Looking for a Designer to Mentor

I’m looking for a designer to mentor. What I’m offering:

  • Six months of mentoring, renewable if it’s working out
  • Review any work you want: sketches, deliverables, finished products, pieces of writing, etc. It can’t be overly time-sensitive though; no “OMG, the client needs to see these in an hour and I need your help!” kind of stuff. More like, “How could I make/have made this better?”
  • Help with career planning: what you should do, who you should meet, etc. and help arrange introductions if possible
  • General advice

I’m looking for a particular kind of designer to mentor, though, as I think I’d probably be able to help this type of designer out the most. Who you are:

  • Early-career (2-3 years+) interaction/UX designer: not fresh out of undergrad
  • Wants to or (preferably has) written articles and/or conference presentations
  • Works with complex problems—I’m not going to be much help with marketing or branding work
  • Interested in more than web
  • Comfortable in English. Alas, I don’t speak any other language well enough to be able to effectively tutor someone in it.
  • Doesn’t mind the occasional blunt advice and criticism
  • A sense of humor
  • Willing to deal with me mostly via email and IM. If you’re in SF, we’ll get beverages occasionally.

I’ll try to help guide you as best I can.

UPDATE: I’ve found three people to mentor and applications are hereby closed. Thanks for your interest!

100 Days of Design

Yesterday, I found myself reading Michael Bierut’s exercise he gives his graduate students at Yale: do a design exercise every day for 100 days. The same exercise, repeatedly. At the same time, I also happened to read this article by Sebastian Marshall about the importance of doing quantity, not quality, if you want to improve.

I mentioned on Twitter how I’d like to do this exercise one day, and got a challenge from Livia Labate: let’s do it now. If we start on March 1, it would be finished on June 8.

Because I’m insane, I said ok.

I had to find something to do, so I thought about it for a while. I wanted something that would come together to make something, yet mark the distinct days. I wanted something that could be done in under 15 minutes a day, preferably less. And I wanted something that related, however tangentially, to my day. What did I do every day already?

Aside from sleeping and eating and other hygiene (none of which would mark a day very distinctly), the one thing I do every day without fail is listen to music. Sometimes obsessively listening to the same song over and over. Sometimes the songs are meaningful, sometimes just a song. But it’s usually interesting. So my project would be around that.

I also thought back to some of my favorite assignments from graduate school, and I remembered one Dan Boyarski gave us when I first started and the Onomatopoeia Project from Kristin Hughes in Grad Type. I enjoy playing with type, so I decided on a typography project.

So here’s what I’m doing: every day for the next hundred days, I’m going to take the song I’ve listened to the most that day, pull out a meaningful or memorable lyric, and make it into a piece of expressive typography. Each day I’ll have a 6″x6″ square to put the type in. Then, I’m putting them into one enormous poster of 20 rows with 5 lyric squares each. On June 8, I should have a 3’x10′ poster (at least) of the project. I’m using whatever font works with that day’s lyric, presented in any way I want (as long as it’s in the 6″x6″ box). I started the project today with a lyric from The Beatles’ “Free as a Bird.”

Wish me luck.

2011 Professional Goals

Launch a working product of my own. Not a concept project and not a client project. A product I can unequivocally point to as my own design that others can use.

Write more. A blog post a week, and a longer article on Designing Devices once a month.

Sketch more. Improve my freehand drawing and noodle on ideas. Instead of a laptop or iPad to fill in the gaps of the day, sketch.

More storytelling in presentations. Telling stories is a great way to engage the audience. I need to incorporate them more into my talks.

More outreach. Less dealing with the design community, more engagement with the broader business and tech worlds. More going after projects I want to work on.

Another strong program for Device Design Day. The first Device Design Day was a success, with a great lineup of speakers. Build on that.

Improve The Interaction Design Library. Add excerpts or summaries to all entries in the Interaction Design Library. Link to a twitter account. Find buried gems.

Create an Interaction Design Glossary of Terms. Use the canonical books in the field to create a glossary for everyone to use.

2011 Personal Goals

Exercise. Thirty minutes of exercise every day. No exceptions. Can be Wii Fit, walking, pushups/situps, whatever. Just move. Hard.

Resume cello. Practice cello three times a week. At least a half hour each time. Resume serious lessons once back up to speed.

More off-line time. Three hours of off-line time on weekdays, six hours per day on weekends. Spending too much time online, not enough engaging with the world around me. It leads to caring about stupid stuff like how many Twitter followers I have or whether people have voted up my answers on Quora. In the end, who gives a shit?

See friends more. I’m so much happier when I do social activities and/or meet friends for drinks at least once a week. I don’t do it enough. Friends reading this: consider yourself on notice.

Pause before snapping. Before lashing out, try to figure out why I’m angry or frustrated. Is it something the other person said or did, or am I overreacting? Focus on the feeling first, then articulate it (if appropriate). Sit on angry emails for a long while.

Read more fiction. My 2010 books were heavily weighed towards non-fiction. I should add more fiction to the mix.

More live music. Really any live music. I don’t think I saw a single show in 2010.

Daily pause. Fifteen minutes a day of doing nothing but sitting quietly. Call it prayer, meditation, whatever. Focus.

Fight envy. It’s a poison, and leads to thinking badly about myself. I can only live my life as best as I can. My only true competition is myself.

2010 Bibliography

Design and Technology

MUST READ: Living with Complexity, Don Norman

MUST READ: Design Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean, Roberto Verganti (my review)

The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves, W. Brian Arthur (my review)

The Language of Things: Understanding the World of Desirable Objects, Deyan Sudjic (my review)

Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century, P.W. Singer

From Concept to Consumer: How to Turn Ideas Into Money, Phil Baker

Simple and Usable Web, Mobile, and Interaction Design, Giles Colborn

The Laws of Simplicity, John Maeda

Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, Steven Johnson (my review)

Smart Things: Ubiquitous Computing User Experience Design, Mike Kuniavsky

Designing Interfaces, Second Edition, Jenifer Tidwell (Not yet released, got an advance copy)

 

Fiction

MUST READ: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: A Novel, David Mitchell

MUST READ: River of Gods, Ian McDonald

Appaloosa, Robert B. Parker

Shadow & Claw: The First Half of ‘The Book of the New Sun’ (Book of the Long Sun), Gene Wolfe

The Imperfectionists: A Novel, Tom Rachman

The Gone-Away World, Nick Harkaway

The Walking Dead: Compendium One, Robert Kirkman

Spook Country, William Gibson

A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3), George R.R. Martin

 

Neuroscience

MUST READ: Proust Was a Neuroscientist, Jonah Lehrer

MUST READ: How We Decide, Jonah Lehrer

Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life, Winifred Gallagher

This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, Daniel Levitin

Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average, Joseph Hallinan

Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence, Andy Clark

 

Philosophy and Metaphysics

MUST READ: Gospel and the Zodiac: The Secret Truth about Jesus, Bill Darlison

How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, Arnold Bennett

The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America, Louis Menand

Meditations, Marcus Aureilus

 

Writing

MUST READ: On Writing, Stephen King

How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy, Orson Scott Card

The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller, John Truby

Write Great Fiction – Plot & Structure, James Scott Bell

 

Dog Training

How to Housebreak Your Dog in 7 Days (Revised), Shirlee Kalstone

How to Raise the Perfect Dog: Through Puppyhood and Beyond, Cesar Milan

How to Be Your Dog’s Best Friend: The Classic Training Manual for Dog Owners, The Monks of New Skete

 

Food

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, Anthony Bourdain

Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook, Anthony Bourdain

 

Miscellaneous Non-Fiction

Confessions of a Public Speaker, Scott Berkun

Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality, Scott Belsky

Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?, Seth Godin

The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion, John Hagel, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison

The Book of Codes: Understanding the World of Hidden Messages, Paul Lunde

Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace, David Lipsky

For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World’s Favorite Drink and Changed History, Sarah Rose

My Favorite Design Articles 2010

Better than the stuff I wrote in 2010 are a bunch of really great articles I’ve read and enjoyed (and have influenced me) throughout the year. Here are my favorites (in no particular order):

Tips on Buying Design by Mike Montiero
“Most people don’t need to buy design. And only about half the people trying to buy design should be. Your designer should be a partner, helping you solve your problem. You have a goal in mind; the two of you work together for a solution. Getting to that solution includes researching the people you want using your object, the market for that object and who, if anyone, is trying to sell that same sort of object. If all of that sounds like a pain in the ass, and it kind of is, then don’t buy design. Hire a production team. You’ll save money.”

User Experience Matters: What Entrepreneurs Can Learn From ‘Objectified’ by Om Malik
“Most companies (including web startups), he said, are looking to “wow” with their products, when in reality what they should be looking for is an “’of course’ reaction from their users.”

A not-so-brief chat with Randall Stephenson of AT&T by Fake Steve Jobs
“Point of the talk was, when you’re lucky enough to create a smash hit product — when the stars align, and the hardware is great and the ecosystem is great and the apps are great and the whole experience is great, and everything you do just makes everything else better, and you’re totally on a roll and can do no wrong — when that happens, you do not go out and try to fuck it all up by discouraging people who love your product. What you do, instead, is you fix your fucking shitty ass network you fucking shit-eating-grin-wearing hillbilly ass clown!”

We Are All Talk Radio Hosts by Jonah Lehrer
“The larger moral is that our metaphors for reasoning are all wrong. We like to believe that the gift of human reason lets us think like scientists, so that our conscious thoughts lead us closer to the truth. But here’s the paradox: all that reasoning and confabulation can often lead us astray, so that we end up knowing less about what jams/cars/jelly beans we actually prefer.”

The Measure of a Designer by Nancy Sharon Collins
“From my mother, I learned perfect composition and can identify incorrect measurements down to a 64th of an inch with my naked eye. In the cold O.R. at New York’s Lenox Hill Hospital, the Park Avenue plastic surgeon was chagrined when I said I wanted to tell them where I wanted the two new concentric circles that would be my nipples and areola to be placed. We argued—the surgeon’s assistant wanted to measure and I said, no, this has to be done optically. Thus I stood buck-naked before a mirror and the 12-member surgical team, with a Sharpie marker in my hand. To my satisfaction, when the surgeon’s assistant measured my work with his millimeter ruler, it was quantifiably perfect.”

I Jump for Cash Bitch by Robert Schaefer
“You have until 10am tomorrow morning to send me the business card artwork or you will hear from my lawyer. I am sick to death of dealing with you designers. Being able to draw and dressing like women doesn’t make you special.”

So You Need a Typeface by Julian Hansen

Design Thinking: A Useful Myth by Don Norman
“A powerful myth has arisen upon the land, a myth that permeates business, academia, and government. It is pervasive and persuasive. But although it is relatively harmless, it is false. The myth? That designers possess some mystical, creative thought process that places them above all others in their skills at creative, groundbreaking thought. This myth is nonsense, but like all myths, it has a certain ring of plausibility although lacking any evidence. Why should we perpetuate such nonsensical, erroneous thinking? Because it turns out to be a very useful way to convince people that designers do more than make things look pretty. Never let facts stand in the way of utility.”

The Evaporative Cooling Effect by Xianhang Zhang
“The Evaporative Cooling Effect is a term I learned from an excellent essay by Eliezer Yudowsky that describes a particular phenomena of group dynamics. It occurs when the most high value contributors to a community realize that the community is no longer serving their needs any more and so therefore, leave. When that happens, it drops the general quality of the community down such that the next most high value contributors now find the community underwhelming. Each layer of disappearances slowly reduces the average quality of the group until such a point that you reach the people who are so unskilled-and-unaware of it that they’re unable to tell that they’re part of a mediocre group.”

Google Maps and Readability by Justin O’Beirne
“For months, I’ve been trying to figure out why Google Maps’s city labels seem so much more readable than the labels on other mapping sites.”

Explain the Internet to a 19th Century Street Urchin by Doogie Horner

Why Pioneers Have Arrows in Their Backs by Steve Blank
“Over time the idea that winners in new markets are the ones who have been the first (not just early) entrants into their categories became unchallenged conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley. The only problem is that it’s simply not true.”

The Design Lesson: 1 of 1 by Andy Rutledge
“In graphic design, nothing is what it actually is. Everything other than content is representative of something else. Additionally, much of the content is also merely representative of something other than what it actually is.”

Why Innovation is Beginner’s Luck by G. Michael Maddock and Raphael Louis Vitón
“‘You can’t read the label when you are sitting inside the jar.’ This is how we like to describe the myopia that comes with being an expert. And odds are you are a myopic expert. That makes you vulnerable to people who come into your industry from the outside, and it limits your ability to come up with revolutionary new products.”

Build What Had Previously Not Been Possible by Jason L. Bapiste
“If you’re an entrepreneur looking to change the world it all seems to start with a simple little idea. It may seem as if the idea sprung up instantly, but it’s most likely a compilation of building blocks. Over the course of history new building blocks become available, which allow us to build companies that weren’t possible before. The crucial part to changing the world as an entrepreneur is to use these new building blocks to build what had previously not been possible. When looking at an idea it’s useful to ask yourself: ‘Would it have been possible to build this company 12-18 months ago?'”

Ideas Are a Commodity, It’s Execution Intelligence That Matters by Rob Adams
“One characteristic I run into when sorting this out with companies is an obsession around the uniqueness of the idea. Somehow there’s an urban legend that has denigrated to an obsession that the idea is king; it is what will make or break the new offering. The idea somehow must be unique and stand-alone in its market. The simple act of describing it needs to cause people to take out their wallets and give you money –or- cause your competitors to copy it. Prepare to be disabused of that notion. Your idea doesn’t matter.”

Engagement, Entertainment, or Get The Task Done: Cognitive, visual, and motor loads in UX design by Susan Weinschenk
“A traditional human factors concept is the idea of loads. A load refers to how much work you are requiring. In human factors terminology, we talk about cognitive loads (thinking, memory), visual loads (perceiving, noticing), and motor loads (keyboard, mouse, pointing). When you are designing to make something easier or simpler, you want to lower these loads. But sometimes you can’t lower all three loads. Often usability work is about finding the right balance in the three types of loads.”

Usability Ain’t Everything—A Response to Jakob Nielsen’s iPad Usability Study by Fred Beecher
“The conclusion of the Nielsen Norman Group’s April 2010 study of iPad usability is that it has problems and more standards are the solution. Yes, the iPad is imperfect, but resorting to standards as the solution is an antiquated reaction that fails to consider how interactive systems have evolved. We’re not Usability Engineers anymore (not most of us, anyway); we’re User Experience Designers. Experience is more than just usability.”

The Touch Gesture Reference Guide by Luke Wroblewski

The Secret to Great Work is Great Play by Garr Reynolds
“We must abandon the notion that work (or study) and play are opposites. Work and play are inexorably linked, at least the kind of creative work in which we are engaged today and hope to prepare our children for.”

Software Sea Change by Guy English
“The thing is these people don’t buy Applications, they download Apps. “Software” is dead, don’t bother putting that word on a sell sheet. Have you written “a program” recently? That’s nice, find a place in line behind all the other nerds but try not to step on the Coke-bottle glasses they tend to drop. “Oh … you’ve developed an application … is it something my doctor would know about”? People, lots and lots of people, people who have no idea what software even is, will download Apps like they’re snacking on potatoe chips. What’s my proof? Well, two million downloads of an App in a week supports that and I’d argue that a total of three billion Apps downloaded backs up my argument too. Also, I spell potatoe with an ‘e’, as God intended, so you know I’m right about this.”

11 Principles of Interaction Design Explained by Paul Seys

What Apple Needs to Do Now by Adam Greenfield
“I want to use the strongest language here. This is a terribly disappointing renunciation of possibility on Apple’s part, a failure to articulate an interface-design vocabulary as “futuristic” as, and harmonious with, the formal vocabulary of the physical devices themselves. One of the deepest principles of interaction design I observe is that, except in special cases, the articulation of a user interface should suggest something of a device, service or application’s capabilities and affordances. This is clearly, thoroughly and intentionally undermined in Apple’s current suite of iOS offerings.”

Opinions vs. Data by Lukas Mathis
“If there’s one thing we should all take to heart, it’s that humans are strange: They rarely behave the way we expect (or want) them to. Testing often reveals issues we would never have found out by merely thinking about a design. Conversely, something that looks wrong might actually work perfectly well.”

What else should be on the list? Please leave suggestions (articles, not presentations, videos, books or book excerpts, please) in the comments.

Favorite Articles I’ve Written in 2010

I admit it: it wasn’t a great year for me, writing-wise. I was lucky to have a few decent articles to put on this list. Here’s the articles I wrote that I liked the most in 2010.

Interaction Models (January)
One of the central tasks of any device designer is to create the interaction model. The interaction model is the overarching framework that ties the functionality together into a unified whole. Done right, the interaction model can be a major product differentiator; even if individual features are replicated, it may be difficult (although certainly not impossible) to reproduce the interaction model that ties all the features together.

3x2x2: A New Method of Thumb Typing for Tablet Computers (April)
Thumb typing is, of course, not new. (Few things are.) Blackberry users have been typing with thumbs for nearly a decade now, and other mobile phone users have been texting using only thumbs prior to that. There even thumb keyboards, and several interesting designs for thumb typing on a touchscreen. I want to add one more: the 3x2x2 Method.

Ghost Fingers Typing for Tablet Devices (May)
Ghost Fingers are a pattern I found when researching my book Designing Gestural Interfaces. Ghost Fingers are when a device becomes seemingly transparent so the users can “see” (onscreen) their fingers on the back of or inside of the device. Ghost fingers could be employed with tablets by putting a touchscreen (it could even be just a wide capacitive strip) on the back of the tablet that would only turn on when the keyboard was deployed. It could even be a physical keyboard, although that could get annoying when simply holding the tablet. As the user pressed the (digital or analog) buttons on the back, the corresponding key on the front of the screen would be highlighted.

Ebook Affordances (May)
I’ve put a handful of books on my iPad over the last few weeks, but I have to admit: I keep forgetting to read them. Not because the books aren’t good, but because, unlike physical books, ebooks take up no psychic space. Physical books by the nature of their being, well, physical and visible, remind me to read them. This isn’t true of digital books. Currently, I can’t glance at the Kindle or iBooks icons on my iPhone or iPad and know whether I have a library beneath it, waiting to be read, or nothing. There is no visual affordance that there’s anything there for me to engage with.

Finger Positions for Touchscreens (August)
When it comes to touchscreen devices, we’re not making the best use of our fingers.

What is a Device? (August)
For tens of thousands of years, humans have used objects to augment our reality. We employ tools to do what we can’t do easily with our own bodies, to change our environment, and to reason through problems. Our devices are no different, only more powerful, with the ability to transform activities, spaces, even entire cities

Everything I’ve Ever Learned About Giving Design Critiques I Learned from Tim Gunn (November)
I went through two years of studio critiques while getting my Master’s degree in design, and have been through dozens of them in the five years since then, but I can honestly say I’ve learned more about how to appropriately give design criticism from Tim Gunn, one of the hosts of the US television show Project Runway.

Why You Want (But Won’t Like) A Minority Report-style Interface (November)
Gestural interfaces show us how little of the body we actually use when interacting with the digital world. The Wii and Kinect, as Minority Report did, show us there are other ways of doing our tasks that can be more engaging, more physical. After all, who wouldn’t want to sweep their arm in front of a giant screen to open a folder? It’s like magic, and makes the simple mouse click or even finger tap seem dull. If nothing else, Minority Report-style interfaces cause us to think more expansively about what an interface could or should be, how we could be interacting with our devices and environments.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention probably the most popular article I ever wrote (although there wasn’t much writing involved): Essential Interaction Design Essays and Articles (September), which spun off the even better resource, The Interaction Design Library.

Happy reading, and see you in 2011!

Winter Break Reading List 2010

Some scifi, some philosophy, and a (now) literary classic. Hoping I can get to all of these in two weeks is ambitious, I know, especially with a new puppy arriving on 20 December! Writing them down and publishing them at least gives me a public goal, so that I don’t spend my entire break playing Donkey Kong Country Returns.

The Mezzanine, Nicholson Baker

Meditations, Marcus Aurelius

Brasyl, Ian McDonald

A Fire Upon The Deep, Vernor Vinge

Pragmatism, William James

Both Meditations and Pragmatism have free Kindle versions.

My Top Ten Albums of 2010

My criteria this year, as every year, is the same: no or few skipped tracks and the amount of times I find myself listening to the album over the course of the year.

10. Freelance Whales, Weathervanes. One of the few albums I can stand banjos on.

9. LCD Soundsystem, This Is Happening. Witty dance music. Plus, James Murphy looks like he could be my brother.

8. The Limousines, Get Sharp. Catchy as all hell. “Very Busy People” is one of the singles of the year.

7. Girl Talk, All Day. Every 30 seconds, something that astounds and amuses. A carnival of samples, and a RIAA nightmare.

6. Yeasayer, Odd Blood. New New Wave.

5. The Bird and The Bee, Interpreting the Masters Volume 1: A Tribute to Daryl Hall and John Oates. What could have been a gimmick…well, kind of still is, but in a great way. I can go for this.

4. Broken Bells, Broken Bells. I don’t like The Shins or Danger Mouse, but I do like this album from Shin’s James Mercer and Danger Mouse. A great, unexpected pairing.

3. The National, High Violet. The best album yet from this band. Melancholy, thoughtful, expansive.

2. Arcade Fire, The Suburbs. A really great album, from start to finish. “We Used to Wait” and “Suburban War” are as good, if not better, than anything on Funeral.

1. Eels, End Times. One of the bleakest records of the year is also my favorite. If “Little Bird” doesn’t break your heart, you don’t have one.

My picks for last year and my Top 25 albums of 2000-2009.

Five Things I’m Thinking About

Continuing the meme of getting out half-baked thoughts:

1. Connecting small devices to the internet. How do you hook up your toaster to the internet? There’s a bunch of ways to do this right now, the problem is finding the right way.

2. Emotional objects. Our studio amp likes its music loud. My home coffee pot seems to weep when it has to make coffee, letting off these little moans and cries. Would people buy a crying coffee pot? How much emotion is too much?

3. Decision-making. I’ve been reading a lot of neuroscience books: Proust Was a Neuroscientist, How We Decide, Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life, and Why We Make Mistakes. Applying what’s understood about the brain to products is something I’m mulling over.

4. Software agents. Seems like it’s time to start building them. But how would they work? I want something like JARVIS from the Iron Man movies, but boy is it a hard problem.

5. Different OS UIs. I’m pretty sick of the OSX and Windows paradigms and of the Web 2.0 aesthetic. I’m ready for the future. But what does that look like?