[February 2021] I wrote this short piece in graduate school—my first year—when I thought I would still be a graphic designer when I finished school. I think much of this came to pass in terms of technology as a tool—although the typesetters, film separators and other craftsmen probably wouldn’t agree. We also had no idea…
If you are looking for ways to put your User Experience Design skills to use this summer consider reaching out and volunteering for one of the various Civil Rights organizations fighting for racial equality and civil rights for all people. Black Visions CollectiveNAACPColor of ChangeSouthern Poverty Law CenterACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)North Star Health CollectiveCommunity…
In my piece, Using Mapping to Scope a System, I covered the process of using Mind Maps, Cluster Maps and Concept Maps/Models to help you scope the boundaries of a system and to identify what all the actors, elements and actions might be within the boundaries of the system. In this piece I am going…
The Power of Mapping Maps and models help us see and visualize all sorts of concepts. To get our hands and heads around a topic or a complex system as well as ideas and simple systems. We can model conceptual ideas, real ecosystems, objects and interactions. To help understand the boundaries of a topic or the…
The past two falls have found me teaching the basic Interaction Design Foundations course at CCA. It’s great fun and we get into the basics of task flows, wireframes, information architecture, concept modeling, components and micro-interactions and finally game design to push the idea of design, test, iterate, test all wrapped up in fun. General(Required…
The Shift Back from Management Moving from management back into the role of an individual contributor — especially if you go out as a freelancer or consultant — can be as overwhelming and confusing as moving into leadership from an individual contributor role. Some of the reasons are similar but some are very different. When I left my management…
As part of my classes that I teach at CCA, interaction design patterns come up. Sometimes in their simple form of elements as captured in a style guide and sometimes in the context of the complete design and development toolkit like we are seeing today. I try to give my students a bit of history…
Thoughts from a digital packrat As a person who has created a lot of different types of social experiences over the years and who has written about social experiences (Designing Social Interfaces from O’Reilly Media), I have accounts all over the internet and my phone is littered with social apps that I tried a couple of…
I am currently teaching systems design at California College of Arts and we have been talking about the social architecture for social interfaces. Key to the foundation for social experiences is online identity and understanding the spectrum of ways that people can and want to represent themselves online. As designers we can give people the…
I have been working on this book material for awhile – I started writing the book about a year after we did our talk at the IA Summit and then it stalled as I began working on my Dr. Leslie book and then began teaching at CCA. So to force myself to continue and to…
In the spring I will be teaching the Systems class at CCA for the third time. I will be integrating systems which covers systems, mapping, information architecture with social interface design thinking as well since so much of developing a social design with reputation, identity, privacy, engagement and activities is essentially systems thinking. So while…
I am thick in the middle of research for my book and I am having a blast. The rabbit trails that I find myself traversing is reinvigorating my love of the trivia and interesting things you can find on the internet and in the library. That serendipitous wandering that I used to do when the…
Last semester I taught a class. This semester, I have embarked again on the journey that is “writing a book”. I have picked back up, the project I started in 2004, which was a remix of my thesis project from graduate school—a book version with narrative and history about Dr. Robert L. Leslie and the Composing…
Combine an Interaction Design program, with a crash course in visual design, mix it up with how visual design principles, practices and approaches intersect and influence designing the full user experience and you get the class I am teaching. We are doing a crash course in the basics – gestalt principles, typography basics, type history,…
As part of the class I am teaching – Visual Interaction Design – we are doing a module on typography and type design. Tangential to that is type history – not specifically relevant but great background for the designers. So starting with the type history deck provided by Ellen Lupton, which is part of her…