Changing the World With Design

Since starting my graduate degree in Information Management, I've discovered an entire new and fantastical world called "design" that has entirely changed the way I think and view the world. The principles that make up the foundation of "user-centered design" can also serve not only to design better systems and stuff, but provide a framework through which to view the world.

One of the cooler applications of design to "everyday" life is the work that is being done by Emily Pilloton in North Carolina. Co-founder of ProjectH, a nonprofit design organization, Pilloton has taken on one of the scarier systems ever formed in the US - formal education - and has begun to tackle it with design.

Thinking about how to "fix" our underfunded, outdated, bureaucracy-laden public education system is a difficult, convoluted and systemically heartbreaking effort. But Pilloton has armed herself, and works to create "Design initiatives for Humanity, Habitats, Health, and Happiness". And it's working. They are doing some really awesome things over in North Caroline.

Check out her TED talk on "Teaching Design for Change". It is one of the most inspiring TED talks I've seen in a while. Often the people who speak for TED have these wonderful insights, challenges, and ideas, but this one is particularly strong because this a snapshot into work that is creating sustainable change in behavior and attitudes. And that's just cool.

More About Emily Pilloton:

A visit with Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report (1/18/2010)

Writing for Design Mind about the need for design to "Get Local", a reflection around the one-year mark of their project in Bertie, NC.

Coming Down to the Wire

This term has been a wickedly difficult one to make it through. Not because of bad things, but because there have been perhaps too many elements that have been taking up all the bandwidth I have. I think the dilemma of too much of a good thing is almost harder to manage, because it comes down to the fact you have to cut out something you don't particularly want to cut.

But the end of this somewhat overwhelming quarter is in sight, and hopefully I'll be able to finish some of the blog entries that I have sitting in the drafts folder. There are so many awesome things happening and going on in the world, and I have a lot of thoughts that whirl around in my head I want to get down on paper. But unfortunately, I've had to prioritize the writing that is required of me at the moment (mostly some fascinating research). And honestly, my word-quota has been mostly filled by it.

So this has been a bit of a blog sabbatical, but only a temporary one.

The Beauty of Data Visualization (David McCandless TED talk)

I have to do a quick post about this TED talk from earlier this year. David McCandless talks about "The Beauty of Data Visualization". And it's beautiful. I've been digging around the newest website, "Information is Beautiful" having a lovely time examining all the truly lovely visualizations they've created.

I really do believe that pictures/visuals really are the next sets of vocabulary for communicating data. We have spent a lot of time in using words to describe data (and believe me, I love words), but there's so much power in a picture. And the visualization of data can give you an immediate grasping of context (accurate only if done right, of course) that words just can't quite capture.

For example, McCandless et al. produced a "Billion Dollar-o-Gram" in 2009 to give some context to those billions being thrown around. Go look at that for a second, and then come back after finding the cost to "Wall Street Revenue 2009", "Cost of Obesity Related Diseases", "Eradicate AIDS worldwide", and then "Worldwide cost of financial crisis".

McCandless talks about how the sometimes quoted "absolute figures" don't give you a whole picture - the relative presentation of data through visualization can give you a better view of the landscape. Visualization creates an information map for people to explore, and helps expose the hidden patterns among the data.

One comment he makes was interesting - he challenges the saying "data is the new oil" with a slight modification: "data is the new soil". It is this rich resource, and there is so much of it. We just have to figure out how to ask the right questions of it to get the answers.

"Let the dataset change your mindset" - the use of visualization is definitely a part of making sound decisions that can be backed up by data.

Design & The Platinum Rule

We have Alix Han (@uxkungfu) talking to students today about user-experience (UX).

You know the "golden rule": Do unto others as you would have them do to you.

Alix tells us the platinum rule of design: Do unto others as they would have you do to them...

What?

Well, it goes like this - you might like to be kicked, but that other person might prefer hugs. Seems a bit simplistic, but ....

Stealing some of the main points from her presentation, there are a few key elements that make up the desires/needs of humans and their interactions.

Talking About Emotional Design

Certainty: I want to know that things will work the way I expect them to

Variety: I want fresh, entertaining content

Significance: I want to feel special and important in some way

Love & Connection: I want to feel connected to someone or something

A designer's job is to research/discover how these come together and make a user's experience awesome.

The Walking Schoolbus

A short column in the Seattle Times this morning by Nicole Brodeur made me hopeful about small changes that will hopefully have a lasting impact. The only information here is really the coordination efforts – I simply wanted to share something I thought was really nifty.

The article covered the “walking schoolbus” that goes to West Woodland Elementary school in Phinny Ridge every morning, coordinated by one man (a Mr. Glen Bradburn) and 18 families. Parents are in charge of “driving” the bus – they walk their kids to meet other parents and children, and eventually get all 22 children to school. Then they do it on the way back.

It’s a clever solution – it gets kids walking more (challenging the rising obesity levels in kids), also letting them work off some of that seemingly endless energy that makes it difficult for them to pay attention in school. It is a great opportunity for families to get to know each other in neighborhoods, helping people see beyond their own little bubble that is so comfortable to stay in. It saves on busing costs and petrol, is better for the environment, and is simply just a cool thing.

Going strong since 2005, this walking bus will hopefully continue to run and inspire other families/communities. There are apparently 18 other walking buses in the Seattle area – I hope they continue to grow.

Education and Innovation

Today the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced the Next Generation Learning Challenges, which is "a collaborative, multi-year initiative, which aims to help dramatically improve college readiness and college completion in the United States through the use of technology."

Sounds like a great initiative to me. Education is one of the issues that I feel very strongly about, but it doesn't get a lot of my energy, mostly because it often depresses me. But this is quite relevant for me right now, because I'm working with a colleague on refining a case study we wrote together about this very issue - how can the educational system benefit from the integration of technology, and successfully see that happen? How does an institution keep it's educational mission at the forefront of any initiative that brings about change? I think it's an interesting and critical problem, and it has to be taken seriously by parents, students, legislators, business owners, educators, and pretty much every citizen in the country.

In the press release, Bill Gates says “American education has been the best in the world, but we’re falling below our own high standards of excellence for high school and college attainment ... We’re living in a tremendous age of innovation. We should harness new technologies and innovation to help all students get the education they need to succeed.”

I think Mr. Gates has it right - we're at a pivotal moment in our education system's history, and how we deal with this is going to set the tone for the next few decades. We're not talking frivolous or secondary issues - we're talking about the education of generations of kids. The policy and investing choices we make today are going to have repercussions, and so we all had better take them seriously. I hope this movement from the Gates Foundation will help stimulate further dialogues about this issue.

Read more at: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/press-releases/Pages/next-generation-learning-challenges-101011.aspx

Information & Making Decisions

Decision making can be a difficult thing. Sometimes it's simple "I wouldn't be caught dead in those shoes", a decision made on strong personal preferences without much thought or information needed. My experiences over time have shaped my shoe taste, and I don't really need outside information to make my decision.

But the majority of the time, making a decision is not so simple - numerous variables can catch us up in a game of trying to calculate tradeoffs and possible outcomes and consequences. I find myself going over the same problem over and over, imaging all the various things that could go wrong if I make the "wrong" decision. Over-thinking an issue can get me into trouble.

And then there are the decisions we don't even realize are important until later, and we go through the phase of "if only I'd known when I was making that decision that I would end up here with this result, I would have chosen differently".

It's easy to find oneself feeling paralyzed in the face of making a decision that can have seemingly unending number of outcomes and consequences.

Good information can help the decision making process easier. If we know more, we can make more informed decisions. Part of what I want to do with my degree in this field called information management is help make information more accessible, understandable, and sustainable for decision making in organizations.

Whatever the heck that means in the real-world. Still working on figuring that part out.

On Vacation

Between wrapping up my summer internship, and then leaving on vacation (and having spotty internet and time), this rambler is taking a bit of a blogging break. Will kick it back in gear come next week when I'm back in Seattle and back to routine.

A Self That Goes On Changing

One Virginia Woolf quote is that "A self that goes on changing is a self that goes on living."

I've been thinking a lot about change these days from a few different perspectives.

As a student, I'm gearing up for an interesting academic quarter. I've started to prepare for a course titled "Information and the Management of Change" which I'm quite looking forward to. The two main readings for the course are Galavan et al.'s Strategy, Innovation and Change and Beer & Nohria's Breaking the Code of Change. While I've only read the introductions for both, they have already caught my interest, because change management is not an easy or simply beast to tackle. I hope they both fulfill their promises of being spaces where theory and real-world practice have met and been synthesized. On page one of Galavan, the editors claim that their contributors are people who"breathe life into strategy through the connection of innovation, leadership, and change management". Sounds good to me.

In professional and personal news... well, they're going to stay professional and personal. But on a general level, there have been some interesting changes that have happened, and some changes that need to be made. There are some changes I'm looking forward to, and others that are not so simple. Sometimes the most needed changes are the ones we resist implementing the most.

Wish I were blogging from PAX, but that was not to be this year. That's one thing I plan on changing - I'm buying my pass as soon as they go on sale next year!

Projects & Relative Problems

This seems very true some days:

(Picture from http://ninapaley.com/mimiandeunice/)

Whether at work or in one's personal life, it seems to be that by default we want to prioritize our own problems, and view them as more important and difficult than those faced by others. Our needs are at the center of how we see everything else. We can look back later and put a crisis or breakdown in perspective, but in the moment it's hard to have insight like that. But when it comes to the workplace, it can be costly to an organization for an individual to take this stance. In trying to mitigate projects and the inevitable conflicts that arise, this mentality is a particularly difficult challenge for someone like a business analyst or project manager.

Say, for example, I'm trying to get two different department heads to communicate with each other, and communicate to me, about priorities, problems they need fixed, and what their requirements are for a certain project. But if they can't come up with supporting data/information about why their needs are more important, all that happens is a back and forth of "My needs are more important than theirs because... because" and reasonings that have no data to back them up. If I can't get this information, I can't validate any decisions I make in terms of the project direction, nor can I make much (if any) progress.

Anyone in an organization that is tasked with coming up with requirements or needs must be able to not only articulate those needs, but have validating data to back up the reasoning behind those needs. We can't become personally attached to "having-our-way" when there's no data to back up why our way is "better", or why your problem is the most critical. We have to be able to tell someone or many someones why we choose to do something, and what value that decision adds to the project.

Getting that data can be tricky, full of politics and personal feelings, and sometimes it simply isn't going to happen. Information is not a straightforward topic, and it is really the people that make it a challenge and "interesting" in both good ways and bad. But it is worth the effort when you can stand in front of a group and present a solid project with an information foundation you can rely upon.

Norman Strikes Again

You know it's going to be interesting when one of the most well known names in HCI design write a blog post called "Design Thinking: A Useful Myth".

Don Norman's post this past June is well worth the read, not only because it is well written but because it has some interesting points that might make for good discussions amoung "designers". Norman talks about the fact that the idea that designers somehow have mystical powers of intellect and perspective can be a useful myth, but that this idea of "design thinking" is simply a myth. He makes the point that it really isn't a unique characteristic to this profession. Breakthroughs simply occur "when people find fresh insights, new points of view and propagate them". Creative people are all around. But the design community, across all sectors, has a vested interest in perpetuating the myth that designers somehow have the monopoly on design thinking, which is according to Norman really simply "a public relations term for good, old fashion creative thinking.

1) The myth helps fight against the confusion that "design" equals "making things pretty". Design is so much more than that, and every little piece that might change the popular mind helps.

2) It helps get designers into the door at organizations. "Hire us, they say, and we will bring the magic of design companies to you, working wonders upon your dead, stilted, unproductive company." Ultimately, Norman points out, the "design thinking" pitch is akin to claiming a secret weapon that has to power to solve big problems, and that is a valuable tool.

Norman wraps up the post with an interesting challenge to designers:

"So, long live the phrase 'design thinking.' It will help in the transformation of design from the world of form and style to that of function and structure. It will help spread the word that designers can add value to almost any problem, from healthcare to pollution, business strategy and company organization. When this transformation takes place, the term can be put away to die a natural death. Meanwhile exploit the myth. Act as if you believe it. Just don't actually do so."

Why Are We Still So Paper-Based?

It continually amazes me how much paper my last job produced - I was working as a database coordinator for an academic department at the UW. Sounds like a pretty electronic-centric position, right?

Wrong.

I had a brown paper bag I used to collect mixed paper for recycling. I think I emptied it every other week. That doesn't seem too bad if you don't think too much about that. A supposedly paperless position, filling up a Safeway brown paper bag every two weeks!! Reports and presentations and notes, printouts and event planning materials.

Currently I'm interning with the university's information technology office, and it just baffles me. We print out so much electronically-based documents and artifacts. Everything from emails and reports and meeting handouts. While laptops are dominant, notes are still often taken with paper and pen. Though personally I'm thankful that what I'm doing now produces very little printed work, even though I find myself in the center of a paper-laden environment.

I think that this is partly a holdover of established working practices - it is only very relatively recently that we could make almost any document electronic. This is probably the core of the reason - people who have been working for the last 15 to 30 years are not likely to want to change how they've been doing things. In a world where technological innovations have ripped through our societies, radically changing and shifting established assumptions and practices, it is difficult to keep up with the latest anything, let alone quickly adapt.

This is not to say that there haven't been successful moves to reduce paper use - as part of a university -wide initiative, the office is required by state law to use 100% recycled paper, reduce paper use by 30% beginning July 2010, and to recycle all office paper. It seems as if there is steady support for it, but it certainly takes more than throwing away paper in a different box. Moving towards paperless or paper-scarce environments requires a shift in attitude, behavior, and an acceptance that it won't always be convenient or the same as it was before.

The End of Google Wave

A recent article by Maggie Shiels, a Technology reporter for the BBC News, proclaimed the news that "Google drops Wave because of lack of users". Reading through this, it seems a little strange to me. But it seems as if that because "Wave has not seen the adoption we would have liked", says Google, they are going to phase out the site and integrate some of the developed technology into other Google projects.

Honestly, giving up on Wave seems premature to me. I have been able to use Wave for a few different classes, both for note taking and project managing, and it has been a very interesting tool. Yes, I agree with the assessment that for it to be successful, many people need to be signed up and using it. I think pushing it within both corporate and education environments should have really taken it off. Wave has this awesome real-time communication and collaboration aspect, and it does it all within a browser. It has character-by-character live typing, and the ability to drag-and-drop files from the desktop, even “playback” the history of changes that users have made. It integrated other forms of communication and I'm really disappointed that Google is giving up on it. Perhaps it is because users required invitations, but that doesn't seem to be the case - I still have a good number of invitations that are sitting unused in my account.

I think this is indicative of the core problem with many information technology initiatives. This great technology exists, but people lack either the incentive or knowledge for how to use it to its fullest potential. So I don't think that the retirement of Wave is a technology failure, but an information one. If Google is going to "create innovations with the potential to advance technology" they're going to have to innovate better user communication and education along the way.

***

On a side note, I've been thinking about something recently. I don't read the news as much as I'd like to these days. During my undergraduate studies, I read the New York Times every morning, took the copy with me throughout the day because I would likely reference it at least once either in a class or in conversation. For the most part I focused on political and international news, and "digested" almost all the news articles through that lens.

Today, the way I get news it quite a bit different. I skim the international BBC headlines online when I get into work, briefly scan through my Twitter feed for local and technical news, and during my lunch break I'll dive deeper into a handful of stories that catch my eye. These articles are almost always technology or information related, which makes sense considering my program. Seems to be the story of grad school so far - all this information I want to process and not enough time to do it.

Tim Brown TED Talk July 2009

This was one of the first videos I watched after discovering the wonderful resource of the fantastic "TED Talks". A comment on the video by a Robert Chesley caught my eye, as he sought to sum up the core message of Brown's talk. I'd try to paraphrase, but it sounds so right as it is:

"It's about looking past the small "new and improved" versions of design and exploring possibilities. It's not enough to strive for new and improved. That's the old school approach. What we have needed and are now beginning to move toward is the integration of ideas based on human centered actual needs. The context of the use needs to be central to the design itself, not the other way around. This approach means you have to get away from the CAD station and actually talk to customers and watch them. Above all listen to what they are saying relative to the context that they alone can bring to the table. From this position you will gain insight into the real problems they face. Once you truly understand the problem you can begin the process of integrating related problems of other customers. This is where real design innovation begins. This is the start of the process for developing dynamic disruptive changes in the market."

I think that this is the elusive goal every designer, regardless of what you're designing: to try to genuinely understand the problem you're designing to solve. One of my favorite quotes is from Zelda Harrison. She gets at the crux of the issues: "Never ask a designer to design a bridge. Ask a designer to design a way to cross the water".

Video of Jesse Schell: "Designing Outside the Box" DICE 2010

Last night I watched this 28 minute video of Carnegie Mellon University Professor Jesse Schell talking about "going beyond Facebook" and the emerging game development trends. I thought I'd share some of the key points that I took away from watching it - though it might make more sense to watch it first!

Some of the key takeaway points:

1) The unexpected force by which Facebook et al. stormed the world. The list of games (ClubPenguin, Wii, WiiFit, Guitar Hero) that were these huge hits that traditionally seem completely impossible. And I still don't see the appeal of Farmville. Apparently I'm too traditional.

2) That these phenomenon are all breaking through into reality. The blending of virtual and reality are on the path to blurring together almost indistinguishably. Interesting psychological reasoning that because we're cut off from nature and "we live in a bubble of fake bullshit" we're seeking out the "real" relative to our experiences. Maybe it's just because we've finally realize how artificial so many of our interactions have become.

3) Technology is going to continue to diverge in some respects, rather than unify into the happy box. Loved the idea of the iPhone as the Swiss Army knife.

4) Games are creeping into daily life more and more. I can totally see this, and I liked the examples he pointed out. These things have turned accepted and traditionally established processes and behaviors into something more.

• Fantasy Football - Even your grandmother does it.
• Geocashing - Because taking a walk is better when there is treasure at the end of it!
• Fox & The Simpsons - Watching TV has become a game.
• DARPA's red weather balloons - We'll do the work for them!
• Weight Watchers - Points are like a game.
• Ford Hybrid Car - Grow the plant leaves, save on gas. This has changed the way people drive!

5) Imagine if skilled game designers were involved in the development of these emerging "games". It would really change things up. I think that the marketing department in the way of hiring designers for a while, because marketers seem to always think they know what is best. Strength of game designers is that interaction-design emphasis.

6) We're heading towards a future where creepy sensors are always recording everything. Schell suggested that this potentially could be a huge behavior changer. A little big-brother-ish, but I think I like it in theory.

7) Disposable technology. I think we're already a good ways there. Think about how quickly we go through things. Schell makes an interesting point - the technology in a Furbie is greater than the technology it took to put a man on the moon, though that is true for almost any electronic these days.

8) Huge danger for games to turn into serious commercialized schmuck. Penny-Arcade made a comment or two about this trend in the game "Alan Wake". I haven't played it, but it is reported to have some serious crazy ass product placement in the game, perhaps the most blatant yet. Anyways, I thought of that when he was talking about the REM cycle device for some reason.

Wii Games - E3 2011 - Guitar Hero 5

The Information Rambler

What do you do with information? How do you process it? What do you do with the overwhelming amount of it that bombards you almost every moment of every day.

Those are pretty serious questions. The implications of how a person, group, organization, society, nation answers that can have echoing answers with lasting repercussions.

Information can change national policy, the color you choose for your house window frames, or even what wine you chose to have for dinner.

I'm entering my second year of a master's program in "Information Management" at the University of Washington in the beautiful . The meaning of that in itself is a challenge to unravel, and yet a fascinating journey.

I'd like to document a few pieces of this experience, and put into words some of the thoughts I've been having about information. Might as well put it out into the teeming mass that is the interwebs.