Letters from the Equator

Dyslexie: A typeface for dyslexics

http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2011/06/30/dyslexie-a-typeface-for-dyslexics/

When I attended the first Design Jam last year, no one was really sure what to expect. It was great at the time when I was transitioning careers from being a hybrid dev/designer to full-time UX, as it gave me an opportunity to practice a lot of cool stuff I’d been dying to try out. I did skip the second one for several reasons, but by the time Design Jam 3 came around I was itching to give it another go since full-time UX started to feel quite repetitive.

My primary goal for the day was to keep things simple and to test how my UX skills had developed over the last 6 months. My plan was to avoid pre-selecting specific methods to use and to go with the flow. I wanted to know if I was more aware of the design process, and whether I was able to influence it towards a positive outcome. So, while the first jam was for me to test out UX methods, DJL3 was for me to evaluate my ability to navigate or influence the design process (which I feel is a core part of what UX designers do).

I think that overall, I’m quite okay at facilitating generative activities by prioritizing ideas, chunking activities up into tasks, having a ‘feel’ for the team’s flow and encouraging discussion. I was not so okay with the delivery part of the day when we needed to pull together to make something. With the generative part of the work, all I had to do was organize the information that my team members were freely sharing with each other. But with the delivery part of the day, I wasn’t really sure how to suggest an approach that worked for everyone – almost everyone had a different idea of what needed to be done.

In the end Jason Mesut stepped in and helped us formulate a plan. The mentors made a big difference that day and I was particularly pleased they were handpicked by the organizers to provide teams a balance of domain, team, and design advice.

While I certainly came away with some interesting insights from the day, I spoke to a lot of people who said they weren’t exactly sure what they got out of design jam apart from the fact that it was sort of fun. Some people were expecting to have a kind of workshop-like experience where they would be exposed to UX methods, which they could incorporate into their current work. Some said it would’ve been better to be assigned into teams for skill balance, rather than assigning themselves to teams in a semi-random fashion.

I agree that its impossible to please everyone, but I think that it may be worth reflecting on what attendees really want out of a design jam. For me, it was first a place for me to try out UX methods, and then a place for me to evaluate my design skills. But for others, it may be something completely different.

I wonder if there are patterns that are starting to formulate, seeing that Design Jam is now in its third iteration, that could help shape future iterations of the jam in a new way. So far the formula for a design jam hasn’t really changed very much. On the other hand, maybe all we really need is for design jam to be a testing ground of sorts for multidisciplinary teams to work on something and have fun at the same time.

Either way, I hope and trust that future iterations of design jam exceed the community’s expectations for a UX hack day.

Check out my team’s work here at http://djlon0310.tumblr.com

This year I decided to attend more UX conferences, having fully made the transition into UX for good. The year kicked off with UX Hong Kong (which was amazing), followed by UX Lisbon in May, and just few weeks ago – the DIBI conference up in Newcastle.

Every conference has its own strengths and general vibe. After getting advice from some seasoned conference attendees, it was a matter of choosing the conferences that would suit me best. For me, UX Hong Kong was a perfect start, as it was a fairly intimate conference where I got to meet some really interesting people and give me a taste of what a UX conference feels like.

May came around and it was as people had prophesied – UX Lisbon turned out to be a big UX party – food, fun, sights and Don Norman. Plus a stellar cast of UX rock stars made it promptly a trip to remember.

Then, just when I thought I had exhausted my remit for conferences, I made an impulse purchase to attend DIBI a few months later after finding out that Jared Spool and Jeffrey Zeldman were speaking.

At this point you’re probably wondering why I keep attending so many conferences, and what have I really benefited from them?

Well for one, I don’t really attend conferences to learn new skills or even pick up on future trends. The real reason I attend conferences is to absorb the intangible benefits of being around people who influence and care about this industry.

Some people call this networking, but that’s such a lame word. I prefer to call it a ‘community of practice‘, based on the work done by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, where a profession evolves and develops around groups of people with shared interests.

There are several reasons why this is important with regards to conferences.

Watching our industry evolve in real time

UX as an industry is still taking on form, shifting and moulding from a primordial soup of different disciplines, practices and vernaculars. Thus we constantly draw upon the work of highly influential people who have done the good job of piecing together these otherwise separate domains. Each practitioner represents a specific sphere of influence, but this again is constantly changing in and outside the context of work.

Conference settings allow for ‘change’ conversations to happen between experts, practitioners of varying levels, students, and casual observers. It is during these moments that we collectively work out our perspectives, beliefs, and approaches as a community.

As with all new industries, the main challenge isn’t about solving problems from what we already know as a community, but about how to tackle issues from what we collectively don’t know.

You can only get this kind of thing by working it out with other practitioners, and conferences are great places to do that.

Engaging with the wider conversation

There is a tendency of assuming something had been codified after it has been published in some form or practiced more widely – the more popular, the more ‘permanent’ its effects. It’s far better to understand the wider conversation that is taking place between influencers, and the work that goes on between them.

At DIBI, speakers like Inayaili de León, Jeremy Keith, Faruk Ates and Jeffrey Zeldman all made references to the history and progression of digital (publishing, web, devices, teams…) to establish the context in which we *ought* to think about digital. So although they each delivered different talks, their overall message was the same – that the web has now matured and a huge re-thinking is in order.

Missing the wider conversation is really about missing the plot entirely, because the wider conversation (in the case of DIBI) explains why we had the web in the first place, how it has become what it is today, and where is it trying to get to. Skip that, and all you get is a dumbed down instruction book on how to code HTML5. That’s not what you come to a conference for.

Understanding UX across horizons

Conferences like UX Hong Kong and UX Lisbon are great for meeting an international crowd. Everyone has a different story to tell about how they got into UX and it varies per country, locale and city.

I think this is important since we’re increasingly designing for a far wider audience now. This isn’t just about solving design problems, but also about how clients in different countries perceive the value of UX, and how designers adapt their practices to the local culture and market demands.

This challenges us to rethink our own approaches – are our designs really fit for purpose? Is there such a thing as a universal design language? How do we ensure that we communicate design effectively across borders and cultures?

Being human

Conferences shouldn’t feel sterile and mechanical but it occasionally does. No one’s really at fault but it does take a lot of empathy, hospitality, encouragement, patience and candidness for attendees to feel welcome and in good spirits.

By all means, organizers should consider hygiene aspects such as the registration process and fun stuff like the schwag bag, but I think it comes down to the fact that practitioners are making a sacrifice to be with other practitioners, regardless of rank, background, specialism, principle or agenda.

Plus, I try to stick to conferences that allow me to be myself. And I suppose this is self-selecting that certain conferences tend to attract a certain crowd, but it’s better when people get along.

So, yes – I feel there are good reasons to be a conference junkie – however I think setting the right expectations, picturing the broader context, preparing to meet people, and a dose of humility and empathy can make a big difference in the conference experience and how one is ultimately enriched from it.

By Bronnie Ware (who worked for years nursing the dying) For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives. People grow a lot when they…

It’s ok to not like things, just don’t be a dick about it.

Elephant on a Trampoline

How does parenting affect upbringing of children?

WSJ article here about how twins raised apart from each other revealed very little effects of parenting on their eventual becoming.

i.e. adult twins were mirror identicals to each other even though they were raised by different parents.

Parents’ main rationale is that their effort is an investment in their children’s future; they’re sacrificing now to turn their kids into healthy, smart, successful, well-adjusted adults.  But according to decades of twin research, their rationale is just, well, wrong.  High-strung parenting isn’t dangerous, but it does make being a parent a lot more work and less fun than it has to be.

Note to parents: relax

Note to growing children: your future is your responsibility

Note to adults: if you’re wondering, it probably wasn’t your parents fault

caveat: I think this mostly relates to mostly “normal” parenting, i.e. not considering traumatic life-changing experiences like nuclear attack from aliens, etc.

via @globalmoxie

There’s a big party going on around the world. People are having a good time making a mockery of the whole rapture debacle, and I admit - some of it is pretty humorous and all.

And then I saw this.

And I kinda laughed inside a little. And then I stopped, staring at the bit of the strip with the burning Christians.

And I felt something curl up and die inside me, like… I was doing something wrong for believing that there was a second coming. That I should abandon my beliefs, the trust I place in something and someone that a lot of people consider to be an absolute joke and mockery of everything good - Jesus.

A lot of people, except me and maybe a few other people, do think that this whole Jesus thing is one of the most laughable things on the face of the planet. But because some of these people are my friends, I have to suck it up and keep on going.

And it’s fine, I’ll be ok by tomorrow. Because people are just out to have a good laugh, and that’s ok.

Right?

Handmade visualization tool-kit by jose.duarte on Flickr.

Death to powerpoint. Bring out your inner creative.