Iota Partners is a new Chicago-based venture of Rick Robinson and John Cain (with whom Experientia partner Jan-Christoph Zoels once worked at Sapient) that deals with user experience research, sensor-based data, and smart modelling. The papers section on their website is worth exploring in some depth. Here are some of them: After ethnography This paper [...]

Posted on 19 May 2012 | 12:03 pm

According to a new driving study, conducted by Professor SeungJun Kim at Carnegie Mellon’s Human Computer Interaction Institute, young people and seniors each perform better with different types of feedback: “71% of elder drivers thought the auditory modality was the most useful and 59% thought the visual modality was the most annoying. In contrast, 63% [...]

Posted on 17 May 2012 | 1:31 pm

Short report on the first European EPIC meeting by Anna Wojnarowska, UX researcher at Experientia: Last Friday, 11th of May, around 100 members of the ethnographic research community in Europe gathered in Barcelona for the 1st European EPIC (Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference) meeting, to discuss the conditions of ethnographic practice in Europe. The meeting [...]

Posted on 15 May 2012 | 7:54 am

The BBC have just released some interesting research around participation online, writes Neil Perkin on FutureLab. The findings (the result of a “large-scale, long-term investigation into how the UK online population participates using digital media today”) have raised a little controversy since they seem to indicate that the long-term model or view of participation online, [...]

Posted on 14 May 2012 | 1:42 pm

Brian Pagán of User Intelligence in Amsterdam argues that touch-free gestures and Natural Language Interaction (NLI) may open up further paths toward a true Natural User Interface (NUI). “User interfaces for computers have come a long way from vacuum tubes and punch cards, and each advancement brings new possibilities and challenges. Touch-free gestures and natural [...]

Posted on 12 May 2012 | 3:06 pm

A conversation with senior Wells Fargo execs reveals a bank trying to use the Internet, social media and mobile technology to worm its way deeper and deeper into their customers’ lives. “Brian Pearce, senior VP in charge of Wells Fargo’s retail mobile channel, said the bank sees mobile as “a way to be with our [...]

Posted on 12 May 2012 | 2:55 pm

The people at Nesta, the UK innovation charity, think that co-production is potentially transformative and its power comes from re-framing the problem and re-establishing relationships to enable more holistic and people-centred approaches. Co-production can also tackle the lack of trust between some users and professionals, a dependency culture where people look to the state to [...]

Posted on 11 May 2012 | 2:22 pm

Harvard neuroscience researchers have just confirmed what many of us have suspected all along: social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest are “brain candy” for Internet users. Every status update, every tweet, every pin is a micro-jolt delivered squarely to the pleasure centers of our brains. What’s alternately terrifying and inspiring is how all [...]

Posted on 11 May 2012 | 2:15 pm

Leading neurologist Susan Greenfield tells Nokia Conversations that we need a new framework to make sense of our ‘mobile world’ Her argument is that mobile technology, and what we do with it, is now at the center of our family and social life, like the piano was for the Victorians and the TV was for [...]

Posted on 11 May 2012 | 1:31 pm

An older post, but I missed it. So here it is, more than two years after it was published by Stowe Boyd: “A few posts have emerged recently that recapitulate the well-worn arguments of attention scarcity and information overload in the real-time social web. So, here at start of 2010, a new decade, will try [...]

Posted on 5 May 2012 | 4:52 pm

In a blog post (which is itself a paraphrased transcript of his talk at the Polish IA Summit 2012), Peter Bogaards talks about the relationship between user experience and customer experience, and how user experience designers can extend their influence in businesses. “A customer-obsessed company focuses its strategy, its energy, and its budget on processes [...]

Posted on 5 May 2012 | 3:02 pm

Peter Merholz, VP of experience design at Inflection (and founder of Adaptive Path), thinks there is no such thing as a UX design profession. User experience is a strategic framework, he says, a mindset for approaching product and service challenges. “The practice of user experience is most successful when focused on strategy, vision, and planning, [...]

Posted on 5 May 2012 | 2:54 pm

Experientia partner in charge of user research, Michele Visciola, will be one of the speakers at the EPIC Europe one-day meeting at the Elisava Design School in Barcelona next week, on 11 May 2012. The European meeting is the first of its kind for EPIC (Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference), and is designed to provide [...]

Posted on 3 May 2012 | 3:25 pm

Businesses now sit on data goldmines, but very few leverage the data to improve customer service. Ziba’s creative director Sean Madden suggests three ways forward. “Big Data has gotten a lot of attention over the past 18 months as retail, manufacturing, and technology companies realize the gold mines they’re sitting on and rush to scour [...]

Posted on 3 May 2012 | 1:12 pm

Social TV is a major disruption in the rapidly changing television industry. In the free report “Social TV and the second screen“, Stowe Boyd, acclaimed futurist, managing director of World Talk Research, and a researcher-at-large at The Futures Agency, characterizes the forces at work in the emergence of social TV, presents a framework for understanding [...]

Posted on 3 May 2012 | 1:03 pm

When companies don’t care about user experience, it is clearly reflected in the products they create. Although everyone can agree that software should be intuitive, user-friendly, and aesthetically pleasing, many managers aren’t willing to invest the time and resources it takes to build something compelling. A large part of our job as UX advocates, argues [...]

Posted on 3 May 2012 | 12:47 pm

When we talk about social media we are really only talking about tools that we can use to help us and the people we engage to achieve a task. To make a success in social media we need to understand online communities, argues Matt Rhodes. “There is a fundamental difference in how people behave when [...]

Posted on 1 May 2012 | 8:01 am

As ethnographic practice has spilled out into the broader world of design and policy-making, business strategy and marketing, the monograph has not remained the singular format for presenting ethnographic work. In the design community and high-tech industry, it is the conference paper (see EPIC, DIS, CSCW, and CHI, etc), the technology demo, and within corporate [...]

Posted on 1 May 2012 | 7:57 am

Tim Todish provides some good examples of companies extending the (user) experience beyond the device as a good way to differentiate from the competition. “Most of the time when we think about UX, we are thinking within the confines of the digital world. What I’m suggesting, however, is that there are ways to extend the [...]

Posted on 1 May 2012 | 7:49 am

Of all the conferences that are dedicated to discussions on technology and society, there’s one that has continued to consistently curate an amazing line of up speakers while maintaining an intimate environment for meaningful exchanges without any elitist barriers to participation – Lift, writes Tricia Wang. After her talk at Lift 2012, Wang had a [...]

Posted on 1 May 2012 | 7:44 am

“While technology can help strengthen relationships with people you barely know, it can damage relationships with the people that are close to you, like family,” says Team Gantt co-founder Nathan Gilmore. Read article

Posted on 1 May 2012 | 7:38 am

In his last article Simon Norris, founder and CEO of Nomensa, outlined a simple model ‘the meaning dimension‘ to help consider how we can understand the significance of meaning. The aim of the article was to introduce the meaning dimension as a scale that could be considered for interaction design. It also reinforces his position [...]

Posted on 1 May 2012 | 7:33 am

In this long article, Peter Steen Høgenhaug explores how and when to use gamification to improve the user experience of websites and apps, and also when not to use it. Using game theories in areas not otherwise associated with games is often referred to as gamification. This term, however, has gotten a rather negative air [...]

Posted on 1 May 2012 | 7:27 am

Do people want touch on laptop screens? Daria Loi, user experience manager at Intel, did some research on the matter and the answer is a clear yes: people want a single device with a keyboard that opens, closes and is touch enabled. In user experience testing conducted by Intel, researchers observed people tilting back the [...]

Posted on 27 April 2012 | 1:12 pm

John Dilworth and Matt Miller of LDS Church provide an overall framework to communicate the value of UX within businesses, that directly associates the value proposition of UX with key business objectives. “It is the job of the UX designer to demonstrate the value that UX work brings to a product or service. If the [...]

Posted on 27 April 2012 | 1:05 pm

Some interesting data by Tamara J. Erickson on what she calls the “Re-Generation”: individuals at the formative ages of 11 to 13, those born after about 1995 [which, by the way, has a gap of three years]. “My interest is how swimming in this digital soup has shaped the young generation’s view of the world. [...]

Posted on 27 April 2012 | 11:29 am

The UK Design Council, in partnership with the UK Department of Health, ran a national competition to find teams of designers and experts who could develop new ideas to help improve the lives of those affected by dementia, reports Dexigner. Guided by in-depth research and working with those affected by dementia, the five teams developed [...]

Posted on 26 April 2012 | 10:07 am

The first campaign to break the 1-million-dollar barrier in this revolutionary crowd-funding platform was an industrial design project. Could Kickstarter transform the design industry as we know it? A design report from New York by Joseph Grima on FastCo.Design. “Put simply, Kickstarter allows anyone with an idea for a “creative project” to seek backing for [...]

Posted on 25 April 2012 | 4:47 pm

In an article for UX Magazine, Catalina Naranjo-Bock provides a solid general description of co-designing processes: “The practice of co-design allows users to become an active part of the creative development of a product by interacting directly with design and research teams. It is grounded in the belief that all people are creative and that [...]

Posted on 25 April 2012 | 4:37 pm

Social media in particular has inexorably changed the world, driving openness and fear – but it is not beyond our control, argues Danah Boyd in a long essay for The Guardian. “Most technology designers engage in their trade to make the world a better place. Technologists love to celebrate the amazing things that people can [...]

Posted on 22 April 2012 | 2:59 pm

Sherry Turkle is a psychologist and professor at M.I.T., says we use technology to keep one another at distances we can control: not too close, not too far, just right: the Goldilocks effect. “Over the past 15 years, I’ve studied technologies of mobile connection and talked to hundreds of people of all ages and circumstances [...]

Posted on 22 April 2012 | 2:54 pm

Saar Gur, general partner at Charles River Ventures, discusses a new generation of smart mobile services, which provide user information in the background to make accurate predictions around real-time user intention and will offer suggestions, results and different user interfaces/interactions based on their prediction of state. “As I think about what these new Smart Services [...]

Posted on 22 April 2012 | 2:40 pm

UX consultant Harry Brignull spoke at UX London 2012 about the design of The Week magazine’s iPad app, telling the story of the project from the initial sketches through to its launch in Apple’s Newsstand. In a long blog post on 90 percent of everything, he provides an annotated transcript. “Let me tell you the [...]

Posted on 22 April 2012 | 2:34 pm

Henry Alford, contributing editor at Vanity Fair, wonders when in the digital age, did privacy become a choice rather than a given. “When Facebook bought Instagram, the social photo app for iPhone and Android devices, on April 9, a chorus of concern emanated from the Twittersphere: Facebook would have access to Instagram users’ uploaded photos. [...]

Posted on 22 April 2012 | 2:27 pm

Even within the technology community, 33% agreed with the below statement: “People will not trust the use of near-field communications devices and there will not be major conversion of money to an all-digital, all-the-time format. By 2020, payments through the use of mobile devices will not have gained a lot of traction as a method [...]

Posted on 22 April 2012 | 2:13 pm

In an editorial, The Guardian argues for an open web: “To protect the web’s founding principle is a matter of what Tim Berners-Lee would call citizen vigilance, of restraining by openness itself the continual pressure for a closed-down, privately owned cyberspace that is the inevitable product of those internet Cecil Rhodes who would like to [...]

Posted on 22 April 2012 | 2:07 pm

In his book “Wicked problems: Problems worth solving“, author John Kolko (founder and director of Austin Center for Design) argues that involving end users in the entire design process ensures a humane design solution. He now summarises his argument in this article for FastCo.Design. “Cultural probes literally probe a given culture, poking at society and [...]

Posted on 22 April 2012 | 1:39 pm

IKEA’s new Uppleva Smart TV-furniture unit was extensively shown at the Milan Design Week (which ends today), and on Core77 I wrote more about the interface design, but here some more about the user research that went into the product. The user research consisted of two parts: in-home visits and an online survey. The IKEA [...]

Posted on 22 April 2012 | 11:13 am

Chris Risdon, senior experience designer at Adaptive Path, looks at the explosion of smart products, which passively collect data about you and your specific behavior, and tell you a story which is designed to directly influence you, and argues that their very value proposition lies in behaviour change: “These are products that have an explicit [...]

Posted on 22 April 2012 | 10:28 am

Austin Brown, UX designer at EffectiveUI, and his colleague Lindsay Moore wondered if there was a way to design better, by combinubg the best aspects of interaction design and product design, as well as a little service design. They hoped that this would allow to create a holistic experience that transcends definition, and thus create [...]

Posted on 22 April 2012 | 10:21 am

Brains, Behavior and Design is a group of IIT Institute of Design students appling findings from the fields of cognitive psychology and behavioral economics to the design process. It is not clear to what extent the group is still active now, but the site is still alive. The Brains, Behavior & Design Group is dedicated [...]

Posted on 18 April 2012 | 2:02 pm

Artefact is, like Experientia, a UX design consultancy that is strongly inspired by cognitive and behavioral modeling, and uses all kinds of inputs from cognitive and social science to enrich their design work: “At Artefact, we’re becoming increasingly aware of the fact that regardless of the type of design challenge we work on, all of [...]

Posted on 18 April 2012 | 8:54 am

Tricia Wang is a cultural sociologist interested in understanding how people use digital tools in their day to day lives. In her talk at the Lift 12 conference, she focuses on a story you may have heard of, concerning a student who ended up making international headlines for throwing shoes at the architect of China’s [...]

Posted on 18 April 2012 | 8:38 am

Richard MacManus writes on ReadWriteWeb that the next generation of in-car apps will be about providing “smart” services, such as taking some of the cognitive load off the driver – including making the car autonomous in some ways. And he provides Audi (which just bought Ducati, by the way) as a case in point: “One [...]

Posted on 18 April 2012 | 8:32 am

In an extensive article by Charles Arthur, technology editor of The Guardian, on the rise of walled gardens (apps, social networks) on the net, we read this quote by John Battelle of Federated Media: “The open web is full of spam, shady operators and blatant falsehoods. Outside of a relatively small percentage of high-quality sites, [...]

Posted on 18 April 2012 | 6:47 am

I enjoyed the final paragraph of the Fast.CoDesign article on the second generation Nest Thermostat: “Here’s a sense in which the Nest seems almost over-designed–all of this care for a one-time experience of screwing it in might seem excessive. But the fact is that user-focused design is also a form of good will–and a better [...]

Posted on 18 April 2012 | 6:32 am

Within the next decade, smart-device swiping will have gained mainstream acceptance as a method of payment and could largely replace cash and credit cards for most online and in-store purchases by smartphone and tablet owners, according to a new survey of technology experts and stakeholders. Many of the people surveyed by Elon University’s Imagining the [...]

Posted on 18 April 2012 | 6:20 am

Wired UK has published a guest post by Usman Haque, founder of Pachube.com and director at Haque Design + Research and CEO of Connected Environments, where he argues that current Smart Cities initiatives are looking for a one-size fits all, top-down strategic approach to sustainability, citizen well-being and economic development, and that their strategies focus [...]

Posted on 18 April 2012 | 6:15 am

Wearable devices, or “wearables” for short, have enormous potential for uses in health and fitness, navigation, social networking, commerce, and media. In a new report out today, Forrester argues that wearables will move mainstream once they get serious investment from the “big five” platforms — Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook — and their developer [...]

Posted on 17 April 2012 | 9:30 pm

Wolff Olins’s Mary Ellen Muckerman explores what a focus on user experience could mean for business. “The principles and theories of UX have created a new normal in terms of brand delivery and interaction. They state that how people actually use your product is much more important than how it was intended to be used. [...]

Posted on 17 April 2012 | 9:18 am

"Getting the details right is the difference between something that delights, and something customers tolerate."
—Jeff Atwood

I didn't read Jeff Atwood's article about cat feeders right away, because it really is 90% about a cat product. It's also a terrific demonstration of what he's saying above. The first version of the product, a cat feeder, served a core need well enough for him to satisfice with its shortcomings because the net return in time savings and improved quality of life, for him anyway, was absolutely worth it.

The punchline is this.

• Be sure you're first getting the primary function more or less right.
• Do the work of listening to users every day.
• Refine the details of your product based on their feedback.

Listening to the opinions expressed by customers, obsessing over the details, and getting them right in the design is necessary and hard. But over time, if the points of pain are incrementally addressed and the design improved, the collection of those well-thought-out details embody a better experience.

Get better slowly, but do get better. Suck it up and feel your users' pain. Assure them that you're listening by sweating the details.

Posted on 8 May 2012 | 7:52 pm

Bill Buxton has been collecting input and interactive devices whose design struck him as interesting, useful, or important. In the process, he has assembled a great collection spanning over 30 years of the history of pen computing, pointing devices, touch technologies, as well as an illustration of the nature of how new technologies emerge.

The collection can be browsed in HTML or via the PivotViewer Silverlight interface. PivotViewer provides a richer experience with faceted filtering, search, and hypertext links for metadata. Each device includes Buxton's photos, notes, details about the device's release date, retail value, and name of the creator.

View the Buxton Collection.

Posted on 25 April 2012 | 5:23 pm

People still occasionally ask me if I make the small bound Wireframe Sketchbooks, but I stopped selling them after a few years, and instead just posted instructions for how to make your own. I know that few people have the time or interest to do that, so I've been looking at alternatives for them.

A month ago, Brad from JetPens contacted me to tell me that he started supplying a sketchbook from Maruman that I might like. What I really liked is how closely it resembles the one I made. Some of my Instagram friends have been seeing pics of me using the Maruman Mnemosyne Inspiration Notebook, and a few like it as I do. The one I'm using is the A5 (5.8" X 8.3"), which has a 5 mm X 5 mm pale gray lined grid, title line, and 70 perforated sheets.

Below is a photo of the Konigi notebook on the left and the Maruman on the right. The Sharpie is there to give you a sense of scale.

You can see that the Maruman is the same width, and only 1/4 inch taller. The Maruman paper is smoother paper than the Konigi, and works well with inks. I'm using with a fine Hi-Tec-C and really love the feel of pen and marker on it. The Konigi book had a little tooth/texture because I like to work with soft pencil as well as pen/marker.

I think this is the closest of any notebook I've tried to mine. It meets the same requirements that I had for a sketchbook: small and wire-bound, white sheets with small quadrille, perforated paper, and can ideally be used in landscape orientation.

Thanks to Brad Dowdy for indulging my pen and paper addiction by letting me test and review the Maruman. If you're interested, you can check it out here.

Posted on 27 March 2012 | 5:23 pm

I'd like to talk about the one thing that's been consistent over the years—the genesis and power of creativity. ... It’s all about how you’re putting what you do together. The elements you’re using don’t matter. Purity of human expression and experience is not confined to guitars, to tubes, to turntables, to microchips. There’s no right way, no pure way of doing it—there’s just doing it.

From Bruce Springsteen's inspiring 2012 SXSW Keynote Speech.

Posted on 22 March 2012 | 2:16 pm

Screenleap is a free service that lets you share your screen from any device with a browser, including tablets and smartphones. No software downloads, installs, or sign ups are required. May come in handy for people doing customer support or testing sessions where participant software installation could be an issue.

Posted on 14 March 2012 | 7:27 pm

Responsive.is is a clever tool. Enter a URL or append one to http://responsive.is to view how the layout presents itself on the Desktop, and in tablets and mobile phones.

Posted on 14 March 2012 | 7:22 pm

These are some of the quotes that resonate with me related to doing business in web and software product design.

On finding the right product design

The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.
–John Maeda

Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.
–Caterina Fake

Can we do the job of those 6 parts as one.
–Jonathan Ive. Objectified.

If I had to summarize our learnings in three words: "simple trumps complete."
–Neil Hunt on Netflix A-B testing

I don’t need every customer. I’m primarily in the business of selling a product for money. How much effort do I really want to devote to satisfying people who are unable or extremely unlikely to pay for anything?…
–Marco Arment, Instapaper

Some people argue software should be agnostic. They say it's arrogant for developers to limit features or ignore feature requests. They say software should always be as flexible as possible.

We think that's bullshit. The best software has a vision. The best software takes sides. When someone uses software, they're not just looking for features, they're looking for an approach. They're looking for a vision. Decide what your vision is and run with it.
–Jason Fried, Getting Real

When you build an app always look out for the non-essential features. Make sure they don’t make it into your v1.0. They slow down your release, they dilute your focus, they require resources that pull you away from perfecting the core of your app, and they open the door to more bugs at launch.
–Jason Fried

The best designers and the best programmers aren’t the ones with the best skills, or the nimblest fingers, or the ones who can rock and roll with photoshop or vim, they are the ones that can determine what just doesn’t matter. That’s where the real gains are made.

Most of the time you spend is wasted time on things that just don’t matter. If you can cut out the work and thinking that just doesn’t matter you’ll achieve productivity you’ve never imagined. It’s there if you just don’t pay attention to the things that don’t matter.
–Jason Fried

“Minimum Viable Product”. MVP, if you aren’t familiar, is an idea from the Lean Startup scene. In a nutshell, it means to do as little as possible so you can learn if you did the right thing or not.
–Jason Fried

How do you know when it's done? The question is: when is it good enough?
Good enough, for those that seek perfection, is what we call it when it's sufficient to surpass the standards we've set. Anything beyond good enough is called stalling and a waste of time.

If you don't like your definition of 'good enough', then feel free to change that, but the goal before shipping is merely that. Not perfect.
–Seth Godin

"Good design, when done well, should be invisible."
–Jared Spool

"So much complexity in software comes from trying to make one thing do two things."
–Ryan Singer

"When the form changes, so does the underlying business model, which of course changes the function as well. … The question that gets asked about technology, the one that is almost always precisely the wrong question is, "How does this advance help our business?" The correct question is, "how does this advance undermine our business model and require us/enable us to build a new one?" … When a change in form comes to your industry, the first thing to discover is how it will change the function."
–Seth Godin on how to react to change

"When discussing any product, technology, or idea, it’s easy to focus only on its value, what problem it is trying to solve for the user. This is a good start, and has historically been the only consideration. Recently however, people have started to realize that it also has to be well designed; it can’t be painful to use.
…
What’s most important is their relationship: as long as value is greater than pain, you’ll be ok.
…
Just because value > pain doesn’t mean that you’re done, it just means that it’s good enough to ship.
…
As pain goes down, people will use a product more often for less valuable tasks. Value is still > pain but now it takes much less value to trigger usage. … [R]educing pain, not improving the value of a product in any way, can significantly affect usage."
–Scott Jenson on Mobile Apps and value versus pain

"Making something obvious has a cost. You can’t make everything obvious because you have limited resources. I’m not talking money–although that may be part of it too. I’m primarily talking screen real estate, attention span, comprehension, etc.

Making something obvious is expensive because it often means you have to make a whole bunch of other things less obvious. Obvious dominates and only one thing can truly dominate at a time. It may be worth it to make that one thing completely obvious, but it’s still expensive.

Obvious is all about always. The thing(s) people do all the time, the always stuff, should be obvious. The core, the epicenter, the essence of the product should be obvious."
–Jason Fried on designing The Obvious, the Easy, and the Possible

"If we limit ourselves to what we envision at the outset, we'll miss opportunity. If we had stopped at what the Wright Brothers could envision, we wouldn't have gotten very far."

(In 1910, Wilbur Wright didn't believe planes would be able to carry large numbers of people as trains did, or would be ever able to carry freight. The first air cargo was in 1913.)
–Brock Rumor

I think there’s a benefit to being one of six people that no one knew. No VCs would return our calls and we were broke and bootstrapping it and operating under the radar so we could focus on the most important things: the product, the users, what we were building. There’s all this noise, the tech-crunch, which you have to tune out if you want to build a good product. None of that stuff is additive; it all takes away from building a product.
-Caterina Fake on developing in obscurity.

If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.
-Reid Hoffman, quoted in Mark Goldenson’s 10 lessons from a failed startup, found via svn.

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius–and a lot of courage–to move in the opposite direction.
–Albert Einstein

On running a business

"My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other's negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are not done by one person, they are done by a team of people."
–Steve Jobs

Insulate yourself…
from anonymous angry people
Expose yourself to art you don't yet understand
Precisely measure the results that are important to you
Stay blind to the metrics that don't matter
Fail often
Ship
Lead, don't manage so much
Seek out uncomfortable situations
Make an impact on the people who matter to you
Be better at your baseline skills than anyone else
Copyedit less, invent more
Give more speeches
Ignore unsolicited advice
–Seth Godin

Two elements of successful leadership: a willingness to be wrong and an eagerness to admit it.
–Seth Godin

80 percent of success is just showing up.
–Woody Allen

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.
–Aristotle.

On creativity

The Secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
–Albert Einstein

Everything you can imagine is real.
–Pablo Picasso

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
–Oscar Wilde

“In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.”
–Coco Chanel

And just as Steve loved ideas, and loved making stuff, he treated the process of creativity with a rare and a wonderful reverence. You see, I think he better than anyone understood that while ideas ultimately can be so powerful, they begin as fragile, barely formed thoughts, so easily missed, so easily compromised, so easily just squished.
–Jonathan Ive at the Steve Jobs Tribute on the Apple campus. His talk starts around 47:17 right after Tim Cook introduces him.

I'd like to talk about the one thing that's been consistent over the years—the genesis and power of creativity. ... It’s all about how you’re putting what you do together. The elements you’re using don’t matter. Purity of human expression and experience is not confined to guitars, to tubes, to turntables, to microchips. There’s no right way, no pure way of doing it—there’s just doing it.
– From Bruce Springsteen's inspiring 2012 SXSW Keynote Speech.

Rumble, young musicians, rumble. Open your ears and open your hearts. Don't take yourself too seriously, and take yourself as seriously as death itself. Don't worry. Worry your ass off. Have unclad confidence, but doubt. It keeps you awake and alert. Believe you are the baddest ass in town-and you suck! It keeps you honest. Be able to keep two completely contradictory ideals alive and well inside of your heart and head at all times. If it doesn't drive you crazy, it will make you strong. And stay hard, stay hungry and stay alive. And when you walk on stage tonight to bring the noise, treat it like it's all we have-and then remember it's only rock 'n' roll.
– From Bruce Springsteen's inspiring 2012 SXSW Keynote Speech.

Posted on 14 March 2012 | 3:09 pm

This is a guide for binding your own sketchbooks. I offer it to you designers, developers, makers, and tinkerers out there who are looking for a way to physically connect to your practice of designing interfaces, or who maybe just want a fun and practical way to get your hands dirty.

I started making my own sketchbooks and pads a few years ago. At the time there weren't many options for interface sketching and storyboarding.

I began buying different types of notebooks, researching simple bookbinding, taking classes, and prototyping. I wound up liking wirebound books best. You can see pictures of some of the notebooks I made and some of the interface design sketchbooks I later sold via this site and Amazon.

The project to sell the sketchbooks was a great learning experience—one I would highly recommend. I wanted to go through the steps of learning to design something physical, figure out how to get it produced, and learn about the logistics of selling and fulfilling.

It was a great experience, and a lot of people put up with the progressive quality improvements in each phase.

After a few years making and selling my sketchbooks, I stopped. I've had many requests to stock them again, but in the end the time and effort to devote to this business of designing and selling atoms, and improving the product costs more to me than I have to give. I've decided to just tell you how I make mine and give you the printable sheets, links to resources, and the steps to make your own.

The easiest method for binding your own sketchbooks would be to take paper (either plain white, or printable graphpaper) to your local copy shop and have them wirebind your pages together. The suggestions below might help if you want to invest in a binding machine and do it yourself like I do.

This project was fueled by coffee.
Your donation keeps me wired and makin' stuff.

Artwork in the background: Octorider by Adam Connor, and Real Artists by Busy Building Things.

Binding

This tutorial shows you exactly how I bind books with the wire-binding machine. What you end up doing will depend on the machine you choose, but the steps should be about the same.

1. Measure

Measure stack of paper, front cover and back cover against the binder's coil guide. This will tell you what size coil to use. I typically create 50-60 page notebooks with a 3/4" 2:1 coil.

2. Hang your coils

Hang your coils on the coil holder on the front of the binder.

3. Punch envelope

Punch envelope first and place with front of envelope facing forward.

4. Punch paper

Punch paper in sets and place on coils, repeat until all placed.

5. Punch front cover

Punch front cover and place on coils, with front of cover facing forward.

6. Punch back cover

Punch back cover and place on coils, with inside facing forward.

7. Cut coils

Cut coils to end of book edge.

8. Pull the stack and close coil

Pull the stack off of the binder, and rest with open coil side down on the coil squeezer. Pull lever to close coils.

9. Flip over and enjoy

Flip over the back cover. You'll notice that because you hung the envelope and paper first, the inwardly-turned part of the coil should keep paper from sliding out of the rings.

Attaching elastic closure (optional)

1. Punch back cover

Create a cardboard rig to place your eyelets evenly on the back and use a clamp or bulldog clips to hold the cover and jig together. Use your punch and mallet to punch two holes at the corners about 1" in from each side. The wooden mallet works well with a small anvil.

2. Insert cut elastic and eyelet

Cut 1/4" elastic bands. Measure so that they'll be snug around the front. I measure to the length of the edge of book that will be wrapped and add 2-3 inches for the books above. Thread the elastic through your holes and leave 1/2" hanging on the inside. Push the eyelets through the holes, outside facing the back.

3. Close eyelets and you're done!

Use your eyelet crimping tool to snap closed the open end and fasten the elastic to the back cover. Make sure you're using the right end of the eyelet tool or else they won't close properly and cleanly. You can now cut that excess 1/2" of elastic from the inside back cover.

Rolla/Circa/Atoma Binding

The big costly binders aren't your only option. In the image at right are pics of books I've bound with a DIY disk-binding system. They have sort of a cult following among notebook and journal obsessives because of their versatility.

Disk systems let you punch small mushroom shaped holes in your paper that you slide into disks (some people call these Smurf binders because of the shape). This lets you easily remove and replace pages in your books. Nice, right?

There are a few vendors that sell disk binding systems. The ones I'm familiar with are shown at right.

Rollabind
Makes personal and office-sized punches, and sells paper and covers for their system. This is the same system as Circa.

Levenger
Sells personal punches and paper for the Rollabind system, rebranded under the Circa name.

Atoma
A disk-binding system made and fulfilled by a company in Europe. I don't have experience with this one, but it looks about the same as Rolla.

Sketchpads

Sketchpads are made by gluing stacks of paper that on one end. To make sketchpads, you'll need a padding press, paper, chipboard, and padding compound. These are easily obtained from office and binding supply stores.

Tim Liston pointed me to an inexpensive wooden binder called the Pad Magic Paper Padding Press that looks decent for DIYers doing small runs. The free printable graphpaper sheets on this site are perfect for this.

Enjoy! Have fun making your sketchbooks! A donation keeps me wired and makin' stuff like this.

Teaser: 

<img src="" class="screen-thumb" alt="" />

This is a guide for creating your sketchbooks like those previously sold here at Konigi, using wire binding machines and the printable graph papers available on this site.

The illustrated step-by-step tutorial shows you the typical steps for planning, gathering materials, and binding sketchbooks using a small square book example.

More info...

Posted on 13 March 2012 | 9:39 pm

Posted on 9 March 2012 | 5:24 pm

About

Of course you want to come to Brooklyn. If you want to stay Downtown (Brooklyn Heights, Cobble and Boerum Hill) or further towards the park (Gowanus, Park Slope, Prospect Heights), these are some options that I know of. If you know any other decent options, please let me know!

Hotels

Generally speaking, hotel options don't seem great, surprisingly. They're either in really weird places or are far from where you want to be, especially if you want to be further away from downtown Brooklyn. There are a few decent ones I list below.

NU Hotel
On Smith Street in Cobble Hill, which is full of restaurants and Bklyn shops. Modern furnishings, and bright looking rooms. Cool looking options, including quirky rooms with bunk beads or hammock. I lived in this neighborhood from about 93-98 and love the hood. Funny to me that there's a jail across the street, but you won't even notice it there. Not very convenient to our house, about 1/2 hour walk to Park Slope. Near F train and a 5 minute walk to 2, 3, 4, 5, N, R trains.

Brooklyn Marriot
Downtown big hotel experience sandwiched between beautiful Brooklyn Heights, downtown court houses and NYU Polytech area. Short walk to Brooklyn Heights or Dumbo. Nowhere near my house. We've stayed here when we've had to be out of our apartment, and it's the chain experience you'd expect. Near 2, 3, 4, 5, N, R trains.

BnBs

THE best option if comfortable staying in someone's place I think is to search Airbnb. Among the options I've found some beautiful homes that really put your more into the neighborhoods that you want to be in than the hotels can. Check the ratings and comments.

I haven't yet had people stay in these particular B and B's but these are the ones we've looked at that are near our home and the park.

Park Slope

The Park Slope Bed and Breakfast
This looks like the ideal brownstone experience. Owner Josie gets great reviews on the sites below, and it's in a great location in center Slope and a block from the park. 3 flights of stairs, so be fit if you want to stay here. I live in a 4 story walkup, so I know that lugging luggage is rough, but my advice is to just pack light and you'll be fine. About 5-10 minute walk to 2, 3, F, B and Q trains.

See also the reviews in their Google Listing and on bedandbreakfast.com.

At Home In Brooklyn
I haven't had people stay here, but it gets good reviews and looks like it's the brownstone experiene you may be looking for, even though it's not technically a brownstone. Around the corner about 5 blocks from our house, and right across from Prospect Park. This is a few blocks from the arch and the Saturday farmer's market and an ideal location for getting to restaurants, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the Museum, and trains. Near 2, 3, B and Q trains.

See also the reviews in the Google listing.

Downtown

3B, The Downtown Brooklyn Bed and Breakfast
Located downtown on Lawrence between Jay and Bridge Streets in the Metrotech Center area, near NYU Poly and Fulton St. It's a A short walk to Brooklyn Heights, and a longer walk to Cobble/Boerum Hill and Fort Greene. The immediate area is primarily commercial with some residential spots and new rehabbed buildings gone residential. 3B place looks like a co-op living space managed by a Brooklyn creatives that run a little BnB with private rooms and a communal bunk room on a 3rd floor walk up with high ceilings. Breakfast included.

See also the reviews in Yelp and in their Google Listing.

Posted on 7 March 2012 | 5:25 pm

Tom van Beveren re-launches We are Colorblind. The site is restarting from scratch with new articles and examples of good and bad uses of color in terms of how those design decisions affect people with colorblindness. When you mouse over the examples, the screenshots allow you to compare the example with normal vison and simulated colorblindness. He also presents excellent examples for how these interfaces can be improved to become more accessible.

Posted on 5 March 2012 | 10:56 pm

It's the doers who do.

I've never read Theodore Roosevelt's "Citizenship in a Republic/Man in the Arena" speech before hearing it in this BoS2011 recap video.

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

I'm seeing him with his pince nez saying, "It's not the critic who counts," and thinking, even Roosevelt agrees, "haters gonna hate." I think that's a good reminder to every one of us showing up every day, trying, failing, and succeeding, despite the obstacles, critics, haters, etc. But don't take it from me. Teddy told you so.

Posted on 2 March 2012 | 11:17 pm

I'm certainly no stranger to being opinionated and argumentative. I've put my foot in my mouth a few times by pushing back on others' ideas, and am well aware that being quick to react can be detrimental. The older I get, the more I realize how little I know and how much more time I need to spend thinking after listening, before I open my mouth or start to type to respond.

I admire Jason Fried's recent blog post, "Give it five minutes." In it, he writes candidly about the issue of pushing back on ideas, starting from an exchange he had with Richard Saul Wurman, where the two had given talks at the same event. Wurman approached Fried to congratulate him, and Fried replied by telling Wurman what he disagreed with about his talk. The take away from that exchange was that Wurman taught Fried to stop and think, to give ideas a chance before challenging them with little respect or consideration.

I like this bit of advice from Fried, who turned that lesson into an opportunity to grow personally, and share what he learned from that exchange.

There are two things in this world that take no skill: 1. Spending other people’s money and 2. Dismissing an idea.

Dismissing an idea is so easy because it doesn’t involve any work. You can scoff at it. You can ignore it. You can puff some smoke at it. That’s easy. The hard thing to do is protect it, think about it, let it marinate, explore it, riff on it, and try it. The right idea could start out life as the wrong idea.

So next time you hear something, or someone, talk about an idea, pitch an idea, or suggest an idea, give it five minutes. Think about it a little bit before pushing back, before saying it’s too hard or it’s too much work. Those things may be true, but there may be another truth in there too: It may be worth it.

There's a fantastic little Jonathan Ive anecdote in there as well, where Ive explains Steve Jobs' respect for the fragility of ideas, the best of which can start out naive, but lead to beautiful things if they're allowed the time and space to be explored.

While some of the best products can grow out of one's work done in isolation, the ideas need to be shared to grow into products. Stifling others' ideas with immediate push back is not only a quick way to alienate your team, but squashing them too early can really do the most harm to you, by depriving you from seeing what it might become. This is one of those rare reminders that with maturity, hopefully we can learn to become more humble and grow. We just have to be open to the ideas.

Posted on 2 March 2012 | 10:14 pm

Usabilla Discover is like a mashup of Pinterest and LittleBigDetails, or maybe it's a social LittleSnapper. Whatever the pitch, it's pretty useful to share screenshots of interface and visual designs you like. Now to figure out how to get my over 2,000 screenshots into it.

Note: To get in during the beta, sign up here with code "KONIGI", good for the first 200 who use the code.

Posted on 2 March 2012 | 4:43 pm

Mr Tappy is a kit for filming mobile phones, tablet computers and handheld devices from the user's point of view. Looks like a great alternative to setting up your own DIY rig, and costs $289.

Originally designed by Nick Bowmast as a filming rig for iPad usability testing, Mr Tappy lets you capture or share user interaction with mobile devices during user experience research, product demonstrations or classroom presentations. Attach your webcam and any type of mobile device, set the camera height and angle, and record.

Via 90 Percent of Everything.

Posted on 28 February 2012 | 3:21 pm

I'm pretty excited about the announcement we at Balsamiq were able to make jointly with the group at StackExchange today. The two groups have been working together to integrate Mockups into the UX StackExchange. You can now post Mockups wireframes with questions and answers to UX.StackExchange.com using the free integrated Mockups editor.

I'm really excited about this. One of the conversations Peldi and I had before I joined Balsamiq was about creating something I've wanted to use for a long time--a site where you could upload wireframes to vet ideas, get feedback, and test concepts with other peer professionals. I'm of the "show me, don't tell me" school of communication. Luckily the excellent UX version of StackExchange was created, and Mockups had the plugin model to integrate with it nicely, so lazyweb wishes can happen without even asking.

Here's a bit from our announcement at Balsamiq:

If you don't know what StackExchange is, you've been missing out. It's a collection of community-edited and moderated question and answer websites, each dedicated to becoming the single best online resource on a number of different topics. The most famous StackExchange site is StackOverflow.com, the ultimate Q&A site for programming questions. Other popular StackExchange sites are Startups.StackExchange.com or English.StackExchange.com, about the English Language and its Usage. See a full list here.

About a month ago we were excited to see that UX.StackExchange.com launched publicly, and thanks to the long beta period had already become a wonderful resource for anyone interested in creating better software.

Some users had been posting Mockups to the site, and finally user Moshe Berman posted this question asking if the site could license Mockups. Peldi got a message from Joel Spolsky, the two groups iterated on ideas in myBalsamiq, and the rest is history.

You can find out more about how to use Mockups in the UX StackExchange in our blog and in this thread on UX.SE.

Posted on 27 February 2012 | 3:08 pm

Seung Chan Lim, better known as Slim, spent 10 years making software, working in computer science and interaction design at MAYA Design where he was the Assistant Director of Engineering. After some soul searching he began to ask why he was doing what he was doing, and at the suggestion of a mentor, he went out to do something different, something he didn't understand. He went to art school.

Slim's book explores how making works (as a process), what it means (to make something), and why it matters (to our lives). Through this exploration the book also investigates the ethics of our relationship to Computer Technology, and proposes a new direction.

I love the idea of learning something new and unfamiliar as a way of expanding one's perspective. Two of my favorite articles/talks in recent years that relate to this topic are Bill Buxton's article on how to keep innovating and Paula Scher's Ted Talk on finding fun in the unfamiliar.

Judging by the introduction video, the book looks to be substantial, exploratory, humble, and inspiring. I'm really looking forward to reading it.

The book is being funded now, so if you want to see it happen like I do, you can back this project on Kickstarter.

Posted on 24 February 2012 | 3:36 pm

Sure you can use a checkbox to enter binary values in a form, but Pinterest goes the hi-fi route and instead uses sexy switches, a la iOS controls, in their email settings form.

Posted on 23 February 2012 | 10:10 pm

The team at Viget have created a free OmniGraffle stencil for designing interfaces with Twitter Bootstrap.

Posted on 23 February 2012 | 9:59 pm

Simple things appeal to me. I like the simplicity of being able to usubscribe immediately. Zerply goes the extra mile and not only gives me options to never get email notifications via links in the notification itself, but also to change the frequency of updates. Nice.

Posted on 23 February 2012 | 9:56 pm

Why Do We Check In? | Street FightNice interview with Omid covering a variety of 4sq use cases. Rosenfeld Media – The Mobile Frontier: Alex Rainert: Head of Product at foursquareLast year I did a quick interview with Rachel Hinman for her book on Mobile Design. It's coming out soon and I bet it'll be [...]

Posted on 6 April 2012 | 9:00 pm

Advice From an Early Startup Employee – Eric Tang’s BlogThinking about joining a startup? Read this post. iTextEditors – iPhone and iPad text/code editors and writing tools comparedOutrageously well detailed if this is your jam. iPhone and iPad styluses compared | MacworldNice rundown of iPad styluses w/ reviews. Keynote Prototyping Bundle for iPad, iPhone, Android [...]

Posted on 3 April 2012 | 3:01 am

The Credit Card Is The New App Platform – Forbes ESPI at work: The power of Keynote | EdenspiekermannGood piece on using Keynote to mock up UIs. It’s the battery, stupid: The looming 4G smartphone crisisFelt this hard at SXSW and we feel it up close at 4sq all the time with a lot of [...]

Posted on 25 March 2012 | 1:06 am

Learning to Code: The Roadmap I Wish I Had Been Given – Jimmy LiLots to learn in this email for those who want to get their hands dirty and learn how to code. Learning from competition – Marco.orgGreat one from Marco on being honest about what your competition is doing better than you and then [...]

Posted on 13 March 2012 | 9:02 pm

Some tips for interacting with the press – Chris DixonReally smart list here. Eric Stromberg — Increasing User Engagement in EmailsGreat learnings on impactful emails from the team at Hunch. WTF QR CODESThe next time someone's like "We should totally use a QR Code for that!" you can send them this blog. Mike Kruzeniski – [...]

Posted on 2 March 2012 | 5:01 pm

Behind the App: Repeat Timer Pro – Concept, Design, Marketing Strategy and it’s ResultsFantastic breakdown of how someone took their vision for a simple iOS app and made it happen. The Best Automatic Coffee MachineBookmarking this one for latah. Latin Text Generator for Mac OS X – LittleIpsumClever and sexy looking too. Chipotle is Apple: [...]

Posted on 19 February 2012 | 3:02 am

Everything you need to know about buying a camera | The Verge Skip College, Work at a Startup With EnstituteIt might not be *this* idea but I feel like something like this becoming a legit option is going to happen. Original Foursquare Investor Pitch Deck 2009Awesome to see this today. The Spoon and Trowel :: [...]

Posted on 10 February 2012 | 3:00 am

New iOS Design Pattern: Slide-out Navigation – Ken YarmoshI find the slide out really undermines discovery but appreciate how it keeps things super clean. Why are software development task estimations regularly off by a factor of 2-3? – QuoraAmazing answer. The Next Chapter: All Eyes on the Future (err, the past) at Back of the [...]

Posted on 30 January 2012 | 5:01 pm

Eric Stromberg — How to Make an Impact During the First Month of Your Startup JobGREAT list right here. The Discreet Shift to Twitter | Monday Note"It now seems Facebook’s usage is undergoing a split. Active Facebookers become increasingly engaged, spend more time doing more stuff, while “reasonable” users (above 25) become more reluctant and [...]

Posted on 5 January 2012 | 5:01 pm

14 Of The Year’s Best Ideas In Interface Design | Co.DesignLots to get inspired by on this list. 10 things we learned about Apple this year – SplatFGreat list from Dan. Get a Recipe Every Time You Check-In at a Grocery StoreNeat! Snake Oil? The scientific evidence for health supplementsExcellent, informativem infographic. How to Curb [...]

Posted on 1 January 2012 | 3:00 am