Tag Archive / interaction design

• Wanderlust : February 2011

  Sorry for the month delay in blog entries but it’s been a non-stop rollercoaster of travel and events.

  Here is the shortlist of what happened in after the last blog entry and a few important things happening this month:

  WordPress DC Town Hall with founder Matt Mullenweg

  1.31.2001 – Washington, DC

  This event happened at Fathom Creative, down the road from CDG Interactive.  It was well attended and the sponsor even got an internet stream for online viewing and questions.  Matt was really relaxed, calm guest who talked about how WordPress was started (at the heart, WordPress started as a image gallery) and answered plenty of questions about it, running a business, some things in the works/future as well as what could be better. I asked about how it was doing in the mobile world and got the surprising answer (700% in two years! – with apps in almost every mobile platform).

  IxDA Interaction 11

  2.9-12.2011 – Boulder, CO

  Decided to arrive early to this conference (third time for me) to relax in Boulder and get to a workshop for the first time. However, I fell ill Tuesday morning and spent the following 24-48 hours in bed.  Missed the workshop but attended the full conference. I even got to attend an after-party on the first night (it was definitely an experience, especially the music and its location inside the Boulder Theatre). This conference was well attended and did not disappoint, concluding with the keynote speech from Bruce Sterling (design critic as well as sci-fi writer).

  All the keynotes as well as the individual lightning lectures were all interesting in one way or another.  However, the tone, in my perspective as a developer, was different in that were was more of a focus internally than the last two years. Whereas I was more in sync in the last two (especially with mobile coming up big during this duration), this was more internal than anything else.

  • Related stories – http://www.ixda.org/interaction/
  • For related keynotes/lightning lectures – http://www.ixda.org/resources

  One of new additions to this conference was a day for design-related activities. In my case, it was geocaching, where I spend a few hours in the streets of Boulder playing hide-and-go-seek for hidden treasures. (Thankfully, I was well by then!)

  I will be doing a CDG blog entry on my geocaching adventure later on this month.

  Oh, BTW…it snowed 3-5” and went from single digits (Tuesday) to 60s (Sunday) in one week.

  You thought DC had crazy weather!

  Nixon in China

  2/19-20, 2011 – NYC, NY

  I packed bags again the following weekend, for a trip to NYC for The Met’s presentation of John Adams’ 1987 opera Nixon in China. I last heard this opera on CD a decade ago in college but the performance did not disappoint. Well sung by all the performers and John Adams (who conducted his own work) got a standing ovation.

  What was interesting about the opera, apart from the music, was the whole scenery. As a person who grew up during the last glimmer of the Cold War, some of the scenes were familiar from all the news broadcasts during this time (you know, when you only had TV and print).  The opening scene of the Nixons stepping out of the plane matched the videotape footage to a point where it was eerie.  Of course, the big irony, particularly those in the audience, is how much has changed in the almost 30 years that meeting.  As a point, during a scene in the second act, Pat Nixon was presented with a jade elephant. The official near her remarked "We can make hundreds of them cheaply!", which was followed with laughter (with a tinge of irony) from the audience.

  The second act ended with the agitprop play (the music the basis for a Adams’ stand-alone work The Chairman Dance), which really reminds someone of my age about the old Socialist/Communist displays in the 80’s, or more recently, in North Korea. Of course, the big irony is that so much of that change would start two years later.

  Leaving memory lane, I spent a quiet following day listening to three Shostakovich quartet (11^th, 12^th, and 15^th) and Beethoven’s Grosse Fugue, Op. 133 at Bargemusic with the St.Petersburg Quartet. Back home on Monday (President’s Day).

  And that was my month of February.

  Will be returning to NYC for two concerts:

  • March 26 – NY Philharmonic/Avery Fisher Hall for Bartok’s 1^st Piano Concerto
    — I will be able to say that I have heard all three concertos live – 3^rd in DC/NSO (2005) and 2^nd in Boston/BSO (2007)
  • April 16 – Met Opera for Berg’s Wozzeck
    — Heard Berg’s other opera Lulu last year

  Hopefully, things will slightly quieter further in the year.

  Later (multiple crossing of digits…)

• Why Design Now?

  

  Last week, I finally escaped DC for NYC. Got the chance to finally see the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, which is part of the large Smithsonian family. This museum’s focus is on design, whether functional or artistic. I got the chance to look at the exhibit Why Design Now? – part of the National Design Triennial.

  This exhibit reminds me of MoMA’s Design and the Elastic Mind a few years ago but on a smaller scale. In this case, the various themes were grouped into areas such as communication, mobility, and energy. I was very interested in the Materials section, looking at some very beautifully crafted items made with processes that had little environmental impact. For example, packaging or dishware that used local materials (paper/plant material) while being easily biodegradable. And then, there are the eyeglasses…

  I spend most of the day at the museum, soaking in all the design and getting recharged again after three months of work. Anyways, the exhibit is open until 1/9/2011. Enjoy.

• News On The Homefront

  

  NYC IxDA Redux

  A big belated “Thank You” to IxDA New York for Interaction 10 Redux (3/6). It was nice to meet all the people who attended and to see all of the presentations that I missed at Savannah.  Would come back for another event hosted by the group if my schedule allow it.

  Of course, that means I have to start paying attention to the home IxDA branch as well.

  More Opera

  Ironically enough, after NYC IxDA Redux, I went back to New York for my scheduled vacation for Met’s performance of The Nose. This weekend, went back to The Met for Lulu, the Alban Berg opera composed a few years after The Nose. Same decade, different moods but both are considered some of the most avant-garde works of their time. This was the last performance for me this season. Already planning for attending two performances next season in 2011 — John Adam’s Nixon in China and Alban Berg’s Wozzeck.

  Futura

  If you have not noticed, the font has changed in this site. After the font change last year, I decided to re-evalute my choice and changed to the first choice of Futura. I like Super Grotesk and it was choosen because of its closeness to Futura. However, there were just some things that I felt were not right (weight, letter styles) for me. It was nagging me in the back of my mind for a few months. So I decided to go back to the first choice of Futura.

  I am still on the look out for any other Futura-like fonts but the right choice has been made right now.

  Recent Blog Entry for CDG

  Last week, finally completed a book review of Morville/Callender ‘s Search Pattern for CDG and posted on the blog. Interesting read and really changed my ideas about search engines and how search result can be displayed for easier use.

  I mentioned on Twitter (5/4) that this would be my blog for CDG for the next couple of months as I will be spending writing for this blog. A consquenence will be some important announcements about The Wilson Project and Project Charles, as well as some important blog entries.

• Search Patterns Book Review

  (Originally published on CDG Interactive/Innate blog)

  After a few months’ hiatus, the CDG Book Club is back. In this installment, UI Developer Ivan Wilson discusses Search Patterns: Design for Discovery by Peter Morville and Jeffery Callender.

  I first heard about the book Search Patterns during the IxDA Interaction 10 conference in Savannah, Georgia when I attended Peter Moreville’s lecture about The Future of Search. This brief book (less than 200 pages) interested me because it focuses less on technology and more on design. It’s not about Google or Yahoo, but on interaction designers and information architecture.

  That said, the main premise of the book can be summed up in the following statement:
  The problem of search is designing interfaces and processes that allow people to find things.

  Let us step back a moment. Is searching and finding two of the same things? Well, no. And that is a bit of a revelation to anyone, especially me who builds the front-end code for search pages.

  The book addresses two main points:

  1. Search is a not passive activity.

  What do we do when we go to a search page? Input term(s), click button, get results—right? But what happens when the results don’t lead to the information the user is looking for?

  The user isn’t some blank slate. Even if you’re just surfing around, you’re affected by a variety of filters–such recommendations from friends, past memories, etc. As users, we’re always judging whether a search result is right for us or just another dead end. If a user isn’t finding what he’s looking for, the problem isn’t necessarily an inadequate use of the search; it may be a user interface problem. In other words, the interface may not be adequate for what/how the user wants to find.

  2. Information need to be findable, not just searchable.

  Here, the authors approach the problem from the other end: those who create the content that is being searched. Especially on the web, content does not lend itself to being able to be found in an instant. It’s up to content producers and coders to make content searchable by using tools such as keywords or tags or database indexing. If you’re a business, you need to understand how to categorize products in a way that makes it as easy as possible for the user to find them via search (for example, adding information like ISBN numbers for books).

  Throughout the book, the authors detail different interfaces currently being used (faceted navigation, widgets, etc) in search. They also give glimpses into the future, with examples of search being tied in with social media like Twitter or Facebook. Also, the authors detail some of the methods the users take in searching for items whether in narrow or expanded focus.

  But in the end, designing for search engines will be about more than speed and accuracy; it will be more about having the process of finding easier. And that is what this book is about.

• UI or UN? The Life of a Front-End Developer…The Lecture???

  No. Really.

  Basically, it originally started as an idea for me to do something close to work but outside the office.  However, there are a number of ideas that need fleshing out. Not just about work (dealing with bad HTML code) but also about ideas about Charles, TWP, front-end developement, and IxD.

  And linguistics.

  More news to come.