The Language of Things

Quick Facts
Size: 208 pages (B&W photography)
5 Chapters:
    1) Language
    2) Design and its Archetypes
    3) Luxury
    4) Fashion
    5) Art
Where to buy: Amazon.com

Every now and again, I buy a book to try to understand the different forms of design and the mystique that draws me to it. My exploration led me to The Language of Things by Deyan Sudjic. To put it simply, it is one of the most comprehensible, intelligent, and clever books I’ve read in a long time. Here is why...

First, Sudjic has an non-American perspective which is refreshing and presents a style devoid of capitalistic or consumerist undertones. Sudjic’s statements are often quick and to the point and his citations from the works of prestigious designers and architects reinforce his perspectives. Sudjic analogizes consumerism to product pornography and device fetishism. Later, he cites John Berger’s Ways to Seeing to support his assessment. Berger states: “It is important...not to confuse publicity (of a product) with the pleasure or benefits to be enjoyed from the thing it advertises”. Sudjic identifies several attributes of design that seem to be overlooked or forgotten in modern products such as consistency (ex. black laptops paired with white power cords), redundancy, and a lack of durability. Sudjic states that “the allure of a product is created and sold on the basis of a look that doesn’t survive physical contact”. In addition, Sudjic states that the product cycle of each new version of a device is too quick to ever foster a meaningful and lasting owner/object relationship.

Second, Sudjic does a great job of transposing design into commonly available forms and communicates what design is not. According to Sudjic, a designer’s goal is to modify an existing archetype, such as a lamp or chair, which tells exactly what it does and what the user needs to make it work. In addition, Sudjic highlights playfulness as an archetype to encourage design as an engagement of all the users senses, not just the ‘look and feel’. Sudjic switches to define design within luxury as those products that represent stability, quality, scarcity, and communicate ‘coded social signals of privileges’. Sudjic identifies design in fashion by describing the processes, presentations (ex. shows, models, parties, etc.), and the use of uniforms to evoke an emotional response from viewers. I can say that Sudjic is absolutely correct because the websites of designers such as Nubbytwiglet.com, which I frequent often to stay inspired and interested in design and / or fashion, often are designed to evoke an emotional response via comments and praise in the artistry that appears there. When contrasting art and design, Sudjic believes that design is forever burdened with utility and problem solving, while art is driven by the intangible and can result in uselessness.

References to iconic designers and architects such as Earnest Elmo Colkins (Consumer Engineering), Philippe Starck, Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class, Josef Hoffman, and Adolf Loos' Ornament and Crime appear frequently throughout the text.

Final thought: Go get the book! I finished this in one day because I was enamored with it’s brevity and precise thoughts. Sudjic’s thoughts are clear and once you’ve completed this book, perhaps your thinking of what design is and isn’t will be clear too..

An audio interview with Deyan Sudjic as he discusses The Language of Things is available through The Sound of Young America. Click here to listen or download it (12.4 MB .mp3 format)

iPhone Cool Projects Review

Quick Facts: 240 pages
Source Code: 184.98 Kb (.zip file)
Where to buy: Buy from Amazon.com or eBook from Apress Buy eBook

iPhone Cool Projects is a very broad and deep iPhone development composition. The book is broken into 7 chapters:
CHAPTER 1 - Designing a Simple, Frenzic-StylePuzzleGame
CHAPTER 2 - Mike Ash’s Deep Dive Into Peer-to-Peer Networking
CHAPTER 3 - Doing Several Things at Once: Performance Enhancements with Threading
CHAPTER 4 - All Fingers and Thumbs: Multitouch Interface Design andImplementation
CHAPTER 5 - Physics, Sprites, and Animation with the cocos2d-iPhone Framework
CHAPTER 6 - Serious Streaming Audio the Pandora Radio Way
CHAPTER 7 - Going the Routesy Way with Core Location, XML, and SQLite

For new iPhone developers, Apress provides the source code for each chapter’s project to help those of us that like to learn by seeing the code work, and only then decomposing it into various pieces for learning purposes.

Without going into gross detail, I mainly bought the book to gain some insight into threading, multitouch interface design, audio streaming. Chapter 3 (Threading) opens by describing the taxonomy of threading and several keywords such as thread, process, multitasking, synchronization, deadlock, etc. After the description, the chapter walks you through the steps AND color graphics of each of the XCode screens. There are LOTS of diagrams to explain the setup and the arrangement of threads in the example project as well. In the past, when books have very intense globs of code, there is something lost when attempting to explain each line. iPhone Cool Projects actually does a decent job of walking through the connections to UIControl objects and completing tasks such as an event processing loop or implementing a critical section. Chapter 4 (Multitouch Interface Design and Implementation) explores many concepts and breaks mutilt-touch gesturing into 2 tasks:
- Arrange for touch messages to get routed to your code (Event handling: touchesBegan, touchesMoved, touchesEnded, touchCancelled)
- Understand the information passed to you (gesture recognition: tap, double-tap, finger scroll, swipe, pink/unpinch, two-finger scroll)
- Track and parse gestures from that information


Many of these sorts of topics are available via the Apple Developer Connection, but it helps to have additional context and perspectives on how to implement these types of methodologies for multiple situations and architectures.

If you are a skeptic and want to see more before committing to purchasing this book, Apress has generously provided a sample chapter (Chapter 5) to entice you to buy.

Try it out!

A Project Guide to UX Design Book Review

A Project Guide to UX Design is a book that defines the micro and macroscopic views of user experience design and its role in the project life cycle. Russ and Carolyn do a great job of reiterating what the core of user experience design is as well as identifying the different roles that utilize it. The book covers a lot of ground and takes a transcendental approach of showing the underlying purpose for each role in order to promote a synthetic comprehension of user experience design as opposed to shallow memorization.

The main target audience of the book are Information Architects, Interaction Designers, User Researchers, and other project stakeholders (Business Analysts, Content Strategists, Copywriters, Visual Designers, and Front-end Developers).

To make the contents more inviting, I've created an enclosing outline to provide abstract classifications for several groups of chapters. Each number represents the number of pages in each chapter:

+ Introduction
- Chapter 1: The Tao of UXD (8)
- Chapter 2: The Project Ecosystem (29)

+ Business Perspective
- Chapter 3: Proposals for Consultants and Freelancers (15)
- Chapter 4: Project Objectives and Approach (10)
- Chapter 5: Business Requirements (15)

+ Research
- Chapter 6: User Research (26)
- Chapter 7: Personas (13)
- Chapter 8: User Experience Design and SEO (17)

+ Information Architecture / Interaction Design
- Chapter 9: Transition from Defining to Designing (18)
- Chapter 10: Site Maps and Task Flows (17)
- Chapter 11: Wireframes and Annotations (17)
- Chapter 12: Prototyping (15)
- Chapter 13: Design testing with Users (25)
- Chapter 14: Transition: From Design to Development and Beyond (10)

The book also contains frequent references to books, online resources, and user experience groups and authors throughout as opposed to an Appendix or a 'For further reading' section nested in the back. This helps to drive home the thoughts as you read them, rather than 'when you are finished'.

As an aspiring user experience professional, I do believe that this book is worth owning, reading, and referencing as a compass to create effective user experience in any project setting.

Information Architecture Book Review

A lot of people think they know exactly Information Architecture is, but the truth is that a lot of people don’t know and they are not even aware that they don’t know (aka second level incompetence).

To make sure I wasn’t a member of the later group, I recently read Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web (2nd Edition) by Christina Wodtke and Austin Govella.

Wodkte and Govella do a good job in outlining their definition of the basic principles of IA:
- Design for Wayfinding
- Set expectations and provide feedback
- Design ergonomically
- Be consistent / consider standards
- Provide error support (Prevent, Protect, and Inform)
- Rely on Recognition rather than on recall
- Provide for people of varying skill levels
- Provide contextual help and documentation

While the illustrations that drive home the subject matter can be a little clipart-ish at times, the concepts are presented in a non-technical and non-jargon based way. Each topic is explained clearly using an outline / numbered bullet format to ensure that each section can be clearly understood independently and collectively. Items such as ‘Who are the users?’ may seem trivial at first, but imagine how many interpretations of ‘The users are...’ exists within an organization and the problems that arise when the user begins to morph throughout the product lifecycle to satisfy everyone's argument. Wodtke and Govella decompose several non-obvious items such as persona creation and navigational types (structural, associative, and utility) into chunks that are comprehensible (Hrair Limit). I was genuinely surprised to find a section for Social Architecture which exposed me to topics such as Kurt Lewin’s formula for understanding human behavior and the elements of social architecture: identity + elements, relationships + elements, and activity + elements.

The book can be read from cover to cover, if time permits. However, most of the world will probably use this book as a reference guide for completing IA related tasks as they arise. I would strongly recommend that all aspiring and current IAs give the book a once over to spawn new thoughts about the discipline or to renew the interest in keeping things usable and findable.

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

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