(image via TextFugu)

Due to Important Persons in My Life who use Japanese as their native tongue, I’m trying to make a concerted effort to learn some of it myself. Not that I had fantastic predictions of success for myself or anything– I struggled with Intensive French (though emerged victorious) and that was 10 years ago. Since I’ve found myself on the road a lot lately, I wasn’t able to sign up for a class. But I *did* find TextFugu, a really cool, living textbook that is clearly a labor of love, and which is actually really helpful.

You pay for the monthly service (or can get a whole lifetime subscription), and the style that the creator employs is friendly and personable. Its whole design is done so beautifully that it makes me want to continue to learn what I thought was such a difficult and impermeable language. The beauty of the site itself and the ease of the interface serves as enough encouragement to persist in my nascent studies. Important Person has remarked that my ability to recognize hiragana after a few weeks of playing with the site is “kind of impressive” (to paraphrase). I’m still working through the free chapters, but I’m confident that I’ll continue to the content you have to pay to access.

The site is quite an interesting model of how people can use and communicate intimate knowledge of a subject in a way that’s profitable. I hope that they’re able to sustain themselves, because it’s such great work!

PS. I’d love it if any other prospective Japanese learners would get in touch, because it’d be nice to have a buddy in my journey to Japanese semi-literacy.

As you most likely have figured out by now, I have a penchant for representations of buttons, knobs and dials, called affordances. I stumbled across this pic from the portfolio of Jorge Rigabert. I think it especially caught my eye because my reading comprehension of Spanish is dodgy at best. Juego limpio translates to “fair play.”

I came across the phrase “Uncanny Valley” for the first time at South by Southwest last year. It came up in reference to the creepy not-realism of the then-recent Disney production “Mars Needs Moms.”

And to get up to speed on what that means, the phrase comes from robotics:

things that look somewhat human, but are clearly not — such as C-3PO (in Star Wars) or a Golem — produce an accepting reaction, while things that are very nearly human, but just a little strange — such as a child’s doll, aventriloquist’s dummy, or a clown — produce a negative response.

- TV Tropes & Idioms

So that’s uncanny valley. If you plotted this on an X and Y access, X for how human normal-like and Y for how cool you are with that, the valley refers to that acceptance drop– in other words, how creeped out you are by things that look like humans but are not.

In comics, we understand that the greater the detail of the image, the harder it is to relate to personally. Scott McCloud talks about that in Understanding Comics (still one of my favorites):

Uncanny valley specifically refers to visual feedback, but I think it goes further, and that it implies to a repulsion for technology that we designers can run the risk of touching on by building in too many personal details.

There’s something icky about systems that don’t appreciate that they have waaaay more than enough personal data about you and me at their disposal. Still, I sometimes get wrapped up in what it’d be cool to do, forgetting that I have an above-average understanding and expectation of technology and what it can know about us and what it can do with that information. So I run the risk of making a Chuck E. Cheese experience (if you had a birthday party as a child in North America during the 80s or 90s, you know what I mean. I swear; I still have nightmares) when what I was going for was Wall-E.

Recommend, don’t infer

When I first discovered Pandora and the Music Genome Project, I was super excited. I was so excited, in fact, that I was inspired to go back to school and learn about what interaction design was and how I could do it too. Recommender systems are great! I am still amazed by the magic of watching a smart system get smarter and get quickly to the heart of your taste preferences with more precision than an old friend.

There’s something lost in that, though. Recommender systems are pretty arrogant, and they’re wrong almost as often as they’re right. We’ve learned to ignore the static that’s an Amazon book or music recommendation for something we’ve already purchased somewhere else.

Respect for boundaries

Everybody has a different threshold for how much technology belongs in their lives. When we create without a healthy respect for those boundaries, we create uncanny interfaces. When I put on my researcher hat, I want to know more about the themes in those boundaries. For me, location based services frequently toe the line of freaky, even though I should be well used to them now. I imagine the boundaries vary and change by culture.

As promoters of technology, we should be aware of those boundaries, and respect them. Unfortunately, the ability to construct and deploy complex systems comes with a lot of power. Respect for boundaries is not frequently enough at the heart of business decisions.

When accessorizing…

It’s one of my mental go-to quotes that I picked up somewhere from an unlikely source (I’d prefer a Timbuk2 messenger bag to Chanel any day). At least, I believe the quote to be attributed to Coco Chanel, basically, that “when accessorizing always take off the last thing you put on.” We have to get to know the things that we like. What I’m thinking is that when I have the impulse to automate, I need to take a step back and think about the reciprocity of the system and the user. Probably one less detail than the one I’ve added is right. I think it’s good to establish familiarity, but in steps over time.

Ok, that’s it. I end with a random google image search for “Awesome Accessories” (this):

If you’re reading this, you possibly remember my Michigan-lovin’ post from a few years ago. After that post, I became even more “Pure Michigan”– I got a job at one of the Big Three and learned all kinds of things about the role of UX design in the automotive product development lifecycle. It was my first full-time job in the field, and I had to say good-bye to all kinds of good folks with swiftness in the past week and a half.

Having lived in Northern, West and Southeast Michigan my whole life now, and certainly taken from them what I think of as Midwestern values and a sense of loyalty, I also thought a lot about what I wanted from a community. Chicago seems to respond well to those never formalized requirements. Moreover, and this cuts to the heart of it, one of my closest and oldest friends moved to Chicago right out of school; she’s a friend from childhood who ended up in the design field for reasons parallel to my own (certain parental figures may have been to blame for the both of us). With Erin’s assistance, I can clearly see what a dynamic city this is, and what a stellar fit it will be for me and my Person.

So I moved. And I found work with a company I’m excited about and I’m taking a big, enthusiastic belly flop into the future.

It’s just a generic ceramic travel mug that I got from Meijer (the local super-supermarket). And while it may seem inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, I have a real affection for it every time it sits in my hands.

Recently, I tweeted about The Evolution of Lids (which was sent my way by fellow curmudgeon Becca). This comprehensive history shows the success of the Solo Traveler Lid, which you might recognize from oh, every other sip you take in disposable form.

The Solo Traveler Lid succeeds where many travel mugs fail: it provides a light, quickly accessible drink solution, reinforced enough to provide reasonable certainty that you won’t burn your ass by squeezing just a little too hard (I’m looking at you, Scruggs Lid).

Like most things in the inorganic world, the success of this lid is no accident. Seemingly (and without doing a comprehensive literature review, because this is my free time), a great deal of design effort focused around the disposable lid. Of course, there’s a tantalizing constraint there, but also the lids were developed in a different economy, where resources were treaded as endless. The Solo lid was designed in 1986.

I didn’t fully consider the ceramic, paper-mimicing mug trend until recently because a) I have other travel mugs that work well enough and b) I was concerned that the form that the mug mimicked would leave me wanting for the original paper thing. And then one day I was doing some grocery shopping, and thinking about the lid link from Becca.

And as a tactile experience, this thing is just… right on. My mug’s lid snaps on and is easy to wash. The reasonably tight lid grip keeps grody build-up from forming, one of the things that often skeeves me out about travel mugs.

And the Solo form has been retained. What this has been making me think about is the adoption of one form by another, similar form, which will share the name and functionality. In a way, the design was deeply considered in the 80s. During the 80s, a reusable, travel mug meant wielding a giant Thermos, and certainly didn’t fit nicely in a hand or a car’s cup holder. Back then, there wasn’t a Starbucks on every corner but that disposable form was quickly becoming a part of their success story.

Okay, that’s great. My mug mimics its disposable counterpart. But what are the challenges and constraints that make reusable mugs unique that haven’t been solved in emulating the disposable kind? I am sure there are fantastic travel mugs out there beyond my wildest imagination. I’m not doubting that. But what can be learned from the work of the old form applied to the new one (a travel mug for the 21st century)? What’s missing?

I’ve explained Odyssey of the Mind and received enough blank stares where I guess it’s time to put up a link. Odyssey of the Mind, or OM as it’s usually referred to, is a creative problem solving competition for kids from elementary through high school. And don’t be fooled by the word “creative”– OM can get quite competitive.

The 2010-11 problem set includes school year-long challenges like building vehicles powered by mousetraps, putting together balsa wood structures and coming up with skits to convey associated concepts. The problems are solved in small teams.

When I realized as an adult how applicable the skills developed in OM are to User Experience or Interaction Design, as well as our parent and cousin fields, I was delighted. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this is exactly what I wanted to do when I grew up. Therefore, I am lucky.

I can’t think of better training for how to keep an open mind, to collaborate, prototype and build. This is a seriously valuable program.

Image via Times Union (Source here).

Each year, my friends and I plan a weekend up north. We’ve been doing this so long that we have gotten the organization down to a pseudo-science. It’s just an ordinary weekend… except we look forward to it all year long. Two of my friends even used last year’s occasion to announce their engagement.

Because the event seems to have stuck over the years, we knew we were way overdue in adding some do-goodery into the mix. And thus, I am proud to present Tundig.org: The Tundig Collective.

(Photo via aaron m.)

She has an etsy shop and she’s great to work with. One other thing I know about her stuff is that she has a great collection of fabrics, in turn bright, beautiful and a little off from the ordinary. I heartily recommend you check her out: quietlyhip on etsy.

An efficient yet terrible microwave

This microwave is terribly efficient, emphasis on the terrible. It’s a binary system, so you could select a precise keystroke with a minimum of steps. But look at that little area for feedback– it’s completely separate from the controls! That means you’re immediately pushing the user into a moding system. While I can’t really criticize without trying to pop up some delicious kettle corn or some other way of actually using the microwave, I can tell that this is bad. Just bad.

I countered with this beauty:

Simple and Cheap

This microwave separates out the functionality of power and time and allows the user to input both on a continuous basis, really nice for ‘I just want to pop some tea into the microwave for a few minutes.’ It provides instantaneous feedback via the rotating dials, and best of all, it’s cheap– no need for an expensive LCD screen!

And if you need more evidence: which microwave looks like it gets used the most?

Trust and design. I’ve been chewing on that for the past few months. Since we started the contextual inquiry for our CHI project, actually. I’ve started to think about how there’s an element of trust to every well designed object, product or service.

Like these scissors.

I think about trust a lot.

CHI, Location & Technology for Mediating Trust

Last fall, as part of the CHI Student Design Competition, we started to ask questions about the necessity of meeting strangers in public spaces for the purpose of going for a walk. The line of questioning came from interesting, and often conflicted, anecdotes that walkers had about encountering strangers in public spaces.

To paraphrase a main point of our design (Night Beacon, an app that would empower people to walk with confidence at night), the app would lose its purpose without trust. It’s one reason that though we were approached to develop this app during and following CHI, we held off. I think we chose instead to use our project to chip at some underlying assumptions about the role that technology can play in building trustful relationships between humans, especially in cases where a smart phone with network connectivity can be the most readily available tool in a potentially dangerous or threatening situation.

This project challenge perceptions of danger and threats to safety. Like the rest of my teammates, I found myself thinking constantly about perceived versus real threats as the competition drew near. Who would want to design or build a system that would put someone in harm’s way? And we met people who passionately warned us that our idea would not work. We also met people who were willing to accept the possibility that it could.

As a CHI side note, I checked in on previous CHI SDC winner Noah Liebman’s website, and he has a great post on competing at CHI. His first piece of advice: Trust the Process. His teammate, Deb Lauterbach, also has some sage advice for competitors. These posts both incidentally fell in line with this post, but it might have something to do with the fact that the SDC, for competitors, becomes a big part of your life. And if done well (ie the way Noah and Deb describe), you will be intellectually challenged to the point where you may not really feel aptly prepared to reflect on it until things die down a little bit.

And one more piece of advice for the competition: know your project’s weaknesses better than anyone else. Poke your own holes so you can patch ‘em up (a messy metaphor, but you know what I mean).

Trust & Automobiles

I think a lot about the future of cars now. Trust is an essential element of getting in a giant hunk of metal that we propel, with the assistance of the machine itself, at speeds approaching 100 miles per hour. Since I work at GM now, I think about that every day. I think about the effective application of information systems to the driving experience. When you routinely trust that a car will work, that helps you get back in a car every time you get in a car. I bet people who have been in major accidents have much different relationships with their vehicles than those of us who haven’t [yet].

Data Packets: Trusting it Will Get There, What Should We Do Now?

And on another, somewhat more abstract level, I was just thinking about how I think that our trust level has reached a fair saturation point in the few years or so, at least in places of relative advantage. For a system predicated on sending a bunch of packets of data, on repeat if necessary, until they reach their source, we certainly have every expectation that the system will work quickly and seamlessly.

In his book, Emotional Design, Don Norman points out

Much of modern technology is really the technology of social interaction: it is the technology of trust and emotional bonds. But neither social interaction nor trust were designed into the technology or even thought through: they came about through happenstance, through the accidental byproducts of deployment (157).

Wired editor Chris Anderson proclaimed last month that The Web is Dead.  Whether or not this statement was meant to provoke and/or bait, Anderson discussed the shift from ‘the world wide web’ to API-driven applications, that is, applications away from a browser (like Netflix Streaming on your TV). The academic in me has me thinking about how deep-rooted our trust has gotten: enough that we are willing to get our data from device and application-specific filters and views instead of from a trusty old browser window.

The designer in me is picturing a game of catch. It’s a game of catch between you and your closest friends, and some of your friends who you aren’t that close with, but who you like to play catch with anyway. The passing back and forth of pieces of data between yourself and the people you trust, that is a big part of day-to-day life that I see coming. So what might that look like? What can we do with that?

Trust is something I’ve repeated 20 times over the course of this post because it speaks to a larger ethics of design that’s easy enough to overlook. But I think a basic principle is that good design doesn’t hide its intentions. So as far as CHI goes, I am so pleased that Noah says ‘trust the process’ around the time I’m thinking about the role of trust in design. So as far as your or my desire to be a creative professional, let’s keep thinking about this trust thing, okay?