I spoke and gave a workshop on sketching at UX Australia a few weeks ago. Here’s my talk, which without the actual talking is perhaps a little obscure - I’m promised that the audio’s coming soon…
Coming up this week is OzIA. After seeing my sketchnotes from UX Australia (below), Eric was nice enough to sponsor me to be the official sketchnoter of the event. Thanks Eric! Can’t wait!
Web Directions
I was too slack and otherwise occupied to get a proposal in for Web Directions (boo!) but it’s on next week and the program looks like it’ll be a blast (yay!). I’m especially looking forward to hearing Mark Boulton talk about type, listening to Christian Crumlish talk about social interfaces, and playing with the augmented reality t-shirt, designed by Miss Failwhale herself, Yiying Lu and made technically possible by my mates at MOB. The whole week is set to be amazing, as it’s the inaugural Australian Web Week! After arriving in Australia two weeks too late to attend last year’s Web Directions, it feels like it’s about time I got to attend!
Edge of the Web
Last but certainly not least is Edge of the Web, out in Perth November 6th & 7th. I”m honoured to say I’ll be flying over to the left coast to talk about the train wrecks and best practices of online shop design, and attend the award ceremony for the Australian Web Awards, which I helped judge. Gary Barber was nice (or crazy) enough to let me ramble on about job titles to avoid, photography for failed painters and our the reality of augmented reality in a recent interview, which you can read here.
One of my favourite aspects of the Information Architecture Summit earlier this year was meeting and getting to know Dan Willis. He’s a consultant for Sapient (yawn) but far more importantly, he’s super smart, super funny, and scribbles like a demon. He also looks pretty suave wearing my hat.
My favourite bit is what Dan has to say about defining the problem that design is there to solve:
I don’t think it’s served design or designers well to run away from that part. I think designers need to step up their game. If they’re not able to step it up to where they’re really good at that, they should at least not be satisfied with being told what it is at the end of the day.
Thanks for the interview Dan!
Click here to see all “What’s Design Mean to You?” interviews.
Videos don’t seem to be the kind of content that inspires too many comments, but judging by the links to my Reboot interviews, it seems like you’ve enjoyed them. Going on that—and considering how much I enjoyed meeting the folks I interviewed—I’m planning on continuing the series at dConstruct. I’ll only be there one day so it’s unlikely I’ll get that many interviews done, but there will be plenty of interesting folks there so I’ll do what I can. Top-of-the-list targets are Joshua Porter, Elliot Jay Stock and Leisa Reichelt, but I’m looking for more candidates. If you’ll be there and have something to say about design, @ me on twitter.
Like a fool, I missed both of Thomas Vander Wal’s presentations at Reboot 10. I heard they were good. So it was only coincidentally (and after the conference was over) that I managed to get this interview with him a the funky Fox Hotel where he was staying.
So what’s design mean to you, Thomas?
It’s the layer on top of things that are used, that makes them comfortable and gives them more ease of use. It’s adding experience but taking away the hard edges, and allow people to embrace the tool or service in a closer interaction.
Other than that, his explanation of “the four foundation layers” for developing social tools gave me plenty to think about.
After the interview, Thomas and I coincidentally discovered a shared love of typography, and spent an afternoon in Copenhagen, a beautifully designed city, hunting interesting type with our cameras (his booty and mine). It was a blast to spend time with Thomas: he spit out interesting stuff the whole time, and I wish I’d written it all down.
I’ll be seeing Thomas again soon, and would love to do another interview. What would you ask him if you could? If you’re as interested as I am in what he’s got to say, leave a comment with your questions, and I’ll gather them up and me and my camera will ask him next week.
I interviewed eleven smart people at Reboot10 in Copenhagen, Denmark, asking the same question: what’s design mean to you? This is the last video in the series.
Interview number ten is with Kars Alfrink. How’s that for a cool name? On his own site, leapfrog.nl, he describes his work so: “I design the dialogue between people and the products & services they use, with the help of a broad range of sketching and prototyping techniques.”
Kars’ answer went in an interesting direction, quite different from any other answers I got in the interviews:
The unique thing about design, as opposed to other disciplines such as engineering, is the capacity to imagine things that are not actually here yet, and imagine them in such a way that they can be experienced. [snip] The designer has the capacity to make them tangible in some way, for other people, without them needing to be built.
As you’d imagine from this quote, Kars does a lot of prototyping, which he explains in some detail. He also said some pretty interesting, and uncoventional, things about the relationship between design and understanding of, and involvement in, the technologies of implementation.
I interviewed eleven smart people at Reboot10 in Copenhagen, Denmark, asking the same question: what’s design mean to you? This is the next-to-last and tenth video in the series. The last interview with Thomas Vander Wal will be up shortly.
I was too slack and otherwise occupied to get a proposal in for Web Directions (boo!) but it’s on next week and the program looks like it’ll be a blast (yay!). I’m especially looking forward to hearing Mark Boulton talk about type, listening to Christian Crumlish talk about social interfaces, and playing with the augmented reality t-shirt, designed by Miss Failwhale herself, Yiying Lu and made technically possible by my mates at MOB. The whole week is set to be amazing, as it’s the inaugural Australian Web Week! After arriving in Australia two weeks too late to attend last year’s Web Directions, it feels like it’s about time I got to attend!
Last but certainly not least is Edge of the Web, out in Perth November 6th & 7th. I”m honoured to say I’ll be flying over to the left coast to talk about the train wrecks and best practices of online shop design, and attend the award ceremony for the Australian Web Awards, which I helped judge. Gary Barber was nice (or crazy) enough to let me ramble on about job titles to avoid, photography for failed painters and our the reality of augmented reality in a recent interview, which you can read here.