DesignAday

Interaction 13: Schwag

I’ll be spending this week (at least) reporting on Interaction 13, which took place last week in Toronto. It was another great conference, but rather than diving into the details, I’m first going to give my annual schwag inventory.

The “bag” this year was not actually a bag, but a slipcase for an iPad or other tablet. Made of a dark gray felt and screened with the conference logo in white, the case features two leather loops that pivot around the top corners to hold the tablet in. It was a really good idea and genuinely useful. It contained the following:

• A ballpoint pen branded by YehID. That is going in my drawer o’ pens that I rarely use.
• Jauntful Toronto map of Tom’s Selection of Amazing Foodie Finds. I didn’t use it, depending instead on my iPhone apps.
• Field Notes 48-page memo book. It’s a nice little book, and it’s going in the same drawer as the ballpoint pen on a stack of similar little books.
• A metal Android V1 stencil by UI Stencils. It’s 150% actual size, which I won’t find nearly as useful as if it were actual size. It has a couple button shapes, but is mostly icons. It would allow you to mark the four corners of the screen, and it can be used as a straight-edge. It also has some embossed icons for interaction techniques, but I’m not sure of their utility. The stencil came in a plastic slipcase and was accompanied by a Zebra HB 0.7 mm #2 mechanical pencil.
• A coupon for one free ebook download from O’Reilly. That’s something I’ll definitely take advantage of, as soon as I figure out which one I want to get.
• Lanyard, printed with the Ix13 logo.

As far as conference schwag goes, it was pretty light, which is a good thing: less refuse.

Interaction 13 - Bring it!

Tomorrow, I’ll be driving up to Toronto where I’ll be attending Interaction 13 all next week. I will kick off my conference experience by presenting my workshop: Sitting in the Driver’s Seat: creating production-ready CSS. I have my slides ready (well, mostly), and I’ve created a number of CSS exercises that we will be working through. There are still seats available, by the way. I’ll be encouraging attendees to get involved in the implementation of the web applications/sites they design. To do so, they really ought to know how to create good, clean, maintainable, reusable HTML and CSS components. I’ll be showing them how to do just that.

One of the great things about giving a workshop is that I’ll have it done and out of the way before the conference proper starts, so I’ll be able to fully enjoy myself. There are a lot of people I’m looking forward to seeing, and a lot of food I’m looking forward to eating. Oh, and there are those presentations I’ll be attending, too.

If you are going to be at the conference, please find me. I’d love to meet you.

Interaction 13 Shortlist

In past years, the Interaction conference has used Crowdvine to allow people to connect, communicate, and plan what to attend. A couple of the conferences have included custom mobile apps with such functionality. This year, there’s something new: Shortlist.

Shortlist recommends people to meet based on your unique set of goals, professional background and social media connections. We call it “accelerating serendipity.” You’ll call it “amazing.”

Shortlist is also an information hub for essentials like sessions, exhibitors and maps. Everything you need to make the most of your time and opportunity is now at your fingertips. So the only question left to ask is, “Who’s on your Shortlist?”

I can’t say I care about the recommendations too awfully much. I already know a lot of people that will be attending, so I’m more interested in seeing who that I know will be there, rather than a list of people I don’t know. But, the functionality I’m most interested in is the ability to select the sessions I’m planning on attending and then display my personalized schedule.

Crowdvine would allow you to indicate people you considered friends separately from those you would like to meet. Shortlist only seems to allow me to add people to my “shortlist”. Crowdvine would notify you if someone marked you as a friend or someone they want to meet, allowing you to then go and do the same. It allowed you to see each attendee’s list of friends and see who was planning to attend which sessions. As far as I can tell, Shortlist doesn’t make that information public. There is a page for “My Connections”, but it is currently empty, and I don’t know how to add anyone to it.

Of course, all of this is of limited value without the ability to access it on my phone during the conference. I searched for an iOS app and didn’t find one, but Shortlist is optimized for mobile use, so I saved it to my home screen for easy access. That should be sufficient for viewing my schedule as I move from session to session. The only thing missing there is the ability to view one day at a time, rather than having to scroll through the entire week’s worth of events.

Shortlist is less robust than Crowdvine, but it is a solid start for a competing service.

15 Reasons

You should attend my workshop if:

1. You want more control over the realization of your design.
2. The developers you work with are getting tired of you pestering them to “move it a few pixels to the left”.
3. When you look at your CSS in Firebug, half of it is lined out.
4. Your files aren’t under version control.
5. You would like to know who edited your style sheet and messed up your layout.
6. You are up for learning how to make UI behavior easier to maintain by reducing the amount of JavaScript necessary.
7. You feel guilty asking a developer to change the color… again… when they have performance requirements to hit.
8. You think there may be a better use of the time you spend specifying type sizes and pixel dimensions in an InDesign document.
9. You have wondered why you bother putting so much detail into a spec when they don’t follow it anyway.
10. You are interested in optimizing your CSS for reuse, turning styles into plug-and-play components.
11. You would like to create a functional design pattern library for your product.
12. You currently hand off an HTML mockup to your developers and hope they don’t screw it up.
13. You’ve ever fantasized about checking in your own code.
14. There’s stuff in this list that you feel like you should know, but don’t yet understand.
15. You want to take control of your destiny as a user interface designer.

My workshop, Sitting in the Driver’s Seat: creating production-ready CSS, will be on Sunday, January 27th, from 2:00 to 5:00.

Interaction 13 Program

The daily schedule for Interaction 13 has been posted on the conference website. There’s quite a bit there to choose from. With one full day of workshops followed by four days of presentations and other activities, the program is bursting at the seams. In fact, there is so much to take in, I’m not finding the straight list to be particularly helpful, and I’m not sure it’s entirely accurate. There are some gaps in the schedule, and Thursday morning, in particular, appears to be incomplete. Each day’s 10-minute sessions claim to take place in parallel, whereas I think they are intended to be serialized in a single track running parallel to two 45-minute sessions. Assuming that is the case, I like the format. I can see value in picking three short presentations over a single, longer presentation. There’s a greater chance of gleaning useful tidbits from three short ones if all of the speakers are unfamiliar or the topics aren’t of particular interest. At any rate, I’d like to see a visualization of the schedule, as it would be much easier to see how many tracks there are at any given point and which sessions overlap.

I was struck by the number of game design and healthcare-related presentations. I’m very intrigued by the Idea Markets, and I’m bummed that I won’t be able to attend the Local Leaders Workshop or the Interaction Design Education Summit either one, due to the fact that I’ll be running my own workshop, Sitting in the Driver’s Seat: creating production-ready CSS. Be sure to take advantage of early bird pricing!

Don’t miss out on your opportunity to save $100 on half-day and full-day workshops during early bird workshop registration! The Interaction13 conference program includes 13 exciting workshops and all take place on Sunday January 27 at OCAD U. Workshop capacity is 30 seats and during early bird registration, tickets are limited to 10 per workshop. Early bird workshop registration has been extended and now ends on December 7 so register now before workshops sell out and early registration ends!

…and then we got acquired.

IxDA Pittsburgh had an outstanding event tonight hosted by Confluence on the North Shore. The topic was UX Within an Organization, and our panel had a lot of wisdom to pass around:

• Gary Minnaert, User Experience Architect at Confluence
• Maria Emerson, User Experience Director at Intermedix
• Ian DeJesus, Interaction Designer at Viz | General Dynamics C4 Systems
• Anna Abovyan, User Experience Designer at M*Modal
• Minette Vaccariello, Experience Design Manager at UPMC Health Plan

Ryan Cummings, Manager of User Experience at Dick’s Sporting Goods moderated, leading us through discussions of work environment, organizational structure, designer/developer collaboration, in-house challenges, and growth, among others.

Something that struck me right at the beginning, as each of the panelists gave us a little background about their careers and their companies, was that many of us share the same basic story. We were one of a couple, or the only designer, at a relatively small firm, and then we got acquired by a much larger company and had to establish a UX presence within it. It doesn’t make my job any easier, but I rest assured that I’m not alone on this journey.

Of course, the topic of a designer’s ability to code also came up. I really liked Francisco Souki’s comment. He’s a Game Designer working at Schell Games, and he observed that Interaction Designers in industry have a battle to fight that he doesn’t have. In the gaming industry, it’s a foregone conclusion that a designer is needed on a project. Francisco went on to say that a Game Designer is not expected to code, and in fact, the developers would never let a designer touch their code, but they create tools with which the designers can tweak things. A tool may be nothing more than a text file with a bunch of dimensions in it. That sounds an awful lot like a stylesheet. Hmmmm. Don’t forget, I’m running a workshop at Interaction 13. You too can learn how to replace your specification documents with production ready CSS.

Sitting in the Driver’s Seat

I have some exciting news that I’m finally able to share. The Interaction 13 program has been announced, and I’m part of it! I’ll be running an afternoon workshop on Sunday, January 27th. Registration for the workshop costs $200 through November 30th, after which the price rises to $300. There are only 30 seats, so book it now.

Sitting in the Driver’s Seat: creating production-ready CSS
workshop with Jack Moffett

CSS 3 has handed the keys back to designers. With a syntax and structure that speaks our language and a fine-grained level of control, it empowers designers to not only prototype in the actual medium, but to contribute production-ready code. The days of pointing at the screen over the developer’s shoulder and trying to explain how something needs to shift three pixels are over. In fact, much of the JavaScript currently employed for simple UI behaviors can be replaced with well-architected styles. Take the driver’s seat, and make the CSS your UI specification document. This workshop is intended for intermediate designers interested in gaining more control over their team’s final product. As a participant, you will:

• Familiarize yourself with the tools you’ll need to integrate with your development team.
• Learn how Object Oriented CSS (OOCSS) can lead to cleaner, more maintainable code.
• Discover how to replace heavy-handed, inefficient JavaScript with CSS-driven behavior.
• Get started on your own library of CSS components.

It’s Away!

There are only a couple days left until the deadline for Interaction 13 submissions. I just got mine in. In addition to my talk, “Working with Developers for Fun and Profit”, I achieved my goal of submitting a workshop. In fact, I submitted two. Hopefully, one or the other will be selected. With my teaching experience, I do believe that conference workshops would be an excellent fit for me.

Introduction to Typography

Typography is one of the foundations of design. It should be part of the fundamental training of a designer, whether pursuing Graphic Design, Interaction Design, Industrial Design, Information Design, or Service Design. Unfortunately, due to the limitations of technology, especially on the web, typography was given short shrift. Designer’s control of type was hamstrung, so the importance of learning the finer points of working with type diminished. A large percentage of Interaction Designers don’t have a visual design background and have not been exposed to typographic training.

Now, with the advent of web fonts and services that provide them, typography on the web is seeing a resurgence. CSS 3 provides fine control of type, making it, once again, a powerful tool in the hands of those that know how to wield it. We are the caretakers of an art that has been under development since 3200 BC (cuneiform)—the very architecture of visual communication. As such, it is our responsibility to become proficient in the use of type as a method of communication, a means of expression, and an element of usability.

Intended primarily for typographic beginners, the goal of this workshop is to:

• Provide a basic vocabulary with which to discuss typography
• Give a historical overview of typographic evolution
• Instill a foundational understanding of how type works in print and on screen
• Demonstrate the implementation of type with contemporary web technology
• Elicit an appreciation of, and passion for, well-executed typography

Sitting in the Driver’s Seat: creating production-ready CSS

CSS 3 has handed the keys back to designers. With a syntax and structure that speaks our language and a fine-grained level of control, it empowers designers to not only prototype in the actual medium, but to contribute production-ready code. The days of pointing at the screen over the developer’s shoulder and trying to explain how something needs to shift three pixels are over. In fact, much of the JavaScript currently employed for simple UI behaviors can be replaced with well-architected styles. Take the driver’s seat, and make the CSS your UI specification document.

This workshop is intended for intermediate designers interested in gaining more control over their team’s final product. As a participant, you will:

• Familiarize yourself with the tools you’ll need to integrate with your development team.
• Learn how Object Oriented CSS (OOCSS) can lead to cleaner, more maintainable code.
• Discover how to replace heavy-handed, inefficient JavaScript with CSS-driven behavior.
• Get started on your own library of CSS components.

Interaction 13 Call for Participation

Interaction 13’s call for participation went out yesterday. Like last year, they are accepting 10 and 45 minute talks, as well as half and full-day workshops. Of course, one constant for the Interaction conferences has been the ever-changing format, and there are some new offerings this year. Posters are a staple at many conferences, but this is the first year they will be exhibited at Interaction. There will also be Pecha Kucha sessions—those 20-slide, 20-seconds-per-slide presentations—and a unique concept called the Idea Market.

The Idea Market is a space for enabling the social exchange of ideas, crowdsourced from the design community. It’s an active environment where your “ideas” can be brought to a vibrant and diverse market. Participants will bring prototypes or visualizations of their product or service design idea and “setup shop” in the Idea Market. Conference presenters and attendees can engage in pitched ideas, prototypes, pilot or beta projects and receive constructive critique and input to help shape your projects outcome over 3 days of open and participatory design.

With this wide range of options, there is a lot of room for new speakers, which has been a difficult balancing act for conference organizers in the past. The conference receives hundreds of submissions each year, from world renowned practitioners right down to students, and only a fraction of them will fit into the program. How do you provide a stage for up-and-coming designers while also seeding your program with known speakers that will both draw attendees and maintain the high-quality identity that the conference as built? Of course, this is also one of the reasons that the submission once again requires a video. I was thinking ahead this year and recorded my presentation to my local group, which was fortunate, since Midwest UX was not able to record sessions.

You have until September 1st to submit. I’ll be hard pressed to get together a workshop submission by then, as I have a busy schedule next month, but I’m going to try. Please give me feedback on the topics I’m considering.

Handicapped

Since I was paying my own way to Midwest UX, I decided to be frugal and stay in the Holiday Inn, rather than one of the nicer, official conference hotels. The room was cheaper, the parking was cheaper, and the internet access was free. I don’t know why, but I was assigned a handicap room. Of course, being a designer, I found this to be fascinating, because it prompted me to think about my environment in a completely different way. Here are the observations I made.

1. The room had a “doorbell”. I didn’t test it, but I’m assuming it would cause a light to flash in the room to alert a deaf occupant that someone is at the door.
2. Entering the room for the first time was bizarrely disorienting. I’m used to hotel rooms being relatively crowded. This one was comparatively spacious with wide spaces between everything. Portions of the room were just bare. It’s kind of silly, but it felt disconcerting.
3. The coat/clothes rack was low—about waste high.
4. Rather than the little curtain pulls, there were rods the height of the entire window with large handles on the ends.
5. The shower did not have a recessed basin. It was floor-level, and big enough for three to stand in.
6. There was a large bench at the back of the shower that folded down from the wall.
7. The shower head was of the handheld kind on a flexible hose and was mounted on a vertical pole. It could slide up and down the pole to adjust its height.
8. The entire second floor of the hotel seemed to be handicapped rooms. Being on the second floor, the view out of my window was the roof of the first floor. I was basically staring at the side of the HVAC system. However, if I sat down, I couldn’t see that. The only thing in view was the sky.
9. The bathroom was on the outside wall. Just as the main room, it had windows all along that wall, but with heavy wooden blinds. I can’t imagine anyone ever opening them.

A lot of this is just common sense once you think about it, but I never have to think about it.