Interactions

Disrupting the UX design education space

Posted: Wed, November 19, 2014 - 11:31:55

Room 202 My teaching partner Mandy and I stood in silence looking around the room one last time in which magic had happened the preceding 10 weeks. We teach the UX Design immersive for General Assembly in San Francisco. 10 weeks, 5 days/week, 8 hours/day of teaching and learning, of intense, hard work, of struggle, of laughter, of transformation, of…

Lessons from leading design at a startup

Posted: Tue, September 16, 2014 - 10:01:28

In the past 100+ days I’ve led the successful re-invigoration of a fledgling design capability at a 2-year-old startup into a robust, cohesive, solidified practice with vitality to carry it further, with unified executive support. This includes a revitalized visual design language, visionary concepts to provoke innovation, and strategic re-thinking of UX fundamentals core to the product’s functionality. Being my…

Possibilities, probabilities, and sensibilities

Posted: Thu, July 31, 2014 - 11:27:43

Design is an iterative activity involving trajectories of exploration and discovery, of the problem space, the target market, and the solutions, towards making good choices. As the primary designer charged with delivery of an optimal solution, I must contend with such problems of choice, and thus trade-offs. Designing is fundamentally about mediating “choices”: what elements to show on-screen, which pathways…

Bringing together designers, ePatients, and medical personnel

Posted: Fri, May 23, 2014 - 11:06:54

Back in 1989–1991, I served on the committee that founded BayCHI, the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of ACM SIGCHI. I became its first elected chair and served as its first appointed program chair for 12 years. I also served as SIGCHI’s Local Chapters chair for five years, supporting the founding and development of SIGCHI chapters around the world. Much…

Three fundamentals for defining a design strategy

Posted: Tue, April 15, 2014 - 11:04:47

The other day I tweeted this out while grasping what I’m trying to accomplish in my new role as Director of UX at a Big Data start-up: "Creating strategy (& vision) is about understanding the essence, exploring the potential & defining the expression, in an integrative way.” I’d like to delve a bit deeper into this spontaneously conveyed moment of…

What serendipity is providing for me to read

Posted: Thu, March 13, 2014 - 12:48:54

In the spirit of the new What Are You Reading? articles that appear within Interactions magazine… My use of Twitter and my attending local professional events have had a big impact on what I'm reading. Indeed, both have increased my reading greatly. Every day I spend at least a few minutes on Twitter—time which often surfaces an abundance of online…

Pushing pixels (and tools) : The internal dialogue of craft

Posted: Fri, January 10, 2014 - 10:40:56

Even as a principal designer directing design strategy for projects, I still sometimes go deep into the pixels. When I do, I use a complex tool like Adobe Fireworks or Photoshop to vividly, precisely render a concept so it can win executive buy-in, or prepare final assets for delivery to engineers. Getting into the pixels can be very satisfying. I…

Utilizing patients in the experience design process

Posted: Mon, November 18, 2013 - 10:00:45

Dave deBronkart (a.k.a. e-Patient Dave) is quite well-known for his assertion during a TED talk and at other times that patients are the most underutilized resource in healthcare. Without question, that underutilization extends to the healthcare and patient experience (re)design process. At Medicine X 2013, Sonny Vu ruffled some feathers when he said that, in his company's design process for…

Learning from ePatient (scholar)s

Posted: Mon, September 23, 2013 - 10:30:36

Increasingly, patients are making invaluable contributions to the redesign of our broken healthcare system and the patient experience. Designers working in healthcare should be aware of and leverage these contributions. Among the facilitators of this is Medicine X, a fabulous conference held annually in September at Stanford University. As stated by the conference organizers: Medicine X aims to bring together…

Patina of things

Posted: Thu, August 29, 2013 - 11:18:03

I tend to use things for a long time. It feels as if my belongings take on aspects of myself. So it is difficult for me to throw my possessions away. When our building was renovated a few years ago, I kept all my furniture, even though it was not the best fit to the new interior. The furniture was…