O Danny Boy

Towards Some Rules for Online Identity Management

Annoyance at spam twitter accounts had me lock up my twitter updates last week. The upshot of that was that by doing so, I moved some 500 people who had been following me into twitter limbo. For the last few days, I've been having to decide, one by one, which ones I let return to seeing my updates. Rather than do this willy-nilly, I came up with some basic rules that might be interesting to you as well.

In order for me to let you have a glimpse of my life, I've decided, I need to know you or know of you, or at a minimum want to know you. If I don't know you or know of you, the only way I can tell if I want to know you is from your online identity, which in this case means glancing at your twitter profile. If you follow thousands of people, I'm probably not going to let you follow me, because it bespeaks of a lack of interest in me as an individual. If the "person" is a company, product or service, forget it. There has to be some benefit to me in your seeing some of me, and that is unlikely to be the case with most companies. I can see how it might benefit them, but me? Unlikely.

The bar is much higher for me to choose to follow someone. In order for me to do that, there are two criteria: I have to know you well (we've at least had drinks or a meal), and you have to use your twitter account in a way that I find acceptable. By that I mean you don't twitter excessively or have long @ conversations or only @ people. You need to have something to say for me to want to hear it, not just responses. I have to know you well for the simple reason I need to understand a little of your life to make sense of some of your messages. Where you live, your family life, what you do for a living, your sense of humor, etc. Without context, a twitter stream can simply be stuff and nonsense.

Now, abstracting this just a little to all social networks isn't much of a stretch.

Have something to say.
Pick and choose who you follow and who follows you carefully.
Offline context still matters.
Reveal only as much as is necessary.
Give me a reason to follow you--and to share with you.

It's a start anyway.

Why did you go to [other conference] instead of Interaction08?

Believe it or not, we're already thinking about next year's Interaction09, following the sell-out success of Interaction08. But we're not resting on our laurels: One of the things I'm curious about is why some of you chose to attend other conferences—IA Summit, CHI, etc.—instead of (or in addition to) Interaction08.

Obviously, we're not going to change the focus of the conference away from interaction design, but if there were other factors that caused you to instead go elsewhere, I'd be curious to hear them. Everything is up for grabs: location, program, etc. Email me at dan AT odannyboy DOT com or leave a comment.

Do You Want to Be My Boss?

Ok, maybe that isn't the best way to sell this job, but Adaptive Path is looking for a new CEO. If you or someone you know (or even know of) would be an interesting fit (combining business and design savvy), we'd like to know. Send an email to bryan dot mason at adaptivepath dot com.

Topless in the Echo Chamber

I unwittingly entered Bizzaro World yesterday when the LA Times put on its front page a story about Todd Wilkens' War on Crackberries which mentioned a term I'd jokingly come up with two years ago: the "topless" (as in laptopless) meeting. United Press picked up the story, and before you know it, we had three news crews in the office asking me about going topless.

The ABC piece was national which was fun (my parents' friends called them: "Danny was on TV!"). Ironically, the ABC News clip is preceded by an ad for Blackberry. Heh.

Here's the local CBS news:

Here's the local NBC clip:

Some guidelines for topless meetings.

Going topless at meetings is apparently a women's issue too.

In Praise of a Water Bottle

At the airport on the way to Austin last week, I bought a bottle of water. Or, more precisely, I bought the plastic container that the water came in. The water was just a bonus. The bottle, by SEI Water, is shaped like a large hip flask or canteen instead of the typical round cylinder, and it feels sturdier too. I spent a little bit more for this water bottle because I liked the form factor. The bottle drew comments everywhere I went, because (and here is the point) when I was done with it, I didn't throw it out like I do with every other water bottle. I kept refilling it, rather than discard it. It fit so well in my hand and looked so good with its sleek Helvetica Neue logo, I didn't want to get rid of it once its initial "use" was up. Five days later, I still have it. An airport water bottle.

That's good design.

Sneak Preview of Interactive Gestures!

In advance of my Tap is the New Click presentation at ETech, O'Reilly has graciously allowed me to post a draft of the first chapter of my new book (now titled) Interactive Gestures: Designing Gestural Interfaces. It's pretty much my unedited first draft, but I think it reads pretty well. Comments welcome, of course!

Download Chapter 1 (5.4mb pdf)

4x4 Meme: More About Me

Brian Haven tagged me with a new meme to learn 16 new things about me in groups of four. So here it goes.

Four Jobs I've Had in My Life:

Newspaper Delivery Boy. 1984-1987. I'm not sure how I did this. I was terrible at it too.
Security Guard, All-Women's Catholic College. 1989-90. The wolf guarding the sheep, in other words.
Marketing Assistant, Women's Lingerie Company. 1994. A long-term temp job I got when I first moved to new work. Very distracting.
Copywriter, TV Guide Magazine. 1992-4. Ponch and Jon go hang-gliding. (Repeat).

Four TV Shows I DVR:

The Wire
The Soup
Lost
30 Rock

Four places I've been:

Sydney
Venice
Dublin
Helsinki

Four music artists I'm listening to right now:

The Raveonettes, "Lust Lust Lust"
British Sea Power," Do You Like Rock Music?"
The Waxwings, "Low to the Ground"
The Magnetic Fields, "Distortion"

I'll tag four people with blogs to keep it going: Jamin Hegemin, Brian Oberkirch, Matt Jones, and Liz Danzico.

Conferences I'll Be At, Spring 2008 Edition

If you are looking to meet/talk to/get a drink with yours truly, here are the conferences I'm speaking at or attending in the next few months.

This week, it's Adaptive Path's UX Intensive in San Francisco, where I'm teaching the (newly rebooted) Interaction Design Day this Friday. Some seats are still available, so use my code of FODS and get 10% off. It's very hands on, so watch those x-acto blades!

March takes me to ETech in San Diego for Tap is the New Click from my upcoming book. Use my code et08fd and get 20% off. March is also SXSW in Austin, where I'm leading a Core Conversation on Feeding the Creativity Beast.

April 1-2, I'm speaking at and dropping in on classes at Indiana University's School of Infomatics. Then I'm back in San Francisco to attend Adaptive Path's MX Conference on design leadership. Use my code FODS and get 10% off. (The early bird price is still going on too.)

May 22-23 has me in Portland for the always-great WebVisions with Tap is the New Click.

There's more lined up for summer which will be announced shortly. Hope to see you somewhere!

Firefox 3 to Fitts' Law: Suck It

Take a look at the tabs from the new Firefox 3 Beta. Not only are the tabs smaller in size than in previous versions (and thus creating a smaller target), they have foolishly added borders around them (which aren't clickable), making the targets smaller still and far more difficult to hit. The vertical borders between tabs are no big deal, but needlessly adding the border below seems a poor design choice. As crazy as it sounds, we could use those 2 or 3 pixels of height for the tab, because it will make using them much easier.

Since when do tabs peek down from above anyway? I'm all for experimentation, but let's be reasonable.

How to Lie with Design Research video

The talk I gave last year at ID's 2007 Design Research conference is now available as a video!

A Meditation on Fate, Chance, and Luck at Year's End

I've never been a big believer in Fate with a capital F, with its creepy overtones of predestination. I don't care to think there is an intelligent power who has pre-ordained your life for you, or that your biology and environment makes it impossible for you do anything but what you will do. Even if this may be true, it's a horrible principle to base your life on, I think. By doing so, you think the future is already determined, and that makes life not really much worth living.

I do, however, believe in chance and luck. Chance, as I define it, is an accidental event you have no control over that happens without your direct action. A bridge collapsing, picking up a magazine in a doctor's office and finding a great article, overhearing your favorite song blasting out of someone's window--all are examples of chance. Chance can be random (a kicked-up stone hitting your windshield) or semi-random (a terrorist blows up a building near you). Random (or really, seemingly random) chance is usually a result of some natural or social process. Rust weakens a bridge, for instance, causing it to collapse. Semi-random chance is triggered by someone else's actions that in turn affect you. A drunk driver smashes into your car. It's caused by someone's actions, but you did nothing to instigate or trigger the event personally.

Chance can ruin or make your life worse, as anyone who has caught a strange illness can attest. It can also enhance your life, and this is what we call luck.

Luck is really just a type of chance: an event that goes in your favor. You can meet someone who offers you a job or becomes a spouse. You can find money on the street. You can win the lottery. Bad luck is just chance, really.

Now, there are those who would argue that we make our own luck. You have to be prepared to meet a possible spouse. You have to buy the lottery ticket to win. And I suppose there is some truth to this. There's probably two forms of luck too. The kind where you've positioned yourself to receive it, and the other kind, which theologians call grace. Grace is an unexpected, undeserved gift. You don't have to be prepared to receive it, or worthy to receive it, you just do.

Coincidence is a form of luck, I think. Bumping into the right person at the right time. Having someone give you a book you were just thinking of. It's a form of good luck.

I wish you and yours the best of luck in the new year.

Best Interaction Design Blogs of 2007

Time again for my annual picks of the blogs I found the most interesting and the most helpful over the last year. (See my picks for 2005 and 2006.)

In no particular order:

Jeff Howard's Designing for Service always uncovers interesting links with good commentary on service design.
Brian Oberkirch's Like It Matters always has clear-eyed commentary on products and the web.
Marc Andressen's pmarca blog has become required reading, not only for its insights on technology and Silicon Valley, but for its hilarious commentary on pop culture too.
Design A Day by Jack Moffett is probably the best pure design blog on this list. Daily goodness.
Adam Greenfield's Speedbird isn't exactly interaction design-oriented (although let's be honest: few of my picks this year are), but it does contain a host of critical thinking about topics interaction designers should care about, namely architecture, cities, and ubicomp.
Putting People First constantly uncovers (and summarizes well) great UX posts.
Making a return to the list is Basement.org. Not only good analysis of trends, but links to great practical tools too.
Nicolas Nova at Pasta and Vinegar posts too much, but often finds things, especially from the academic world, that others miss.

So that's the list! There are lots of other blogs I follow of course, but these have been the most consistent, the most insightful over the last year.

See you in 2008!

My Top 10 Albums of 2007

It's been a surprisingly great year for music. Lots of great new bands and old favorites returning. Even some of the albums that didn't make this list were pretty good. Here are my picks in order:

10. In Rainbows, Radiohead. Took me a while to get into this album, but it is one of their best.

9. Costello Music, The Fratellis. "Flathead" was the second best single of the year.

8. The Stage Names, Okkervil River. Heartfelt, personal.

7. The Information, Beck. Personal lyrics for a change make this album ring true. Who else can use a telephone dialing fit into a melody?

6. New Magnetic Wonder, The Apples in Stereo. Happy happy joy joy!

5. Reunion Tour, The Weakerthans. While not as great as some of their earlier efforts, still a solid album. "Sun in an Empty Room" is one of the best songs they have ever done.

4. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Spoon. Has the best single of the year, "You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb." I wasn't a fan of these guys before, but I am now.

3. Neon Bible, Arcade Fire. Darker, deeper.

2. The Broken String, Bishop Allen. My new favorite band. Catchy, charming. "Click Click Click Click" is my ringtone, if that tells you anything.

1. Leaves in the River, Sea Wolf. Great lyrics, soulful melodies, and frequent use of a cello. What's not to like? My pick for the best album of the year.

In the disappointments category, put the missing Courtney Love album, Traffic and Weather by Fountains of Wayne, and Wilco's Sky Blue Sky.

Does Marshall McLuhan Still Matter?

As part of my winter break reading list, I've been trying to plow through Essential McLuhan by Marshall McLuhan because for a while now I thought I was missing out on some crucial piece of my education in media theory, some lost piece about the medium I'm working in.

As it turns out, not so much.

While still an interesting read and while some of the concepts, namely "The Medium is The Message" which the internet makes perfectly obvious day after day, are still sound, a lot of these writings seem hopelessly dated and almost laughably irrelevant now, 40 years later. Saying that, for instance, radio is Hot (demanding the use of a single sense) while TV is Cool (requires more participation) seems, if not obvious, then at least non-helpful as a model in the age of satellite radio and TV like Lost. And the internet? Well, it pretty much blows the Hot/Cool thing to hell. It's Hot and Cool, often at the same time, and as far as I can tell, the Hot/Cool model doesn't much help us understand the medium (or its message) any better.

His simplistic take on the electronic world seems quaint now, almost Victorian in its language, filled with bad puns and quotes from Shakespeare and Joyce to prove his points. He's not a fan of television and god knows what he would make of the web. He saw electronic media as the end of civilization and of the printed word. Satan is a great electrical engineer, he noted. And although he invented the term "global village," he certainly doesn't seem like he wants to live there.

In short, I don't know what to make of his work. He could simply be one of those seminal figures who turned a critical eye on something overlooked (in his case television) and went on to influence other critics. Maybe he's the Velvet Underground or Big Star of media theorists. Or maybe, just maybe, he was wrong about a lot of things. Electronic media like what you are reading now hasn't destroyed the world or the printed word. The global village? Probably a good thing. Television? Awesome.

The most damning piece of evidence? The Wikipedia articles around McLuhan do a better, more concise job of explaining his theories than he does.

As for me, I'd rather watch TV.

Awesome End-of-Year Conference Discounts

If you want to see yours truly in the flesh talking about interaction design and the like, here are some conferences you should register for and get a cheap rate:

Saturday, December 15th is the last day to get the early bird rate of $499 for Interaction08, the conference I'm Chairing. It's an awesome program and, it being in Savannah and all, it should be a tremendous social event. Here's me in Boxes & Arrows talking about why you should go.

Also in February, Adaptive Path's UX Intensive is happening in San Francisco. This time, with a rebooted Interaction Design Day that is chock-full of hands-on activities and information. (The new schedule of activities will be posted soon--it's hot off the presses!) Early bird registration ends December 31, and use my code of FODS to get another 10% off that!