I haven’t worked on a web site or web application for about nine months now, so there is a joke going around the office that I’m “over the web” and refuse to do any more web projects. While that’s not true, like all jokes it has a kernel of honesty in it, because the god’s honest truth is that I am a bit tired of the web. I’ve been doing web work for 12 years now, and it’s like an old marriage: I know its habits intimately. It takes a really interesting (pure) web project to pique my interest these days.

Why? Simply because the problems many sites have (How do we get more traffic? Is this web form usable? How do we make a community? How can I optimize for search engines? etc.) simply aren’t all that interesting to me any more. Not compared to the vast amount of hard problems that exist elsewhere, on other devices, on the desktop, and in environments. The problems of medical devices, consumer electronics, mobile, operating systems and platforms, kiosks and in-environment touchpoints seem much more engaging and a direct part of people’s lives than most web sites will ever be.

This is not to say, of course, that all web work is boring; that’s patently untrue. Any problem, even the most mundane, can be interesting if you haven’t tackled it before, or if you tackle it with fresh eyes and make it new for yourself. But for me to get excited about a web project now involves the app or site being the solution–or, more likely, part of a solution–of a really interesting, hard problem, the solution to which will be meaningful to users’ lives. That’s what engages me now. (And Allah be praised I work at a company that attracts such projects where I get to do just that.)

While my interest in the web wanes, the internet continues to fascinate. The genius of Vint Cerf and his crew in setting the ‘Net up as so open has paid off so many times, in so many ways, it is unreal. I suppose it makes sense the plumber’s son would be interested in technology’s plumbing, but how people continue to make use of the use of that plumbing in so many unexpected ways is inspiring. I’m almost always interested in a new internet project. And I expect and hope it will always be so.

The conference I’m chairing, the Interaction Design Association’s first annual conference, Interaction08, is having a call for submissions until September 15, 2007. The conference will be held in Savannah, Georgia, USA on February 8-10, 2008.

Submissions are for Lightning Session slots, each of which is 25 minutes in duration around a single topic. Single or duo speakers are allowed, but no panels, please. Please submit only one idea per person. There are 14 open Lightning Session slots. Lightning Session speakers will receive free admission to the conference.

Topics for Lightning Sessions can be around anything relating to the field of interaction design; that is, anything focused on the behavior of products and services in response to human action. Our potential attendees are particularly interested in tactical, practical information around methods, prototyping techniques, documentation, mobile, physical computing, and information
visualization. We are interested in fields related to interaction design (e.g., information architecture, visual and industrial design, coding), but only as they relate to interaction design.

Lightning Session speakers will be determined by the IxDA Conference Committee and announced on October 31, 2007. I really hope some of my O Danny Boy readers will submit session ideas!

Just FYI, this conference is going to be great, if I do say so myself. Check out the line-up: Alan Cooper, Bill Buxton, Sigi Moeslinger, Malcolm McCullough, Jared Spool, Regine Debatty, Dan Brown, Molly Wright Steenson, Aza Raskin, Sarah Allen, and Matt Jones. We will also host pre-conference workshops taught by Marc Rettig and Jenna Date, Darja Isaksson, Jeff Patton, and Todd Warfel.

See you in Savannah!

The Mrs. and I are fans of Kathy Griffin‘s Bravo TV series My Life on D-List. Partially because my old friend Dennis Hensley appeared on the show in season one (although mysteriously, never since. Is he not one of her “best gays” anymore?)

In any case, watching her prepare and perform her live shows has some interesting process lessons for designers.

• Know the audience. aka Know the user. Every time Kathy bombs at a gig, it is usually because the audience isn’t who she expected them to be. In order to that you need to…
• Do some research. When Kathy performed in a prison recently, she went there early to meet some of her audience and figure out what their lives were like and she could tailor the jokes appropriately. The lesson for designers is pretty obvious: find out the context and the users.
• Prototype. When she is in “research mode,” Kathy often tests out jokes with the people she meets. She sees how far she can push them and what they are going to laugh at. A small test of a concept goes a long way.
• Use their language. When she performed at the prison, Kathy learned some of the prison lingo from the convicts, then used them in jokes, especially in her first jokes. They got big laughs and it immediately broke the ice with the audience. She spoke their language and established empathy and showed understanding right from the start. We should do the same: speak the language of our audiences, be they users, marketing, engineering, or business owners.
• Keep a notebook. Kathy has a spiral-bound notebook she carries around with her and is even onstage with her often. It contains notes and ideas for jokes (I’m guessing) so she can change her show on the fly if necessary. It also (I’m guessing) is where she takes notes on her “culture research” which is really the subject matter from which she spins her shows. Designers (me included) would do well to keep a physical notebook for inspiration and memory refreshers.
• Tell stories. Kathy onstage is mostly a storyteller, doing long bits on her encounters with celebrities. She does it in a very self-effacing way that puts the audience there in the story with her. Designers too need stories, about the product and about the process they went through to create the
• Tell the truth. What’s funny about Kathy’s schtick is that she is often (as cliche as it is) saying the things you might think, but never say out loud. She can be merciless with some of the celebrities she skews, but it works because her observations (and impressions) are so dead-on. Designers should be so fearless in telling truth to power (“This new product idea isn’t very good.”)

I’m now able to write off my Tivo as a business expense.

The podcast for my 2007 SXSW talk is now available. Here is my SXSW 2007 presentation slides (6mb pdf) if you want to follow along. It was also reviewed by The Guardian.

Even better: I don’t sound like an idiot and people laughed at the jokes.

Lots of people buy magazines to read on airplanes. I know I do. How many of those just get tossed once the plane ride is over? Tens of thousands, no doubt.

How about a service where, for the price of one magazine, you could share magazines between airports and flights?

Here’s how it would work: A kiosk at your airport has a bunch of magazines, just like at a newsstand. (Granted, it might not have the vast selection of the newsstand, but all popular titles would be represented.) You show your AirMag card and you “check out” a certain number of magazines like it was a lending library. Then you take them and read them on the plane. After departing the plane, you simply drop them into a receptacle located in the airport, probably in multiple places but definitely in baggage. The magazines get put back into the kiosk where others can then check them out. All for about $5/month, the price of about one magazine.

The airport newsstands would holler bloody murder, but this would be an awesome service, don’t you think?

I’m a latecomer to the cult of James Dyson. I’ve certainly heard of him, of course, but other than knowing he invented those cool vacuum cleaners, I didn’t know all that much about him. I just read a BusinessWeek article on his latest invention, the Dyson Airblade, which doesn’t cut people, as the comicbook-style name suggests, but rather is a super new air drier for hands in public restrooms. (Watch him demo it.) Not only is he a famous industrial designer, he’s also staring a design school. But you probably already knew this. I’m slow sometimes.

What caught my eye in the BW article, however, was his focus on both the details of design and on what he calls “wrong thinking.”

Dyson earns respect as a designer for

his willingness to get into the nitty-gritty of bringing a product to market. “He’s different from other inventors,” says Glenn Weston-Murphy, a lecturer at Yale University’s Faculty of Engineering. “A lot of people have great ideas, but they have no clue how to turn them into products. James takes it to the level where it’s commercial and productive.”

In other words, he’s a working designer, not just a design thinker. It took him 15 years and 5000 prototypes, according to a Fast Company profile, to bring his vacuum to life. Dyson once said, “Enjoy failure and learn from it. You can never learn from success.”

The second thing that caught my eye was his adherence to what he calls “wrong thinking.”

True to his contrarian nature, Dyson looks for solutions where competitors see no promise. “We call what we do wrong thinking,” he says. His engineers and designers are encouraged to try ideas that most people would consider crazy. The clear plastic dust collector in the cyclonic vacuum is one example. Market researchers warned Dyson that consumers didn’t want to see dirt and pet hair collecting. As it turns out, a lot of people find the sight of their household detritus to be strangely compelling.

This wrong thinking extends back to the products he chooses to design, that is, back to design strategy. The vacuum basically sat untouched for decades before Dyson decided to redesign it. “I like frustration. I like seeing things in everyday life that don’t work very well and try to make them better,” he says in this article. Who thinks of hand driers as being worthy of design attention? Yet they work terribly, don’t they? I know I’m constantly wiping my hand on my pants rather than use one. Or even after using one, because they simply don’t work all that well. And, as it turns out, they are energy hogs and germ-spreaders as well.

Dyson cites as one of his heroes the visionary Buckminster Fuller and it’s easy to see the connection. I think I now have another hero myself.