It’s a fascinating and entertaining read, but what really jumped out at me was this:

From the start, readers latched onto Kimball’s strange magazine with crablike tenacity. Today, roughly three-quarters of subscribers renew, a rate that’s the envy of publishing. In 2007, they signed up their one millionth subscriber, and over the years Kimball has supersized his idea into a franchise that includes 12 seasons of “America’s Test Kitchen,” the most-watched cooking show on public television; a second magazine, Cook’s Country (with its attendant show); reams of special issues and books; a battery of paid Web sites; a radio program; and even an online cooking school, and he has done it without discounting subscriptions or giving anything away or taking on a single advertiser [emphasis mine].

I’ve always believed that personality, intelligent opinion and honesty will always make a product more attractive and successful than focus groups, following the herd and conventional “wisdom”, and it’s lovely to see Mr. Kimball and Cook’s Illustrated prove this so clearly.

No, that’s not a complaint. UX Australia 2011 was one of the conferences I’ve most enjoyed attending, ever. It’s just that I never really learn anything at a conference. Not that I’m all super smart and know it all already, it’s just that learning takes time. If it was your first time at a UX conference, what someone said in 45 minutes on stage may have been a revelation, and the half-day workshops I attended (especially Whitney Quesenbery’s storytelling workshop) introduced me to new and exciting concepts, but to really learn these things, I’ll need to do them, preferably with someone much smarter than me looking over my shoulder.

What I learned, or more accurately was reminded of, is the value of people.

Chats in Bars

The theme of people came up a lot this year.

At the after-party, I spent some time chatting with a young interaction designer from Germany named Susi. She was happy to meet someone who spoke German, and I was amazed she’d come so far for our little Aussie get-together. And she was taken aback by how nice everyone was. She thought there was a bit of an in-crowd, but everyone she got up the courage to speak to (and she knew no one when she arrived) was friendly, interested and welcoming. Her surprise surprised me at first.

On the way to a pub one night, I finally met the charming and funny Joe Sokohl. We discovered we had both lived in Hamburg Germany at the same time (not sure if Susi met him too, but his German’s pretty good) and shared some memories. We got on to how conferences work, and he mentioned how much he enjoyed coming over to Australia. My memory’s not nearly good enough to try and quote him directly, but he said he enjoyed our lack of rockstars; that there are plenty of great UX people in Australia, but that there’s little to none of the ego parading in-crowd mentality here.

The Cool Kids

Every conference has what Robert Hoekman Jr. called a “cool kids table” – that group of people who know each other from speaking at and attending conferences around the world. It’s unavoidable that when a group of people do something together that other people don’t do, that a bit of a clique develops, and we’ve got that in Australia too, of course. I’m more or less part of that group now too. Considering I feel I’m well and truly a part of this community, even though I’ve only been in this country three years, have only ever worked directly with one person in the UX community, and was accepted to speak at the first UX Australia although hardly anyone knew me and no one had ever heard me speak is proof enough that, in Australia, the “cool kids table” is mostly a concept in the heads of those who think they’re on the outside looking in. The cool kids don’t seem to know they are.

As Joe noted, Aussies tend to have their feet on the ground, and have a low tolerance for arrogance. I explained the “Tall Poppy Syndrome” to him: that Aussies tend to tear down anyone they see getting too far above the norm. But on second thought, I don’t think that’s what keeps our UX community grounded. We’re just lucky enough to have so many people who are genuinely friendly, don’t take themselves too seriously, and just want to make stuff that improves people’s lives and have a good time while they’re doing it.

That is worth a lot. Talk to most people about their jobs.

What Counts

Considering my recent Facebook cull, and compounded by reading “Big Deal” last weekend, I’ve obviously been thinking a lot about friends lately. And it may seem obvious, but that’s what really matters at conferences, and in anything we do: the people. It’s interesting to hear what people are working on and what an awesome process they followed to achieve the result, but the real value is inspiration, and that comes from the chats, usually in bars, where you find out why people really did what they did, what really turns them on and why they do what they do, in work and beyond. I can’t really say that I’m close with that many people in our community, but I’m surprised every time we get together by how many lovely people I’m lucky enough to call colleagues, and I’d really like to come to call more of them friends.

Sappy? Naive? Unprofessional? Well, this is a love letter.

I love you UX Australia.

Generally I’d try and summarise the great presos I saw at a conference, but that’s obviously not what was on my mind this time. Luckily, some smart people have done that for us:

I’d never spoken at anything bigger than a group of mates at the pub, and would’ve described myself as someone with a “please shoot me now” level of stage fright. But by the time I found out what was expected, it was too late to back out. I threw some slides together, Leisa and I met at a café on the morning of our preso and mashed our slides into one deck, and off we went. Leisa was already an old hand, which helped me immensely, I had my “shoot me” moment, got past it, and by all accounts I didn’t embarrass myself. It felt like it was over in seconds, the audience laughed and nodded when they were meant to, and there were even a few people waiting to ask me questions when I left the stage.

Despite being “shoot me” nervous every single time, I’ve spoken at three more conferences since then and plan to do it again in the future. Why would I do this to myself?

To understand it better than I could ever explain it, read “Big Deal: On Being Famous to Almost No One” by Robert Hoekman Jr.

Robert was far more ambitious than myself and wrote numerous articles, five books (before this one) and ended up becoming a bit of a rock star in the web design & user experience world. He was flown around the world regularly to stay in top hotels, attend expensive parties and get up on a stage for an hour and talk about his work. And it destroyed his life.

“Big Deal” isn’t a book about web design, user experience design, or how to get a conference speaking gig. It’s a brutally honest account of Robert’s quest for what he calls “micro-fame”: to live an exciting life in exciting places, to win a seat at the cool kids’ table, to be adulated and validated by a bunch of intelligent strangers, and what achieving it all cost him in the end.

Sounds pretty glum, right? Luckily Robert’s a talented author, so it’s a pleasure to read – I flew through it in about six hours. Beyond that, at the cost of his marriage and friends, he discovered plenty of wisdom we’d all do well to keep in mind. Despite the rise and fall which is most of the story, it’s an optimistic book about keeping your eye on the things that make life liveable, and being mindful of why you’re doing what you do. I learned a lot, and am reconsidering my decisions and plans because of it.

Regardless of which industry you work in, if you define yourself by what you do, you should read “Big Deal” and learn from Robert’s mistakes. Should our paths ever cross at some conference, I look forward to buying Mr. Hoekman a beer to thank him for his honesty and courage.

Big Deal is available for Kindle or iBooks.

This March I was in Hong Kong and while waiting in a train station gadget shop for a friend buying some iSomething or another, I noticed a chunky, angular pen, with what looked like a rubber tip. Hallelujah! It turned out to be the AluPen from Just Mobile, and it’s hands down the best iPad Stylus I’ve ever used. Grippy, with a tip that is just hard and soft enough, it feels much like using a thick pencil.

If you draw on the iPad, or just get sick of smudging your finger across all that lovely glass, you must try this thing.

So I got the shears out this afternoon and drastically trimmed the friend tree. Here’s how I made my decisions. Looking at each person on my list of friends, I asked myself these questions:

• Do I recognise this person’s name? If not, do I at least recognise their face? (I’m bad with names)
• Have I had anything to do with this person in the real world in the last 5 years? If not, have I had any meaningful online interaction with this person in the last year?
• Have I recently read anything that informed me, touched me or was somehow important to me written by this person?

If I couldn’t answer “yes” to all of these questions, I cut. Many of the people I unfriended (bizarre verb, eh?) fell into one of these categories:

• People I had an interesting chat with at a conference years ago, but haven’t interacted with since.
• Buddhists I had an interesting chat with or worked with at a meditation course years ago, but haven’t interacted with since.
• People I had brief contact with somewhere else online, but never met.
• People I used to work with and was never personally close to, with whom I’ve had no contact since the work relationship ended.
• People I don’t or barely know, who friended me to see stuff (usually photos) I post on Facebook.
• Someone I’ve never met at all and can’t remember how we became Facebook friends in the first place.

This all probably seems pretty cold. People’s feelings will surely be hurt. I’ve already received Facebook messages from people who’ve taken it personally. I’d apologise, but I reckon Facebook, and in a larger sense this clumsy new space we’re conducting our relationships in, are to blame.

The Facebook model of relationships, and the models of most, if not all, social networks are seriously flawed, for a number of reasons.

Just like “Friends” (without the sofas)

Apart from the broken insistence that everyone we have any kind of relationship with is a “friend”, Facebook in particular forces symmetrical relationships; that is, if we agree that we’re friends, you’re forced to see my stuff, and I must see yours as well. I speak at conferences, so you might be interested in my stuff, but there’s a good chance I don’t even know you. I’m a fan of your blog and am interested in your thoughts, but again, you understandably don’t have the slightest interest in me. I also post lots of photos on Facebook, especially from Buddhist events I’ve attended, so there are hundreds of Buddhists I’ve never met, many of whom don’t even speak my language, who want to see my pictures, but I don’t want to see their unreadable posts in Russian, Czech, Finnish, etc. But Facebook forces two-way sharing on us, and although they’ve given a slight nod to this problem, the interface they’ve given us to deal with it is clunky at best. Beyond a certain number of friends, we get an extremely high ratio of noise to signal, and miss the things we want to see as they drown in a deluge of irrelevance.

Things change

Other than all of that, real relationships change: people move, quit jobs, break up, drift apart. This happens naturally, and over time – I left Hamburg Germany 3 years ago, and naturally kept in touch with my close friends, but didn’t see the occasional acquaintances any more, simply because I wasn’t there. Nobody was snubbed, and nobody thought twice about it.

On Facebook, I’m always “there” and me and all 740 of my so called friends, no matter how emotionally or physically distant we are, are in each others’ faces every single day. In order to change this, I’m forced to make a a conscious decision and, if we translate the interface into natural language, say to them “I’m no longer your friend”. At least they don’t get a “Matt Balara just unfriended you” mail, but even without remembering when, how and where the hell we met, I can’t help but feel rude clicking a link that says “unfriend”. And considering how quickly I’ve received “refriend” requests (five within an hour), some people keep close track of this sort of thing and do indeed take it personally.

Balance

Very few natural relationships are in fact symmetrical. You might be a very open person who’ll tell anyone about your dog dying, your new job or the sexy lady you took home last night. The guy you just met in a bar may not want to hear it, and wouldn’t even dream of telling you what he had for dinner. An extremely asymmetrical relationship. It’s a real-world one though, so he’s got a pretty practical solution to his dilemma: he can get up and leave, and likely never see you again. Unless you got his name and can find him on Facebook.

In the real world, we all choose how much we share with who, and most of us get it more less right most of the time. There are unspoken cultural rules we absorb throughout our lives, and we shift gears smoothly and unconsciously as we change our social context: share less at work, more at the pub with old friends, even more at home with loved ones, and so on. On most social networks each of us is standing on a stage, yelling indiscriminately into a crowd of neighbours, current and ex lovers, colleagues, clients, acquaintances and complete strangers. And trying to target our messages at just the right group of people on Facebook is enough effort (not at all smooth or unconscious) that we rarely bother, and therefore rarely say anything that truly amounts to sharing.

Show me the money

This is not an accident. The last thing Facebook wants is for you to be able to quickly and easily manage what you see from, or say to, who – they earn their daily bread by providing other companies with a network that’ll quickly distribute their stuff far and wide – and their interface is quite smartly optimised for that, not for our ease of use or to reflect our actual relationships. I can’t blame them for that – Facebook is a company and exists to earn money – but it doesn’t mean that their interface doesn’t piss me off on a daily basis. I could argue with them for hours about whether or not pissing off users is a sensible long-term strategy, but that’s another story, and an argument I likely couldn’t win.

Alternatives?

Simply allowing asymmetrical relationships, i.e. I can see your stuff without you having to see mine, helps a lot. I love Twitter, for example. At the moment 1,304 people follow me, and I follow 444. I see what I want to see, and allow strangers to see what they want. If people I don’t know yet interact with me through an @MattBalara, I’ll often end up following them, and I’ve met people who’ve ended up being friends this way. Although the 140 character limit lends itself very well to link sharing, witty banter and light contact, it’s no replacement for the more in depth sharing and conversation that’s theoretically possible on something like Facebook.

Google+ looks like it goes a little way towards solving some of these problems, by emphasising context with Circles, and allowing asymmetrical relationships. I’ve got to admit I haven’t yet looked at it long enough to really get it, and I need another time intensive social network like I need a kick in the teeth, but after today’s big trimming, I’ll be having a much closer look, with a move away from Facebook in mind.

Now I know you

I now find it quite enjoyable to look through 352 names and know exactly who each of them is, where we met, and what we mean to each other. I’m surprised that I can remember that many people. We may not all be “friends” exactly, but I know they’re all people I want to keep in touch with, who mean something to me somehow, and who I look forward to hearing from.

To those who’re no longer in the list, please know that my intent wasn’t to insult you. I just couldn’t keep up, and had to draw the line somewhere.

It’s nothing personal. Which is the whole point really.

If you’ve never heard of Instagram (you can skip this paragraph if you have) it’s an iPhone app that allows you to make a photo, crop it to a square format – which makes sense considering the screen you view the photos on – apply one of eleven filters to it – to give it the look of a 70′s Polaroid for example – and post it to the ‘net with a location and a comment. You can find and follow other Instagram users, and what they post, you see, and your followers see your posts. You can also choose to simultaneously post your photos to Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Tumblr and send your location to Foursquare to check in.

At first I snapped a little and looked through my feed occasionally, but on my recent trip I really started to get into Instagram. Taking me back to my Polaroidiary days, I started shooting whatever I was experiencing wherever I was and sharing it with friends. In the spirit of “the best camera is the one that’s with you” (can anyone give me the original source of that quote?) through Instagram I learned to appreciate my iPhone’s camera and really enjoy making photos with it, and found it especially suited, due to it’s inconspicuousness, to making candid shots of the people around me. Instagram is shoot from the hip and share, and contrary to my first opinion, I found it a great way to easily share snapshots, with the option of posting the best of them to Flickr as desired. Instagram’s interface makes it quick and easy to do what it’s there for and I’ve really had fun with it.

There’s just one grain of sand in the Instagram ointment.

The small irritant is that Instagram pays at best lip service to the web as we usually see it, i.e. in a browser (but hopefully not IE). If you choose to post a photo to Twitter, it creates a short link, like this: http://instagr.am/p/e7NZ/. The page shown completely omits the location and comment of the photo, and there’s nothing else – no way to see any other photos, the photographer’s profile or followers – nothing but the photo. And, if you neglect to post your photos to Twitter, there’s no way at all to get a link to your photo after the fact – it can only be viewed in the Instagram app itself. My web sharing & grazing take place on at least 3 platforms depending on context, and I like to have a link for every bit of data I’m putting out there, to use when and as I see fit. This post is a perfect example: I can only share photos here that I either posted to Flickr or Twitter. I can’t link to all photos from a certain day or place, for example, nor can I send you to my Instagram page to see all of my photos.

Going on the principle of focussing on the essence, I can understand Instagram’s decision – it’s a mobile app, and the shooting, sharing & viewing are intended to happen on a mobile device, and that all works fine. I can understand it, but I’m a little irritated all the same. To be fair, it could also be a “core first” decision, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they beefed up the web view in the future. Any Instagrammies out there got any inside goss on this?

Side note: when I was made aware of the Instagram Terms of Service, which gave Instagram and other users the right to use your photos as they see fit, I was ready to drop the app completely. To their credit Instagram reacted quickly and corrected what was apparently a bit of a copy & paste error. Kudos to the Instagram team. You can see the updated ToS here.

Update: the Instagram guys let me know that you can grab the link to a photo by tapping the … button on the right under any photo you’re looking at.

What went wrong? Well, a few things. Firstly, most sessions at TEDx were completely dark except for the stage, and I was a bit too self-conscious to sit there with my iPad glowing in the dark & irritating everyone within metres. Secondly, although the iPad charcoal stylus is a nice idea and does work as it should, I quickly realised that I couldn’t write worth a damn with it, and sketchnotes are as much about the notes as they are the sketches. And lastly, I don’t have enough practice with Sketchbook Pro to make anything worth seeing at the speed that sketchnotes demand.

Good thing I took my trusty pen & Moleskine with me.

I can’t say I made any sketchnotes I’m super excited about (mood influences these things heavily, and I was pretty bummed about the iPad thing not working out) but I can say I enjoyed TEDx and look forward to attending again next year. After watching so many absolutely brain-bursting TED talks, I’d set my expectations pretty high, and a local TEDx could never have fulfilled them completely, but it was an interesting & enjoyable day. If I had one wish for next year it would be that speakers should speak more about big ideas they want to share, and less about products they want us to buy and use.

You can see all of my TEDx Sydney sketchnnotes here. I’ll be practicing with the iPad charcoal stylus & Sketchbook Pro, and with any luck I’ll post some sexy scribbles here soon.

Not long after publishing that post, I went back through the DIY video, trying to figure out what I’d done wrong. Towards the beginning (around 0:45), he says “it’s a good idea to make sure the foam you’re using is indeed conductive.” So I snipped off a chunk of foam, and tried drawing with it.

And it worked just as good as my finger.

Holding that little strip of foam, I realised I’d made myself an iPad Charcoal Stylus. I’d automatically gripped it as I’d learned to hold a piece of charcoal way back in art school (ahhhh, those were the days), as seen below.

So if you want the simplest iPad stylus the world’s ever seen, you’ll need:

• Some conductive foam (found at an electronics store if you’re not a nerd and don’t have any lying around)

Then follow these complicated instructions:

1. Cut a strip of conductive foam that’s as long as you want and as wide as the thickness of your foam (a square in cross-section).
2. Snip the corners off of one end so it’s more or less rounded.
3. Download Sketchbook Pro, sync your iPad and start drawing!

The foam’s quite rigid stuff, so it doesn’t flop around and is easy to hold. The charcoal grip is best suited to pretty rough drawing, but I’ll be experimenting with longer styluses better suited to a typical pen grip. My first results with the iPad Charcoal Stylus are still pretty rough, but I’m now confident that has more to do with learning & getting the most out of the software, and not a half-functional stylus.

So thanks to the wonders of conductive foam I’ll be snipping myself a few more charcoals and sketchnoting TEDx Sydney tomorrow on the iPad! I just hope the conference coffee’s worth drinking.

Sketchnoting is usually pretty simple: open sketchbook, click pen, get started. An iPad’s a computer, and they’re always more complicated than the anologue world, so this will need a little more preparation. Firstly, the software: there are a few drawing apps out there for the iPad, but the hands-down, knock-down-drag-out winner is Sketchbook Pro from Autodesk. At AU $9.99 it may seem pretty expensive for people used to piddly little iPhone apps that cost $1.99 and do next to nothing, but this is another beast entirely. It does layers à la Photoshop, creates smooth & soft lines and has a simple, smart interface. And the results are often stunning. So no contest there. You can also get the iPhone version, but the small screen always felt cramped to me – the lovely large iPad screen is perfect for it.

The only downside is the iPad wants a finger as input, but only monkeys draw with their fingers (ewwwwww!). Like any other more advanced primate, I want to draw with a pen. I ordered a Pogo Sketch, a pen designed to simulate a finger, but they’re back-ordered two weeks in Australia. Sigh. What to do? The inimitable Stepehan Cox saved the day and gave me a tip. Instead of me prattling on about it, watch it yourself:

So off I enthusiastically went to buy a cheap ballpoint, some copper wire and a chunk of conductive foam (did you even know there was such a thing?)

After following the instructions, I now have two very DIY looking iPad styluses.

I wound the copper wire a bit tighter than in the video, and taped it all down with some grippy black gaffer tape, and voila! They’re done!

Am I excited? Well, no actually, I’m not.

It’s possibly a side-effect of them being DIY, the thickness of the copper wire, how well wrapped in wire the bits of foam are or somethigng else I’m unaware of, but these things react sloooow, and sometimes not at all. I know it’s not an app problem, as Sketchbook Pro reacts with hardly any lag at all when I use my finger, but the lag these styluses introduce makes it almost impossible to draw anything, as you can see…

TEDx is tomorrow (not today as it says in my sketchnote, silly me), so it looks like I’ll be drawing with my finger after all. With any luck the Pogo Sketch will be much more responsive when it arrives in two weeks.

Maybe the ol’ trusty Moleskine & gel pen are the way to draw after all? I will take them along, just in case.

Photo by bernardoh

When I told the girl at the front door that I had an appointment, she checked her iPhone, found my name, and with a smile she sent me up to the second floor. There, another color coded girl (the “ushers” wear orange, the geniuses wear blue) checked her iPhone, asked me to take a seat and said it’d be just a minute. A simple but beautifully designed screen behind the geniuses showed me my own name, reassuring me that I was next in line. The smooth friendliness made it rather difficult for me to maintain my irate customer stance, but I set my jaw, determined to give the so-called genius a piece of my mind if he hesitated for even a second to replace my iPhone.

Luckily for Tom, my genius, he didn’t hesitate at all. In fact, upon seeing the missing button on the top of my phone, he said, “let’s get that replaced then, shall we?” I blinked, nodded, and two signatures and 3 minutes later I had a brand spanking new iPhone in my pocket. Tom gave me exactly what I’d been hoping for (but assuming wouldn’t happen) and was extremely friendly through out our brief transaction.

The Weakest Link

Our experience with the brands we love (and hate) is a chain of mini-experiences:

• Advertising links to…
• In store or web site purchase links to…
• The box links to…
• Unboxing links to…
• First time use links to…
• Learning & regular use links to…
• Customer service links to…
• Repair or replacement links to…
• Next purchase links to…

Any brand that can construct a solid chain from beginning to end, has a good chance of linking the end to the beginning and creating a permanent loop of consumption, something that Apple’s become pretty good at.

Expectations

Apple’s advertising, packaging, product design and so many other links in the chain have always been such good experiences for me, so I was shocked at the problems I encountered trying to book a genius bar appointment. If DELL or Microsoft gave me those kinds of problems, it would confirm my opinion of them and would therefore, in a way, be more bearable. But when Apple drops the ball I’m shocked. They’ve trained me to expect perfect experiences as my right as an Apple customer. Tom the genius restored my faith, but the hassle of booking an appointment to see him is now part of the chain in my memory.

Other than that, the repair or replacement link is the absolute worst part of the chain to disappoint a customer. If I have your broken product in hand, my expectation in that moment is that you suck. There’s no other point in the chain where it’s more important to prove the opposite.

A Simple Fix

Keeping all of this in mind, it’s not really a big challenge to improve the appointment booking process without changing anything but the copy. If Apple were to take this “piss of” screen:

And simply change the text:

…and give me the ability to jump straight to the page and check back – without clicking through six time-wasting screens over and over again – I’d be a very happy customer, and Apple’s otherwise perfect chain would be a perfect circle.