-time employee, you’re not getting any extra cash for work beyond 40 hours a week. So, the company is benefiting from exploiting your time, but you are not.
What kinds of activities will I get to perform in this role?
In school, interaction design students typically engage across a range of activities, including user research, interaction design, product strategy, visual design, and prototyping. However, most employers tightly align a job title with a job description. And that job description is the box within which you can work. So if you’re an “interaction designer” or a “UX designer”, you might be just a workflow-and-wireframes jockey, because user research is done by people with the title “User Researcher”, and Flash prototyping is done by people with the title “Web developer”. Design firms do this so they can task people as if they are interchangeable cogs in a machine. It makes it a lot easier for planning, but it’s stultifying as an employee.
So find out what freedom you’ll have in your practice.
What do you expect for an employee’s utilization percentage?
(This is more for design services firms as opposed to working in-house.) Most people, if they’ve never worked for a services firm, don’t even know what a “utilization percentage” is. It’s the amount of time you spend doing billable work. Utilization percentage * billing rate = company revenue. As such, employers want that utilization rate to be very high.
I feel that a 75% rate is humane. Any expectation above 85% is out of line (particularly if they’re working you more than 40 hours a week). Some companies have 100% utilization targets. That’s crazy. Basically, it means you’re turning the crank all day. You have no time for internal business. No time to read, think, grow. No time to experiment, try new things. When you’re going beyond 85%, you’re basically sacrificing your professional growth in order to line your company’s owner’s pockets.
Will you own any intellectual property I develop during the time I work there, even if it’s created outside of work hours?
Some companies, and I know this can be hard to believe, lay claim to an employee’s entire creative output, regardless of whether it happens during work hours. Now, I’m no lawyer, and if memory serves, these claims are not defensible, but would you want to work for any company that attempted this, whether or not the attempt stuck?
What support will I get for expressing myself publicly, and engaging with a wider community?
Unless you are a senior employee, most design firms offer no support for, and some actively discourage, their staff members developing public personas and engaging with a wider community. I’ve heard countless stories from friends who have had to fight their companies in order to submit talks to conferences, or contribute articles in publications.
(If you’re talking to a design firm) Are you a public company, or owned by one?
Public companies require levels of growth and profitability that lead to policies which often run contrary to delivering high-quality design in a sane environment. If you find out the design firm you’re talking to is public, or owned by a public company, be wary, and be certain you have satisfactory answers to the previous questions.
It’s about treating you like a person, not a revenue-generating asset
The questions I’ve posed here all boils down to whether the employer will treat you as a person, a human with wants, needs, aspirations, and desire for happiness, or do they just see their staff as a means to making money? (And, let me be clear — I’m all for making money, but there’s a point beyond which it just becomes greedy.) Never except the answer “It’s just business.” There’s no reason humanity and business cannot mix.
Stop with the bullshit school projects (What I would tell interaction design students, #3 in a series)
Posted on | January 19, 2010 | 3 Comments
I’ve got a little series of advice/guidance/wisdom/hubris for interaction design students
I’m very much involved with Adaptive Path’s hiring processes, and as such I see a ton of resumes, peruse a scad of portfolios, and discuss futures with hordes of students soon to be graduating from a range of undergrad and graduate programs. As a “hiring manager,” what interests me most is your work. Do you have the skills to pay the bills, and how comfortable and confident are you when talking about your approach to solving problems?
Among my biggest frustrations is having students walk me through bullshit school projects. Bullshit school projects are those which are solipsistic (solving a problem that a limited set of college students face), and/or uninteresting, and/or overly formal, and/or simply lack meaning. If I’m going to be hiring you to work with clients to help address their challenges, I need to be comfortable that you have an ability to engage in real-world problems.
I think much of the blame for these projects lays at the feet of the teachers, who have ensconced themselves in the academy in order to avoid the real world. But students have a responsibility to demonstrate what they can do in a way that someone who doesn’t know them can understand their thought process, their approach, and their talents.
Perhaps the single best way a student can ensure she is doing relevant work is to take internships at companies. I met one undergrad who has worked with IDEO, Frog, and Nokia, and the work she showed me was largely drawn from these experiences, and gave me the confidence that she could deliver real-world design.
I’m not saying students need to think corporatist. One of my favorite student projects is the redesigned BART kiosk by Ljuba Miljkovic and Ben Cohen. BART didn’t ask them to do this (in fact, it demonstrates that BART unwisely spent money on a user interface so poor it could be vastly improved by two smart college students in a semester), but for a class project they realized it offered a remarkable opportunity. It hit on a real-world pain point (as anyone who has purchased a BART ticket knows), and demonstrated a thoughtful and practical approach.
And it doesn’t need to be a project that appeals to a big audience. As part of his MFA work at CCA, Matthew Baranauskas has done a set of tangible computing projects to create new tools to help mentally challenged folks express themselves in a variety of creative ways. While the number of people who could use these tools is quite limited, by addressing a space very different from his normal context, Matthew demonstrates his skills and vision in such a way that it’s clear how he would approach professional work.
So, if you’re an interaction design student, please don’t do yet another mobile app that helps you and your friends coordinate getting beers (or yet another web app that monitors a building’s energy consumption), or some context-free formal exploration of gestural interfaces, or something that simply demonstrates that you’ve learned a set of methods. Identify an interesting problem *in the world*, and attempt to solve it.
Nexus One: I’ve had one for a couple weeks
Posted on | January 5, 2010 | 7 Comments
I can finally announce it publicly: I’ve had a Nexus One for the past couple weeks. While I played with it a bit, I never used it extensively, as I didn’t want to put my iPhone’s SIM card in it, and I didn’t have any other SIM cards lying around.
The Nexus One is a perfectly solid offering in this touchscreen-smartphone space. Its interaction and interface design are quite good. I love the Maps app, which essentially can operate just like an in-car turn-by-turn GPS navigation device, with the added benefit of Google Street View, so you can be quite positive your turning at the right spot.
I’m very interested in leaving Apple and AT&T, and the Nexus One could very much be that new phone for me. I am not really reliant on any non-standard iPhone apps, so the transition shouldn’t be too hard. But, at this point, I’m not ready to make the change, for two primary reasons:
- Podcasts. The thing I do most with my iPhone is listen to podcasts. And I’ve become quite reliant on the “2x” playback feature of podcasts. Google’s Listen app does not offer double-speed playback. I suppose I could turn my iPhone into an iPod touch and use the Nexus One for other things, but having two glass bricks on me at all times seems unnecessary.
- Desktop software configuration. Or rather, the lack of it. With Nexus One, you have to do all your configuration on the phone, or within various Google Apps. There is no iTunes equivalent for the Nexus One. I believe this is a huge mistake. Anyone owning a Nexus One is likely to own a computer with a USB port. Why not let me use my computer, with it’s bigger screen, easier text entry, etc, etc, to configure my Nexus One? I’ve said it many times – iTunes was the secret of iPod’s success, and is quite significant in iPhone’s success. Having to do everything on the Nexus One’s screen is a pain and it kind of angers me that Google hasn’t seen fit to release software to make the configuration easier. (If you’re not beholden to Apple/iTunes the way I am, this might not be an issue. Or, if you’re an extensive Google tool user (Gmail. Google Calendar, etc.), it might not end up mattering to you, as you can get all that information onto the Nexus One pretty easily.)
All that said, if I could get a $60/mo plan on T-Mobile for the NexusOne (which is what I currently play AT&T, as I’m grandfathered in with my first-gen iPhone), I would have to seriously consider the switch. However, it looks like the minimum price of the necessary T-Mobile plan is $80/mo, which is kind of a non-starter for me. I would even consider $70/mo with unlimited SMS and data.
I am happy that there is now a legitimate competitor to iPhone/AT&T, and one that is not beholden to a particular carrier. I hope this finally leads to some competition in the pricing of service plans.
keep looking »Linkblog
- And the angel said unto him, stop hitting yourself!
March 4, 2010 | 8:34 amFunny.
- A new global visual language for the BBC’s digital services
February 22, 2010 | 2:24 pmTruly impressive work, and an impressive post detailing it!
- Talking Heads in Rome 1980
February 21, 2010 | 8:26 pmA series of 11 videos on YouTube of a 1980 concert. Sweet.
- Hot Pockets Ingredients
February 21, 2010 | 8:22 pmUm. An elegant poster of a disgustingly over-ingrediented “food”.
- The Birth of Cheap Communication (and Junk Mail)
February 21, 2010 | 12:07 pmFun, breezy take on the original “Victorian internet” – the British Postal System.
- Roger Ebert: The Essential Man
February 16, 2010 | 8:06 amHe might have no jaw, but Ebert has been as eloquent as ever of late (and quite the liberal activist!)
- Bing Maps Explore is pretty sweet
February 11, 2010 | 6:21 pmSadly, it requires Silverlight, but the functionality is fly. Check out the “Map Apps” (bottom of the screen). The Streetside Photos app draws geotagged photos from Flickr and applies them into the Street View. Pretty awesome.
- Ravens Coach Brian Billick Tackles Super Bowl XLIV : NPR
February 6, 2010 | 10:03 amAs we approach the Super Bowl, I found this interview about what a coach really does surprisingly informative.
- Henrietta Lacks: A Donor’s Immortal Legacy
February 6, 2010 | 10:02 amThis is utterly fascinating. Henrietta Lacks’ cervical cells are the world’s first immortal cells. I had never heard of HeLa cells before this interview with author Rebecca Skloot. Now I want to read the book.
- The Incredible San Fancisco Artists’ Soapbox Derby, 1975
February 4, 2010 | 8:00 am24 minute film about a truly delightful community endeavor. I don’t think SF has this kind of artist mojo any longer, but I’d love to see something like this Oakland, careening down Joaquin Miller Road.
- Paywalls, Blogs, Comments, Editing and Magazines: A Conversation with Paul Ford, Web Editor of Harper’s Magazine | The Awl
February 4, 2010 | 7:37 amIf you’ve followed ftrain for the past 10+ years, you already know that Paul Ford is among the smartest people on the internet. This conversation with The Awl about pay models for publishing and his experience at Harpers is a little precious at times, but worth a read.
- Interview with Bloom County creator Berkeley Breathed
February 2, 2010 | 8:12 amBloom County was among those key influences informing my sense of humor, including Monty Python, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Edward Gorey. This interview looks back to its creation.
- Axe Cop
January 31, 2010 | 9:52 pmSo awesome. And funny. The best comic ever written by a 5-year-old and drawn by his 29-year-old brother. I wanna Avocado Soldier t-shirt.
- Lost Landscapes of San Francisco 3 and 4
January 31, 2010 | 7:28 pmRick Prelinger collects archival, industrial, and found footage of San Francisco, and presents them as clips in front of live audiences. Delightful look at the city’s past.
- Roger Ebert’s best films of the decade
January 31, 2010 | 7:23 pmI’m a little late on linking to this. Historically, I’ve found Ebert to be far too forgiving a critic (he just loves movies too much and gives poor ones a pass), so I was surprised at how close his list is to mine (if I bothered to make one). Synecdoche, Me And You and Everyone We Know, even Juno.
- Taking Directions from Slime Mold
January 25, 2010 | 7:54 pmIf my colleague Kate Rutter were to have a spirit organism, it would be slime mold. Slime mold are bizarre, neither plant nor animal nor fungi, and they’ve become the poster species for self-organizing systems. Anyway, they can also design subway systems. Scroll down to listen to the piece about them.
- Where has all the popcorn gone?
January 24, 2010 | 4:20 pmThe folks on Chowhound have the same question I did the last time I went to the supermarket. Popcorn could become the next artisanal fetish.
- S.F.s Market Street changes as city evolves
January 23, 2010 | 8:07 amCarl Nolte does it again with an exploration of Market Street’s multiple personalities. The stretch between 6th and 9th is among the most depressing urban blights in the US.
- Online Dating: The 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures
January 21, 2010 | 8:13 pmOKCupid.com is a dating site. OkTrends is where the people behind the site reveal insights discovered through statistical analysis of site behavior. It’s awesome.
- How to be a superstar bartender
January 18, 2010 | 8:39 pmExcellent set of explicit instructions for the basics of mixing drinks (measuring, shaking, stirring, twists, etc.)
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Archive for Linkblog »
