I was recently interviewed by the amazing Maurice Cherry for his podcast Revision Path. I was one of the first designers Maurice interviewed way back in the day for Revision Path, so it was wonderful to chat with him about the state of design today, and what I have been working on. Most interestingly for me, we had a chance to talk about science fiction, Afrofuturism, and "that black rights in space..."
Check it.
I wrote recently on A List Apart about finding and working with creative communities. Too often in the Western design world, we hear that design is stale, or has become homogenous.
This view views creative communities, essentially, as pools of user-generated content, that freely available content is there to be mined and the best ideas repackaged for profit. This is idea as commodity, and it very conveniently strips out the people doing the creating, instead looking at their conceptual and design work as a resource.
But another way of thinking is to view creative networks as interdependent networks of people. By nature, they cannot be resources, and any work put into the community is to sustain and nourish those human connections, not create assets. The focus is on contributing. How you build connections among other creative people makes you part of the network. See them, however ephemeral and globally distributed, as a powerful way to expand your design horizons and be part of something different.
Read the whole article at ALA!
I just rediscovered these CSS compositions recently in my bookmarks, and thought you might enjoy them.
There are a lot of similarities between teaching english and designing websites. I taught ESL (English as a Second Language) full time in Japan for over 4 years before becoming a designer, and I'd like to think that experience better prepared me for a career on the web.
Some element of user research should go into every design project. Some studios hire researchers, and use that as a core selling point. Others are comfortable using the findings of outsiders. If research is built into how your team operates, you might reuse what data you've already gathered. In any situation, it plays a big part in the development and deployment of sites and web apps.
The same was true in the English lessons I taught in Japan. Teachers wrote down all kinds of interesting tidbits in student files. They were where I learned if they had siblings, pets, even a passport full of visa stamps. Looking at a student file before class gave me just enough background to plan a targeted lesson. In much the same way, I now use analytics, user research, and interviews to get data about our audience and plan designs that work for them. It makes it a much more personal experience for them, if done right.
I sometimes think that classrooms are like user interfaces. It takes a lot to get them working correctly. I used to get clammy hands when a lesson started floundering. The flop sweat and frustration when someone didn’t get a grammar point or a vocabulary word- agh! That process of deciding what worked in class, and then doing more of it, feels to me the same process I take when designing for the web. Find the parts of the interface that are failing, and rework them.
One of the most hated parts of the students lessons was the “listen and repeat”. It was used for grammar exercises, pronunciation, and pretty much every dead spot in the lesson. It worked for my students when used judiciously. Giving students practice with language patterns helped to solidify the ebb and flow of the English language.
I find the same principle holds true with the design work I do now. I find myself unconsciously looking for repeated interaction patterns. Those become learned behavior on the web- just think about those now-ubiquitous hamburger menu buttons. A few years ago, as responsive web design was just starting out, those hardly existed! Now it's a known pattern, one built on a few years of user repetition.
I can even trace certain mark-making from my years in art school, patterns that I still use again and again. In that way, I've built up a design language all my own, one built on years of practice.
There were always a few students no one could stand. I don’t miss a single one. They were the people with the most obvious and grating personalities. They would find creative ways to derail lessons, interrupt the shyest students right when they were about to open up, or vehemently disagree with some established scientific fact. One highlight was having a middle-aged man laugh in my face when I told him the population of Nigeria was larger than Japan's. You had to learn to think on your feet, though, and avoid situations that would let the the crazy ones take over the class.
But here's the thing. They forced me to change the way I taught. They made me spend an extra minute or two explaining a complicated idiom, or a grammar point, or even just wait patiently while shy students got up the nerve to speak. The waiting patiently was the hardest, to be honest.
But in the same way that those bad students forced me to innovate and change the way I conducted classes, the complex humanity of people online forces me to simplify and rethink my interfaces, to eliminate those kinds of situations.
Web designers are not always teachers, but we can learn a lot from what happens in a classroom. I view Design as a language, one that I speak with varying degrees of proficiency, depending on the problem I'm solving. How information is passed from one person to another matters greatly, whether it be the spoken word, or web content. Teaching one has made me much better at the other.
Ill be speaking and holding a workshop at Webvisions Portland in May. If you're in the area, I'd love to see you there.
My talk is called Hyperlinks and Storyarcs, and will be about non-linear storytelling on the web. You can read more about it on the Webvisions blog.
I was a Computer Arts subscriber for 2 years. I learned all sorts of things, from how to set up an augmented reality webapp, to creating efficient patterns in Illustrator. The new talent and agency features were also great, as I could see what others in the industry were working on.
I decided, though, to cancel my membership. The magazine had a serious lack of diversity in its pages. There were hardly ever any designers from South America, Asia, Africa, or 'other' design communities. The same few people were featured constantly, month after month, and I just got tired of seeing nothing but white European faces.
The design world is bigger than that. I wanted to also read about agencies in Lagos and Accra, translated interviews with Colombian designers, and tutorials from Indian typographers. I wanted to learn, not only about what has been in the design news, but what others were doing around the globe. That wasn't in the pages of Computer Arts, so I cancelled my subscription.
if you have a few minutes, check out the article I wrote on Smashing Magazine about multi-screen storytelling. I've spoken about this topic before, at Webvisions and NYUXPA, so I'm really glad the topic is being seen by a wider audience.
There's no shortage of blog posts telling you how to make a killer portfolio. This isn't one of them. It's simply my personal experience showing my work online, and what I've learned while designing my portfolio. If there are any lessons here, they are intensely personal, and may not apply to you.
Still curious, dear reader? Then carry on.
I've always attached undue weight to my personal site. If I could just crop those images the right way, or just write that CSS a bit more cleverly, it would magically bring a wave of interest in my work. Since I don't have my own (internet) TV show, it obviously didn't work. What I've realized, slowly, is what my online portfolio is actually for. To prove (to myself) that I'm not a faker.
I joined the Art Directors Club about a year ago, on a whim. They seemed to have a few interesting events happening, and being new in New York, I figured it was an good way to meet people.
The ADC Executive Director Ignacio Oreamuno started having office hours, and invited members to come in and talk, have a cup of coffee, and get portfolio advice. I jumped at the chance, mostly because I needed some impartial outside advice about my work. He asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I said an astronaut, but I was only half joking. So was he.
Pulling out my iPad and showing him a bit of my portfolio, we talked generally about the work, about technology, and digital art direction. The advice I got was straightforward. “You have a bit of everything in here. Anyone who says they can do it all is a liar.” he said. “You need to focus on one area, and get fucking awesome at it.” Being all over the place, trying to prove I'm capable, diluted my portfolio.
Ignacio suggested I look for radical digital ideas that organizations like MIT's Media Lab were working on, and design conceptual work around those. He said the in order to craft mind-blowing digital experiences, I needed to look years in the future, and not at today. Too much of what I produce seemed focused on chasing short-term successes.
The typography, color choices, interaction patterns in my work need to have real purpose, and my portfolio should showcase that. Not in that esoteric Art World way, but in the pragmatic, rule-based way that design calls for. Talking about my work more critically, more forcefully, is a skill I have yet to master. A small realization that came from an impartial observer, with no personal stake in me or my career.
Strangers can be your most honest critics.
Just a quick note to say I will be speaking at the New York City User Experience Professionals Association next week, on the 16th of April.
The talk is one that is close to my heart, and is entitled The Art of Effective Narrative. I'll be looking at examples of effective digital storytelling, and asking some pointed questions to help attendees use storytelling to create unique user experiences.
Thanks to Rodrigo Sanchez and all the UXPA crew for hosting me, hope to see you there!
You can register here: The Art of Effective Narrative
I was really excited to get an article published on .net magazine this week.
We need to start using cultural queries in our designs as a way to adapt content for different groups of people.
By factoring in cultural variables, we can create sites that are relevant for a wide variety of users around the world. Over the past three years, we’ve been captivated by media queries. Our focus on responsive design has been incredibly successful, especially when you look at statistics saying the majority of web users demand mobile ready sites. I believe that something is still missing. By looking so exclusively at technology and code, we have largely ignored cultural differences and the global mindset necessary in our connected world.
Go check it out!