Brown paper roll

Just discovered that the Tower Bridge has a twitter profile, here: http://twitter.com/towerbridge

why? It tells to the world when it closes and opens, and what kind of boat is passing, in what direction. Very simple thing, and automatically updated from the bridge lift schedule (here), I guess. But it’s a way to make visible something that was invisible before. It could be information to share with other objects (Navigators? My Nike+ iPhone, when I’m running? traffic lights? Buses and transports?).

2 things are nice: 1 is that information is no more just in a web page, but it actually becomes data, ready to be reused and mashed elsewhere. 2 is that an object (bridge) becomes one of my connections. How many things are connected with me? how many other objects of affection could be part of my profile? maybe my mac at home? I could start an automator task to be updated on things…

And it’s funny that a bridge - which represents a connection in itself - becomes something to be connected with.

Also, is the bridge connected to somebody? maybe to the aficionados, people who uses it often…. It could recognize them as they pass, and say hello in a special way (a twitter message?) what kind of information does it receive and read?

Iv’e started using Axure RP to prototype and quickly create dynamic pages.

When Visio meets Dreamweaver, this is the feeling I have now..

In the last year I’ve worked in some projects where people could be involved in communities and participate actively. Give users a while wall where to write and they will follow some sort of 1% rule (A.K.A. Participation Inequality).

It becomes easier for users to participate when the white wall / page is not white anymore, for instance by having some good examples; as Nielsen could say*, people stop facing the horror of a blank page.To demonstrate the power of “examples”, that could even happen when participation is not allowed, as in the case of the picture. This is one of Rough Trade East gent’s toilets, in London.

The designers / owners started with a graffiti-like wonderful rose; style and place suggest some sort of spontaneous street art. Tags came later, when people decided to add some true “user generated content” to the wall

*as some of you may know, I’m not the biggest JN fan. Sometimes, however, his views are pretty much spot on…

Welcome back!

I’ve been out of touch for more than one month, as I was facing both a flat and an office move.

The new location of the office is now 5 minutes from my flat. This should give me much more time to sleep, read and - potentially - write something here. I have done a lot of things instead: one of them was about finding a new flatmate for the place we live. After weeks of emails, posts on gumtree and visits, our old flatmates decided they they will stay instead of going.

From now on I’ll be much more active than I was before!

Some of my friends started using climbing hooks as a key rings - back in the ’90s.

The same object is now a key ring only. The usage changes the function of the same object.

Moreover, the object prevents future mis-use: you can read NOT FOR CLIMBING USE on one side of the hook. I’m sure it’s fore safety reason (materials are different, I reckon). Is this a good example of a misleading cultural affordance? And what happens when the object is used for other purposes (e.g. fixing a net to a pole, to create an improvised goal)?

On a similar note: what does the CHINA mark mean, if visually connected to the alert written on the hook?

from mass media to mess media to mash media

A couple of weeks ago I watched an Icelandic movie (Noi Albinoi; AKA Noi the Albino ), and I was really impressed by one of the most trivial scenes of the movie.

To make it short: Nói (the main character) get into the coffee of the local gas station (where Iris works as a waitress) and asks for something to drink. Normal - so far.
Then Iris asks Noi if he wants to drink it in the coffee or take it away. Again, this is really common in places such as Starbucks and similar.
The surprise is that in this case the juice is actually cheaper if the customer drinks it in.

Subverting the “eat in / take away” balance has an economic reason: the juice bottle has a cost, and drinking it inside the coffee means the possibility to have it back.
But it also has a social reason, or at least a social consequence: it invites people drinking inside. The rule becomes one of the factors to spark a bit of “social life” into the bar (much needed, if you work at the coffee of a gas station in a remote fishing village in western Iceland).

Fostering participation is a difficult stuff. It involves environment design, a consistent conception of every touchpoint, a content to share, a great work on identity and trust, but also strong business rules: everything should row in the same direction. That’s the experience design, I guess.

because I have a lot of cognitive surplus to share with all of you. Or maybe just with myself

What’s the gin in these days? How can we dissipate our will to actively contribute? LOLCATZ? youtube videos?
In my case it’s been GoogleReader, at least for the last year: I subscribed to tons of blogs, sitting at my desk and just waiting passively new posts to be captured with the powerful RSS tool.

(via Influx Insights)

As you know I am reading Mental Models. I find the book pretty interesting, as it gives a different way we can give shape to user research findings; it’s time to use something more complete and insightful than Personas (I’ll try to explain why in a future post). However I had some trouble with the book when it comes to detail practical aspects of the M.M creation. As it’s common, a book can’t completely spread knowledge on practical and “tacit” skills, even if there are a lot of resources available on the site.

BUT….. Hooray!!! Indi Young will be in Brighton for a full-day workshop. Chances are I’ll be able to attend.

Can’t wait.

My flat is made for parties: a big open space with terrace, and the possibility to invite tons of people around. Being my flatmates in the Financial Services area of expertise, I often have to explain why on earth I do what I do. It always happen with clients, and with colleagues.
A few months ago, one of these cyclical started on my company mailing list, and I hate doing precise definitions, so I was a bit concerned: why should I start now?
Actually, for a long time I’ve been fighting with the problem of defining what an user experience architect is, and what does (s)he look like. It started with a lunch chat with some colleagues, and the World Usability Day ignited a sparkle and made me think of different things. All that complexity had to be simplified in my head.

Essentially, the label of my/our role is one of the things that convinced me to do what I do now.

“User” is the first word. User is what is most important in our 40 hours a week (not to consider that the rest of my life I see users everywhere…). Researching their behaviors and preferences is the necessary first step for everything we do; unveiling their needs is the force to get innovation in services and design; putting the user (I prefer “people”) first is a way of exhibiting our intention to follow a UCD process when designing.

Experience. I always think experiences are something emergent from the interaction of many different variables: there are physical, cognitive, emotional, social, historical variables that all contribute to the way a bunch of people enjoy the relationship with someone/ something else.
Obviously, we cannot control all of these variables. We can barely control a small part of it. I think we can’t design the experience. But, we can design for experience. IMHO, it means we are considering as many ways an individual / collective interacts with the environment, and we model these interactions consequently. It’s a really general definition, and it involves designing physical spaces, devices, digital spaces, communication strategies and so many other things I can’t even think of. This is a dream, probably. This what I hope the perfect User Experience Architect (UEA) would do. Better: this is what I hope a team of perfect UEAs would do, together with other competences, which integrate knowledge and expertise.

The term that initially puzzled me the most was “architect“. I always connect “architects” to the concrete design of buildings. Actually the etymology simply means something like “supreme maker” (sorry for the awful translation from Greek), but in daily usage it’s the dude with a yellow safety cap who overviews the construction site of the building he has designed in blueprint and plaster. Architect is not the carpenter, of course. It‚s not even the engineer.
If we think that we are architects of user experiences, we have to define our blueprints (sketches?) and our plaster (scenarios? prototypes?). If our bricks are interactions, then it’s not about lining up bricks, but the representation of them

What I think is missing from the term “architect” is the strategic part. I feel really comfortable with the Adaptive Path composition of User Experience, as blending of 4 different disciplines (at least): Interaction design, Design research, Design strategy and Information architecture. Unfortunately, the term architect doesn’t convey the richness of this. Designer doesn’t help as well. Consultant and researcher only capture part of this mix. Maker is too practical, God is too abstract (and maybe a bit profane). For now, I’d stick with architect, which is a good metaphor of the fact that we don’t build or fill with furniture, but I’m not completely satisfied.