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Yesterday at UX Week the R&D project I’ve been working on all summer for Adaptive Path was unveiled during a panel discussion called Wear It During Sex. The project was inspired by an open letter to Steve Jobs by Amy Tenderich, a diabetic. Adaptive Path answered the call and developed a diabetes management system, called the Charmr.

Jesse James Garrett, Dan Saffer, Rachel Hinman, Alexa Andrzejewski, Jamin Hegeman

As you can see, I was on the panel that revealed the work and talked about the process. There’s been a lot of buzz since.

• NEWS FLASH: SF Design Firm Unveils the Diabetes “Charmr”
• TechCrunch
• CNet
• Engadget
• National Public Radio (NPR)
• MedGadget

There’s also a detailed account of the process and project on Adaptive Path’s site.

As I’m at UX Week currently, I’m too occupied to write more. But I’ll will follow up later in the week to talk about my involvement.

Overall, I was very excited to be part of the project. And everyone’s really happy with the response we’ve been getting.

Friday was the last day of my 10 weeks at Adaptive Path. We had the normal 4 pm tea time, but with more people and more activities. The Wii, which I had heard we had, finally made an appearance. The screen was projected on the conference room wall to make for some great fun.

Overall, I had a great time this summer in San Francisco with Adaptive Path. I was surprised—but delighted—to find out they are much more research focused than I imagined, and that they’re not as much of a web company as I thought. Though, they still have a strong foothold in all things web, they’re looking beyond.

While I’m no longer at the office, I still need to complete my essay. Because I was stretched between multiple projects, I didn’t have dedicated time till my last two days. I wrote 1,200 words on Friday, but it’s still a draft and may be too academic in its present form. So I will be working to complete that in the next two weeks.

Also, in two weeks is UX Week, which I will be attending. One of the projects I’ve been working on will be presented at the conference. I will be presenting that along with the rest of the team. I will also help facilitate a couple workshops, including one with Liz Sanders.

At Friday’s party I talked to a recent hire, Leah Buley, about being on the inside of Adaptive Path. We mused that the AP environment and company could not be replicated, or that it would be difficult to do so, because so much of what makes AP what it is are the people that work there.

It’s the people that I will miss.

And perhaps they’ll miss me, too.

One of the great things about being at Adaptive Path is that I have access to the cello-playing man who wrote Designing for Interaction, Dan Saffer. Today I sat down with him to talk about the direction my essay is going, as it’s somewhat of a commentary on the perception of interaction design in current practice.

It was the first time he and I really talked much about our ideas of interaction design (we’ve talked about other things, just not interaction design as a practice so directly). And it was great to pick his brain to find out whether I am either way off or making assumptions about some of the thoughts and gut feelings I have that are influencing my essay.

He was mostly supportive. And not that I don’t value my judgment, but it was nice to validate my thoughts with someone of his stature in the interaction design world.

As for the essay, it’s about the need for interaction design to distance itself from the web. This is something that I have been thinking about throughout the summer having encountered in a practicing world that seems to still largely view interaction design as being tied to the domain of web design. Not that all practice thinks of itself this way. But I think it will be good for Adaptive Path’s audience.

I’ve got a good outline of what I want to say, which I ran by Dan. Now I just need to crank it out. That’s what the last day of the internship is for.

I flew back from Baltimore today after day long days with a client. On the plane I read half of Everyware by Adam Greenfield, which I’m finding quite intriguing.

I found myself highlighting lots of text and using post-its jot to down ideas and bookmark pages for potential blog topics.

Also, I kept putting ubiquitous computing in context with an essay I’m writing for Adaptive Path (originally I said it would be about emotion, but I changed it). I’m not going to say what my current topic is because I’m not sure. But I do have 600 words!

For the next few days I’m living in the apartment of one of my coworkers. She and her boyfriend are fortunately house sitting. So I’m kind of house sitting their place, since my lease ended on July 31.

I’ve got two more days at Adaptive Path. Then I’m heading by train and bus to Yosemite, where my sister-in-law will pick me up and take me to Mammoth Lakes to stay with her and my brother, Matt, for a week. Matt’s working this weekend (rock climbing guide), which is why he can’t pick me up.

He and I may do an extended outdoors trip. I told him to plan something.

Then, on August 11, I fly back to Pittsburgh from Reno. On August 12, I’m driving to DC for UX Week, where I’ll hook up with the AP folks again.

I should be back in the burgh for good on August 17 (unless I head to Charlottesville, Virginia, where my youngest brother Jeff will have just moved).

At afternoon tea on Friday, one of the Adaptive Path folks explained why AP’s blog posts don’t necessarily express what the company thinks as a whole. “Todd was speaking for Todd,” he said.

He was speaking about Todd Wilkens’ recent post on why usability is a path to failure, which many usability professionals took issue with, and which not everyone within AP agreed with either.

But isn’t it important that the viewpoints expressed on the blog align with that of the company?

“I don’t give a fuck about alignment,” the APer rebuked. “I care about getting the opinion out there.”

This is one of the reasons AP is a very different company to work for.