--Engage! - Interaction Design

What is an ugly interaction?

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:04:05 GMT

Today at work while working through a design during a scoping & requirements definition session with my internal stake holders, I found myself challenging my team because I felt the popular suggestion in the room (can�t really talk about the design by committee situation I ended up in) was leading towards what I could only describe as an �ugly interaction�. I know when I come back to the office tomorrow morning, I�m going to be pressed to do a better job of expressing why I feel this...

Sketching ... It isn't just a drawing that takes less time

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 06:32:53 GMT

I'm teaching an interaction design class for SmartExperience.org right now, and I'm in the midst of my sketching lessons. Dealing with a smart group of UX professionals, here is what I'm figuring out about sketching. ... The lesson asked students to do 10 sketches about their project. Personally I felt this was a low number, but it turned out it was way too high for all of them. No fault to them though....

Announcing IxDA Interaction09 | Vancouver

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:45:35 GMT

Feb 5-9 I'll be in Vancouver, BC, Canada @ IxDA Interaction09 | Vancouver -- THE global Interaction Design conference. See y'all there!

Are you Plurky!!!????!!!

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:17:45 GMT

Plurk is a micro-blogging application that is very rich, interactive and wonderinfully and thoughtfully designed. It takes the concept of Jaiku and Twitter which are so minimalist in their presentation (Twitter is MySpace-like and Jaiku is Face-book-like) and applies some really interesting RIA design theory around it. Instead of a "feed" it uses a timeline. Questions about scale have arisen, but so far that part is working for me. Further there is inline threading of comments...

[RANT] No longer an Expression Blend fan boy

Thu, 22 May 2008 05:12:05 GMT

What proceeds is my rant after dealing with Blend for the last year. As in many rants there is some emotion that leads to misinformation, but the bulk of the message has a huge kernel of truth. The short of it is that Expression Studio and specifically Expression Blend even as a 2.0 is just bad design. Enjoy the rant. I�m coming to the final leg of a WPF project and I have to say, I�ve lost the love. I have been both critical and supportive of...

Teaching SmartExperience.org class starting end of May

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:35:10 GMT

I'll be teaching a longer reprise of the course I taught last year on Interaction Design for Rich Internet Applications for SmartExperience.org. Course detail and registration information is here: http://smartexperience.org/classes/ixd-ria/ What I can tell you I've changed is: 1. A clearer course outline and instruction format 2. A defined project that every student is going to do 3. Clear outline...

Shared Google Reader

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 03:50:49 GMT

I'm not posting as much as before, but what I do do now is share a lot of what I find interesting in my daily readings using Google Reader. To see the latest, just look at the ride sidebar that says "Interesting". But if you want to you can go to my Google Reader Share page. There is a...

Creativity: Allowing beautiful accidents to unfold ... AKA Serendipity

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 03:35:23 GMT

When I think about what makes design so special I often get stuck, but today it was loudly pronounced to me as a process of purposeful accidents leading to serendipity. Today, while I was working on the visual design for a desktop application, I was "happy" with the design. Then by accident I hit the wrong layer in Fireworks and removed an element I had not planned to remove. The result? Well, I LOVED IT without that element and the design got pulled together after that on so...

Ok, I hope I'm back!

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 10:30:35 GMT

So I think I stopped the re-direct problem I was having. what a horrible world we live in when people have to hack sites like mine (I mean what! I have like under 1000 viewers) to try and increase their spam to really unethical sites. Well, no one wants to read this, but I hope to be back blogging soon. I'm very disappointed that the commenting feature isn't working, nor is the talk to me link off the left sidebar. Just email me directly. What I really want to do is find a way to...

Interaction08 | Savannah is close to selling out

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 23:31:14 GMT

With over 315 attendees registered for Interaciton08, this 1.0 conference for IxDA is going to tear it up in beautiful and historic Savannah, GA. Our many sponsors saw the light and put their money where their mouth is, after we announced our...