I may have not qualified to sing “Cowboys From Hell” at this year’s Cogaoke, but nevertheless, I’ll be attending this year’s South by Southwes (SXSW) conference in Austin, TX (US).

SXSW is film, it’s interactive computing innovation/extravaganza, it’s loads of live music all across the city –it’s perhaps the hottest, most happening place to be from the 12th to the 21st of March. I’m really glad that me and many, *many* other workmates are being sent by Pearson Education to learn, discover and get inspired by this experience.

We are only going for the interactive part of the event, which in itself it’s more than worth the trip to Austin. I would love to stay longer –especially for the music. Then again, SXSW Interactive won’t be lacking tunes: there’s always “open karaoke” for some of us to go see sing!

I’ll be using the power of the my little blue bird to document most of the various events and sessions I will be attending, along with a few “recaps” right here on this site.

(It’s only appropriate to use Twitter at SXSW, after all, it was there where Twitter had it’s “tipping point“)

If you’re not familiar with what SXSW is, please visit the SXSW official web site or the always reliable Wikipedia entry (citation needed).

This is one of those *things* I promised myself I would have to live at some point in my life (like Coachella, China, or Skydiving), so I’m rather excited about it!

Now, if only I liked BBQ…

Here’s a photo of the book + the actual dish, moments after serving:

Along with me rather spicy vegetarian meal, I decided to pick an article to read out of the latest Interactions magazine. I found one on “user-research-driven mobile user interface innovation” and found it rather interesting.

(No surprise there –it’s Interactions…)

I wrote a little something about the article over at TaskFlo.ws. –right after I was done savouring the product of my newly-found passion: Indian cuisine.

Namasté.

I had the opportunity to visit a really lovely town, learn loads and meet excellent people –some new fellow interaction designers, others for the first time (even though I had been communicating with them for some time via Twitter). I also had the opportunity to go to a few parties held around the conference, including an impromptu karaoke session at a local Savannah bar.

The experience of an event like this is indeed comparable to that of a music festival. There are various bands speakers going on at the same time and you sometimes wish you could go see all of them, but you are forced to choose. Gladly, the Interaction Design Association records video of every session of the conference, so not only I get to see what I missed (and enjoy again what I witnessed), but so can you. I’ll be sure to post links when those videos become available.

As I mentioned before, it all started with the workshops. The ones I took were all hands-on and very productive. A crash course on the essentials of brainstorming and wireframing. Then, there was the talks.

The first keynote was done by Nathan Shedroff, who I had the chance to see at the Voices That Matter conference in Nashville (2008). The title of his keynote was “Meaningful Innovation Relies on Interaction and Service Design”. The presentation was clearly focused on innovation, but most importantly on the concept of meaning. He defined meaning as “the deepest connection you can make with a customer, user or audience”. Shedroff had many other interesting insights on design, such as: “All design is the process of making experiences, of evoking meaning” and “The most successful experiences are meaningful (not merely novel)”. The one that I found the most interesting was when he mentioned that we need a new way forward (meaningful, sustainable & profitable) and that Interaction designers are in a good position to help make this happen since they we are service-oriente and customer-focused, as well as being comfortable with models, research methods and ambiguity.

You can get Nathan’s entire presentation slides [PDF] here.

Another talk I attended was called “Frames: Notes on Improvisation and Design” by Liz Danzico. I particularly liked this talk because it made me realize how much improvisation is related to design. Liz talked about how improvisation allows for creating in the moment, in response to the environment and how it can result in the invention of new patterns. She notes 4 patterns within improvisation that relate directly to design: it happens in the present (happens in the “now”), it’s responsive (defined on the go), it’s detectable (requires no predetermined knowledge), and it’s additive (accepts all offers). She even made a clear example out of Jazz and how this genre of music creates frames that allow for creating through improvisation. I took from this talk that we can try to design for improvisation. Even thinking about how to mimic the same brain activity generated by improvisation in order to include it into our design process left me pondering.

Now I know why Miles Davis was featured on these Apple ads.

Greg Vassallo had one of the most memorable talks of the entire event, not only because he shared “Ten Things [he] Learned About Being a Design Consultant While Living in the Hospital For a Year”, but also because this presentation is a result of what he learned whilst enduring the battle against a rare case of Leukemia doctors discovered in his son when he was only 2-months old. (Visit loveforluca.com for more on this story). His talk highlighted the similarities that existed between the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and how user experience designers create effective solutions for their clients. Some of the most important things he learned were: care about what you do and show it; plans change; and treat the patient–not the illness, among others. Out of the things Greg mentioned he had learned during that year, I thought the most salient and relevant to designers was when he said it is OK to say “I don’t know”. Greg mentioned how senior doctors where comfortable saying “I don’t know” in front of a question they didn’t have an answer for right away, where as younger doctors would stay firm on their feet whilst appearing to have an answer for everything. There seems to be a similar situation among experienced designers and those who are not as experienced. It’s understandable that “juniors” wish to try and prove themselves in front of peers and clients, but it requires certain level of confidence to say “I don’t really know, but I’ll certainly try to get to the answer”. As a “junior” myself, I hope to be more and more comfortable saying “I don’t know” when I don’t.

After some delicious southern food, some of us proceeded to go to a “Design Jam” (where the second analogy between music and interaction design was evident). We were given the task to try and design a way for cupcakes to travel safely without ruining the frosting. I’ll let the following image speak for itself (although I’ll say these “solutions” would never beat the “Chia Cupcake” idea that another group presented to the rest of the room):

There wasn’t anything novel about this activity, but it reminded us about treating the act of designing in a similar fashion to the way music bands “jam”, in order to come up with new, great music designs.

Another interesting talk was the one given by Richard Banks, from Microsoft Research in Cambridge (UK). Called “The 40-Year Old Tweet”. This talk was great because it reminded us about the way we store our actions and thoughts into history through digital services (Twitter, Flickr…etc) and asked designers to design for these bits and pieces of our lives to be accessible –in fact, transferable by generations (the same way a physical photo albums or journals allow). Richard pointed to the fact that literally translating old forms of technology into new forms is not necessarily the way to go about designing “the future of looking back”. He also presented a short video on MS Research’s SenseCam: a camera that hangs from your neck and takes a snap shot every 30 seconds. Initially, I didn’t quite get it, but after seeing a video similar to this one, it all clicked in my head –it’s a brilliant tool to that practically allows you to relive an event, a day, and much more. Think of it as automated mental images stored digitally for posterity with a sense of movement.

These are only some of the talks I had the chance to experience live (take a look at the entire programme to get a better idea about the *many* sessions that took place). There was also “Designing for The Web in the World” by Timo Arnall which dealt with making physical objects more interactive and connected through RFID chips; Peter Morville’s “The Future of Search” (extremely relevant to my work at Pearson right now), Ben Fullerton’s “Designing for Solitude” (I *must* write an entire post on this session alone — talk about making me reflect about life as I know it) Rob Nero’s TRKBRD (awesome idea that I want to see developed into laptop computers, PRONTO!) and Chris Fahey’s fantastic (and widely talked about) presentation called “The Human Interface” (featuring Clippy, from MS Word, who wasn’t very pleased about Chris mentioning him). I won’t attempt to describe Chris’ talk. I’ll let his slides explain it better than I even could (so please go see them).

Tyler Durden was wrong...

Lastly, I found Jon Kolko’s keynote titled “My Heart is in the Work” also very interesting. It was mainly about the role of interaction designers in shaping culture (as well as other aspects and challenges of interaction design as a practice). He explained how in order to design cultural change, designers must first understand culture in it’s current form. He also touched on important elements that are relevant to interaction design, like the power designers have to “change behaviour through empathy” (which I found particularly interesting, given my background in Psychology). Here is a link to other things Jon had to say about Interaction 10.

Are you still reading this? I’m sorry –I knew from the start this was going to be a long post (and it doesn’t even cover everything I really wanted to record here for posterity). But I know one day I’ll come back to this and be glad I took the time to write about the moments, ideas and events that took place during these amazing four days in Savannah. I hope you found it informative, whether you were there to experience it –but especially if you were not.

I’ll share other “lighter” content around the conference in the near future –I’ve still got a few photos and videos to sort through.

I finish now by saying that this event was *the best* and most effectively-organized conference I’ve had the chance to experience. If you are a UX designer (or you are at least interested in this area) I recommend you make the effort investment to attend this yearly event. You will know it pays for itself after you see it for yourself.

I’m sure I’ll share some more thoughts later. For now, leave you with this video I caught of myself playing with Microsoft’s Surface last night. It was running a game in which a song plays and players have to flip over album covers whilst the music is playing. Once you find the album cover of the song playing, you need to bring the cover to where you are to win points:

What i didn’t know is that the game (actually, the people) can get quite vicious whilst playing, so injuries can do happen:

At this point, I may just write a compelling, redUX version of what I took from the talks –the conference ends tomorrow. It has been everything I expected and more. I’d say the conference paid for itself thanks to mini-quiches and almond-chocolate ice cream baskets, but the knowledge being shared here is priceless.

]]> http://www.diegopulido.com/ixd10-dia-1/feed/ 0 http://www.diegopulido.com/workshops-done-ixd10-day-0/ http://www.diegopulido.com/workshops-done-ixd10-day-0/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:01:51 +0000 Diego http://www.diegopulido.com/?p=311 If you are staying at the Planters Inn (in Savannah), you know you’ve got to go to the lobby of the hotel, the mezzanine, or even sit down in the hallway of your floor to get any wifi signal for your computer or phone (like I had to at 1 a.m. on Wednesday when I arrived here)

Sadly, I’m not the only one…

So you probably know where I am right now.

In other news…

The first day of Interaction 10 (for me –and many others) was a really productive/active one. It was a day full of workshops –and these were really hands on. Brilliant.

First, I attended Dan Saffer’s “Brainstorming and Design Principles” workshop. There wasn’t a gap of more than 15-20 minutes talking before we were doing some brainstorming exercise or activity throughout the entire workshop, which was great. Personally, I never thought of brainstorming as something that could be done in so many different ways. The brainstorming and design principles I’ve learned about here can (and should) be very well applicable  in my everyday work –and beyond.

I’ll post a link to Dan’s slides whenever I find them. A resource not to be missed, no matter what you do.

The second workshop of the day was “The Right Way to Wireframe” by Russ Unger, Will Evans, Fred Beecher & Todd Zaki Warfel. Turns out, there really is not a “right” way to wireframe, but what I found most interesting about this workshop was to see how the same project (designing a particular website) was tackled from four different design perspectives. They all shared some common themes (Site maps, sketches, wireframes, prototypes), but each approach was unique and I learned quite a bit from all four. This workshop was also really hands-on. The facilitators divided the crowd into various  design”weapons of choice” (e.g. Fireworks, OmniGraffle, Balsamiq) and made us go from preliminary sketching to actually taking out our laptops (I’m glad I’ve brought mine) and actually making some wireframes that would later be presented to the group for critique.

Unfortunately, there was some sort of “Happy Hour” going on whilst we were still trying to mass-produce wireframes against the clock. Gladly, in Interaction 10, if you don’t go to the beer, the beer comes to you:

Those of you going to SXSW this year will have the chance to experience this workshop, divided as one pre and one post-lunch sessions. I highly recommend this workshop for any of you who wants to know where they stand in regards to wireframing in design and wish to discover what could change or improve (Fat Tire not included). It certainly served that purposed for me.

All right, I’m off to experience the first full day of talks & sessions. There’s loads to learn today.

Ciao from the land of “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil“

I’m currently staying at the Planters Inn. So far, a rather average hotel (except they’ve managed to give me the *one* room where the free WiFi does NOT work –so I’m writing this from the lobby). Unfortunately, I haven’t got time to complain (nor I’m willing to pay nearly double the rates I am now for a different hotel).

In any case, today should be really interesting. It’s going to be a day of workshops: one in the morning and another one in the afternoon.

More from southern lands soon –now, off to try and find if there’s any source of Lavazza in Savannah.

]]> http://www.diegopulido.com/ixd10-jsuis-la/feed/ 0 http://www.diegopulido.com/first-off-lisboa/ http://www.diegopulido.com/first-off-lisboa/#comments Mon, 01 Feb 2010 06:59:00 +0000 Diego http://www.diegopulido.com/?p=237 In the past month or so, I have taken industrial amounts of photos. This is due to my recent trips to Portugal (right before the new year) and Bogotá (Colombia) immediately after.

I’ve had the chance to acquire a great DSLr for the first time, and this is the first set that sees the light of day from all that Trans-Atlantic/Trans-American traveling: Lisbon.

The idea behind the Portugal trip came after about an hour-long gTalk conversation with my good friend (and photographer extraordinaire) Willie Morris. We studied together in Torino (Italy) back in 2005 and we’ve been mates ever since. We thought about it, decided, looked for tickets and planned our arrival –everything in more or less that time frame.

The trip was indeed a refreshing experience for me. I recently completed my much anticipated M.S. in Human-Computer Interaction from Indiana University and I was ready for a break from it all… and what better way than to relive my days of being a student backpacking around Europe with someone who knows exactly how that feels like?

Willie did, in fact, keep a very comprehensive account of our entire trip and shared it all on his web site (I’m talking plenty of stories, photos and HD video about it all). You can head over to his blog and relieve it all again.

As I previously mentioned, Willie is rather knowledgeable in the world of (serious) photography. This is why I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to learn how to take decent photos with a proper DSLr camera from someone who already knows how to and does it very well. After all, having the chance to learn from someone directly is something I’ll always favour (over reading books or even watching instructional videos).

What you see here is the shortlist of the hundreds of photos I took in Lisbon alone. You can enjoy it by going through the embedded slide show –but I would recommend you experience it in full, directly via Flickr.

Soon, you will see the rest of the sets displayed here. I will try to speed up the rigorous selection process every photo has to through so they can be Flickrd up to the “series of tubes” before I depart to southern North American lands for Interaction 10.

I hope you enjoy taking a look at these photos (as well as the ones to come). I´ve certainly enjoyed capturing every single moment.

Taken from the Baltimore Sun: http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/technology/2010/01/apple_ipad_pros_cons.html

A couple of days back I wrote a little something about it over at TaskFlo.ws

It’s just my take –just like any other blog of anyone concerned and/or passionate about Apple’s latest and greatest.

As part of my defence presentation for my Master’s thesis project, I was required to make a short demo on video showing how this new proposed prototyping technique called “Paper in Screen” works during a usability test.

This video is made to fit within an already-tight 30 minutes long presentation (taking place this coming Thursday, 3 December, 2009). So, if the voice-over appears to be a little “rushed”, it’s because the video that was originally meant to be only 30 seconds long, could only be made in 2:01 min. (for it to at least make *some* sense).

This brings my thesis project practically to an end –pending a few extra revisions of the final document and a couple of much needed rehearsals of the presentation itself. Hopefully it will all come to a nice, smooth end soon.

Thank you for watching.

That’s it — in a nutshell.

More Later ^_^