I just finished reading Joe Lamantia’s excellent post Designing Post-Humanity: Everyware in the Far Future. I don’t have anything brilliant to add – just pointers to other stories that explore similar issues.

The most thoroughly realized examples of trans-human/post-human futurism are Masamune Shirow’s Appleseed and Ghost in the Shell. Cyberpunk forerunners like William Gibson relied on the reader’s imagination to fill in the gaps. Shirow’s manga explores every gritty detail. Both stories deal with the social and legal issues of trans-humanism through crime-fighting female protagonists (it’s Japanese – ’nuff said). You can read them as manga or watch TV shows and movies. Continue reading »

I started using Delicious again after a one-year hiatus. I am impressed with the new interface. At first, I though they just reskinned the old design – lipstick on a pig, if we are still allowed to use that phrase. After using it for a week, I see that they have made a number of subtle but crucial changes to the user interface.

Today, I am writing about the tagging interface, which is my favorite of these changes. I really like the new interface. I offer some tips on using it effectively, and some recommendations to the design team on further improvements. Continue reading »

One of the unavoidable features of modern professional life is a never-ending stream of email. Over the years I have come up with a few tricks that really help me stay at email nirvana: “inbox zero.” People around here tease me about it, but I have a very tidy inbox. I thought I would share some techniques (tricks) I have found useful. Continue reading »

This is a continuation of my notes from Day 2 of MX East.

Brendon Shauer of Adaptive Path gave a talk on the Long Wow, planning and staging a great sustained experience. (It sounds like a sexual self-help talk, but wasn’t). His major points were clear and resonated well. However, saying these things and doing them are two different issues.

• Manage the platform for delivery
• Create and evolve a repeatable process
• Tackle a wide area of customer needs, especially in areas with metrics, like UX
• Organize and plan the pipeline of improvements/changes

Brendan also gave some general UX advice…

• Stop trying to do everything
• Connect with something distinct
• Consciously plan and manage strategy

The closing keynote speaker was Scott Berkun on the Myths of Innovation. I really enjoyed his talk, but I didn’t take any notes. The only thing I wrote was “buy the book”. I guess I should do that.

Day 2 was just as satisfying as day 1. As with the post I did about MX East Day 1, this is a stream of consciousness ramble rather than a deep reflection on the proceedings.

Mark Jones of IDEO started the day with a loosely joined series of experience design insights. He described the ‘new customer,’ who’s expectations are set by the best experiences they have from any industry. The new customer is not loyal to companies that provide lousy experiences, in fact they actively evade old-school lock-in techniques. Then Jones gave three techniques to design experiences for the new customer.

• Look wide: look at the customer’s whole lives; the service ecology that they inhabit; find appropriate, targeted and strategic roles for your services
• Prototype early: prototype services during the brainstorming phase; role play; use front line people and executives together; scenario, story board and video narrative
• Communicate: rally around a single vision; involve stakeholders in the design, then use them to help with communications; visualize the goal – be compelling; prototype branding and marketing to visualize how an offering fits in the market/strategy

Next was Chris Conley from Gravity Tank, speaking about building a creative culture. My favorite insight was that companies are organized to efficient execute their present strategy; innovation is pretty much impossible in a normal corporate environment because they are purpose-built to prevent it. He presented an extended examination of Pixar’s culture of innovation. It’s all from the Incredibles DVD, so you can watch it yourself.

Then came Sara Ulius-Sable of Whirlpool, who gave one of my favorite talks. She is the metrics manager for Whirlpool, which sits atop 22 famous brands, like Kitchen-Aid and Maytag. She spoke about how tactical metrics can have a major impact on strategy. Her team at Whirlpool works with business units, engineering and UX to target dimensions of experience that represent ‘healthy’ for each brand. She listed her four attributes of a good metric.

• Predictive: correlated to business measures and outcomes
• Sensitive: differences are detectable
• Actionable: able to provide clear direction
• Relevant: to brand strategy and product domain

Irene Au from Google gave us 9 ways to succeed as a UX manager. My favorites were #6 “let skeptics fail”; and #7 “deliver excellence on a few projects.” She recommended selecting projects carefully using explicit internal priorities. Be transparent about the UX team’s level of commitment. Avoid coming in late to rescue doomed projects. Avoid projects that aren’t committed to an open collaboration with the UX team. And so forth.

To be continued…