Here’s to all my friends in San Diego coping with the fires. I went to NYTimes.com today and found that Bonita, CA (my friend Jason’s hometown) had made the front page.

We dealt with fires in San Diego four years ago when I was at UCSD, and let me tell you, it is no fun. Smoke and ash everywhere, gray skies…yuck. You feel really cooped up inside with all the windows closed.

Anyway, I hope all you San Diegans are doing alright…let’s hope the damage is minimal.

Current San Diego Area Fire Maps

Welcome to Wrigley!
Originally uploaded by josh.ev9.

Today was a great day. Jason and I headed to a Cubs game at Wrigley. Man, that place knows how to turn a relatively slow, boring game into an unforgettable experience. There’s just something about the old fashioned style, the sense of history and cameraderie. You can’t help but feel like a life-long fan.

I think even Jason, a true San Diego Padre fan, felt like a real Cubs fan almost immediately. I could tell not only by the sweet Cubs hat he bought before the game, but also by the two Cubs shirts he left the game with. I’m pretty sure Jason will cheer for the Cubs this October, after all, It Could Happen.

Excellent job Wrigley, and excellent job Cubbies, who beat the Mets 6-2. Have a look at my photos from the game.

I’m gonna go back to chillin with my good friend Jason. Here’s to old friends in new cities.

This evening Kynthia’s thoughts got me thinking. Among other things, she said:

“[W]e design heads get in this place where, just because we wouldn’t be caught dead releasing something into the wild, we think there is nothing to learn from it.”

My brain took her thoughts on a tangent and went this way:

So since I started my job at ThoughtWorks, my role has pretty much been defined by this exact issue. See, we use agile development methods, which often means that the stuff I’m designing might be built tomorrow, or at the latest in the next few weeks, which leads to some pretty interesting questions, such as:

• If I had to hand over my design in the next [time limit], what would be the most important part(s) to get across? So what should I spend my time on?
• How can my design(s) make the greatest impact in the short run?
• How can my design(s) be flexible enough that they’ll support more advanced interactions and further redesign (without simply adding features) in the long run?
• How much does my design cost, in terms of real dollars and development time? Is there anything I can do to make it less expensive without hurting the users (too much)?
• Will the brilliant, awesome, amazing design I’ve just created embrace change if it turns out users really don’t like something about it? Or will it fail miserably…which might be a good thing if it motivates the product owners to spend more money to fix it.

Indeed, I believe us “design heads” need to wrap our brains around the idea that the “ideal design solution” can be super-difficult, and sometimes impossible to implement, if for no other reason than the person with the money doesn’t feel like splurging for a great user experience. Given this situation, it’s important that we release our ideas into the world early and often, even if they aren’t perfect. Putting our ideas out into the world lets them get stomped on, beat up, and improved to the point where while they may not be ideal, they’ll at least be better.

Iteration, baby, that’s the name of the game. It turns out when we designers draw and write and specify and prototype and mock-up our designs in our oh-so-ritualistic way, we end up with an unintended by-product: intimidation. See, even if our brilliant, perfected ideas aren’t intimidating to the teams of programmers that have to build them, they’ll often be super-intimidating to those who have to pay for them. See, the more realistic/difficult/etc. our designs look on paper or other prototyped form, the higher the perceived cost. Let’s look at a formula to really help this sink in:

C(p) = -I(L)

Now, I haven’t taken a math class in years, so that formula probably means nothing at all. Ignore it for now. What I mean to say is that the higher the perceived cost, the lower the likelihood of implementation. This all seems pretty simple, and it is, but sometimes it’s hard for us designers to break away from the idea that we need to perfect everything about our concepts. In fact, when we do this, it can be to our disadvantage.

Oh, and don’t think we’re not intimidating ourselves either! When was the last time you decided not to take on some project just because you knew it would take too long to really “do it right?” Yeah, it happens to me all the time too. We designers know how to intimidate ourselves as well.

So rather than perfecting, why don’t we try biting off just a little bit at a time? Design in terms of small, implementable, simple solutions to the problem at hand. Then expand on the concepts, and build them all the while…just a little at a time. Sure, some of that implementation will have to be redone as you go, but if it truly improves the end design, do it.

Of course, when you’re designing and building an enterprise level application, there’s a lot more structure and process that has to be involved in design, but I think for Kynthia’s case, an Agile development process is somewhat ideal. It gives you the opportunity to take a stab at a problem, implement something simple, learn from what you built/pondered/etc., and iterate.

Anyway, sorry for taking your thoughts on a tangent, Kynthia, but thank you for getting my brain cranking this evening.

In response to me beaming about my job, Kevin wrote:

Would you say that you are doing all the things you were trained to do at the School of Informatics?

I got to see Matt and Apurva over the weekend, and one of the things that came up was how little their jobs resembled what we do. Apurva took a job that doesn’t really understand HCI, and Matt spends the bulk of his time doing wireframes.

I know you took an extra course, essentially, when you started your job, but where does the School of Informatics training fit in?

Well, I think I should respond to that. I’ll take them a paragraph at a time…

Would you say that you are doing all the things you were trained to do at the School of Informatics?

Kinda. I’m doing a lot of stuff that I was trained to do at the School of Informatics. Still, I’m doing my fair share of wireframes, lo-mid-hi fidelity prototypes, and the like. A lot of what I do simply has to do with communicating exactly what I am trained to do, so that I can go forth and do it. This takes a lot of trust from my coworkers…generally when I explain my game plan at the outset of a project, I’ll get strange looks. By the end, though, so far it seems that people think the results are noticeably better than the inputs.

The most invaluable part of my IU HCI/d education has been the “d.” Without a doubt, the tools that earn me the most gratification are my Design sensibilities, which Marty, Eli, Erik, Youn, my Graphic Design courses, as well as all my classmates, helped me to find. Ideas like Computer Imagination still inspire me, but a lot of our clients generally aren’t ready to think in terms of “pie in the sky” ideas…they want grounded results, ASAP. As I gain experience, I hope to be a stronger advocate of Computer Imagination in my workplace, but for now I’m simply here to make my clients & their customers happy.

I got to see Matt and Apurva over the weekend, and one of the things that came up was how little their jobs resembled what we do. Apurva took a job that doesn’t really understand HCI, and Matt spends the bulk of his time doing wireframes.

Look, I’m not saying my job is perfect. There are times when I get fed up with technology-centered thinking, and am frustrated and feel like an outsider. The difference with a place like ThoughtWorks is that the people are really open to new ways of thought, especially if they’re backed by some academic rigor. Many people here don’t necessarily understand HCI, especially the intricate differences between Usability, UI Design, Interaction Design, and the like…but my coworkers have been very interested to learn about them.

Just a few weeks ago I taught a room full of about 30 coworkers and clients about User Centered Design. They were psyched to see how easy lo-fi prototyping and basic usability testing can be, and some of them planned on carrying the ideas out on their own projects. The people around me yearn to learn, and that makes my job somewhat easier.

There have been lows though. Like when I was told I should go read the Windows User Interface Manual. And when people have kurtly told me to “make the app pretty.” It’s at this point that I know that I have my real work cut out…not only do I have to do what they ask for, but also get them into a state where they can be ready to learn about what an Interaction Designer is meant to do. Yeah, I guess a lot of my job is just about being accepting of opinions and doing some work that I don’t love in order to open the doors to the stuff I love to do, like talking to real users.

Hey Matt & Apurva (and others) - if you want a piece of this action, let me know. I can hook you up with a recruiter.

I know you took an extra course, essentially, when you started your job, but where does the School of Informatics training fit in?

ThoughtWorks University was a fantastic educational experience, and I am so glad I was able to take part in that. The most important part of that experience was meeting and hanging out with my new coworkers from all over the world for 6 weeks in a foreign country. The next best part was learning about the techniques that ThoughtWorks uses with our clients, which generally fall into the category of Agile Development. Now, the somewhat highly structured Development methodologies like the ones that fall under the category of Agile are far different from Eli & Marty’s PRInCiPleS, which encourages free thought…but there are still many overlaps between the two. Being able to think above standard practices and processes served me well at TWU, and I think I have Informatics to thank for that.

You can’t forget the 7 Themes. Those come up all the time.

My graphic design classes in the School of Fine Arts were also invaluable. I highly recommend those to all HCI/d folks.

Above all else, the School of Informatics gave me the confidence to walk into a growing company and feel like a leader in my field. I can talk with authority on subjects ranging from Design to Usability to HCI to Innovation, and on and on.

Finally, there’s a lot of talk around TW about how they recruit and hire the best and brightest. This can be intimidating to many. It hasn’t been all that intimidating for me, though…I’ve been among the best and brightest in the world of HCI/d for the past 2 years…so I know I can hold my own in a room full of brilliant people. (It sounds cheesy, but it’s true.)

What else?

Of course, there’s some stuff that I learned before I came to IU that has helped me as well. I had a degree that said “HCI” before I came to the School of Informatics. Studying the Contextual Design process changed my life at UCSD, and becoming familiar with the literature that has come out of the field of HCI over the past 30 or so years definitely helped. So yeah, some mad props are also in order for my other alma mater.

So yeah, I hope that answers your questions, Kevin. And I also hope it wasn’t overkill.

Tiffanie succinctly described my main reason for blogging. Sure, there are other positives as well, but I love the fact that I’ll be able to look back at my life over the years, and that others will be able to do so as well. I can’t wait for the future.

It’s still always a little strange to see my name in lights. It doesn’t happen all that often, but still.

I’m still missing California a little, but my Thanksgiving trip to Phoenix helped that a little bit. The warmth was good for my soul. Sometimes I feel like I just need a good shot of sun, it always makes me a happier person.

Either way, thanks for the song, Kynthia.