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At 10am this morning, I turned in my signed thesis paper and thesis project, making me officially done with grad school. It’s been pretty quiet on this site the past couple weeks as I tried to get everything complete. This short post is meant to break that silence. But as I have spent many sleepless nights the past week, I’m exhausted and in dire need of a beer, I am keeping this brief.

Graduation is on Saturday. It’s a relief to be done, though I don’t think the reality of what that means has sunk in yet. Congratulations to all of my peers.

Look forward to a longer, more reflective post to come, when I have more energy.

If you follow this blog regularly, you will have noticed that I have not been regularly updating as of late. Time has been very limited, and the brain power needed for blogging has been diverted to other tasks, like thesis, thesis, teaching, coursework, and, of course, finding a job.There are six more weeks left of my grad school life. Hard to believe.Here’s a quick synopsis of what I’ve been up to instead of blogging…

Thesis Paper

During spring break, I completed an entirely new draft of my thesis paper. The previous version had too many structural issues. So I threw it out and didn’t look back, not using one word of the 8,000+ I had written. The end result was much better. I just got feedback from my advisor, Jodi Forlizzi, who says, “It’s almost there!”

Thesis Project

My thesis project, now called MetaMe, a mobile application that helps college freshmen project, explore, and understand their identity, is starting to take shape after months of formlessness. This week I’m creating scenarios and wireframes that I will then share with some fellow grad students to get some feedback. After some refinement, I plan to validate with freshmen next week.

Teaching

My Basic Interaction class is going well. My students just completed their first big project, a communication device/service for various user groups. They chose to prototype their solutions on the iPhone, though some also made web interfaces and physical prototypes. The next project is to design an ebook reader with a focus on gestural interaction.

Job Hunting

Talking to potential employers has kept me quite busy, especially over the last week. I’m looking at both New York and San Francisco, but I’m also in talks with a firm in Sydney, Australia. I just got back from San Francisco for interviews with Adaptive Path and Nectarine, and next week I’m headed to New York to talk to Moment. After that, I’m back in silicon valley to meet with SAP. Frog Design also expressed interest, and I’m trying to set something up with their New York office. Also, I’m talking to 2nd Road in Sydney. As you can see, there are some very different companies in different locations. I’m keeping an open mind to ensure I make the best decision. Overall, I’m thrilled with the opportunities and interest I have received. But I can’t wait to have it all figured out.

in progress

When people switch jobs, move to a new city, start school, or have a child, aspects of their identity change. For designers, this presents an opportunity to help people invent and discover who they would like to be in their new roles. But there is little evidence of design attempting to support this behavior. By looking at one of these groups (incoming college freshmen) I am developing a mobile application called MetaMe that allows students to project meta information about themselves in the physical environment and adjust that information to project and prototype aspects of their identity in order to get to a more desired self.

This work is in progress. It was submitted to CHI 2008 Work-in-Progress (declined) and has also been submitted to Design and Emotion 2008.

Advisors

• Shelley Evenson
• John Zimmerman

Process

Interviews were conducted in students’ rooms to see how they expressed their identity through their artifacts.

Research was documented on large boards to visualize the findings.

Me, taking notes during a participatory design session.

Participatory design session where participants were asked to visualize their social network.

Early sketch for a concept scenario.

Example concept scenarios.

Visualization of some of the survey results.

Visualizing the concepts against the main themes.

Prop used during a concept validation session where participants were asked to enact scenarios.

A participant enacting a scenario.

A representation of ambient information during a participatory design session.

“The System” of the MetaMe concept as understood by a design session participant.

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?

When examining the design process, you cannot leave out the designer herself. As I have been exploring different readings and thoughts about the process, several questions have come to mind:

• What is good design?
• What is a good designer?
• How does one become a good designer?

Thoughtful Interaction Design by Jonas Lowgren and Erik Stolterman devotes a whole chapter to the designer, a subsection that addresses design ability.

“Every designer needs knowledge and skill related to her specific profession. Having knowledge means understanding the vast amount of specific information and techniques existing within any design field. Skill concerns the necessary craftmanship. Both knowledge and skill are needed if a person wants to be a good designer.”

Continuing, abilities required to be a good interaction designer are stated thusly:

• Creative and analytical ability
• Critical judgment
• Rationality and ability to communicate
• Knowledge of technology and material
• Knowledge of technology use
• Knowledge of relevant values and ideals
• Ability to appreciate and compose aesthetic qualities

It is suggested that developing these abilities is a personal journey: “everyone has to develop her own way of becoming a good designer.” Lowgren and Stolterman then suggest that becoming a good designer is a question of “designing oneself as a designer.”

For me, this statement collides with my thesis project, which explores identity and self expression: how products, services, and perhaps people you know act as a means of designing yourself. I have wondered about designing myself as a designer, transforming myself into an interaction designer through school, embracing of the subject matter, and surrounding myself with markers and stickies.

Well, perhaps. Lowgren and Stolterman say, “that to act as a designer, you have to be able to think about yourself as a designer.” They continue, “Becoming a good designer is to some extent a design endeavor, and not an easy one.”

I agree, becoming a good designer isn’t easy, which is why there is a lot of bad design, and will likely continue to be a lot of bad design. The situation reminds me of writing. Nearly everyone can write. Just like everyone can design by picking out clothes to wear and paint for their houses. However, not everyone can write well. Nor can everyone design well.