Designing for the Digital Age Book Review

Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered Products and Services serves as an excellent guide and reference for new and experienced human centered design practitioners. Kim Goodwin (VP of Design @ Cooper.com) does a great job translating her goal-oriented design processes into clear and understandable terms. Human/user centered design books can easily be littered with heavy jargon or unintelligible references that make it difficult or impossible to understand or practice. Goodwin makes a conscious effort to explain and visualize many of the concepts introduced in each chapter and keeps the research lingo within reason. For example, in Chapter 12: Defining Requirements, Goodwin dispels what requirements aren't (i.e. features or specifications) and promptly outlines what is needed to generate effective requirements (i.e. data needs, functional needs, product / service qualities, constraints). In addition, Goodwin's writing style guarantees a cognitive learning experience with most readers by providing multiple exercises and scenarios that engage and evoke a desire for comprehension. The photography, diagrams, and charting are plentiful and supplement the subject matter effectively also.

I believe that this book is easily a pylon supporting the ever-swelling weight of UCD with its hoard of overlapping design disciplines. I recommend it to anyone interested in design or the design process...

Table of Contents:

Getting Started
     Chapter 1: Goal-Directed Product and Service Design
     Chapter 2: Assembling the Team
     Chapter 3: Project Planning
Research
     Chapter 4: Research Fundamentals
     Chapter 5: Understanding the Business
     Chapter 6: Planning User Research
Chapter 7: Understanding Potential Users and Customers
     Chapter 8: Example Interview
     Chapter 9: Other Sources of Information and Inspiration
Modeling
     Chapter 10: Making Sense of Your Data: Modeling
     Chapter 11: Personas
Requirements
     Chapter 12: Defining Requirements
     Chapter 13: Putting It All Together: The User and Domain Analysis
Framework
     Chapter 14: Framework Definition: Visualizing Solutions
     Chapter 15: Principles and Patterns for Framework Design
     Chapter 16: Designing the Form Factor and Interaction Framework
     Chapter 17: Principles and Patterns in Design Language
     Chapter 18: Developing the Design Language
     Chapter 19: Communicating the Framework and Design Language
Detailed Design
     Chapter 20: Detailed Design: Making Your Ideas Real
     Chapter 21: Detailed Design Principles and Patterns
     Chapter 22: Detailed Design Process and Practices
     Chapter 23: Evaluating Your Design
     Chapter 24: Communicating Detailed Design
Ensuring Success
     Chapter 25: Supporting Implementation and Launch
     Chapter 26: Improving Design Capabilities in Individuals and Organizations

See Your (Social) Influence and Grow It

Back in the old days of the web, designers and developers such as myself used metadata to place keywords on websites in order for them to be searchable through Google, Ask.com, and others. The effectiveness of those keywords was measured in the number of organic searches that resulted in a unique site visit. The measure of a person / persona in a social networking atmosphere is not as easy to determine as there is no standard unit for ‘influence’ on the web. Facebook, Twitter, and flickr all provide different ways to communicate with other members, but how do you know if your messages are influential within your local group or in your global network?
I’d like to introduce a concept for measuring social ‘influence’ and increasing it over several networks. I call it the Total external social radius, or (T) chart. A person / persona is one voice on the Internet among a planet filled with tweets, chats, and IMs. When you tweet / post / comment / chat, who hears you? Can you be heard over the much influential people on the web and the remaining white noise? If you have something you want others to know, ideally, you want as many people to be aware of what is being communicated as technologically possible.
Think of the number of each social network as a circular layer around your persona. Imagine the radius of each layer as the total number of external personas that you have been able to capture. For example, Facebook could simply be the ‘number of friends’, Twitter would be your ‘followers’, and flickr could be images tagged as ‘favorite’. The sum of the aforementioned groups could be called the Total external social radius (T) and then you can visualize how much of an ‘influence’ one has. Naturally, not all of the layers would have the same radius, but you get the idea.
Another analogy could be with sound. Think of your radius in terms of sound. In Music, p stands for piano (soft), and ppp represents extremely soft. When a persona has a low radius, that means you are soft relative to the rest of the web. An increase in radius would mean that a persona is forte (loud) and in this case, fff represents extreme loudness. Maybe my tag could be mf (mezzo forte) which means moderately loud. Who knows...
So how do you grow your radius? Google Analytics provides tips on how to use their keyword and ‘Insight for Search’ tools to expand your keyword reach. You can do the same in each respective social network:
Facebook: Join networks and add ‘tags’ to your profile. The more you join, the better...
Twitter: Use #hashtags and get prominent tweeters to re-tweet (RT) your comments, links, and notes. Don't know what they are? Learn about #hashtags here...
flickr: Tag your images using the most prominently searched keywords
Perhaps an API will appear one day which would let you display your web influence. Imagine your power...Would you use it? Do you think others would adopt it?
Real: influence, keywords, metadata, sound
Imagined: talking softly in a loud room and being heard

How the ‘Recession’ helped me narrow my goals

When I hear people talk of the ‘pursuit of the American Dream’, one words comes to mind: Binge. Binge technology, binge entertainment, binge information, binge education. Anyone anywhere can do anything they want anytime. So, like most people, instead of trying to do anything, I tried to do everything all at once. Doing everything was my goal....Unfortunately, that is precisely where my self-inflicted confusion / delusion began.

I’ve always been fascinated with technology, mainly because of the creation and inspiration it provides. Once second a thought is in your head and given enough time, a person could put their thoughts onto a screen in the form of a picture, a program, or a blog. A person can study college level interaction design courses online and be as brilliant as a college graduate...for free. Thanks to open source, anyone can design / program websites and online apps without paying for a single byte of software. How cool was that!

It wasn’t until the recession landed right on top of me,us, everybody that I started to take note of the things I really enjoyed doing. I discovered that I have a strong desire to write and use more artistic outlets. Now that I have lots of free time, thanks to client cutbacks as well as a lower cash flow for dabbling in new technologies (i.e. Adobe CS4 is still too expensive..even after I save $200 by upgrading before Feb. 28th.), I am taking the time to narrow my career goals because I realized something very important: “Technology enables, but it also disables.”


Technology has enabled me to overextend myself with freelance projects and clouded my judgement by tricking me into thinking I want things that I really don’t want or need. Now that things have slowed a bit, I’ve managed to take control over what I want to do professionally and I am much happier for it...


Thank you recession for putting things into perspective and teaching me that milk and honey are not the most important pursuits. Thank you Leo Babuta for writing The Power of Less and making sure that I set limits and manage my expectations. Thanks Gretchen Rubin for making The Happiness Project. Thank you Shannon for putting up with my folly and my flaws while I figure out what it is that I am doing :)

Real: The power of less

Imagined: Delusions of grandeur

iPhone SDK: Application Development Book Review

When I first started learning to develop iPhone Apps, I went and bought a copy of Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK, mainly because it was the only book available that seemed promising in January 2009....

Then, I found the iPhone SDK: Application Development book and it contains details of ALL of the user interactions that I've been trying to develop on my own.

The Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK book is great for beginners to get up to speed on the iPhone's functionality, but it lacks the basic components needed to complete the user experience that people have come to expect from most iPhone Apps. I was constantly soliciting help from other iPhone developers on Twitter for help with things like the Page Flick interaction because it wasn't written up in this book. It has lots of pictures of the iPhone sample programs running in the screen view, but this just means there is less room for explanations that could lead to something you or I can customize. This book, in my opinion, won't be enough to build a production ready program that will garner high sales in the iTunes App Store by itself...

Bottom Line: Jonathan Zdziarski's iPhone SDK book provides fully detailed instructions to intermediate XCode programmers on how to construct and embed almost all of the iPhone's notable UI features: Date/Time Pickers, Progress / Activity Indicators, Proximity Sensors, Cover Flow, and the Movie Player Controllers to name a few. The book even covers network connectivity (CFNetwork) which is quintessential for data driven applications. The prospect of using rich media components such as video and page controls means that others will be adding these features to many iPhone Apps in the future and soon demand for those items will be commonplace. There aren't a lot of pictures of sample apps running, but that's where the examples come in and you can customize the code however you want. My bet is on the book that has sections dedicated to user experiences that most iPhone users will pay money to download. Plus, most software companies won't hesitate to pay top dollar for people who can actually build Cover Flow into their software either...

Real: iPhone mastery, charging high hourly rates

Imagined: Reasons not to design / program for the iPhone

Do Good Design Book Review

I’ve had the chance to read quite a few books that provide guidance and examples of how to become a better professional designer. After reading David Berman’s most book Do Good Design, I find myself to be enlightened and newly aware of the social influence and ethical accountability of design in every form (i.e. visual, interactive, information).

David states that technology has turned the world into designers via personalized interfaces, computers, and cell phones which segues into the his core thoughts:

• Designers have more power than they realize


• The largest threat to humanity’s future just may be the consumption of more than necessary


• Human civilization...can not afford one more major global goof


• The same design that fuels mass overconsumption also holds the power to repair the world


• We live in an unprecedented technological age where we can each reach a larger legacy by propagating our best ideas than by propagating our chromosomes


• Designers can be a model for other professions for identifying ones’ sphere of influence, and then embrace the responsibility that accompanies the power to help repair the world


• Don’t just do good design, do good

While I won’t list all of the book’s chapters (Amazon is pretty good at providing TOC links), I’ll highlight a memorable quote from each major section:

The Creative Brief: Disarming Weapons of Mass Deception

Designers can use their professional power, persuasive skills, and wisdom to help distribute ideas the world really needs

The Design Solution: Convenient Truths
Imagine again a society’s potential where the largest signs, the cleverest ads, the most prominent messages promote healthy behaviors....We can choose it now.

The Do Good Pledge
Immediacy - The time to commit is now
Ethics - I will be true to my profession
Principles - I will be true to myself
Effort - I will spend at least 10 percent of my professional time helping repair the world

I don’t think I ever took notice of the magnitude of ads / visual lies that were around me before I read David’s book. I HIGHLY recommend this book and I hope that once people read it, we can start showing the truth altogether.

Real: Visual lies, The power to change things, Our accountability, Overconsumption

Imagined: The next form of global communication will be company branded logos

Stop Lying...

Now more than ever, more people go online and look for jobs.Many companies are so desperate to get more work and skills out of the people they do hire, the job of requirements are turning into flat out lies, which in turn make job listings 'unusable'. We all know that hiring managers sometimes get overzealous when they post an opening or contract role. Sometimes hiring companies honestly don't know what an interaction designer does outside of what other job listings have stated, at which point someone 'cuts and pastes' other companies skills into their own opening descriptions. In extreme cases, the job title is so misleading from the responsibilities of the job, it seems like an federal enforcement agency should step in. Example:

Title:Information Architect
Responsibilities: Wireframes, prototypes, Linux server administration and installation, Java and WebSphere
Really? I guess you could say that many companies want to fill a server admin role and an IA role....but with the same person!?

Point 1: We (working class) need an honest assessment of the skills needed today AND tomorrow so we can compare expectations. And by expectations, I mean salary / equipment needs / managerial support. Lying is not good design...

Bad Example: Not too long ago, a person I know was hired to do visual and web design work for a small company. The job requirements were very simple: Adobe CS3, HTML, CSS, and Ajax, which are all typical of a front-end presentation level role. Within two days, the job somehow morphed into a full-fledged certified .NET C# Developer position (SQL included). The company's attempt at sponsored training: Borders. Bad Design? Yes, if you consider the job said 'GUI Designer'.

Good Example: Alan Cooper is a prominent author and founder of his own consulting company. On his Careers section, not only does he 'define' each job category, job exercises are present to help prospects determine where they fall in the companies hierarchy, if at all. Here is a link to an example for the interaction design exercise. Good Design? Yes. Why? I now know that I would not be a good communication designer for Cooper, but I would be a great interaction designer.

Point 2: Hiring Managers and Recruiters must stop pushing expectations apart from one another, just in favor of pacifying all parties until after the contract is signed. For the sake of all disciplines, its not good design to be a Talent Pimp...

Real: Truth and honesty can make many things usable, including software and designs

Imagined: Lying, deception, talent pimping