A Project Guide to UX Design

I currently manage a wonderful group of user experience designers at Manifest Digital. Several of our group were relatively new to real world project work upon joining the company, coming from graduate classes in Human Computer Interaction or Interaction Design. We asked them what it was like to go from the classroom to a project situation.

We got a strong message back. College courses had prepared them with the tools and frameworks for applying user-centered design processes, but hadn't really prepared them for the many dynamics they would encounter on the projects themselves. The many different roles on projects - the challenges and, sometimes, frustrations of having to make a case for UCD to a variety of different people who had their own needs and motivations - the occasional frustrations of stops, starts, and miscommunication - all these things had a much greater impact on their daily lives than their education had led them to believe.

Russ Unger and I decided to write a book to help bridge this gap in classroom learning and learning in the project field. It's called A Project Guide to UX Design, and we hope it helps both students in HCI related fields who are getting into project work, and those already working on projects who would like to learn more about the basic UXD toolset.

Learn more about the book here:
http://tinyurl.com/84zwa8

If you read it, let us know what you think! You can also get updates and a bonus sample chapter by visiting the book's website here:
http://www.projectuxd.com

Long time no see

It's hard for me to believe it's been so long since my last post - coming on 3 years. I was such an early adopter (or so it felt like at the time) blogging in 2003 and just when the biggest wave hit, I walked away. Why is that?

Well, they say that for every social networking situation, you have the contributors and you have the lurkers. Lurkers observe and appreciate the dynamic... maybe they throw the occasional comment in like dipping their toes into the pool. But they don't jump all the way in. Meanwhile there are so many folks out there who are doing laps and throwing pool parties.

Part of me shared in the luddite cynicism of the poolsiders. Why would anyone care about relatively random thoughts shared by a stranger? It took me a long time to "get it" with Twitter too - something that many in the field of user experience take as the leading channel for networking. It is a great tool, but we can't lose sight of the fact that the great majority of the users we design for still don't understand or use Twitter - and sometimes even scoff at it. We can say they're behind the times, but so were the people who weren't using 8-tracks.

We don't know for sure how long blogs and micro-blogs are going to be so popular. I'm guessing that we'll reach that saturation point sometime and long for the days of fewer choices or flock to aggregators. In the meantime, there's a giddiness to seeing the pure overwhelming breadth of opinion and thought leadership available so easily now, and the intimacy (or at least the appearance of intimacy) with some amazing people. Some aspect of that will never go away, but the pendulum is going to swing towards some consolidation at some point, and I'll be very interested to see what form that takes.

In the meantime, I'm finally jumping into that pool. Ready for a swim?

Why doesn’t Chicago get destroyed by cosmic rays?

Chicago is a great city. We have all the benefits of a large metropolis area without the stereotyped ego of New York or superficiality of Los Angeles. We have huge parks with winding bike paths… we have world-renowned architecture with soaring skyscrapers… plenty of pedestrians and cars active at any time of night… and of course, an amazing skyline. Not to mention the salt-of-the-earth Midwestern people that are the everymen and –women of the US (part of the reason newscasters all have Midwestern accents). So, why are we never the target of cinematic invading aliens or natural disasters?

I first noticed the trend with Independence Day. Amazing shots of Washington DC, New York, and LA getting the alien treatment. Ok, that’s one movie… of course you’d want to see the peril of the president, and our biggest city in panic, and LA… well, at least that was covered by the plot of the nearby air base and the strip club. I felt a twinge when Chicago was mentioned only halfway through the movie in the same breath as a couple of other smaller cities like Cincinnati I believe – instead of footage, just a footnote.

Envy mounted with Volcano (lava/LA), Deep Impact (tidal wave/New York), The Core (cosmic rays/San Francisco), The Day After Tomorrow (tornados/LA, flood-freeze/New York), and War of the Worlds (aliens/pretty much everything, with no mention of Chicago AFAIK).

What gives? Our legendary skyline would be so much fun to see destroyed in a blockbuster movie. Picture a UFO creeping over Lake Michigan during the Outdoor Film Festival, or Taste of Chicago. And a slimy bug-eyed Martian would look menacing and creepy reflected in the Bean, approaching some couple who are admiring their multiplied images.

Vince Vaughn, please see what you can do.

When will my superpowers manifest themselves?

When I was just a bean in my mother’s belly, she decided one day that the oven really needed cleaning. Imagine her shock when she felt a little electrical current going through her hand as she rubbed the wet cloth along the live metal. She was worried about my health, but I was fine in that regard. However, between that and the fact that we grew up with power lines in our backyard, I’ve been patiently waiting lo these many years for my superpowers to manifest themselves.

I thought they would show up sometime around puberty, perhaps appearing in a Carrie-like holocaust at the Junior High dance. But aside from the power of the rhythm that slowly moves awkward kids from complete standstill, to bounce, to full-out lip over-biting elbows-and-knees cracklin’ motion, nothing magical occurred.

Having passed the usual milestones of age – 18, 21, and recently 30 – I’m starting to think they’ll come along too late for me to enjoy them fully. Although in a few years, the right ones could really make my pending midlife crisis memorable.

Ah, so you ask that favorite ice-breaker question… if I were a superhero, which one would I be? Glad you asked. I would be Jayna of the Wonder Twins. She’s the one who got to be any animal she wanted. I could spy on others by literally being a fly on the wall – or save on scuba rentals by turning into a dolphin – or scare some kids by turning into a shark – or turn into an eagle and fly off laughing, if eagles laugh. Many of the perks of being a superhero are represented by Jayna’s powers.

And what did her brother Zan get? The ability to turn into some form of ice, like an ice saw or an ice wrench or a bucket of water. It’s not hard to see who got the short end of that ice stick. My powers would include not needing to hang around with him anymore. Like a good detergent, I'd be totally self-activating.

Anyway, aside from a better-than-average ability to control dice and an uncanny knack for determining the done-ness of grilling meat, nothing’s shown up yet. But in 20 years, watch out. Hot Flash would be a great name for a superhero or villain. And I bet it hasn’t been taken yet.

What kind of thing wants you to eat it?!

I just saw Slither this past weekend. Woo hoo! It was so much fun. Favorite subtlety - the "No Profanity" sign in the police office when the sheriff and mayor were swearin' up a storm. Only complaint: needed more cowbell. Fillion-shaped cowbell. He was great, just not in it enough. Oh, and the part with the grenade at the end was worth the price of the ticket right there!

If you like clever-campy sci-fi/horror kinds of movies like Shaun of the Dead or Tremors, I recommend you go see it (I'd rate it below the former but above the latter). This kind of genre is best in the movie theater with people jumping out of their seats next to you.

Added bonus - our posse ended being the exact same one that attended Fangoria. Thanks, Gwen and Chris, for being my b-movie buddies.

Holding Oscar but flirting with George

Although my brother and I host an Oscar party every year (this was #5) there are only 3 things that come to mind to say about this one:

1. CONGRATULATIONS CORINNE! Corinne Marrinan, sister of my good friend Amy Davidson, won an Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject for "A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin." She looked gorgeous and graceful as she accepted the Oscar and thanked her family, including Amy, who joined her at the ceremony and was shown in the audience. She also thanked the Academy for seating her next to George Clooney at the nominees luncheon. Here's the clip of her acceptance speech.
   
2. Jon Stewart did a respectable job but is definitely more at home in New York than LA. His beginning was a bit painful for me as a dedicated Daily Show fan - he's so good at avoiding the "I'm reading from a teleprompter" stare on the show, but for the Oscar opener he was so deliberate and careful that you could picture every word scrolling and you could almost see the sweat drops popping on him like a Speedracer cartoon. He did find his stride quickly though (the video about how ungay the old Hollywood cowboys really were must have helped - that was the funniest thing all night). I hope he does host it again, although my favorite is still Steve Martin. One of the reasons they asked J Stew is because they're trying to up the viewership by appealing to a younger audience. How about you up the viewership by giving us more time to view these movies!!! It's getting ridiculous having the movies released at 11:59:59pm on December 31st to a 5 person audience to get it in as late as possible and still qualify. It's harder and harder to get excited about the nominees with no time to see all of them ahead of time. I get it, you make more money because the movie is in the theater during hype-time. But no one I talked to was able to see more than 1 or 2 of the movies ahead of time, which kind of kills the suspense.
   
3. Last note: I kept waiting for Charlize Theron's killer blob of a bow to suck her head off of her neck. This was the only major fashion mistake I noticed as I was hosting, but luckily I have the lovely ladies at Go Fug Yourself to help me catch up on the rest. My favorite post is the one they did about Sharon Stone and Lindsay Lohan. It just sparkles with catty goodness. Enjoy!

Thank you for the reality check, killer clownlady

Well, a lot going on in the past couple of weeks (Fangoria, Oscars, St. Pat's), so here's part 1 of whatever on the highlights!

Fangoria

My first experience with a fan convention left me bemused and a bit disappointed. Quite frankly, I expected a lot more freaky people. Maybe 1 in 200 of the people there bothered to dress up at all (no, I don't count goth-casual as dressing up). Those that did were usually more funny-haha then funny-strange - like a woman who, I guess, was supposed to be a killer queen bee (she had a bee costume on, and a tiara).

I guess I can't complain too much since I didn't dress up myself - and I'm usually more hard-core about that.

Case in point: Halloween 2004, when I was a fairy gaudy mother. (Big white silvery wings, gaudy jewelry, etc - yeah, not very obvious...). Halloween was on a Friday, which of course I celebrated. We decided to go to a haunted house on Saturday and I thought - cool, another chance to dress up, right? Out came the wings again.

After about 1 minute in line I realized what a mistake I had made. First of all, *no one* else in the +60 person line was wearing a costume. Second of all, there were employees of the haunted house who walked up and down the line dressed in black and blood, carrying various quasi-threatening plasticky chainsaws and harassing us with grrrs and arghs. These people were looking for a target, and found a big white-silvery one when they got to me.

Third of all, wings like that show up very very well in blacklight. Which means I was an even bigger target when we got into the place. And I had to go first so everyone else could see their way by the light o' the wings.

My favorite moment was in one of the last rooms, the killer clown room. Now, very few things in a haunted house truly scare me, but clowns are definitely one of them. So when one rushed up to me wielding a sledgehammer and screaming, I was more genuinely frightened than I had been for most of the trip... until she stopped abruptly, cocked her head at me, and said in a perfect teenage "oh -my - gawwwd" snide-sarcastic voice, "Halloween was YES-terday."

Anyway, I have respect for people who dress up even (or perhaps more so) when they look ridiculous. And other than the killer bee and some guy in a head-to-toe green blob costume, everyone looked extraordinarily... ordinary. Even Kelly Stables, the girl who played Samara in the Ring movies, looked cute and very very unthreatening:

It's difficult to be scared of someone when you have your hand on her shoulder and you feel like Lennie - that you could crush her bones if you hold on too tight. When we took this picture I was worried that her mother wouldn't take her back in the nest because she smelled like human.

The highlight of the experience was the part I'd expressly come to see; the Slither panel, which included Firefly/Serenity star Nathan Fillion. Since we didn't shell out the extra $45 for a "Gold Ticket" we weren't able to get very close (and also, we didn't get the autograph guarantee, which basically meant I waited in line for an hour and a half only to be told 10 people away that they were no longer signing and that us General Ticket rabble had to skedaddle - they threatened to throw out the guy in front of me because he was so mad...).


In summary, the panel was a lot of fun; the director and cast made us all jealous that we weren't involved because they seemed to have such a great time with each other. Nathan F. ended up facilitating the discussion with his Canadian charm and wit (I'm a sucker for Canadians). He has very large arms and an animated face which came out kind of squinty from a distance, making me think of a dreamy Popeye. He made a lot of risque jokes which expanded my own carnal knowledge. Ask me what "The Stranger" is sometime, if you don't already know.

The Slither panel was followed by the author of The Zombie Survival Guide, which I find somewhat amusing but am openly jealous that I didn't think to write myself because I'm convinced, it basically wrote itself. My brother and I could write a chapter on our analysis of the two-flat we own and the changes we would make to zombitize it were we to find ourselves in the midst of a zombie meltdown level 2-3. Judging by the respect he got from the audience, others felt the same way.

Then George Romero came out - a small man with large large glasses - and talked in a cranky tone for a while. The most amusing part of that was when he boldly stated "my zombie's will never run!" in a critique of the recent fast-zombie movement, a political stance that warranted him enthusiastic applause for some reason I can't fathom. Finally, a make-up artist panel came on and I learned that the best fake blood is made from food coloring and corn syrup, and that you have to add a little green coloring in the mix or else the blood will look like cranberry juice when you splash it against a white shirt.

So all-in-all, some amusing experiences, worth the $15 ticket but almost not worth the trek out to Rosemont and the 1.5 hour fruitless wait for a chance to ask Nathan F. something he's probably been asked many times before, because getting a new question after talking to hundreds of people has got to be very rare. The movie, by the way, looks bad. Really bad. Whether it's bad enough to break through into cult status remains to be seen - but either way, it looks like it was a enjoyable thing to make.