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)

Balsamiq Mockups Giveaway

Sometimes there is a need for really good software tools to help visualize a concept. Balsamiq Mockups is easily one of the best wire framing and conceptual drawing tools available. Equipped with a vast UI Library that includes controls for websites, iPhone screens, and software user interfaces, it’s a must have for those who want to plan and design with maximum benefit and minimum cost.

Now, for the good news....
Balsamiq has allowed me to give away a copy of Mockups to one lucky individual. All you have to do get in on the action is:

1) Follow me on Twitter (@compoundj)
2) Leave a comment below with your Twitter username
3) Tell me how your life can be easier with Mockups

The winner will be announced @ 11:59 p.m. EST on May 22nd, 2009. Feel free to retweet and download the trial version of Mockups so you can get some practice in. You may be surprised what you are able to do with it. Good Luck!

Update: Congratulations to @sheatsb! Thanks to everyone that participated in this giveaway. Stay tuned for prizes and discussions coming up soon...

Expertise is overused. Try transdisciplinarity

Recently, I was referred to as an ‘expert’ in regards to my work on an upcoming iPhone application where I’m the lead architect (Don’t worry. I promise to not drown you in technobabble on this post). Upon hearing this, I was instantly uncomfortable and I felt compelled to correct the obvious error of judgment, if for nothing more than the sake of clarity rather than modesty. In any event, it made me think: “What do people really think an expert is? Do a few rudimentary accomplishments warrant ‘master’ or even ‘wizard’ level notoriety?” While I find several technologies and programming languages to be easy to use (Adobe Creative Suite, Actionscript, HTML, AJAX, sometimes Objective-C), I find myself realizing how little I know. The truth is, that I’m not an expert at all. I am able to pick up skills quickly and I’m able to use what I’ve learned over time effectively in different situations, but I would never say I’m an expert. To say that one is an expert implies that some threshold of knowledge has been reached or surpassed, and therein lies the problem. What happens next? Is there nothing left to learn? How many experts are self-judged and consequentially self-approved?

My personal solution: Stop trying to be an expert and become a transdisciplinarian. How do I do that? I chose to study the unions between and beyond scientific disciplines and humanities. As a designer and developer, I can see how proficiency in several related fields can improve the quality of my work and my dexterity overall. For example, I can infer what ‘good’ design is if I have design research which identifies visual cues, for example, that appear comprehensible by my target audience (See Gestalt Perception). Researchers such as Sam Ladner provide scientific and empirical evidence in an effort to influence the design of future products, but often this valuable quantitative and qualitative analysis is not used in the design process, if at all. (Recent post by Sam Ladner: Context, Time, and technology, Why do ethnography?) .

Another way of advocating transdisciplinarity is to consider the current U.S. economic situation. Millions of skilled workers, which include even more ‘experts’, are unemployed. In fact, comScore recently released a news brief stating online search behavior on search terms such as “unemployment”,”coupons”, and “bankruptcy” have increased year over year by 206%, 161%, and 156% respectively (comScore: Searches Using Term ‘Unemployment’ in December Triples versus Year Ago). Can anyone really afford to have a myopic view of what the job market considers to be valuable right now?


To help me change my thinking, I read a book entitled Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware by Andy Hunt which does an excellent job describing the the way our minds learn and think by introducing concepts such as the Dreyfus Model of skill acquisition. Hunt references second-order incompetence, which is loosely described as the condition of being unskilled and unaware of the deficiency, which may be a source of many self-proclaimed experts. I recommend the book, but the overall message is to try to become more holistic with our views of proficiency. A broader view of what your / our interests may help to make people more valuable today and in the future (circa end of the recession).

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