.cross.wired.mind.

Not to be outdone by twin launch parties for the Hoodiez, check out the response to John Kovalic’s My Little Cthulhu.

Paizo is one of, if not the largest ecommerce site dedicated gaming. Check out their top 10 and take note of numbers 5, 8, and 9. sweet.

S-U-C-K

The only thing keeping it from getting the full S-U-C-K-S is that I saw it for free one day ahead of its release.

Ham handed comedy, action sequences filmed in confuse-o-vision, crappy acting, crappy dialogue, heavy handed moralizing, horrible pacing, and that is just some of its finer qualities.

Oh, I take that back - Bruce Campbell provided the only real highlight. I would say you should go see it just for his bit, but I am sure it will end up on YouTube soon enough.

Now that I think about it free was too much to pay to see Spiderman 3. Thankfully it also came with free M&Ms - two bags plus water equaled lunch.

I know that there are people who would have paid a mint to take my place in that theater. Believe me, if I could have found you in time I would have gladdly handed my seat to you … as long as I could keep the M&Ms.

Yesterday it was PW, today there is an awesome story by Brian Howard in the CITYPAPER!

This Saturday I will be publicly launching my new toy company - Philly style. From 6-10pm at Rarebreed (15th and South) we will be celebrating the work of Carl Jones and the toys he designed for Dreamland Toyworks.

Come on down and join us or catch the show before it closes in May.

There will be original art by Carl. Canvases by local street artists Bob Will Reign, El Toro, and Nose G. There are also canvases tagged by local graff artists. There will also be a paper box (legally obtained mind you) stickered up by some of Philly’s best sticker artists.

Oh, and we got some coverage in Philadelphia Weekly.

Today a coworker of mine asked me to put aside my years of experience in UX design, and everything I have learned from years of conferences, reading and research and look at a design problem logically.  Sounds odd doesn’t it.  Set aside everything I know so I can become one with some Vulcanesque ideal of pure engineering logic.

That is when it hit me.  If design were about pure logic then mathematicians would make the perfect designers.  Engineers could do it all.  Why have these pesky user experience designers when the answer is so clear and logical.  That got me to thinking of the internal debate we have had in the IA community - is IA a science, art, or craft.

The one thing I have learned from 11 years of experience web craft is that the folks that use the systems we design often act in ways we did not expect or predict.  That is what makes user experience design such a challenge - we deal with people and all of their idiosyncratic behaviors.  In other words - the first victim of the user experience design process is logic.

However, user experience design is not purely an art.  Intuition, emotion, and perception are all key components to user experience design but they do not operate unbridled.  User experience design also requires a bit of cognitive science, a dash of ethnographic methodology, and a solid dose of objective experimentation.

I believe our main tool of trade is intuitive design coupled with validation testing.  User experience design requires us to use both lobes, or to work with people that can compliment our own left or right lobe bias.  Over time we begin to build a strong sense of what will and will not work.  But we must always test our work.  Our intuition must be a measured intuition because, ultimately, the designs we create will be used by the least logical of operators - the human being.

Women who knit sweaters for men often find a less than enthusiastic recipient once they complete their work. (note - men knit too but this usually happens when women knit for men) For the knitter the work was a time consuming challenge. It took skill. It took time. It took many hours of hard work. Why is it that the men who get these sweaters simply do not appreciate what was done for them?

Because knitting is so time consuming the creation of the knitted object must hold the knitters interest. The yarn must feel good on the fingers. The stitches cannot be too repetitive or too simple. The color must not be a bland monotone lest the knitter become bored like a long distance driver watching the white lines of the road wiz by in endless procession.

The trouble is that most men want plain sweaters. One need look no farther than a local men’s shop to see the kinds of fashions that men like to wear. When men see sweater that is a many colored, intricately cabled, mash up of styles they see a sweater that they do not want to wear. Yes it was fun for the knitter to make but it is not what the guy want to wear in public.

The knitter is trapped in a cruel paradox - in order to make a sweater that a man will wear, she will need to use monotone yarn that might be thicker than she wants to use. She may have to use a simple pattern with row after row of uniform stitches. Producing it will be dull and will lack real challenge. Her choice is to enjoy knitting or make a sweater that a man will wear.

So what does this have to do with digital design? User experience designers want interesting projects. They get bored building plain old digital information systems. Information architects constantly look for new ways to build intricate structures, complex organizational systems, and sites with perfect browsing systems. Interaction designers want to build sites with sophisticated interfaces that solve challenging problems. Information designers want everything to be visually interesting and designed with a deeply artistic aesthetic.

We do this because the alternative is often dull and it isn’t always challenging. We want the work we do to be personally gratifying. We want to feel as if we have accomplished something great. Above all else we do not want to get bored. Creativity needs to be expressed. We must stay challenged. We must push the edges of the envelope. We strive for exquisite sophistication that takes complexity and makes it useable for the masses. We all want to build a better, cooler mousetrap.

That is not what the user wants. The user wants a tool that makes sense to them. The do not want to think about how it works - they just want it to work.

User centered design is not just about making products that people can use. People can use products that don’t work very well. User centered design is about making products for the people that will use them and not to make products that can be used but were primarily designed so that we could have a fun time designing them.

Every 5 or 10 years you walk out of a theater and realize that you have just seen a truly important film. The critics may hate it, the money may or may not roll in, but something about the film stands out and changes things.

Star Wars - Blade Runner - Saving Private Ryan - The Matrix - The Lord of the Rings

All of these films changed the genre from which it came. All films that came after looked back at them for inspiration. They became iconic. They shifted the cinematic landscape. After you have seen them you look back at other films like them and they somehow pale in comparison. Scifi before Star Wars just looked cheap. Blade Runner showed that scifi could have substance. Saving Private Ryan made all previous movies about World War II look like Boy Scout outings. The Matrix gave us a whole new way to visualize the world both cinematically and philosophically. The Lord of the Rings showed us that fantasy films did not have to be just mindless sword and sorcery romps with campy dialogue and rubber monsters.

300

Films based on the tales and myths of ancient history have a new gold standard. Narrated in the style of a Greek tragedy, the story telling in 300 feels larger than life. The characters are iconic without being two-dimensional. The story is refined to essentials. There was never a moment that seemed out of place or without purpose. The visuals were simply astounding. Tales of great heroism and ancient drama requires a sense gravity and grandeur without a hard and fast grip on reality. Gladiator tried to recreate history. 300 does not pretend to be an accurate simulation of the fine details of history. Who cares that the helmets were not quite right. Who cares that Spartans were sometimes heavily armored and sometimes fought with just cape, sandals, helmet, shield, and spear. Details are not as important as grand story telling and a real sense of the hero and the myth.

300 certainly has its detractors (more on that another time). It is not a flawless film, but it is the first film about the ancient world that cuts through the historical clutter and tells the heart of the story. It does not attempt to layer on 21st century sensibilities. It is told - unapologetically - from the Spartan perspective. Gross exaggeration - the hallmark of mythical story telling - is embraced rather than shunned. It is not the single most accurate portrayal of the Battle of Thermopylae but it does not stray far from the truth. And that is the power of a good tale - take the truth add some drama and a little exaggeration and you get one hell of an entertaining story.

Now add some of the most breathtaking visuals I have ever seen and that makes the kind of film that shakes it all up and changes the way films are made. Time will tell if I am right but one thing is for sure - 300 is the most beautiful film I have ever seen.

If you have not seen it yet then run out and get a ticket. This is an event that MUST be seen on the big screen (and in DLP if possible).

It does not matter who does it. It does not matter how much (or how little) skill they have as a designer. It does not matter if it was planned or not, tested or not, researched or not. Anyone can do it.

design happens

That is the problem with design - if you think it up and make it then you are a designer.

I have seen so many projects fail because unskilled designers tried to create. I am talking about web apps and other digital information systems created by the companies I have worked for over the past 10 years. I am talking about projects conceived by executives and then designed by them without any consultation with the folks inside their organization who have the skills to make their ideas reality.

Here is how a project typically runs - “the business” has an idea that will generate money, solve a problem, or meet a need (all just ways to make money really). The folks in “the business” look at what their competitors are doing, they think about what they would want, they talk to other “business people” and then they decide what they want to build.

They start a project to build their vision into reality. They want people to just do it. They do not want anyone to conduct the kind of research that would lead to a real understanding of how this product will be used. They do not want anyone to question their vision, even if that means refining it and honing it into an effective solution, product, design, etc. They do not want users to test the design to see if it can be used. They just want it done.

That is when projects fail.

So how do they succeed? Look at how the Palm Pilot came to be. Its creator, Jeff Hawkins used a block of wood that he carried with him for months to see how he would use mini computer. He actually tested his high tech vision with wood and some paper. He did the kind of research that takes a good idea and makes it a great idea.

Look at the iPod … Here is a device that is not the first digital music player on the market and yet it is now the dominant player out there. If the iPod designers had simply done what their competitors were doing would the final solution been as elegant and useable as the iPod we have today? No. Instead they tested, investigated, researched, and then designed the product for use.

For a product to truly succeed it must be intentionally designed to be used by real people. That type of design requires research, testing, and willingness to acknowledge that a good product is not always the one with the largest feature set. Why most product managers do not understand this simple truth is beyond my comprehension.

The iPod proved that rushing to market is not a justifiable motivator to cut corners on design. The success of the Palm Pilot shows that when you think about how people will actually use your product then people will actually use your product.

Design is more than ideas made real. Solid design happens when the designer stands to the side, turns down the ego, watches people do things, and then uses that as inspiration to create solutions that will work.

That is how design should happen. Not by the edict from an executive but from the needs of real people - observed, understood, and then used to make great things.