jamin.org

The October issue of Southwest Airlines Spirit magazine features innovative work at Carnegie Mellon University. The key ingredient: human understanding.

The article mentions work involving Jodi Forlizzi and has this excellent description of John Zimmerman:

Perhaps fittingly, Zimmerman does not look like your average Carnegie Mellon professor. Unlike most of the paunchy, bearded, and semi-distracted men you typically see wandering the halls, Zimmerman is tall and clean-shaven, rail-thin with buzzed, graying hair, and dressed head-to-toe in black. He reminds me a little of Steve Jobs when, appropriately, he pulls out his iPhone and sets it on the table of his cluttered office.

The article also briefly mentions my thesis project, MetaMe (on page 4).

One of the more innovative creations, an electronic widget called MetaMe, displays various manifestations of your personality depending on where you are in the moment.

Sadly, I still have not added the final design to my portfolio. If you have an iPhone, you can view a prototype of the service at metame.jamin.org. The prototype is not fully functional, but shows the main screens. I will try to get the complete work up soon.

Yesterday I received word that the work-in-progress paper I submitted to CHI was not accepted. As it was not my idea to submit to CHI because I do not view it as a good view for design, I was not disappointed. However, I will gripe about the comments I received because they emphasize CHI’s lack of design understanding.

My paper was based on my thesis project work, which explores the idea of being able to prototype your identity in the physical world. I’m taking a research-through-design approach, which means I’m creating a solution to produce knowledge on how explore solutions. This is very much a design approach, using a design process and methods to develop insights and inform direction.

Overall, the three reviewers were interested in the work, but felt it was not fully developed (quite probably). I received an overall rating of 3 (of 5, I assume) from all the reviewers. The 3 translates to “Borderline: Overall I would not argue for accepting this paper.”

The first reviewer begins by stating that the motivation of my work is “not well motivated and embedded in psychologist’s work.” As my work is totally motivated by designer’s work, I completely agree. For the reviewer, it seems a more scientific approach would have been better received. Having gone to CHI last year and witnessed the emphasis on the quantitative and the lack of design, this does not surprise me.

The second and third reviewers share the first’s skepticism, questioning whether the findings could be applied universally and generalized. The third also states that “the conclusions drawn seem to be too subjective.” While it’s entirely possible that my findings were not well argued, thus appearing “too subjective,” I can’t help but wonder if there would have been any room for any subjectivity at all.

While I applaud CHI for attempting to bring more design into the conference (though I also wonder why), I question how design might find its way in if the reviewers do not seem to understand the approach and methods.

And speaking of CHI and design, today I received an ACM bulletin which states: “Each year the SIGCHI conference draws together engineers, designers, educators, and many others concerned with interaction design.” Interaction design? Really? Of all the things they could have said, why not human computer interaction? If making a claim about a conference that draws people together who are concerned with interaction design, it might be best to point to something like the IxDA conference. As someone concerned with interaction design, that’s where I’ll be.

According to BusinessWeek, it’s all about me in 2008. Identity will replace experience in design.

This bodes well for my thesis project, which is all about identity design. I’m so ahead of the curve.

When students graduate high school and go to college, they leave behind their social support systems and their families. This is both an exciting and anxiety producing time in life, where they are trying new things and meeting new people. I’m designing a mobile product that will support this lifestyle transition, and help college students explore who they are and who they would like to become.

The above is my thesis project in a nutshell. It has gone through an evolutionary process since last May, when it was merely a seed of my desire to explore identity and products. I chose college freshmen because they going through an intense period of identity formation, one of my advisors had been working with college freshmen and had a continued interest in the group, and they were easily accessible.

“Problem setting is a process in which, interactively, we name the things to which we will attend and frame the context in which we will attend to them.” —The Reflective Practitioner

Choosing a target group without really having an idea of a problem has been an interesting challenge. It’s a stark contrast to my work with diabetics over the summer with Adaptive Path where there were some obvious and critical problems. With college freshmen, I’ve found that while they do have some pain points, their problems, in general, aren’t that critical. They manage to make friends, discover activities, spend lots of time on Facebook, and occasionally go to class.

“We create problems and solutions at the same time and in parallel, in a process where they coevolve.”
—Thoughtful Interaction Design

So my challenge has been trying to articulate the problem I’m trying to solve, which has led me to ask “What is a problem?” Do you need a problem to start designing a yet to be realized preferred state?