Fieldnotes » How To

Adaptive Path MX 2007 Recap

Kevin Wong — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 23:57:36 +0000

For those who didn’t go down to San Francisco to attend the MX 2007 Conference, G Petroff has a great summary of the whole event. Check it out if you’re interested in what went on and learn something new about interaction design. Big names like Jesse James Garret, Adam Richardson, Tim Brown(!!), and so many more gave panel discussions about their practices, their insights and asking the attendees how they can improve upon what we alreay do? It’s all about understanding the why which helps us move foward with the what and the how.

At the end of her talk, Sara Ulius-Sabel asked all of us, “How do we sustainably get to WOW?” Her point being, we can get to developing products that deliver a delightful, transcendent experience occasionally, but often unpredictably. So how can we get there consistently?

Well, I tried to answer it by synthesizing the main themes I heard over the course of the event, and turning it into a couple of sentences. (Main themes are in ALL CAPS):

By achieving EMPATHY we realize an EXPERIENCE STRATEGY that gets us to DESIGN BEYOND PRODUCTS (and maintain focus when MAKING MISTAKES).

This requires SYSTEMS THINKING (which in return requires TEARING DOWN WALLS), that produces TRANSFORMATION for your MATRIXED(?) ADAPTIVE organization.

Peter Merholz [via Adaptive Path Blog]

Diagrams and themes provided.

MX 2007 @ SF [via Vi]

15 Tips To Typography

Kevin Wong — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 03:24:20 +0000

Very cool article on helping you decide on what is an appropriate Type Face for your next essay, poster or web site you are developing. On a side note, sIFR is a great method to allow you to preserve any specialty type face rendered correctly on any browser regardless if the person viewing the site has the font. Hot damn.

The letterform
The ‘ductus’ represents the framework of a type. It is very important. For a text with a good legibility, we need typographies with a simple ductus, without complex details which could distract the reading process. So, we could pay attention to the text, not to the characters.

Anyways, there is some evidence that type face has an impact on how readers grade your reports/papers/essays/etc. So this applies to everyone in school who are looking to score a little something extra next time. I mean, there are 100’s of free fonts out there. Just search.

15 Tips [Typies]

New Interaction Design Techniques To Consider

Kevin Wong — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 05:15:41 +0000

Dan Saffer, a favorite of mine, has listed some interesting techniques that he has learned about through his conversations and observations with other designers/researchers. I think this is great as it really allows us designers to become more flexible with the various problems we face each time. Check out the list and think about how these could have been helpful with projects you’ve completed in the past.

IxD Techniques [Dan Saffer]

*Update*
I just jumped on the IxDA News Group and discovered that there is an even more exhaustive list (mostly geared towards mobile design) online that includes techniques like digital diaries.

Mobile Research Methods

Ways To Help “Keep Up”

Kevin Wong — Wed, 03 May 2006 00:37:56 +0000

Information overload, information anxiety, multitasking - the age of the information highway. There is a lot of information out there that is all so interesting, and yet, we can’t simply keep up. Nor should we try, even if devote our lives in following the latest news and trends, you end up keeping up with maybe one or two subjects, but the rest fall apart. It’s okay though, we are only human. In fact, forcing ourselves to try and keep up radically reduces our ability to retain any information at all!

However, there is hope. With some strategic practices, you too can cut out the useless bits and focus on the meat. You still won’t be able to focus on everything that you want, but at least you might be saving yourself some sanity. Plus, you might be able to remember your girlfriends anniversary instead of clicking refresh on your RSS news aggregator.

So you let the stack of “things to read” pile up, then eventually when the pile gets to high you end up tossing half of it–or worse, moving it to a deeper “stuff to read someday stack. We have selective amnesia about what we’ll ever get to, but mainly because most of us keep feeling like we have to keep up! Keep up with what?

You can’t keep up. There is no way. And trying to keep up will probably just make you dumber.You can never be current on everything you think you should be.

I will admit that I am a victim of trying to “keep up.” Then again, I’m also trying to learn to cut back only to what is really important.

Keeping Up [Passionate]

Traits of A Good Story

Kevin Wong — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 22:18:47 +0000

Lately my course has been emphasizing the power of storytelling and it is a skill that doesn’t get too much light these days. Seth Godin from Ode Magazine writes out some pointers and qualities of a good story. If you ever watch Steve Jobs give an announcement about Apple’s latest products, then you can see where a lot of these play out. I highly recommend everyone to read this because you never know, it could help you with your next PowerPoint presentation.

Average people are good at ignoring you. Average people have too many different points of view about life and average people are by and large satisfied. If you need to water down your story to appeal to everyone, it will appeal to no one. The most effective stories match the world view of a tiny audience—and then that tiny audience spreads the story.

Read