I really enjoy teaching the UX Intensive workshop on Interaction Design, especially now that it has evolved into a hands-on studio course. I think it is a meaty day that practitioners of all levels can get something out of.

I’m teaching it again in Minneapolis on June 19. Use my discount code of FODS and get 15% off the cost. Hope to see you there!

Oh, and that code works for UX Week too! Now with Pixar!

I don’t usually review academic papers, mostly just design books. But in doing research for the new book, I stumbled across How Bodies Matter: Five Themes for Interaction Design by Scott Klemmer, Björn Hartmann, and Leila Takayama of Stanford. It’s two years old (as of this writing), but I think its themes are dead on and even more relevant now than before, and if you are interested in the future of interaction design, it is well worth a read.

The basic thrust of the paper is that with the current keyboard-mouse-monitor set-up, we do every task, no matter if it is writing a paper or editing a movie or even playing a game, all the same way. Pointing, clicking, dragging and dropping, etc. The work has become “homogenized” and we can do better, creating richer interactions.

Here are their themes:

• Thinking Through Doing. There are a lot of skills you simply cannot learn by reading or listening alone. You have to try them out. Gestures aren’t just for embellishment to communication, they can also be an aid to learning and understanding. Manipulation of items allows for greater understanding of the item. Artifacts have their own characteristics, and their “backtalk” uncovers problems or can suggest new designs.
• Performance. We should design products for expert users, able to use their hands and motor memory to perform action-centered skills. Thinking can be too slow; experiental cognition (learned skillful behavior like driving a car) can be more rapid and powerful than reflective cognition.
• Visibility. Through the performance of an activity, that activity can be made visible to others easily, so that collaboration and situated learning can occur spontaneously.
• Risk. Most products are designed to decrease risk, but retaining some risk can be beneficial. With risk comes trust, responsibility, and attention.
• Thick Practice. Because there is so much benefit to the real world, we should be careful with replacing physical artifacts with digital ones. The best case scenario is to augment the physical world with digital behaviors, and thus “admitting the improvisations of practice that the physical world offers.”

One of the few academic papers I have enjoyed recently.

Annoyance at spam twitter accounts had me lock up my twitter updates last week. The upshot of that was that by doing so, I moved some 500 people who had been following me into twitter limbo. For the last few days, I’ve been having to decide, one by one, which ones I let return to seeing my updates. Rather than do this willy-nilly, I came up with some basic rules that might be interesting to you as well.

In order for me to let you have a glimpse of my life, I’ve decided, I need to know you or know of you, or at a minimum want to know you. If I don’t know you or know of you, the only way I can tell if I want to know you is from your online identity, which in this case means glancing at your twitter profile. If you follow thousands of people, I’m probably not going to let you follow me, because it bespeaks of a lack of interest in me as an individual. If the “person” is a company, product or service, forget it. There has to be some benefit to me in your seeing some of me, and that is unlikely to be the case with most companies. I can see how it might benefit them, but me? Unlikely.

The bar is much higher for me to choose to follow someone. In order for me to do that, there are two criteria: I have to know you well (we’ve at least had drinks or a meal), and you have to use your twitter account in a way that I find acceptable. By that I mean you don’t twitter excessively or have long @ conversations or only @ people. You need to have something to say for me to want to hear it, not just responses. I have to know you well for the simple reason I need to understand a little of your life to make sense of some of your messages. Where you live, your family life, what you do for a living, your sense of humor, etc. Without context, a twitter stream can simply be stuff and nonsense.

Now, abstracting this just a little to all social networks isn’t much of a stretch.

• Have something to say.
• Pick and choose who you follow and who follows you carefully.
• Offline context still matters.
• Reveal only as much as is necessary.
• Give me a reason to follow you–and to share with you.

It’s a start anyway.

Believe it or not, we’re already thinking about next year’s Interaction09, following the sell-out success of Interaction08. But we’re not resting on our laurels: One of the things I’m curious about is why some of you chose to attend other conferences—IA Summit, CHI, etc.—instead of (or in addition to) Interaction08.

Obviously, we’re not going to change the focus of the conference away from interaction design, but if there were other factors that caused you to instead go elsewhere, I’d be curious to hear them. Everything is up for grabs: location, program, etc. Email me at dan AT odannyboy DOT com or leave a comment.

Ok, maybe that isn’t the best way to sell this job, but Adaptive Path is looking for a new CEO. If you or someone you know (or even know of) would be an interesting fit (combining business and design savvy), we’d like to know. Send an email to bryan dot mason at adaptivepath dot com.

At the airport on the way to Austin last week, I bought a bottle of water. Or, more precisely, I bought the plastic container that the water came in. The water was just a bonus. The bottle, by SEI Water, is shaped like a large hip flask or canteen instead of the typical round cylinder, and it feels sturdier too. I spent a little bit more for this water bottle because I liked the form factor. The bottle drew comments everywhere I went, because (and here is the point) when I was done with it, I didn’t throw it out like I do with every other water bottle. I kept refilling it, rather than discard it. It fit so well in my hand and looked so good with its sleek Helvetica Neue logo, I didn’t want to get rid of it once its initial “use” was up. Five days later, I still have it. An airport water bottle.

That’s good design.

In advance of my Tap is the New Click presentation at ETech, O’Reilly has graciously allowed me to post a draft of the first chapter of my new book (now titled) Interactive Gestures: Designing Gestural Interfaces. It’s pretty much my unedited first draft, but I think it reads pretty well. Comments welcome, of course!

Download Chapter 1 (5.4mb pdf)

If you are looking to meet/talk to/get a drink with yours truly, here are the conferences I’m speaking at or attending in the next few months.

This week, it’s Adaptive Path’s UX Intensive in San Francisco, where I’m teaching the (newly rebooted) Interaction Design Day this Friday. Some seats are still available, so use my code of FODS and get 10% off. It’s very hands on, so watch those x-acto blades!

March takes me to ETech in San Diego for Tap is the New Click from my upcoming book. Use my code et08fd and get 20% off. March is also SXSW in Austin, where I’m leading a Core Conversation on Feeding the Creativity Beast.

April 1-2, I’m speaking at and dropping in on classes at Indiana University’s School of Infomatics. Then I’m back in San Francisco to attend Adaptive Path’s MX Conference on design leadership. Use my code FODS and get 10% off. (The early bird price is still going on too.)

May 22-23 has me in Portland for the always-great WebVisions with Tap is the New Click.

There’s more lined up for summer which will be announced shortly. Hope to see you somewhere!