Awhile back there was this post about an awesome wavegraph visualization of music artist frequency as reported to Last.fm. An almost-as-good way to generate the chart for yourself showed up here. The service seems to be pretty back-logged now, but I created a test chart from about two weeks of data in March.Click for the full graph. 
Concept Models
Dan Brown
concept models represent nouns as circles connected by lines that are verbs
Steps:
gather concepts (make a list of nouns from your requirements list, more is better, be complete)
start creating connections
research and elaborate concepts
validate concepts and connections (with others)
economizing connections - analyze and reduce redundancy
be as transparent as possible in your process - explain to colleagues why you did this and the thinking behind it
questions to ask when showing model:
what’s missing?
are these relationships correct?
do these relationships matter?
use concept models when the underlying structure is unclear
use concept models to move away from the “page metaphor”
use concept models to bridge the gap between understanding and solving the problem
this models object-oriented thinking, engineers may be able to understand these models easily
Alan Cooper’s Keynote: An Insurgency of Quality
first to market vs. best to market - business guys tend to only see first to market because they don’t know how to get best to market; this is what we know
we are craftsmen
list of features does not equal a product summary - it’s about the behavior of a the product
industrial age vs. digital age - we can’t manage software in an industrial age way — reducing costs of production doesn’t increase profit, it reduces end quality
two models:
how do we create an insurgency?
start small, carve out a little space
enlist programmers
document success (measurable and demonstrable)
“the insurgency of quality” - unite with programmers
Effective Prototyping
Jonathan Arnowitz
bill buxton talked about choosing the right fidelity
difference between prototyping and sketching?
a prototype is a model of a design that is:
complete or incomplete
portraying specific content and fidelity
for a specific planned purpose
…
prototyping is NOT formalized, manageable, predictable, professional
empower everyone to prototype, everyone has great ideas, but the designer needs to be in the driver’s seat
put an expiration date on your prototype, let people know that date and that this will become obsolete ad well
prototype success depends on:
well defined objectives and areas of responsibility regarding who owns the prototype
effective strategy
Don’t Make Me Click
Aza Raskin - aza@mozilla.com
to the user, the interface is the product
the best interface is no interface (NFI = no fucking interface)
what’s better than a shovel? a hole
90% of the feature requests for Word are for features that already exist - the difference is a usable feature
google calculates, track packages, searches discography, track flights and a lot more all from one interface element - so much functionality packed into a minimal interface
mouseover/tooltip requires interaction from the user - instead of just being able to see it and use it, we’re forcing them to interact
what we need are ZIAs - zen internet/interface applications: “act without doing”
when interaction goes up, information density comes down because the user has to click to get information. less content, less users
paging is held over from databases - give me x number of results sort of call; we want to avoid showing the user the database model!
don’t force users to ask for more content, just give it to them
dynamically loading more content to the bottom of the page as the user scrolls — scrolling down already has this semantic of going back in time or going down for more results (this is an example of removing interaction)
when interaction goes down, content and users go up
what else can scroll simplify?’
bret victor - scroll tabs (http://worrydream.com)
www.flashearth.com - more usable than google earth because there is no concept of levels
google calendar event add form looks like a database model - www.30boxes.com is a better implementation of the add event form
“your personality is nothing but a thin veneer over your underlying implementation”;
every time you force a user to make a choice they don’t care about, then you have failed as a designer!
Designing Information
Ahn Dang
Nirali Patel
information visualization
1 visual representation of data
interactive
amplifies cognition
visualization highlights patterns and relationships in the data
patterns and relationships pull together a common knowledge to help you understand what the information is we’re looking at
assign data types, for example from conference attendees:
quantitative: #of attendees
nominal: gender, city, state, country
ordinal: city, state, country (can be multiple data types)
map data types to visual features
position saturation
length hue …
mackinlay’s visual features (look up chart)
by assigning hue saturation to a data type, you can visually display data saturation
adding interactivity - information seeking mantra
- overview first: high level overview/representation
- zoom and filter - allows you to zoom into a particular aspect
details on demand - get more info that might not have been pertinent at the high level
map on visual variable of length (cool way to talk about it)
get your data and understand your data types, map it to these visual variables
the appropriate display type is a whole other discussion, this is about understanding your data
infosthetics (blog)
many eyes - IBM data visualization tool
email anh.dang@avenuea-razorfish.com for a copy of the presentation (and that mackinley diagram)
animation is another visual feature (motion) — gapminder uses motion and that is a good example
Classic Design Movements and IxD
Chris Bernard
www.designthinkingdigest.com
slides will be on slideshare
graphic design
three movts that matter a lot (to us): surrealism, de stijl, constructivism
why is bahaus important to us?
it was the first movt to truly focus on design as a craft that could be delivered via repeatable process
bauhaus recognized the relationship between art and technology
principles that apply to us:
gestalt: psychology and placement; emergence, reification, multistability (multistable perception)
pragnanz (all about the structure of information and how the human mind wants to use those structures)
grid - the importance of layout grids
process - sketching
contextual research and ethnography is missing from classic design
collaboration movements, the idea of mashups (in music and in visual art) may be seen as a whole movement 20 years from now
what about accessibility? what about sustainability?
“how people feel is the new black” - we’re in the business of how people feel, this is the new bar, creating the experience of delight and desirability
paul rand - logo designer, his logo manifesto (google it), substitute the word “experience” for logo in his manifesto and it makes a lot of sense
http://www.lovemarks.com
Dramatic Features
Chris Conley
designing drama into the interface
catching people’s imagination
an exciting, emotional, or unexpected series of events or set of circumstances
we know these four components of product design:
function - does it work
usability - can people use it
aesthetics - is it nice to look at
drama - is it meaningful <– focusing on this
pixar - pure resonance with people, they work on a film straight from start to finish (no powerpoints or email flurries or requirements lists) and build a billion dollar business every time they make a film
software production should be more like film production!
the analytical/verbal has taken over the creative/tangible through things like market research - the two should be pretty equal
interaction is choreographed
iphone state change — wiggling of icons (state, not mode) - this wiggling creates personality, delight, and an emotion about the experience
wiggling, flicking (interesting interactions!)
the state and transition is embodied in the experience
dimensions of drama:
context and staging
character(s) (apple’s wiggling icons become “they”)
goal or purpose
action/reaction/behavior - common form of dramatic storeytelling
emotion (all of them)
what happens in the real world
your elements are characters
(similar principles in game design)
recognize the value of criticism, taking that criticism and using it to go back and make your work better - we’ve lost this in our companies, people are too invested in defending their ideas
take people’s ideas, listen to them all and don’t commit to do or not do any of them, take all those ideas back to your drawing board to make the work better
Concept Development for Product Design
Gretchen Anderson
dealing with cross-discipline people
Developing a concept:
commander’s intent (from some book) - set an intention so that all stakeholders can buy in
boxes and arrows aren’t a universal language (flow charts tend to not work to communicate with other disciplines)
you have to design before you prototype, otherwise what are you going to prototype
over-sell … go big. designing conservatively is a poor move
harness the power of stories - tell a story instead of a scenario or explanation presentation, more engaging and inspires conversations that everyone can take part in
in your story, something has to happen to your persona/person
your product has a character — give the product a personality, but see it as a supporting character
in your scenario - you need to invoke curiosity, and you need to give it a crisis (exaggerate if necessary, be humorous)
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