jamin.org

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.

I volunteered to give brown bag presentation at Adaptive Path on the mobile media research and concept my team did for Motorola last semester. I really didn’t know what they would think.

The most conversation centered around the value of the scenario video sketch versus a lower fidelity demonstration of the concept. Jesse James Garrett seemed particularly interested in whether I thought the effort put into the production was worth the payoff. I said yes.

Why? Because real people, sound, and a story are more compelling that cartoons.

Incidentally, the same day Jared Spool talked about Apple’s Knowledge Navigator video vs. cartoon scenarios.

“When choosing a presentation format, you’ll want to choose the technique you’ll find easiest to work with. As long as the final product tells the story of user’s ideal experience, you’ll produce a successful envisionment.”

I don’t know about that. Given two equal concepts, the higher fidelity presentation will win over the lower fidelity one. But as an interaction designer, do you have the time or ability to produce something beyond a cartoon experience?

Another question: Can a well-produced presentation give greater weight to a concept that is not as good as another concept that isn’t presented as well? In grad school I’ve seen some nice presentations that impress for their quality, but not so much for the concept, and vice versa.

Perhaps I’m jaded by the competitive nature of my peers and high expectations we have of ourselves at CMU. I have several times gone against Jared’s recommendation above that I choose a technique that I found easiest, instead choosing the one I thought was going to be the most successful, even if it meant I had to teach myself something new.

The goal for me is to have a kick-ass concept coupled by a kick-ass presentation. I don’t see how cartoon scenarios can compare to a good video sketch in communicating the experience.

As I’m going to Chicago to present our final Studio 2 presentation to a different set of folks at Motorola, I am done with Adaptive Path for the week. That means my first two weeks at AP are behind me.

So what have I been up to? Not too much. But I don’t say that as a complaint.

Being a small consulting company, AP works on a variety of projects with different time lines. Some projects have recently ended, others are now beginning. I seem to have caught them in the middle.

What’s great is they are very open with what’s in the works and how all the projects are going. Each week they meet as a company to talk about what’s going on. Transparency is the norm and very different from other places I have worked.

This week I started to get involved with a few projects. Mostly I sat in on meetings and observed. In fact, while I haven’t been doing any designing yet, I have been doing lots of observing. I find just being at AP educational. I can’t help but compare their practices with the startup I worked at in the late 90s and my own business.

Earlier in the week I sat in on a meeting with a new client that was particularly interesting. While I can’t say much about it, I appreciated the teams’ interaction with the client. I get the sense that AP is not about holding the client’s hand. They will tell it like it is, which I prefer to deferential layers of bullshit.

I also appreciate their client selection considerations. They definitely do not take on clients for the sake of making money. And anyone in the company can veto a client.

Some other more intern-y things to report are they set up a tour of Anchor Steam brewery later this month during the week in the middle of the day. And they’ve arranged a field trip to Google to meet the folks behind the Google Analytics redesign.

Also, I offered to share my Studio 2 team’s Motorola concept and I’m now tentatively scheduled to present during one of AP’s weekly brown bag lunches in a couple weeks.

And so it begins.

I introduced myself at the weekly Tuesday staff meeting. “Oh, so that’s how you say your name.” I also got a couple, “You don’t look like what I imagined.”

Today was pretty relaxed. I met the other intern, Irene Chong, from the Institute of Design. We compared design programs and conference-running experiences. She co-chaired About, With, and For (now Design Research Conference) last year.

I, of course, met a lot of other folks. I remember about half their names. Everyone seems very nice. There was a lot of concern and support for my living predicament. Someone even volunteered to drive me to a few apartment viewings after work.

I saw a place I liked near Dolores Park, but the girl showing the place was torn because until I showed up, she was ready to give it to another couple. I should find out about it tomorrow. And if not, I’ve got some other viewing lined up for tomorrow night.

In other news, “Surface computing has arrived.“

On Sunday, I attended a CMU alumni get together at Adaptive Path in San Francisco. The event coincided with CHI being in San Jose this year. And CHI was the reason I was in SF.

Dan Saffer was our host, so I got to talk with him a bit. One thing everyone seemed to mention was that Dan looks different, due to non-thick black glasses and longer hair. So if you think he looks as he does on his site, think again.

Overall, it didn’t feel too much like a networking opportunity, which was part of the motivation for attending. I met one other Adaptive Path member, and talked to a handful of alumni, including some recent HCI graduates. But I struggled to maintain conversations due to two hours of sleep the night before and a cross-country flight that morning.

For me, it was more about seeing the Adaptive Path space and chatting with Dan about my internship there this summer. The layout of the space is very open and looks like a welcome and collaborative place. My classmates were jealous.

Just a brief note to say I recently accepted an offer to work at Adaptive Path over the summer. I’m super excited to experience what they’re all about and check out San Francisco. I start the end of May and finish in early August. Should be a good time.

In other news, my illness has not subsided. We presented our generative research and initial mobile media concepts to Motorola today, and my head was so stuffy and body achy that I felt drunk. Nevertheless, I managed to sound intelligible through the presentation (or so I was told).

The illness and the presentation have wiped me out, and I’ve fallen behind on many fronts (like blogging). Perhaps tomorrow will be the day I wake up to feeling well again.