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.
The video series is almost at an end, and it’s approrpriate that we’ve finally gotten to Stowe. The seed of these interviews was a post I wrote a while back, which came from hearing Stowe and Leisa Reichelt both talk about designing sites. Neither of them are designers in the traditional “graphic design” sense, so there was a bit of a definition question there for me.
Stowe’s pretty well known online, but if you haven’t read his blog or seen him speak yet: he’s a consultant, blogger and thinker, so far over “the edge” of social tools that he often sounds a little crazy (and I mean that in the most admiring way). He writes about social tool developments on /message, and earns his money by helping companies think through (or design) their tools.
Funnily enough, a number of people at Reboot asked me, “what exactly does Stowe do?” Admittedly, I didn’t really know exactly either. He explains it pretty good in the interview.
And what’s Stowe’s take on design?
It’s the laying out of processes or models that represent some thing that’s going to be built or manufactured.
Unfortunately we got cut short by the rain. I’ll see if I can’t squeeze some more out of him next time we see each other.
I interviewed eleven smart people at Reboot10 in Copenhagen, Denmark, asking the same question: what’s design mean to you? This is the ninth video in the series. The last two, Kars Alfrink and Thomas Vander Wal, should be up tomorrow.
After seeing Cennydd’s presentation at Reboot 10, “Beauty in Web Design”, I knew I had to interview him as well. So in the ten minutes he waited on his taxi to the airport, we had a chat.
When I asked what design means to him, Cennydd said it was a “bloody hard” question, but judging by his definitive and certain answer, I reckon he was just playing coy.
Design is art within constraints. The primary one will be that it has to be functional, it has to do something. Design has to be for a purpose, it has to meet some kind of need, it has to achieve some kind of goal.
We then veered off into a discussion of canonical works of web design, and web design and beauty, which is maybe more interesting than my original question. I look forward to having another chat with Cennydd at the upcming dConstruct in September!
This is also my first test of viddler, which allows you to add a comment directly on the video itself. If you’ve got something to say, roll over the playback head on the timeline and then click the green + that appears.
I interviewed eleven smart people at Reboot10 in Copenhagen, Denmark, asking the same question: what’s design mean to you? There are currently eight videos in the series, and more coming soon. Next up is Stowe Boyd.
On the first day at Reboot 10, rumours started circulating that, although he was nowhere to be seen on the schedule, Howard Rheingold would be delivering a talk. I read his books “Virtual Reality” in uni, and “The Virtual Community” when it came out, and I have to say they both had quite a bit to do with me becoming what I am today. So I screwed up my courage and almost (but hopefully not quite) embarrassed myself with the whole gushing fanboi schtick, and had a chat with him after his lecture. He was of course as friendly and open as you’d expect, and happily agreed to this interview.
At work I jokingly call myself the “Internet Opa” (Opa is “grandpa” in German), simply because I’m older than most of my colleagues and I’ve been online longer than most. Howard’s the real Internet Opa if ever there was one. Summing up Howard Rheingold in a sentence is beyond me, but right now he describes himself as a writer who founded the Social Media Classroom, an online educational tool to help students learn to use social media. He just announced that they’re taking on the first students.
A little bit of Howard’s take on design:
In the broad sense it means thinking about what the function or purpose of things or processes are, and translating that into action.
I asked eleven smart people what design means to them at Reboot10 in Copenhagen, Denmark. There are currently seven videos in the series, with more coming soon. Next up is Cenydd Bowles.
