Who wants that? As a researcher, we get excited about any sort of insight. But to our clients, we want them to say: “YES! You’re right! That’s what we need to do!”

The video below is an example of this excitement regarding how the Millennial generation, or otherwise known as Generation Y, will be in power as consumers, decision makers, and leaders of our nation. While this is a marketing video, it’s nothing new. But the message they communicated was clear, meaningful, and factually true. It’s on the future of voting and the motivations that will lead to their decision making. Very timely, but more importantly, was that it came from their voice. In some ways, when doing the research and uncovering answers to “why” questions, I think that it’s fair to have them present their message in a compelling way like below.

Generation WE: The Movement Begins… from Generation We on Vimeo.

Even though this may be a marketing video, the things they say are presumable a result of the interviews, and analysis conducted in the field. The message remains the same with the statistical facts threaded throughout the screens. The difference here is that instead of trying to make some kind of production with footage from a lab study (that always has horrible audio), putting extra effort into the pitch of why the things studied are so important will come off as a much more important argument.

I don’t believe there is any bias in the way it is filmed either. All the things they said are true. It’s no different than having us, as experts, provide a bulleted list of recommendations on a PowerPoint deck. Instead, why not craft the presentation in a way that still comes from the people?

My hope is that more research can be presented in this way because so much of this stuff is lost in the piles of white papers. We can appeal to a broader audience who can help make these changes we are recommending once we put it in a way that really resonates with them. The cost of production is getting lower with cheaper video cameras, adapters that allow us to achieve cinematic aesthetic, and free software to stitch it all together. It’s time to shake things up some more.

Lots of changes are happening around here. Not physically, but here on the web. After overcoming my denial with how broken the experience was around the site, I finally got off my ass to consolidate my pages within Wordpress. After a healthy update to the admin interface, I am now on my way to unified bliss. I must say that the new v2.5+ WP update is a huge improvement. Plus, I’m diggin’ the orange highlights. I digress. In any case, there might be some hiccups along the way, so I’d be great to get your feedback when something looks or smells funny. In terms of visual design, that’s not my forte, so using themes is the way to go! Weee!

How this is going to work:

The root directory of kvwong.com is now the main featured posting page. No longer a blog, per se, but a journal of thoughts that I find interesting both online and in the real world. Thus, I’ve called it Fieldnotes. A record keeping medium of all the work-arounds, unique uses, or exciting examples of people interacting with technology. This is going to be pretty raw and lightly processed. My goal is to two fold:

1) Improve my critical observation skills
2) Incorporate more media, like photography and video, into my work in interesting ways

Within Fieldnotes, you will still find the usual suspects like contact information, general background about myself, the curriculum vitae and lastly, my ever aging portfolio - not metaphorical to wine.

Now here’s the tricky part: I’ve recently begun planning KVW Studios. I will soon be launching my official photography portfolio to the masses separate from Flickr. There I start my path towards small business endeavors. What that entails is still a bit fuzzy, but exciting none the less. The other critical component to KVW Studios is the educational component. While there are plenty of sites that help people get off the ground with photo 101 stuff, I hope to bring something of value too.

Suggestions and ideas are warmly welcome. I’m big on collaboration, and working together. So, hopefully thing will be more of a partnership than anything else.

Cheers,
Kevin

This is something that I’ve always known about (and most of you), but it has come to a point that its significance has changed my actions.

If you follow the Terms of Service on Facebook, it states:

…By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.

In short, they own you your work, your pictures, your information, everything. Even if you take it off and it expires they most certainly have a backup of it someplace and thus can do whatever they want with it, like sell it to marketers. I’m not saying they do, nor do I fully understand the scope of their business model, but that is something I can’t really abide by with respect to my photography.

While I love to think that my photos have some merit and are worthy of publication, even in the smallest sense, there is a possibility that they can be used without complete consent or credit.

Flickr on the other hand has incorporated the Creative Commons policy that protects me (bless the hearts of the original Flickr creators and their open source mindedness.

The message I’m getting at is that I won’t be posting any more pictures on Facebook that I have taken time to compose, process and share with my friends. If you’re really interested in what I do, you can check out my photos on Flickr and leave your comments there.

Some may think that my photos will get taken anyways because people can just right click and save to their desktop. Well that isn’t true. That’s been disabled so ha!

Finally, yes, I’m still working on getting my Europe pictures processed, and to Richard, Alex and Brolen, I am burning DVDs of all 3,300+ photos now. I can give them to you later this week over a couple drinks.

Anyways, I just wanted to write to tell you all that everything is groung great and I am safe, eating 3 meals a day and walking a lot. It’s definitely a healthier routine than what I’ve been going thruogh back in the states.

I’ve taken about 600 photos so far, and you can find some of them here: http://alexkingdesign.com/europe/

I haven’t had a chance to put them on flickr or anything, but I hope you enjoz what’s up so far.  I wish I had my computer so that I can work on them, but whatever. When in Rome.

Even though it’s been great so far, there are some things that I do miss, like family and friends, but otherwise, Europe has a lot going on that I enjoy.

Anyways, hopefully you’re all doing fantastic and please tell me what’s new with you guys and any other update.

Oh yeah! I got a job. I will be starting work in Belltown (Seattle) at a great design consultancy named Artefact.  I will be employee number 12 as their User Experience Design Researcher. It’s perfect and the group is wonderful.  So hurray for disposible income!

Okay, that is all. Bye.

Since graduting from the wonderful University of Washington, everything seemed to just cruise along. I’ve moved back home over on the east side and it has been the most unmotivating experience ever. It reminded me of why I don’t live here. I don’t really do much of anything except eat, sleep and watching a ton of Food Network. Not exactly the ideal post college lifestyle. Fear not though because it really has only been a little more than 2 weeks since walking down the soggy lane where I was presented my emtpy pleather portfolio signifying the milestone of intellectual achievement, if you can call it that.

Anyways, aside from the meandering, I’ve been spending late nights as usual trying to set myself up as a competitive candidate for employment. Right before graduating, three companies reached out to me and expressed interest in my skills. Teague, a product design consulting firm was the first. The position is a Flash design prototyping position. What that means is I take pictures of what software looks like and make them interactive. Valve - as in Counter Strike and Half Life Valve - showed me around their headquarters in downtown Bellevue. I had the privilege to sit in on one of their design discussions, which was quite interesting. The position was actually one that flexed between a lot of responsibilities, but their immediate needs were in marketing and communication (web design). Last to reach out is Artefact Group. This small firm helps software comapnies like Microsoft conduct research and create prototypes of how execution should be accomplished. There are only 11 or 12 people (I was told both) and about a year old. However, the experience in the house per person is anywhere between 5 to 10 or more years. The position I would primarily be researching people and how we can integrate software into their lives without frustrating them (read: Apple).

Each place has been extremely impressive and it’s great to know that there is so much talent in Seattle. It’ll be a hard decision to make no doubt. My professor, Axel, is happy to hear that I’ll still be in town so it’s also good to know I have his support.

Wednesday I’ll be flying out to Amsterdam meeting up with Richard aka “Giggles” Paterson and two other hooligans to experience what everyone should experience, life. Ha. I just picked up the last of the supplies I needed before venturing off into manhood and I plan to keep everyone informed of the misadventures via this blog. I’ll be creating an RSS feed for those who need’em, but otherwise, this will be showing up on Facebook anyways for the majority of my readership, all -9 of you. Be sure to check up on my Flickr account too. I’m going to try to do some moderate uploading as the days pass, but not too much since I need to take more than share for the time being.

Otherwise, I will hoepfully be seeing a lot of you when I return August 5th to share forgotten stories and and photos that would make any man cry.

One final though: I miss school already, I miss the house and I can’t wait to move out into my own place.

Updated
Here is the RSS feed to any and all entries to my time abroad: Travel Log [Yahoo Pipes]

My initial reaction is that Flickr and other photo sharing web sites have been partially resonsible for the overall increase. I say this because all those super awesome photos you see on the explore page are almost always taken with a DSLR. Who wouldn’t want to be able to replicate the same level of awesomeness? Not all however follow through with it. Some fall close by getting a mega zoom camera like the Canon IS5 or the Panisonic FZ-50. I almost got one. They look like a DSLR, and give you the flexibility and image quality similar to their older brothers. However, if you were like me, you found out that only a $100 or more would open a whole new world of photography. Another more obvious reason would be the introduction of inexpensive prosumer cameras. Nikon and Canon are doing a lot to get people on the DSLR wagon by selling decent cameras at $500-$600. Sure it’s twice as expensive as your regular Point and Shoot that you got for Christmas, but the quality easily makes up for the price difference. The nice tones, (perceived) sharpness, speed and bokeh (that amazing background-out-of-focus-look) are but a few of the more than justifiable reasons to pick one up.

The second my friends hit the shutter button on my camera, they want to own one.

If you look at the entry level cameras or prosumer point and shoots, you can see that they all have increased trends.
Nikon Graphc [via flickr]
Canon Graph [via flickr]
Panisonic Graph [via flickr]

Check out her photos. It’s a great way to procrastinate. At least it gets you creatively inspired. Can’t say the same for Facebook. Sorry Zuck.

Okay back to work.

It seems like some people expected me to write about Vista and it’s launch. I don’t think there is anything much to say that what everyone has said already. It’s pretty big news that other blogs have covered more extensively. I have a copy of the Business Edition to install on my old rig back home. When I get that on over the weekend (if I’m not playing FF12), I’ll let you know my thoughts.

Tech Specs for those who like numbers and other marketing garbage

More details and toughts after the jump…

Wide Screen iPod Capability

• Multi-Touchscreen UI
• Coverflow Feature
• Built-in Speaker
• 3.5″ Widescreen

Mobile Phone

Internet Communications

Other Niceties

• Force Feedback Panels
• 2 Mpx Camera
• Built-in Mic
• Automatically Rotating Display (think Canon PowerShot)
• Runs on OS X
• Thinnest SmartPhone Evar!
• Syncs everything (all media and information like bookmarks)!
• Works on PC too!

So What?

The designers at Apple and Steve Job’s vision to make the cellular phone experience easier and more exiciting for you as a consumer takes form today. A lot of the technology that has been implemented in the iPhone isn’t revolutionary, but the application in which they are used is significant. Before proceeding any further, I hope you have a chance to watch the various different quicktime demonstrations that step by step show each capability.

(Hopefully) After seeing some of the videos, you can see that this unit is offering a lot of control to the person interacting with it. Clean icons that are big and easily understood. Minimalistic design. Dynamic buttons that actually give you a touch feedback on the screen! This is significant because with all the different things you can do with the iPhone, the controls are optimized to make it easy for you to use. Think about how many different menu screens you have to click up, down, left and right to just set your alarm clock? It reminds me of an old Nintendo code (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, a, b, a, b, select, start) back in the day. Bonus points for anyone who knows what I’m talking about.

Some features that I particularly enjoy: Multi-Touch Screen, Visual Voicemails and the SMS interface.

Multi-Touch Screen
Hands down awesome. Now I don’t believe that this sort of application can be used as effectively on say, your laptop or desktop, but this could be great for whiteboards and devices like the iPhone. Things like the Minority Report where our hero swipes images and videos back and forth isn’t as usable as you think. Your arms get tired very quickly, and I digress. A multi-touch screen that lets you flick to scroll and “pinch” images to resize photos is nothing new, but has been elegantly used within the iPhone. Applaus goes to Apple for using it appropriately, and not go overboard. The screen also affords gestures as mentioned before in the form of flicks and slides that is naturally understood more clearly. Why use a stylus and super thin, hard to touch scroll bars at the edge of the screen? Just “move” it like the picture was physically infront of you on a table!

Visual Voicemails
Don’t you hate it when you have to wait for the first two skipped messages to hear the third old message, or forced to delete even older messages before hearing the new ones? Or having to hit 7 twice to delete a message since waiting for it to finish just takes too long? A visual list that lets you pick and choose as you will and delete without even having to listen to it is a big step in convenience that the old system couldn’t offer.

SMS UI
It takes the form of iChat, or any other IM application. This is a personal favorite because I always find it difficult to see what my friends and I have talked about grouped together like a conversation. Instead, I’m forced to scroll through the different messages ordered by date going in and out of each text. SMS, or text messaging, is a huge communication method that is growing even more popular. News reports are talking about how text messaging is a new danger while driving, people getting phones with QWERTY keyboards and just the overall popularity has swarmed our culture. It really has become almost like instant messaging. So why not make it look like it?! Oh wait, they did!

Future Implications?

If OS X is running the iPhone, then in terms of network connectivity, then Bon Jour could allow ad hoc communication between other iPhones, or your Mac. Sound familiar? Zune, what? But the benefit this time is that like iTunes, you could possibly share content through a network connection without limitation (except downloading). No 3 day or 3 play rules. Just share! Be “social.” The possibilties are countless with OS X integration and the Apple ecosystem with the iLife suite.

There are some questions that come in mind about how the multi touch may interact with front end web technologies like Flash and JavaScript, but I’ll save that for later. You tell me, what are some concerns that we should still keep in mind?

Macworld 2007 Keynote
Hands-on Preview [Gizmodo]
Close up Pictures [TUAW]

What The Duck