Seen. Heard. Noticed.

Barnes and Noble Nook review - tablets still seem to be in beta

2012-01-02T20:16:00.000-08:00

Wow, it has been a while since I've commented on this blog. As you may or may not know I had a stint up at Microsoft for several months and then landed a full-time position as the senior user experience researcher at Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield here in lovely Portland Oregon.

After adapting to full-time work again, I intend to add some blog entries since I've had some interesting experiences with technology recently.

Most recently, I got a Barnes & Noble Nook tablet as a Hanukkah gift. Actually, I was sent some money that I put towards the new tablet. I spent a lot of time looking, mostly at the Kindle fire and the Nook trying to decide which one to purchase. (Also note, if you are looking at these devices, there is a Nook color and the Nook tablet. Be sure you get the one you're looking for.)

My first decision was, what do I want to do and how much do I want to spend? I already have two laptops plus a work laptop, so productivity is low on the importance scale.

My ideal device looks like this:

really portable: six or 7 inches like the e-readers
under $300 (trying to be realistic)
easy to read and download books and magazines including library loans
easy to check e-mail and use the Internet (Wi-Fi only is just fine)
great access to apps-ideally working with my iPhone, but that means paying Apple premiums
access to TV/movies

I am generally underwhelmed by the tablet market and particularly this crossover reader/tablet. They seem to do a little bit of everything but not a lot of anything. I have to say I really like the reading experience on the Nook. The UI is really nice for looking up words or highlighting-this is where I found the Kindle failed miserably putting me in unending loops. I also really liked the contrast on the screen over the Kindle.

However, downloading library books was a crazy experience, more unending loops and syncing with absolutely no feedback, although I guess that's more about the library website and less about the Nook itself. I also realize that at this premium price of $250 I will have to take out a lot of library books to make it worthwhile. I am still trying to figure out if a paper magazines that I subscribe to will allow me to download digital versions for free. I certainly hope so…

I compromised on apps and other functionality to retain a small footprint, a lightweight device and something in a "reasonable" price range.

I downloaded A copy of Real Simple magazine which looks beautiful. The only thing I realized is that I very often tear pages out of magazines with recipes or book recommendations or other interesting tidbits, and with the e-reader I can no longer do that and I'm not sure I can even print from it. I also have not figured out if there's any way to read the books that I have downloaded on my Nook on my iPhone. I don't imagine always having the device with me and would love to read when I have the chance. Although, the reason I got the tablet is that reading on the iPhone is a pretty painful experience. And I love to read.

The touchscreen is somewhat touch and go. Some pages are optimized which is nice, but the targets are still really small, somehow even worse than the iPhone, and it seems to take one or two touches to actually get it to register. or, it may just be that the Wi-Fi is relatively slow and it's loading but I don't realize it. I spend a lot of time watching the green bar go across the top as it downloads pages.

What I miss most is the ability to have many different apps. The store is extremely limited, which I only learned after my purchase. I have started bookmarking sites, but once you've gone apps you don't want to go back.

The final thing that comes to mind is the e-mail program. The iPhone very kindly lets you read e-mail and then mark it as "unread" so that when you view it on another device you realize you still need to answer that e-mail. Unfortunately, the Nook does not have that option. It's an option I make frequent use of, and definitely miss.

And, if you are purchasing this or any other tablet, I highly recommend a case that you can use either in vertical or horizontal position. I love that I can prop up a book and read it sitting all by itself on the table (especially given ongoing back problems). But you will also want to be able to watch a movie or video propped horizontally. The only case I have found for this device is the Tasume Case. I returned the one I purchased my purchased the device and will be ordering this one.

So, there are a lot of things I would like it to do, and many things I'm not sure that it can. my plan is to use it and adapt to it as best as I can. Heck, if in six months I don't like it, there's always eBay.

The Patient Experience

2011-03-20T16:53:00.000-07:00

My book group just finished reading A General Theory of Love. We seem to be a bunch of psychology nerds and fascinated by the human condition. The general theory is about how important human connection is and how intrinsic it is to our core being. The author's compose lengthy prose on the limbic system which allows mammals (unlike reptiles) to have complex interactions with their offspring. Oversimplified, we seek attachment and based on what we experienced as children, we may have healthy or unhealthy love attachments as we age. We seek connection.

Towards the end of the book, the author's discuss the loss of connection in healthcare from a 1990 New York Times article:

I wouldn't demand a lot of my doctor's time, I just wish he would brood on my situation for perhaps five minutes, that he would give me his whole mind just once. I would like to think of him as going through my character, as he goes through my flesh, to get at my illness, for each man is ill in his own way...I'd like my doctor to scan me, to grope for my spirit as well as my prostate. Without such recognition, I am nothing but my illness.

I have personally done multitudes of interviews with patients and this is one of the best quotes I've run across. What patients want, in addition to and perhaps beyond healing, is to be seen. It is important that they feel cared for and connected, not just like another in a long list of issues for the day. The book goes on to quote a 1994 article in the Lancet which advocates that even if doctors don't care, they should "act" as though they do. Many patients who desire compassion are now turning to alternative therapies.

So, why bring this up on this blog about user experience? It hearkens back to the user experience, but a piece that we often neglect. We talk about technology and how well it works for people, we talk about product design and whether or not it is intuitive and we test web sites to be sure people can easily navigate their way through. But, we often forget to "design" or review the human component, the most variable, least understood component of any system. Whether you are a physician, customer service rep, retail clerk or barista, remember that at the end of the day it is you who makes or breaks the customer experience. Be patient, think about how you might feel in the other person's shoes. Take a deep breath and grope for their spirit, I can guarantee you will both be happier in the end.

Say YES to user experience

2011-03-17T17:16:00.000-07:00

In case you were wondering where the marketplace is going, user experience is trending up!

user experience research Job Trends

User Experience Research jobs

Experience Art

2011-03-14T15:17:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite pics from the Maui trip, copyright Janna Kimel, not Peter Lik!

(see more of Janna's pics)

On a recent trip to Maui, I had a fantastic user experience. Yes, sun, sand and palm trees in March are the real experience for this Portlander, but there were a number of beautiful galleries on the island as well.

Peter Lik is a photographer with stunning work. You are transformed by the landscapes and photographs in his space upon entering. We all have lovely photos of trees and beaches, flowers and trees, even aunt Ethel. Peter has taken photography to a whole new level photographing many extreme weather conditions and flowers and landscapes like you have never seen them before. He uses a medium format camera and a special crystallized paper for printing.

The experience

Although his images are super pricey, collected by Frank Gehry, Bill Clinton and even Paris Hilton, I inquired with one of the salesmen to find out more about his extraordinary work. He carefully explained how the images are matted, between heavy plexiglass, and then took me into a side room and dimmed the lights. (I think it was at this point that he also closed the door but I was so mesmerized I didn't notice). The room looked a bit like a living room with a row of halogen lights above and a couch towards the back and beautiful, natural wood accents.

The salesman propped up a photo of some red maple leaves in fall with the halogen lights hitting just right. As he dimmed the lights, the image took on a whole new dimension, not just going flat or grey like a normal photo, but the light simply began to reflect differently. The image changed with every dim of the light. It was fantastic. In this instance, not only was the art exceptional, but the fact that I got to experience it to the fullest extent of its beauty in a setting somewhat similar to the one where I would own it was a great lesson learned.

How can your company help buyers have the full experience of your product simulated as it would be in the environment of use? What creative ways can you use to display and promote your extraordinary user experience?

What message do we send when we pay kids to study?

2011-02-25T12:53:00.000-08:00

There has been a lot of research lately on paying children to study. As a person interested in motivation and behavior, I find this whole path rather curious.

In an article and presentation Gretchen Anderson and I co-authored last year, we talked about designing for motivation. One of the tenets is to "Play Against Loss." The thought of losing something you think you have is more motivating than a potential reward that you don't yet have. People generally don't like to lose.

At Ultrinsic, we see this instantiated by their model where students bet they will get good grades. One option allows students are asked to choose the minimum grade they will achieve in a given class in a given semester. "Ultrinsic lets students set target grades and choose cash incentives based on their individual educational goals. The incentive is created by the student and Ultrinsic each contributing money to the final reward that the student can earn by achieving the target grade."

Yesterday, NPR reported on a different study, one where young children (2nd-9th grade) get paid to learn. With younger kids, the opposite approach seems to be true. In this study by Roland Fryer, he found that rewarding young children for accomplishing mini-tasks, e. g., sitting still, doing homework, is a successful motivator at this young age. It also helps in setting these behaviors early.

From the viewpoint of motivation and behavior, this is fascinating. Early rewards are successful. Later in life, allow students to set their own goals and include a risk factor to enhance motivation.

Simply thinking about education, it pains me to think that we need to get money involved to encourage kids to read, do their homework and study. Instead of rewarding them for doing unappealing tasks, what can we do to motivate and encourage them to learn? Perhaps what is broken is not our reward system, but our education system.

CES best of...

2011-02-13T22:09:00.000-08:00

Photos of some of the great new technology.

third brain studio on the big screen!

Baby monitor that connects to your iPhone

Sony's new version of the Walkman. iPod shuffles attached to your ears??

Using HeartMath's EmWave to de-stress during the conference.

The BEST iPhone case - Etch-A-Sketch!

Have a screen.....

A Green Light at the End of the Tunnel

2011-01-25T17:15:00.000-08:00

This was, by far, my favorite booth design at CES. It's a tough show to think about sustainability. People give away stuffed animals, plastic bags, reusable tote bags (even reusable is just more "stuff") and other swag. We go through endless amounts of carry out containers and who knows what an insane carbon footprint is created getting people and exhibits all in one place.

And then, I came across this wonderful booth by MINIWIZ built of cardboard and water bottles. Their designs are sustainable and use solar energy. It is beautiful in its simplicity.

The video on their home page beautifully captures their mission with nary a word. Their site shows off innovative personal products, service design (green burial anyone?) and even amazing sustainable architecture.

Thank you, MINIWIZ, for reminding us that not all technology has to be battery powered and end in a landfill.

On the big screen

2011-01-18T21:55:00.000-08:00

The majority of this blog is dedicated to sharing insights on user experience and new technology. This short post is a combination. The image above was an impulsive moment at CES. The Sony booth was showing off GoogleTV where you can bring up the internet on your TV, no matter how big or small. I decided to see how the third brain studio website would look at 42" wide! The "Jimmy" on the bottom is from the picture in picture. What do you want to see from the web on your big screen TV?

Object Recognition - Untagged

2011-01-15T10:19:00.000-08:00

I love this video! What you are looking at is a proof of concept for a gesture and object recognition context-aware user interface by Beverly Harrison and her team at Intel. It is a simple plywood surface and some Legos. None of the items are tagged, they are ordinary, household items. What Beverly and her team have done is create a smart system that tracks objects on a surface. At the beginning, you see her trace her finger on the table and train track fills in. When she moves the train around the track to the station, if you look closely at the surface, you can see little people exit the train.

By using these robust algorithms the team can author any behavior for any object and dynamically re-assign its role. For example, the people could run, walk or move in any pre-coded direction. The dragon that is part of the scenario can be designed to blow fire, bubbles or smoke.

The surface can be large or small. Larger surfaces may require the camera to be further away which in turn degrades the accuracy. The distance is determined by the needed level of accuracy.

What would you do with this technology? Some of their suggestions were tracking items on a workbench or machines in a manufacturing shop. Personally, I love the opportunity for open play with Legos!

Eye-Fi - Best of CES Photo and Video

2011-01-10T11:44:00.000-08:00

This product excites me both personally and professionally. The Eye-Fi won the Best of CES Photo and Video category. Walking through the show, many of the products seem to blend together and everyone seems to be working on the same few problems.

While walking through the show, I preferred to use my digital camera rather than my phone since it's still a better camera. But, the drawback is the lack of connection. If I wanted to send an immediate Tweet or Facebook update, I had to switch over and use my iPhone camera and its wireless capability.

The Eye-Fi solves all of that! Using your existing camera, users simply swap out their existing SD card for a the Eye-Fi which allows any digital camera to become wireless. Their website helps you quickly and easily discover whether their cards will work in your camera. Alas, my point and shoot Olympus has a proprietary XD card and is not compatible.

With the Eye-Fi card, you can wirelessly upload to your computer and any number of web sites including Facebook, Flickr, Picasa or YouTube. Because your camera is NOT a computer, you will need to choose one application for uploading and won't be able to pick and choose for each photo.

Other cool features: The Eye-Fi also offers Geotagging (a must have for some, but personally, I don't want every photo I upload to instantly be able to show my location). The premium cards also offer hotspot access where you can use Starbucks, airport and some hotel wifi for upload access.

I do have one other camera, a nicer one I take out on occasion. I may have to invest in this and give it a whirl!

CES - Overview

2011-01-08T22:03:00.000-08:00

As always, CES is an incredible and overwhelming experience. As I begin to sort through the huge amount of information, I'll start with this insight: connectivity. The connected home is here. Your appliances, healthcare and/or home entertainment are getting intraconnected. Yes, "intra" as in "intrastate" or within a certain space. Devices which serve a particular purpose can now talk with one another. Some devices cross the borders and "talk" to dissimilar devices, but many do not. The iPhone and other smart phones already cross these the boundaries, allowing you to manage your home energy, your entertainment and your health all with the swipe of a finger. Your TV and your stove still need an intermediary.

GE shows that you can create an interface (thanks Dave Bingham!) and give consumers insights into how their home is using energy. With these insights, consumers can make smart decisions on when and how to run their appliances. This saves money on the consumer side and doesn't overtax the infrastructure on the power company side (a growing issue)

Sample of GE's Home Energy Dashboard

Ideal Life and HealthTunes.com both offer connectivity for health care devices, primarily for the chronically ill. In addition to gathering data on weight, blood pressure, temperature and pulse oximetry, these devices upload your information to a secure site where your doctor can access the information and see longitudinal data. Having a more complete picture of your daily life and not just from the 5 minutes you sat in his/her office creates a richer picture of a patient's health.

As a final example, though there are no doubt many more, entertainment is more connected. Apple leads the pack with Airplay, allowing movies and music to stream to your iPhone or iPad. Movies can be quickly pushed to the television set and manipulated with either your phone or tablet.

More CES photos here.

Food as Experience

2010-11-18T09:51:00.001-08:00

Portland is becoming famous for its food carts. If you live here and haven't tried them, TONIGHT you have a great chance to celebrate at the Art Department a new book and try some food cart yumminess!

third brain studio is particularly fond of this book since we are contributors, having conducted interviews at several cart pods to find out just what this trend is all about. We talked to restaurant owners, surgeons and college students, all who enjoy the price, quality, variety and intriguing community when they come to the food carts. We talked with a guy who said there was a vendor in Pioneer Square who practically helped feed him through college, offering him sandwiches even when he barely had enough money. They've become close friends - which he proved by showing us his number in his phone.

All in all, the food carts exemplify Portland. They get you outside no matter what the weather, democratize food and bring people together at long picnic tables where you just can 't help but talk to your neighbor and say, "Hey what's that your eating? I'll have to try that next time!"

World Usability Day

2010-11-11T11:55:00.000-08:00

A sample entry in the "good fun" category for the usability scavenger hunt.

As you may or may not know, Thursday, November 11, 2010 is World Usability Day. Imagine that! Aren't you glad you are in on that little secret? I bet you didn't even get the day off. To celebrate this awesome event, our local computer human interaction group, lovingly known as CHI FOO, is hosting a usability scavenger hunt.

All of the entries from our team, the uxceptionals, can be seen here. and yes, true to form, many of the medical entries are from yours truly. Having spent Wednesday at the hospital volunteering and experiencing my own physical therapy appointment on Thursday gave me lots of great insights into the usability of even more medical products.

Have fun following all the feeds from the CHIFOO link above.

Know your use case

2010-10-24T21:54:00.000-07:00

This is the second in a series of two posts about employing new technologies that took significantly longer than I hoped or expected. The second new thing I needed to accomplish in the last few weeks, was to install and start using Dragon NaturallySpeaking by Nuance. All these presentations blog posts reports and bookkeeping have played havoc on my shoulders and I'm looking for any solution to reduce my time at the keyboard.

I prefer to go to stores and talk to people in person, I know I must be old, but that's still what works for me. I took myself to the nearest Office Depot hoping to ask some questions about the software and perhaps see some new keyboard trays. Nobody in the store ever came up to ask if I needed any help, and when I sought help I was directed to a large screen monitor what I was told to Google my questions. Awesome. I am in your store looking for dictation software, hoping not to use keyboard, and you send me straight to a computer. I left purchasing nothing, more confused than I was before.

As a side note, I will give kudos to one employee at a different store who spent probably 20 min. on the phone with me sharing what he had done for his injuries including trying to convince me to learn an entirely new keyboard that was more ergonomic. Despite that, he had some good advice and good information.

After a good bit of searching, I finally found a grid that answered some of my questions, and confirmed which version of the software would be best for me. It also confirmed that I would be able to use the product with PowerPoint.

I picked up a copy of the software excited to get started. It took me a number of days to get the microphone to work. In fact I never got the microphone to work. Again, a number of conversations with underpaid workers overseas I was told that the microphone that came with the product would not work with my laptop because the internal array mic would override any other signal. I had to go out and purchase a USB headset. Great. I just spent$200 on some software,arguably for use by a population becoming more and more laptop dependent. I'm still not sure that tech really knew what he was talking about but back to the store I went and purchased a USB headset so that I could get moving on this project.

The headset, sadly, took more time to set up than the very complex cloud share Pogoplug that I had set up just hours before.after some convoluted web searches I gather that my problem was just that that device had not been selected as my default device. However, every time I went through the setup process where did software is learning my voice the quality check failed every time. I decided to bypass this and see what would happen. Ta da! what you have just read was all created, while mostly, by using the headset and the new software. I tried to set up 10 years ago when I had my first repetitive stress injury and it was a painful and frustrating process. I am shocked and amazed at the quality of the voice recognition this early in the process. I've had to do very few corrections, and the cheat sheets that come with the software now are superbly helpful.

There is a bit of a learning curve for complex actions, but to just sit in dictate and watch the words pop up on the screen while I rest my weary arms and shoulders is a great relief. It would be best, however, if the engineers and designers did due diligence and realize that likely at least 50% of their users will be working from laptops.

Products who do their research --- FTW

2010-10-24T21:25:00.000-07:00

In the last few weeks, I've had some extraordinary experiences with new technology. One was purely awesome the rest have sucked the time and energy out of my life.

As most of you know I run a small business. Most days I carry my laptop to and from work with much that is wonderful and important in the world in the trunk of my car praying that nobody crashes into me or steals that laptop out of my trunk.

My goal, was to find a way that I could access all of my information from a single point and whether I am at the office or at my home access to the same files. I tried simply carrying an external hard drive for a while but found that Windows 7 and Windows Vista could not be used with the same hard drive. I've talked to technicians, I've talked to people at big box stores, and other good bit of online research only to come up somewhat empty-handed, at least for a reasonable price.

My first solution was to try the NASDuo. The salesman at Fry's talked me into this device which was supposed to be all-in-one remote access to my laptops and iPhone. I literally spent two weeks on the phone with the Philippines trying to set up both my local and remote access. I was upgraded to level II support, unfortunately this wasn't much help. After being told it would take 2 to 3 days to figure out what was going on I gave up and took the device back to Fry's.

I will now sing the praises of the Pogo plug. This nifty little device creates your own personal cloud-a way to access your information remotely from anywhere. Hallelujah! my two weeks of struggle were rewarded with 2 min. of setup. Yes, you read that correctly, minutes. I am shocked and amazed and filled with glee. Oh yes, and eternally grateful to the friend who suggested that I use this product in the first place.

The out of box experience was also quite extraordinary. It has a sleek and clean box with one tiny instruction manual approximately 4 x 4 inches. This manual directs you to a website where they walk you through the quick and easy setup complete with troubleshooting ideas and in no time you have access to your files. circumventing lengthy confusing printed materials and offering clean, interactive graphics was a great choice by the manufacturer.

It is difficult to believe that whoever created the NASDuo thought that anyone but a very technical person would be using their product. The interface and screens were clunky and ugly and asked for information that no average consumer would have any clue of how to find. Even their customer service guys had trouble locating information. In contrast, again, the Pogoplug is a very consumer friendly product with a clean and simple interface which obviously went through user testing prior to entering the marketplace.

Finally, the industrial design of the Pogoplug is strongly preferred, at least by me. It is consumer friendly white though admittedly the pink accents may not be as welcome for a manly man. But the NASDuo was an ugly black box designed for engineers.

At last, I can see my PowerPoint presentations from my iPhone I can share photos with family I can share documents with clients all from this personal cloud. Thank you, thank you, thank you to Pogoplug.

Why I Advocate for Healthcare User Experience

2010-08-05T12:43:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Cohen's article today on Why I Write Empowered Patient (on CNN.com), inspired me to write a story of my own. I will preface this with the fact that I have never been diagnosed with anything fatal or even life-threatening, but as anyone knows, when your body feels somehow less than normal, it affects all aspects of your life.

My story begins at age 10, in gym class. I tripped. I fell. And for the next 10 years I was on and off crutches, saw doctors too numerous to count and was even hospitalized once. What was wrong? To this day, I have no diagnosis. The best information we received was that it was structural and a pair of orthotics and some time would allow me to grow out of it. Meanwhile, I was poked and prodded. I felt like a lab rat, but I and my family wanted answers.

My concerned parents worked to get an answer for why their child, at age 10, could usually not run and sometimes not even walk around with other kids. I went through Disneyland in a wheelchair because it was too painful to walk more than a few blocks. I rode a Honda Spree between classes in college because I couldn't walk the short mileage between classes. (thankfully, it was super cool and turned many heads!) In college I was wrongly diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis. I thought for sure that was a death sentence at the time. I was devastated.

In the years since, I have had many an undiagnosable illness/conditions, and some easily diagnosable. I have broken 2 bones and endured sinus headaches, migraines, anxiety issues, asthma a host of annoying, but never life-threatening illnesses. I've consulted western, eastern and all manner of doctors and health care practitioners, some with great success and others not so much.

Thankfully, now in my 40's I can hike, and do (despite actually breaking that ankle I twisted 30+ years ago) and have a reasonable handle on my health care (including a rebate from a botched bill over 12 months ago...)

I am as adamant as I can be about my health care but still wish:

1) I had insight to my medical records and history

2) I had a way to connect my various providers, both traditional and non, in-network and not

3) I did not have to fork out huge amounts of cash to handle my health care the way I want it handled with practitioners I know and trust - whether or not my insurance company deems them acceptable.

4) That people of any education level would be able to understand and manage their health care. The fact that we now need advocates for our care and to handle the massive billing snafus is simply ridiculous.

Of course, having said all this on the most public of forums...I am probably un-insurable with a long list of pre-existing conditions. But we all need to continue to stand up and ask for what we need. All of these experiences (and more) have led to the reason why third brain studio does a large amount of work making the patient and provider user experience the best it can be.

The patient experience is clouded by pain, discomfort, misunderstandings and a general lack of experience. The provider experience is clouded by a medical system that requires them to spend limited amounts of time with a patient, process endless amounts of paperwork and keep up with ever changing science and technology.

As we do our work, we hope to bring the patient and provider together, as a team, advocating for patients receiving better and more understandable health care and providers to be able to do their best work possible with the most support. Hopefully, this work is another bit or byte in the building of an empowered patient.

Fresh Coffee

2010-07-31T14:00:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the slightly crappy image. Thanks iPhone! This coffee pot was spotted at a client's brand new building this week. Their last building had a lovely machine that made your coffee to spec while you waited. Now, it's up to the staff to make their own pot, and apparently freshness is an issue. Bring on the trusty Post-It note! That note stuck to the coffee server tells everyone what time that pot was filled/brewed. Who is going to design the coffee pot complete with digital readout so we (horror of horrors) won't be drinking stale coffee?

Going Up, or Down or ??

2010-07-31T13:48:00.000-07:00

Apparently, spring has been busy! Sorry for the lack of posts, but I've got a bunch of fun things to add here.

This elevator panel was spotted on a ferry near Seattle. On my way up to the passenger deck, I spotted this amazingly annotated panel. Was it really that difficult to get from 1 to 2? How many passengers had difficulty with this concept? From home made labels to sharpies, apparently there was a good deal of confusion of just how to get from level 1 to level 2. Going up?

Motivating Wellbeing

2010-05-18T22:21:00.000-07:00

Please visit Catalyst magazine's website for an article by yours truly - written with colleague Gretchen Anderson of Lunar design.

Gender Disparity in Drug Trials

2010-04-15T13:07:00.000-07:00

For my previous post on One Size Fits None, I did some digging (with the help of the Medical Anthroplogy community and a librarian at OHSU). I found a number of really interesting sources discussing the gender disparity in drug trials, and thought I'd list them here.

Since I do not have deep research in this area, I will decline in-depth comment. The upshot is, that although the NIH guidelines require "inclusion of women and minorities" - it is clear we have a long way to go.

Organizations

The Organization for the Study of Sex Differences.

Books

Inclusion, The Politics of Medical Research. by Steven Epstein.

Women and health research : ethical and legal issues of including women in clinical studies / Anna C. Mastroianni, Ruth Faden, and Daniel Federman, editors ; Committee on the Ethical and Legal Issues Relating to the Inclusion of Women in Clinical Studies, Division of Health Sciences Policy, Institute of Medicine.

Imprint Washington, D.C. : National Academy Press, c1994.

Women's Health - Missing from U.S. Medicine by Sue Rosser. (this can be read online)

Journal Articles

Brettelll, C. and Sargeant, C. (1996) 'Gender and Health an International Perspective'.

Corrigan, O.P. (2002). ‘First in man’: The politics and ethics of women in clinical drug trials. Feminist Review, 72, 40–72. Info here and here. (Pay to access)

"concern about danger to the unborn foetus has meant that, until very recently, ‘women of childbearing potential’ were routinely excluded from most of the early phases of clinical drug testing...exclusion of women during the early phases of clinical drug trials has now been lifted and drugs are currently being more widely tested on women. This paper examines the differing political and ethical positions..."

Online Sources

"Do Women Need Such Big Flu Shots" by Sabra Klein and Phyllis Greenberger - NY Times Opinion Page

"In planning for the swine flu, however, public health authorities ignored the evidence that vaccines affect women more strongly than men"

There are laws (Public Law PL 103-43) mandating the inclusion of women and ethnic minorities in NIH research.

Hayden, E. (2010) 'Sex bias blights drug studies' . Nature. 464, 332-333.

"The typical patient with chronic pain is a 55-year-old woman — the typical chronic-pain study subject is an 8-week-old male mouse.

Exit Interview - Dating

2010-04-13T19:00:00.001-07:00

Photo by Mike DelGaudio - Flickr

For the most part, I try very hard to keep my personal and professional life separate. However, I had a recent experience that made me want to merge the two. A man I had been dating decided to end things. Happens all the time. (ok, not all the time to me per say, but it happens every day in the world...) But it left me wondering... I like information, I like data. It's fine to end things, but I really wanted more information. Why? What happened? How do you feel?

What if the dating industry took a page from the user experience book? What if, upon ending a marriage, relationship, or friendship, we were given a contextual interview to help us understand how to be a better spouse, partner or friend?

It might look like this:

Intro (tongue planted firmly in cheek):

Before we part ways, I wonder if I can have a few minutes of your time to ask a few questions. You will in no way be reimbursed for your time, but we've gotten this far, so what's a few more minutes?

Nothing you say to me will be confidential, so keep that in mind.

How long did we date?

What first attracted you to me?

Please share with me a really wonderful memory you have of us spending time together.

Please share with me a really unhappy memory you have of us spending time together.

What is one really annoying thing about me?

What is one really wonderful thing about me?

What worked in this relationship?

What didn't work in this relationship?

What is the one thing that made you decide to end this relationship?

Thinking back to the beginning of this relationship, what changed between then and now?

And, wait for it...the magic wand question...if you could change one thing about me, what would it be?

Thanks for participating. Now be on your way and have a nice life.

You might choose to add a diary study or participatory design phase, but I wouldn't push your luck :-).

One Size Fits None

2010-04-13T09:23:00.000-07:00

Photo by Zen on Flickr

In the last few days, I've had a few conversations that lead me to expand my dislike of "one size fits none" even further. I used to say "one size fits none" to refer to clothing in stores that says "one size fits all". Really? I don't think so. Unless it's a scarf, apparel needs to be sized for a 5 foot tall female or a 6 foot tall male and the many sizes in between.

This week, the conversation turned to health care. Did you know that prescription drugs are, by and large, tested on males (likely caucasian)? The NIH does require "inclusion" of women and minorities, but there doesn't seem to be an agreed upon minimum percent of participants...but I digress....(in fact, there's been such an influx of information on this topic, that I'll set up a separate blog post shortly)

Again, normal dosing is supposed to work just as well for 300 lb. males, 150 pound males and females and 100 lb. 4 foot 11 females. I'm not a trained scientist, but I'm pretty sure the math on that creates incredibly varied results. Interestingly, there is a new trend in personalized medicine also talked about in Business Week.

And then there are protocols and provider care. When an individual walks into a doctor's office with a pain in her knee - the doctor should listen. (a recent New York Times article talks about just that). Listen not just to what the pain is and where and when, but also listen to what she's done in the past that felt better, what felt worse. Who has treated it and why. Many doctors, upon hearing, knee pain, will immediately go to the Rolodex in their heads from med school, pull up the "knee pain protocol" and prescribe exercises, pills or surgery - depending on the relevant issues.

However, anecdotal information shows that very often, providers don't listen, really listen to what the patient says. A certain medication has already shown to be ineffective. Using ice made it worse. It always hurts after a particular exercise.

We are people, individuals with a complex set of feelings, pains, biology and psychology. Using the "one size fits all" protocol doesn't work for many patients. Using the apparel metaphor, a size 5 female foot will never fit correctly into a size 12 shoe, don't assume the person attached to that size 5 foot has the same issues as the size 12, either.

Women in Design - Go North

2010-04-01T16:59:00.000-07:00

Last night, Office PDX hosted a Women in Design talk at North - a creative brand agency. It is interesting to hear that there is still discrimination and a feeling that it is somehow different to be a woman than a man in the workplace. Of utmost interest to this 5 foot tall design researcher is the fact that each woman who spoke who was in a major position of power, was also 6 feet or taller!

Nevertheless, we had a lively talk and Q & A session. Below are a few pictures of the gorgeous interior of this space which is creatively inspirational in and of itself.

Zillions of post-it notes adorned the walls in the copy room for this beautiful, feathery effect.

North's cool digs and their floating conference room. I'd stay at work all day to be in this relaxing space!

Bittersweet

2010-02-24T12:36:00.000-08:00

Image courtesy of edenpictures

Today was my first day volunteering at a local children's hospital. I decided to volunteer because:

1) I can

2) I am self-employed and have a flexible schedule

3) It's a great way to really get inside and see how a hospital works (A better option than having kidney stones or breaking any limbs)

Personally and professionally, I like to be a voyeur. I love to hear what people think about things, see how they act in different situations and how they interact in others. This is a wonderful opportunity to do just that. The best part, though? The amazing smiles on the kids faces.

My volunteer work includes taking a clown around to the various rooms in the pediatric units and acting as a clown-wrangler - keeping kids safe from him if they are scared and keeping him moving along if they become over engaged. What I saw in my first outing was delightful. There is sickness, pain and frustration in every room, but with the clown comes a ray of hope.

Red noses will never look the same after you see them placed on a sad and sick child. The light on their faces comes from the nose and the clown and the momentary break in people poking and prodding them with needles and all other manner of things. How wonderful that pushing the red nose does not elicit pain but a slight honk, bringing a smile to every face nearby.

Already, I overheard interesting conversations - mostly families who know more about hospitals and how they work and how they compare than any civilian should. But for now, I'd like to rest on the sweet, relaxed and calmed faces of the kids who, for just a moment, get a break in the action thanks to a small, squishy, red foam ball.

Fantasy Becomes Reality

2010-02-19T11:13:00.000-08:00

The Costume Graveyard - so colorful!

The fabric shop - how it makes me pine for making "stuff!"

A character from the Lion King.

Metal tubing bent to create the legs of the bear seen at the Vancouver Olympics. Each one was bent by hand to look more "bear like".

A character from Finding Nemo.

Dad-fish from Finding Nemo.

Many years ago, I had the opportunity to see Lion King. Many of you may not be lovers of musicals, but I am. It's out. It's true. I spent 7 years running wardrobe and building costumes for theaters in the east and midwest. Five of those years were spent doing all musicals, all the time at the Marriott Theater in Lincolnshire, IL.

The opening scene of Lion King was breathtaking. It brought tears to my eyes. Music, costumes, lights, a "safari" of people and extraordinary puppets surrounds the audience. It was then I learned about Julie Taymor and Michael Curry and their amazing skills at bringing fantasy to life - using people and puppetry seamlessly to create fantastical creatures.

So, I moved to Oregon and found out Michael Curry's workshop is just north of Portland in Scappoose! I recently set up a tour for the Portland Chapter of the Industrial Design Society of America and 20 of us had the great fortune to tour this creative mecca.

What was most wonderful to see, was how little machinery was involved and how much of the work is still done by hand, true artistry. Though they use CAD and other machines to assist, it was obvious that hand work takes precedence.

One of our tour guides was apparently in the left leg of the polar bear last Friday night at the Vancouver Olympic opening ceremonies! We visited the fabric shop, a sculpture shop, a metal shop, the warehouse of old costumes (not a place to go in the dark of night) and even saw the performance area they use for actors and designers to test out the puppets/costumes for movement and to learn to utilize them to the fullest.

Curry has an exceptional ability to visualize large scale designs and a staff whose talents are wide ranging - each having multiple disciplines to pull from. As for me, I just want to get lost in all of the fabric and findings and create something mystical and wonderful. Guess I'll just have to wait for his next show!

Sleep Tracking

2010-02-03T09:31:00.000-08:00

At CES in January, I was lucky enough to be given a Zeo sleep machine by an employee after a long conversation about their product. Was it too good to be true? How does it work, and most importantly, do they need user experience researchers??

It seems they have actually done a good bit of research and the ease of use is high. I intended to do an "out of box" post...but haven't yet. Instead, I'm excited today to share some comparative data having just found out about the iPhone Sleep Cycle app.

Cost: The Zeo retails for $249 and the iPhone app for 0.99 cents. Wow. So what's the difference?

Goal: In a nutshell, the iPhone App captures data and shares it, but doesn't look for the comprehensive picture of your life to help you significantly change your quality of sleep. The Zeo is really more of a medical tool, a way to help understand your patterns, lifestyle and why you are or are not getting enough of the right kind of sleep. For fun, get the App. For issues, get the Zeo.

How it works: Both devices do offer an alarm that will wake you when you are in light sleep and not in deep sleep around the time you request an alarm. You wake up rested rather than jarred out of a deep sleep. The App works simply by placing the phone on your bed. The accelerometer does the rest. The Zeo works by reading data send from a quite comfortable (but unattractive) headband you wear during sleep to the machine at your bedside.

The process: I must admit, however, that I'm not a person who enjoys lots of surveys, questions and daily tracking (despite the fact that I love to design them for others!). Zeo is intensive. You need to give it a lot of information if you are truly wanting to learn and change your sleep. I'm more of the mildly curious type, just wondering how well, and how many hours I slept and how it compares overall. I notice that caffeine days and the one night I had a beer near bedtime result in reduced sleep quality. Good to know...

But, I want to share the information quality because it is an interesting comparison.

Shot #1 - The sleep machine the morning of Feb. 3. The white lines on the graph were added in Photoshop so you can see the info. The graph shows, top to bottom, Wake, REM, Light and Deep sleep. For a person in my age range, a good "sleep number" average is 74. That estimates 6.8 hours of sleep, 1.4 hours of REM, 56 minutes of Deep and 28 minutes of waking during the night.

Myzeo.com: The above images are information you see at www.myzeo.com after plugging in the SD card that lives in the device and logging in to your account. You can see detailed information about your sleep. You also have the opportunity to fill in a journal about your activity levels, alcohol and caffeine intake and other habits that may affect your sleep.

Feb. 3 I had 6.58 hours of sleep, 2:09 of REM, 1:07 of deep and 30 minutes awake.

Looks like I had a good night's sleep! However, I am admittedly sluggish this morning...

Sleep Cycle app: Finally, this is the data you see from the iPhone app. As you can see, for .99 it's not a lot, but for many, it's just enough! However, this does not really seem to map to the Zeo data from the same night, Feb. 3. According to this screen, I had various levels of deep sleep and no dreaming sleep. The general rise and fall seems to map, but the details leave much to be desired. However, as an alarm to wake you during light sleep, it seems to be successful.

This is just the first night of data, but so far, the Zeo wins for accuracy and real behavior change, the iPhone wins for a cost, a nice alarm and a general sense of things.

Portland Events

2010-02-01T13:41:00.000-08:00

I've decided to post a comprehensive list of my favorite Portland events for learning about things of interest as well as networking. My areas of interest include health, technology and design. Now, get out there and have some fun! Let me know if you have an event to add.

IxDA

Interaction Design Association

Last Tuesday of every month, Design Jam Sessions

Upcoming.com

IDSA

Industrial Designers Society of America

Last Wednesday of every month - 3by10, 3 speakers, 10 minutes each, then beer

CHIFOO

Computer Human Interaction Forum of Oregon

First Wednedsay every month - speakers

TiE

A global not-for-profit network of entrepreneurs and professionals dedicated to the advancement of entrepreneurship.

Various events, subscribe to their email list.

UX Book Group

Last Tuesday, every other month

Upcoming.com

PDX Research Gathering

For researchers of all types!

First Tuesday every month at the Maiden for networking

CES Photos

2010-01-13T22:28:00.000-08:00

A few photos from CES

The Que - A standout in the myriad of E-books. A very cool reader for digital files and news - crossover allowing you to read for both business and pleasure. It is made out of a shatterproof plastic. You can even write on it with your finger! However, it seems like an odd size, 8.5 x 11" - you almost need two hands to hold it. Had a great showing at CES.

Just the design of the entry to the Samsung was enough to distract this visitor for a good 10 minutes, staring in awe at the screens and the actual beauty technology sometimes brings to the world.

When I walked up to this car and said "why?" they said, that's why! It's a car that converts to a full-on gaming system. The four screens pop out and each player has their own sound system. I guess that's why. Thankfully, it's only one of a kind.

This is the Intel Health Guide 6000, a project I worked on during my tenure at Intel. It was exciting to finally see it on the market! It's meant to help people with chronic diseases track their health and allow clinicians to monitor care remotely.

Intel was also promoting its 2010 core processors and showing how much data they can process by bringing up real time information from a multitude of social media sites. It was also visually stunning.

On the other end of the spectrum were these retro-machines. They are capable of taking vinyl records and turning them into MP3's. Who knew?

Finally, at the Monster Awards and John Legend concert Friday night, the one and only Stevie Wonder showed up and played a tune for the crowd. Truly a highlight of the week.

Drinks with The Don (Norman that is)

2010-01-11T16:26:00.001-08:00

Friday evening at the Computer Electronics Show was an industrial design gathering in yet another loud, crowded bar in Vegas. With my colleague Kevin Shankweiler at my side, we staunchly entered the networking event. While standing in line for drinks, we had a celebrity sighting. I pointed out Donald (Don?) Norman among the crowd. (Kevin checked for a photo on the iPhone, it was indeed him). We saw an opening and went to talk with him, assuming we'd have mere seconds.

He spent 5-10 minutes talking with us, though I will put a disclaimer up front that it was incredibly hard to hear in the bar and I may have mis-heard everything. Not being one for a detailed memory, three things stick with me about this conversation.

1) Donald Norman is convinced that the computer mouse is great the way it is

2) He doesn't believe in the future of neural interfaces

3) Donald Norman is not a believer in dreaming and using far fetched ideas as a means to innovative design

#2 was a result of #1. Somehow we got on the topic of using a mouse and DN pointed out that it is perfectly accurate for pointing, does it's job well and needs no improvement. My stance was that I have terrible repetitive stress pain and it seems we need to get well beyond the "sitting at the screen" phase eventually. Talented researchers and designers continue to look at creating a better mouse.

I then laughed off the mouse conversation realizing that before long, we'll have neural interfaces or brain-computer interfaces, and it won't matter. He replied in a way as to infer that this would never happen and I was crazy. A very brief Google search shows almost 2 million hits for "neural interface computer." The world of prosthetics making the most impressive strides as we speak. Emotiv has devices open for development. And there is an entire conference devoted to the subject. (Ornery readers might point out that there is a conference or two devoted to Santa Claus too, but I digress).

#3 - Don't be a dreamer. Our conversation wandered to ideation and "Minority Report" type technologies which he correctly noted have been around for awhile, just not mainstream. I talked about pushing the envelope, thinking about the fantastic as a far off goal and then reigning it in for today's reality. Without such idealism, the Wright Brothers would never have gotten off the ground, Bell's telephones never would have happened and DaVinci would have been sitting around eating pasta instead of dreaming up fantastical machines that inform our progress to this day. These inventors believed there was a better way.

So, Mr. Norman, I thank you for your fine company and appreciate the chance to engage in lively conversation! But I do believe in dreaming, and literally building not just a better mousetrap, but a better mouse.

CES Day 1

2010-01-08T00:40:00.001-08:00

Before you arrive, everyone says, "CES is overwhelming, get ready." Well, I'm here to tell you, they are right. A friend who is with the press said there are about 110,00 people. That's bigger than many small towns. Bigger than many small towns put together. Wow.

Somehow, I managed to wander onto the right buses and into the right halls for speeches, badge pick up and exhibit shmoozing. Today's post will be an overview of interesting technologies and I hope to eventually go back and dig deeper into some of them.

Today's learnings:

Ford has come out with a technology called Sync. They worked with IDEO (so excited to hear design research cited in a keynote speech!) to design an in dash and on steering wheel system that connects to the internet. You can have your tweets read to you, make a call, get directions and play music at the touch of a digital interface. Pretty cool and they say it's smarter than the manual controls so you won't have your eyes off the road as long. I know how often I stare at my iPhone screen - I'm not convinced this won't cause more accidents instead of preventing them.

It's actually easier to take notes on the iPhone rather than pull out a laptop. I guess my texting has gotten more accurate.

I had a great meeting with a start up called RememberItNow! They are in Beta with a site that assists with medication compliance, one of my favorite topics and one where I have deep knowledge. We had a really rich conversation. Interested? You can try it now for free. The Jitterbug cell-phone, originally developed with a focus on the senior market is also adding a medication reminder call and a 24 hour nurse on call to their available services.

I was given a Zeo to test out which should be great. It's a device that you wear on your forehead and it connects to a bedside device and tracks your sleep. If you aren't sleeping well, it may be able to help you figure out why. One compelling feature allows you to set the alarm for a wake up time with a one hour window (within one hour of 6.30) and it will wait to wake you until you are in a light sleep, not a deep sleep so you don't end up suffering from that type of wake up for the rest of the day. It's now almost 1 a.m. and I'm too tired to set it up!

The folks at Wellcore are working on a fall-detection, motion capture device that hopes to surpass the Life Alert and other home safety systems. They claim an advanced accelerometer, reminders to put the device on (one of the biggest issues with similar systems) and a sleeker design. The technical pieces sound good, though my design degree doesn't allow me to say their design is at all more attractive than anything on the market. I talked to an employee about objects of desire and making the fall detection piece that seniors need to wear be more attractive - something I have a great interest in improving. He regaled me with a story about a collaboration with Cartier when he was working with a different company. They designed a beautiful device and only 10% of the customers (80% of whom were women) - purchased the beautifully designed reminder. So curious to know more about why that happened!

One final note: I noticed, with fascination and concern, that many larger exhibitors (Intel, Microsoft) were making use of what looked like live Facebook, Flickr and Twitter feeds. Whether or not they were live, it made me realize how very public and available our lives are. It's not just to our friends, but potentially anyone in the entire world. It's all out there. Seeing it on a 30 foot screen just makes it that much more frightening.

Other items of note: The Que - a reader for paperwork as well as digital media, very cool antique looking devices to transfer your LPs, CDs and cassettes to MP3s, a crazy ergonomic workstation and inductive, wireless charging by Fulton.

Patient Focused Care

2009-12-30T09:32:00.000-08:00

Health systems are spending more and more time reviewing the "user experience" and the full patient experience to place themselves above and beyond other competitors.

Kaiser Permanente was cited in an Opinion piece in the New York times by Allison Arieff. She discusses Kaiser's focus on the patient, and their research which illuminated issues of wayfinding, patient control and even the need to remove dying plants to make the entire atmosphere reflect the "Thrive" motto.

Paul Bennett of IDEO presented on their findings at TED discussing the simple insight that patients spend an extraordinary amount of time staring at the ceiling in the hospital and shared some ways which the hospital team attempted to waylay that boredom.

In addition, if you haven't seen it, Bridget Duffy, former Chief Experience Officer of the Cleveland Clinic gives a brilliant talk at GEL Health. She discusses how important the patient experience is in health care including a great conversation about their re-design of a patient gown.

That said, we would love to help your team with needs finding, qualitative hospital and patient research or product research to continue to be the best you can be.

Data Management

2009-12-27T20:21:00.000-08:00

The Department of Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology atOregon Health and Sciences University hosted a talk this month entitled "Advancing Clinical and Translational Research through Biomedical Informatics."

After hearing these speakers, issues of data management and the usability of data management software, arose as a central theme. Each of the research teams represented (three in all), talked about the difficulty of data retrieval.

Robert Schuff of OCTRI discussed issues when tracking potential study subjects. His teams need to sort information on demographics as well as disease and are working on building a system to do just that.

Katrina Goddoard of the NW Biobank has an extensive bank of biological matter from surgeries available to researchers for testing, but locating the samples in the piles of specimens has proven daunting.

Dr. Shannon McWeeney also of OCTRI discussed the importance of translating the results of scientific discoveries into actual changes in patient practice.

Overall, it was apparent that medical research is moving at a rapid pace. Technology can help to track and sort data, but the systems we build to track and sort that data are critical to the analysis, understanding and eventual translation into practice. As researchers and designers, we need to get in at the forefront, initiating excellent data management and user friendly systems so that the research is always accessible.

Participatory Design

2009-11-13T11:19:00.001-08:00

My area of deepest interest in design research combines hands on techniques with the interview process. This was the topic of the guest lecture at the University of Oregon last week.

Participatory design elicits deep insights, beyond the question/answer scenario of an interview. During an interview, a participant largely engages the left side of the brain - the thinking, reasoning, verbal, logical portion. When external stimuli are added - clay, collage materials, items to sort or items you can use to "build," the right brain engages. The creative side that works from fantasy and art and intuition begins to emerge and maybe even take over. Things that may have been difficult to articulate come out in form and participants relax into a different space.

As an exercise to understand how it feels to be a research participant (people watching you, answering numerous personal questions, feeling self-conscious) as well as a way to really walk through this process, I posed this question: "How can mobile technology support your health care?" They could respond with a particular solution or how they would like to feel when supported. They were given a worksheet and a can of Play-Doh.

After about 20 minutes, each student or group presented their thoughts. Some common topics rose quickly to the surface. For this group, generally healthy without known chronic conditions, the concept of an app or device that encourages them to live a healthy lifestyle was popular. In the photo above are 3 designs by one student, all created to be very low profile and add ons to things you already carry or use. A mile meter for your bike built into your bike light, a smart card that fits into your wallet and a thumb drive that captures your heart rate on a bike commute. Whether or not these are feasible, the inspiration or paint point for this participant was not having to carry around another thing. He wanted to add features to an existing device.

A female student created a scale out of the Play-Doh (blue) and talked a lot about the need for balance in her life. She wanted a visual - maybe an iPhone app - that showed a scale to see how she was balancing her spiritual, physical and emotional health on any given day.

Another student was interested in just seeing his food intake for any given day, hoping that would motivate him to eat healthier. (red Play-Doh)

Given more time and a more intimate setting, the exercise could have been pushed to a more personal, emotional conversation. Participants might be asked to model something that represents how they feel about their health or something that represents their biggest health worry.

However, even on this higher level topic, the information may not have played itself out as explicitly in an interview as it did here with the help of a few lumps of Play-Doh. The female may have talked about feeling overwhelmed and needing less stress, but the visual of the scales, her driving need becomes obvious. Balance. The Play-doh not only helps to trigger the right brain, but also allows the participant some time for introspection, time to think about what is really important. The "make" part of the exercise took only 20 minutes, but there was no requirement to talk, just to think and create.

Participatory Design or Engaged Design is a process I strongly believe in. It was great to be able to share its benefits with the next generation of designers.

Remote Education - part II

2009-11-11T13:48:00.000-08:00

This morning, I had the opportunity to talk about design research, particularly Participatory Design, with a class at the University of Oregon. The class is being taught by Dawn Nafus.

What a great lesson in all that technology can do right to bring disparate groups together. It was also a great lesson in how difficult it is to really engage people who are not in the room with you. (classroom image posted here with TV screen and camera in the back corner)

The technology:

A desktop device on the lectern allowing you to share your projected laptop both in the room and at a remote site.
A document viewer which allowed me to share papers and pictures that were not part of the official presentation, but which were great examples of written diaries, collages, photo diaries and subject feedback.
Two wide screen TV sets which allow me to see the remote class room, and them to see both me and each other (one in the back and one in the front).
Two video cameras - again one faced front on the speaker and one facing towards the back to catch all the students.

A tech is assigned to each class and does the behind the scenes work: turning mics on and off, zooming in, etc. Technically, it was great. Everything I needed to do was fully supported. The students mentioned that the class is taught live on each site once a week. Monday, Dawn is in Portland and Weds. in Eugene. This model is preferred over always dialing in to a remote professor. The students said this way they are more engaged.

Our local room had a lively conversation and we got some great design ideas from the group in Eugene. The reality is, however, that no matter what the technology, there is no substitute for being in the same room with another person.

Remote Education

2009-11-06T15:09:00.000-08:00

This week has been full of interesting food for thought around remote collaboration. Wednesday evening started with Sara Bly's talk at CHIFOO about her early work at Xerox Parc and their Media Space. This space attempted to bring two remote worksites together by allowing desktop video and open space video where co-workers could have non-scheduled interactions. Fascinating stuff, especially for 1985! ( a few references here and here)

Since then, I have been planning a guest lecture for a design research class at the University of Oregon. So far, I'm impressed with their forethought in this distributed teaching model. A few students attend class here in Portland and the majority sit in Eugene. There will be a tech on hand here in Portland, and I can share Powerpoint, paper samples and video through their network.

However, being a hands-on researcher, I wanted to engage the students in a hands-on activity so they might experience participatory design first hand. Now, the issue is getting clay and other "make" tools down to Eugene where 3/4 of the class will sit for the lecture.

Computers have made data transfer so simple and easy, that we forget, well I do anyway, how much more work it is to get 3-d elements from one place to another. When will that transporter be ready??

Columbia's Gotta Brand New Bag

2009-10-26T17:36:00.000-07:00

Today, guest speaker Chris Araujo came to speak at my Advanced Studio focused on soft-goods design at the Portland Art Institute. Chris is a Senior Designer of Bags and Accessories at Columbia here in Portland.

Chris shared the very cool bag you see above. The target market is adventure cyclists. Apparently they go on marathon treks (up to 36 hours). The bag has been seen at trade shows and set for market in 2010.

This pack is unique since it is incredibly lightweight, uses triple rip stop nylon and relies on the tension of an infinity-like loop to help the pack keep its shape. It is strong enough to hold fast, but soft enough to absorb the shocks it will likely meet on the trail.

The entire bag is thoughtfully designed with the athlete in mind, allowing easy access during the race to key equipment including their bike repair kit. A "cargo hold" type of net sits inside the flap to keep the items from falling out when the pack is unzipped, but it allow you to reach in and grab items or simply get a quick visual inventory.

The pack has room for a hydration bag and tons of nooks and crannies for assorted items. Personally, I can't wait for the laptop version of this bag. My laptop bag seems to weigh as much as my laptop itself!

Curry-ing Favor of Local Artists

2009-10-19T22:35:00.000-07:00

Michael Curry - noted for his work on costumes for the Lion King, several Olympic ceremonies, theaters and operas - was invited to speak tonight by the staff at the Portland Art Institute in a talk open to the public. Curry is an engaging and inspiring speaker for both students and professionals.

Curry started out with a 5 minute video of his work which definitely sucks you in. He shared larger than life "puppets", sculptures, and art that moves physically as well as art that moves you emotionally. He then proceeded to talk for about an hour without the aid of slides or other hocus pocus. He just talked - about art, creativity, craft, and a bit about business.

"Theater," Curry stated, "won't die, due to our desire to be with other people." Despite the popularity of computer graphics, his 3D business continues to thrive and his belief is that it is a backlash against CG. People still want to touch and feel and look at "real" things.

Curry talked about expertise, inspiration, business and innovation. Below are a few salient points from this talk.

On becoming an expert:

Curry quoted world renowned cellist YoYo Ma on expertise. Ma stated that 10,000 hours of practice outside of an academic setting pushes you from practitioner to expert. That breaks down to about 5 years at 40 hours a week. Sounds about right. Where I disagreed was when he talked about not needing talent or special skills, but that practice will always get you there. Being one who spent years drawing and making things and being artsy, I have still fallen back to the verbal world where I just have a keener knack and am more comfortable. Maybe I never got the 10,000 hours of drawing time in, but I became convinced at around 2,000 that though I can get a point across as needed, and sketch out concepts for clients, my sketch art alone would not keep me in kibble no matter how long I practiced. [Since writing this, I've started reading Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. He has a whole chapter on the 10,000 hour theory if you are interested in reading more on the phenomenon.]

On inspiration:

The new economy continues to inspire Curry's work in new ways. The need to continually reduce shipping costs has created a new challenge and the studio is doing a lot of work around inflatables and origami to meet these needs.

Curry reported a story about a choreographer for Momix who does his best thinking while riding his bike, listening to the music for the next show.

Curry himself uses 10.30 at night in his barn with a cup of tea to sit down with a new script and grab the "golden minute" that time you enter into something new and trust your intuition to see where it will take you.

On business and success:

Be the coach. Be sure your team feels like they get to the end together.

Say yes to the right projects.

Have a post-mortem, discuss why things worked and why they didn't.

On innovators:

Curry favors scientists. Tesla, Galileo, Nostradamus. These men inspire his work.

I encourage you to explore his site from the link above. His work is beautiful, fanciful, mystical and most of all it sure looks like they are all having fun. The audiences enjoy it too.

User Testing Software - no good news

2009-10-14T18:45:00.000-07:00

In preparing for a new round of user research testing, I decided to take another look at what the offerings are to capture the testing, since the technologies change so quickly. Unfortunately, the changes are not quick enough and the solutions are still woefully unsatisfying.

For round 1, we used Camtasia which was fairly easy and captured the information as expected. The downfalls are that it captures data on only one computer (no remote view) and exporting the video for use in Final Cut Pro was a bit of a nightmare - though we are smarter about how to do that now (several hair pulling days later.)

My testing goal is to do synchronous, moderated, in person testing. There will be a test computer and a remote computer where one or more people may view from another room. It would be great if the set up allows notes to coordinate with the video. We need to see the screen and the user and capture audio. This all needs to be done real time, not remotely.

Morae - The Hercules of the bunch. Allows viewing from a second computer, note taking real time in conjunction with tasks, video recording of the users face as well as recording the screen. The downsides are cost (particularly for small businesses) and the fact that their proprietary movie software makes it incredibly difficult to export and manipulate in Final Cut Pro.

Wondering about using User Vue and Morae Manager to accomplish what Morae Recorder and Observer accomplish. I may look into that further, but am guessing there is a good reason not to.

Silverback - Fun, easy software, but it lacks robustness. You can capture images from one computer screen and video of your user during testing. There is no way to view your testing from another room or take notes in line with your testing. It also only works on a Mac. However, for less than the cost of a Morae bundle, you can buy a Mac and a copy of Silverback.

My favorite, though convoluted solution of the moment is courtesy of Todd Zaki Warfel on the IxDA site. For all of the information, visit this thread. The basic solution consists of:

Two (2) Intel based Macs allowing testing on both Windows and Mac
OS X's built in screen sharing to view the test participant's machine and opening an iChat session to get the picture-in-picture and have audio
Recording with SnapZPro

Do you have a favorite User Testing set up? If so, please share! The jury is still out.

As this seems to be a constant topic of conversation in the interaction design community, I plan to continue sharing my findings for research round 2!

CHIfoo - Gretchen Anderson on Collaborative Spaces

2009-09-09T11:32:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, September 2, Gretchen Anderson from Lunar Design in San Francisco, CA came up to Portland to talk about collaborative spaces and how design teams work. She talked about the need to generate ideas and how important it is for "idea people" to have a space to post, comment on and contemplate their work.

She gave a few great examples of how a space or experience is defined how you arrive in it (citing Ziba's new HQ here in Portland as a great example). Other important reminders included getting out of your computer/2D space in your cube and adding some ritual to your worklife to help bound work time/brainstorm time and even break time.

To hear her full talk and see the notes I took (by clicking on a word, you can start the recording from any place in the talk.) Please see: The LiveScribe Website for this recording.

The Researcher's Nightmare

2009-08-31T23:09:00.000-07:00

When I was in theater, there was the concept and indeed a play, called the Actor's Nightmare. In short, it is a concept that an actor in a role gets ill or injured and you, the understudy, are completely unprepared, yet you are asked to go on stage in his/her place. For years, I have had that dream on and off in stressful times and at other random times. I would be working backstage for a show, and suddenly, it was my job to fill in for a missing actor. I didn't know my lines, I didn't fit in the costume and was generally unprepared.

Last night, I had my first reasearcher's nightmare! Getting ready for a big study over the next few weeks, lots of pieces to keep track of and homes to visit. Three types of scripts, a new assistant researcher and working with a new firm. All of those pieces added up to stress which resulted in the ultimate researchers nightmare! I got lost on the way to the home visit, wasn't prepared. I woke up very stressed and glad it was all just a dream!

On Hiring Theater People

2009-08-13T11:46:00.000-07:00

I was recently alerted to this great interview where Peter Menholz of Adaptive Path interviewed Jared Spool - user experience guru.

This excerpt thrilled me since I am a born and bred theater person turned business gal. Curtain up!

Hiring Theater People

PM: You mentioned that when you see a resume with a theater background, you find that encouraging. What is the perspective of theater people that you find illuminating in doing this kind of work?

JS: Theater people have an interesting viewpoint of the world and it changes our viewpoint towards them.

Theater, particularly live theater, as opposed to film for example, is a process where you iterate, you see what works, you try it in rehearsal, and then you make changes, and then you try it again. So theater people inherently understand vast iterations, and moving toward an objective. Theater is also very much about an experience, so quality theater people understand the experience design in that regard, and they understand elements of the user design, such as the illusion, and subtlety, and the back-channel communication sort of stuff. Theater people all know how to work on a deadline because the curtain goes up at eight, and so you either have everything in place when the curtain goes up or you just make stuff up, but the curtain is going to go up. Theater people also understand the difference between on stage and backstage, which in a consulting practice or a research business is actually very important.

See the full article at: http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/essays/archives/000516.php

Social Media and Health Insurance

2009-07-20T13:25:00.000-07:00

At the gym this morning, I was working to maintain my health. I began to contemplate insurance as I hoped that my insurance application would go through - Cobra runs out July 31. I'm not a person who should be without health insurance!

Here is my concern. Even in writing the previous sentence, only half-jokingly, I wonder if/how health insurers can/will infiltrate social media. It's only a matter of time. High school seniors are well aware that colleges now may Google them only to find photos of their junior prom drunkenness or a crazy escapade one night. The information is out there and its free. Be careful what you share.

What, then, about health insurance? If you fill out an application stating you have no prior conditions, but the insurance company looks at your Twitter feed and sees that you had 2 migraines in the last month, what then? What if they look at your Facebook page and see you have a penchant for skydiving and bungee jumping? Will they still insure you? It's not on your application, but the information is out there.

If you have any stories about this, pro or con, I'd love to hear them!

Concept and Usability Testing

2009-06-20T17:13:00.000-07:00

This post comes from a conversation I had with a colleague today about outcomes of usability and concept testing. As consultants or employees, we are hired/asked to test a particular product or service and report on the outcomes.

Many times, we can certainly report on the outcomes, but the real issues lie well beyond usability testing. Case in point, medication compliance. For the last 4 years, I have been looking at medication compliance. Many companies want to create better packaging, reminders or systems that will remind patients to take their medication. So often, there are extenuating circumstances at play. No reminder, no matter how large, loud or persistent can make a patient take his/her medication.

What pharmaceutical companies don't usually want to hear is that there are larger issues at play. Side effects: What about all those medications that make you dizzy, nauseous, cause anal leakage, loss of libido and perhaps a rash. Great! At least your depression will go away and you won't care about these side effects!

Finances: It's no surprise, more and more people are without health insurance. Yes, you can juggle your finances to a point, but the cost of medication is often not seen as a critical expense (though it very well may be.) However, without food for sustenance and a roof over your head, the medication can be rendered useless anyway.

Medical literacy: A patient decides s/he can handle the side-effects and has money for the medication. The patient nods and smiles as the doctor and then the pharmacist explain the best way to take the medication. At home, later that day, those memories are gone and the patient is faced with a pill bottle or jar with limited instructions. The patient then begins taking the medication to the best of his/her memory, but forgets or doesn't understand the small print labels on the bottle. Patients often take their medications out of the pharmacy bottle so the directions are nowhere in sight. Meanwhile, the patient has decided on a routine that is not optimal for medication delivery.

These are just a few of the larger issues which significantly effect medication compliance. But medication compliance is just a sample problem to illustrate a point. We need to talk with our co-workers and clients, people who design and sell products and services and be sure we are all spending our time and money asking the right questions, not just the questions in the budget line. Usability testing can be "lipstick on a pig" providing changes to an already broken product or service, or it can provide significant insights to adaptation and acceptance of the right product or service.

Networking Tip #2

2009-06-11T23:22:00.000-07:00

This week I've spent umpteen (too many to count) hours volunteering, learning and shmoozing at the Usability Professionals Association conference. Conferences are always great places to hone your networking skills. On Wednesday, I accidentally discovered a new one.

I was looking for a woman who did a great presentation. While at one of the breaks, I thought I spotted her (dark square glasses, cute haircut) and called her name out and went up to her. Well, nope, it turns out that person was Carissa and I was looking for Christina. However, Carissa, as eager to meet a new friendly face as I was. She and her partner Manos stopped, and we talked for about 10 minutes. They own Circle D Design in Ann Arbor, she does usability work...etc. Voila! One more stranger is now a frient/colleague/someone I can smile and nod at during the conference and perhaps have a business relationship beyond that with them one day. It's almost too easy.

After this encounter I was joking with friends about how funny and easy it was. We compared it to a guy trying to pick up a gal in a bar, "Haven't I met you somewhere before?" Apparently, it works at conferences too. Try it!

Networking Tips - Listen First

2009-06-02T10:24:00.000-07:00

Although the focus of this blog is largely research based, as a small business owner, I reserve the right to share business tips as well! This post falls into both categories.

Several people have asked me in the last few weeks, "How do you network?" It's not an easy question to answer. It's someting learned over time and almost 20 years of on and off consulting *gulp*.

However, the one suggestion that gets the biggest AHA moment for my fellow researchers is this: Be the first one to ask questions. Put on your researcher hat and just listen. Do you hear the collective sigh of relief? Ah, I get to listen! I'm good at that, you say, that's what I'm paid to do! Ask the questions that you want answers to, whether personal or professional, but it's much easier for most researchers to be in drivers seat to start with.

Within a few minutes, you'll have a good sense of the person you are talking to. Then, either they will turn the conversation towards you, or you can gently interject a similarity, something you have in common, or some work you have done that they may find interesting. Voila. You have networked and also connected as two human beings. (More on this at another time.)

iPod to eyePod

2009-05-19T18:43:00.001-07:00

Last week, I was walking around with my iPod firmly placed in my ears. Downtown Portland is not exactly a screechy, noisy place, but I noticed how nice it was to have my music in my ears. And then, I noticed how odd it was to have music in my ears and not hear the diesel of the bus, the honking of the cars, the whir of the streetcar.

Like many, I find it comforting to tune out the world sometimes, or tune in to my tunes. However, I couldn't help but wonder, what would it be like to have an eyePod? With the iPod, we create our own environment for our ears, what if we were able to create a custom environment for our eyes? Some days, I'd like to feel like I'm walking on a beach, some days it would be fun to be in downtown Tokyo and sometimes an orchard would be a lovely place to be. Given the unlimited options of video, we could also have the moon, Mars, outerspace or any fantasy land as our virtual wallpaper. Lord of the Rings fan? The eyePod can make all of the buildings look like huts for short, furry creatures.

What would it look like? Would we wear super special spectacles? Put in specially coded contact lenses? Walk around with a special hat and a pull out screen?

Obviously, this would be difficult, we need to see the ground, the cars, the trees and the dogs we might walk or drive in to. But, since we are dreaming, let's dream that the existing structures are magically turned into the environment of our choice, while still getting the basic objects in space we need to walk around, to or over.

A few quick ideas above. Likely not Apple-worthy. Wow, I definitely miss concepting!

Oh, and apparently, not surprisingly, I'm not the first one to think about other versions of an "Eye-Pod".

Steampunk "Eye-pod"

EyePod cinema glasses

Remote control earphones?!

The One Button Lie

2009-05-06T13:26:00.000-07:00

As a gesture of kindness, apparently I've been very nice lately, my boyfriend gave me a new iPod shuffle last week. I was so excited! Being one to actively buck trends, when MP3s originally gained popularity, I turned away from Apple and towards the Creative Zen. It was reasonably priced and I couldn't imagine what could make such a large difference on essentially the same device.

Yes, Grasshopper, I learned my lesson. From day one, it was difficult to upload songs and the Yahoo! interface it required was really lousy. I'm no great audiophile, I have maybe 40-50 CD's among which (much to my boyfriend's dismay) are showtunes and Billy Joel. As I said, no great audiophile. But like anyone, I enjoy having my music with me.

Since acquiring that MP3, I have begun to work out at the gym more and I also bought a computer with Windows Vista last summer. It is now April. I've been trying for months to figure out how to get more music onto my MP3 with Vista and through many a google search have found that it's not an easy task. I've also become a big fan of Podcasts. The NPR science shows, This American Life and others that I assumed would make commuting and working out much more pleasurable. But the Creative Zen doesn't play well with the normal podcast files and I never did figure out how to get them on my player.

Enter the Shuffle. It's sweet. Tiny. My first fear is "oh my gosh, I'm going to lose this." I haven't yet. Without much difficulty, I sign up to receive many wonderful Podcasts and start loading Billy Joel and the soundtrack from Chess onto my Shuffle.

The trouble arises at playback. The instruction book that comes with the Shuffle is incredibly limited and I admit I'd rather talk to a human than read a manual. I fussed around with it a bit then hit the Apple store this weekend. I explained my desire to create playlists, as it promised, and was trying with all my might to understand the mental model behind the organization. The problem with one button/no interface devices, I find, is that the entire workings of the device need to be in a map in your head - or you need to print something out on paper. The paper option is annoying and the map in my head is not always reliable.

After talking to two equally surly 20 somethings I did get confirmation that yes, you can indeed create playlists, like file folders and group your music accordingly (workout, meditation, etc.). Wonderful! That's what I hoped for and I went away happy, not exchanging it for a Nano with an actual screen. I found I've become quite attached to it, even in my frustration. It is both a lovely gesture of kindness as well as something so compact and portable that I take it with me everywhere. The emotion evoked by the design is not lost on this designer.

And yet, the usability issues prevailed. I tried to switch between playlists with little success. Click, hold, release, click. One click forward, two clicks pause, three clicks does something, too, but I can't remember that much. I searched for a printed list, I watched the video and "followed along at home" as the nice young lady took me through the clicking process. Once or twice I was able to switch lists, but never reliably.

Today, success, me thinks. A very nice young man at the downtown Portland Apple store was patient and worked with me. He got it to work, handed it to me and, again, I failed. He watched, we talked, "what is your hand position?" "click here, not there" (millimeters apart). Finally, 15 minutes later, we discovered that I was so frustrated, I was actually just clicking too hard. The one button is actually 3 buttons, apparently all in a line. If you click too hard, you confuse it. It thinks you are pressing +/- and playback and it just goes back to playing music.

So, is the Shuffle successful with it's "one button"? It's a great idea in theory, there is a trade-off to having this wonderful, lightweight device full of music and no big buttons to push. The trade-off for me was two trips to the store to understand how to really use the device. The computer interface is leaps and bounds above Yahoo!, but I'm still not sold on the mono-button. Don't throw away those scroll wheels. They may come in handy when dementia sets in - which feels like it could be any day now.

Noticed: De-motivating workouts

2009-04-26T19:01:00.000-07:00

This April, my gym membership was up for renewal. It's a great gym, close to home and down to earth. I set up my renewal and with it got on something called ActivTrax which helps create a customized workout for you each time you visit. Prior to being set up with this service, I was required to meet with a trainer who would have me do some basic exercises to see where I am at and suggest further exercises accordingly. I've been working out steadily for at least 4 months now and feel pretty good about where I am physically. I'm even 10 lbs. lighter.

The trainer took me through the exercises and then fed the results into the computer. Several days later, I went to the gym for my first workout. After this workout, I entered my weights for the day, commenting whether they were "too light," "too heavy" or "just right". For the record, I am a bit over 5' tall and average weight. As I input "just right" to the suggested weight workout for the first exercise, a note popped up that said, "this is particularly light, are you sure it's right?" Am I sure? YES, I'm sure. I'm female, I'm not an athlete, and yes, right now, I cannot lift 100 lbs. even assisted by a machine. This happened with each exercise in succession and has left me with a large bruise on my ego.

And yet...it's bad enough the machines at the gym are barely alterable to my size. Now, I have the added insult of a machine telling me I'm not strong enought. On one hand, there is the negative motivation: "Well," I think, "yes, I can only lift 1 plate now, but wait a few weeks, I'll be lifting plenty by then!" On the other hand I think, "I'm a petite female and this ridiculous machine (apparently programmed by men, strong men) gives me no credit for what I can do in relation to my age and size. Why should I even bother" It's a bit maddening if not humiliating.

I continue to use the machine, which gives me weights that are at times too light and not enough reps on exercises. So, hah, I think, I am stronger than you think I am after all. I'll show you. I'm pretty sure the computer cares not at all, but it's quite interesting how motivating it is to want to get back at that inanimate object for thinking you are a weakling. Talk to me a in a month or two when I'm flexing my muscles for the keyboard.

Logo Hell

2009-04-16T16:05:00.000-07:00

The long and short of it, don't use online logo companies to save money. In fact, don't use them at all.

As a small business start up, I was working to keep expenses down and thought an online service would be a suitable replacement. Despite what Wired said about thelogocompany.net, they are not a suitable replacement for a real, live, talented individual or group of designers. I apologize to all of my graphic design friends for attempting to commoditize their skill!

I do know enough to not design a logo myself. I have now learned enough to say only trust a trained professional to create your logo. Don't try this at home! After showing a logo I can honestly say I was excited about to my design friends, they were quiet or nodded. One friend piped up and said she would rather design me a logo for free than let "bad design" be out in the world. Ouch!

The sad thing is, turns out she is right. When I contacted the Logo Company and told them of my dissatisfaction (admittedly, after I had signed off on the logo), they asked what I wanted changed. My answer? YOU are the experts. You need to fix it. There were apparently kerning and quality problems I wouldn't know to look at. After a final round of emails, I got a few tweaks to my design from them but nothing lovely resembling the work from Geez Louise.

It doesn't look like I will get my money back, but I can keep you from losing yours with a seriously sub-par online provider.

Hopefully, you can tell, but on the top is the Logo Company's design and on the bottom Geez Louise. Your vote?

Seen: Yes We Can

2009-04-16T10:33:00.000-07:00

Yes we cans! These very cool sculptures, largely of cans and a few boxed, dried foods, were spotted in a local mall. It is a great way of making the food pantry and a food drive visible. So many people stopped and enjoyed them!

Wall-e and Eve

Garage Extraordinaire

2009-04-12T22:51:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite examples of user friendly parking is right here in Portland. The garage at the airport has excellent signage. They tell you: how many spaces are left in the garage, which direction to drive to find those spaces and then there are small lights over every parking space that are red or green (see above), alerting you from afar to an empty space. Finally, some intelligence comes to parking.

However, I do recommend staying away from the parking lot in the Lloyd Center in Portland, the complete antithesis of anything user friendly or easy to figure out. It's a parking nightmare with vague and missing signage. You can check in, but you may never leave.

The New Creative Economy

2009-04-01T22:26:00.000-07:00

I attended a lecture tonight about the new, creative economy here in Portland. How to get creatives working again and what companies who are still in business are doing to stay in business. Three things stood out:

1) My favorite piece of advice was to become indispensable. This can work if you are self-employed, a full-time or a part-time employee. Be the person they want/need and turn to for your expertise.

2) The question was also asked of the panel: "Tell us a good story of a time when you were unemployed." I won't rehash them here, but they were funny and sad and yet, enough pounding the pavement got each of them a job and got them where they are today, at companies like Nau, Weiden and Kennedy, 52 Limited and VizWerks. Are you employed now? Were you unemployed previously? Would love to hear more tales of joy or woe on the topic.

3) There were a number of individuals in attendance who are on the political side of the creative economy agenda. One of my biggest concerns of late are the amount of design and creative schools popping up in Portland (which is great), and the lack of places to work post graduation.

Freelancing and consulting and running a small business works for some of us, but many still need/want full-time employment. There was much talk of getting funding for arts education, but little talk about where exactly all those creative students would work if they wanted to stay in Portland after graduation. My talented circle of friends and colleagues - MANY of whom are un or underemployed, are a testament to this ever increasing problem. I'm in search of a committee to join to be part of the solution.

Some interesting numbers on the Portland Metro area arts and culture and employment: Creative Capacity.

Insurance

2009-03-03T14:40:00.000-08:00

An actual conversation with the insurance company:

J: "I see that you didn't cover a visit to a doctor that was covered by BCBS but a different plan from last year. Can you tell me why?"

BCBS: "Your provider is using an outdated code."

J: "Oh, well can you give me an updated code?"

J: "No."

J: "Well how do you know the code is outdated if you can't tell me the new one?"

BCBS: "Check with your provider."

J: "So you know that my codes are unacceptable, but you don't have a list someplace that gives you the acceptable codes?"

BCBS: "No."

I called another provider I saw for a similar issue, got alternate codes. Called back later that morning....

J: (I get the same rep) "So I have two alternate codes, can you tell me if they are acceptable?"

BCBS: "Yes."

J: give codes...

BCBS: "Yes, those are acceptable."

WHY oh why could he not give me that information in the first place??

I have spent hours on the phone this week following up with unpaid and misunderstood issues around insurance. I would LOVE to work on a project where we get to talk with consumers and understand what they want from their health insurance and not have it driven by corporate greed rather than real patient needs. It's really broken. We need to fix it.

2009-02-23T09:44:00.000-08:00

Let's connect! Follow me on twitter. Name: Dezinr.
www.twitter.com

I tweet on healthcare, usability, design and yes, I confess, sometimes the inanities of my daily life.

Interactive Meeting Design

2009-02-14T10:51:00.000-08:00

I'm attending a National Education Association conference with my partner and had the opportunity to see the keynote speaker on Friday. During the keynote, a woman stood off to the side with a large poster and a wonderful array of colored markers, and took "notes" based on an idea presented in "How to Make Meetings Work" by Michael Doyle and David Strauss.

A great tool for the designerly and non-designerly alike. She captured the children singing in the opening event, key phrases and gave life to the memory of the meeting.

Color Play at the Auto Show

2009-02-08T21:57:00.000-08:00

Walking through the auto show today, I noticed the only interactive piece of the entire experience (other than getting in and out of cars) were the areas where customers pick car colors. Car companies had an amazing array of ways to entice customers to engage in choosing their car color. Apologies for the mediocre photo quality of my cell phone camera.

Above is a traditional color sheet - seen in 2009.

Mazda's wall of color balls.

Mazda's color ball up close.

VW Color Memory Game

Memory game lit for a series (play it a bit like the old Simon game)

Mini Cooper color sliders

You are Being Followed

2009-02-01T19:59:00.001-08:00

Twitter. Tweet. You are following people and being followed. I've never been very comfortable with this terminology. What user testing decided that telling someone they are "being followed" is a desirable or comfortable way of being? Last time I checked, being followed had some pretty negative connotations.

Today I "tweeted" about biomimicry and material culture as I was preparing to teach a class. Within a minute, I was being "followed" by someone I've never met, simply, it seems, due to the use of the word "biomimicry".

Out of curiousity, I tweeted "socrates, somnabulate, zygomorphic, jeroboam". So far no follows. Damn, now those are some interesting topics!

Disaster Relief

2009-01-06T08:39:00.000-08:00

I ran across information today pointing me to the site Displaced Designer. AIGA is the main host of Displaced Designer, but what if all of the design communities came together for large or small relief when our colleagues need a hand?

The site is a great idea, but seemingly on the back burner. The posts are largely from the Katrina era 2005-06, with a new call for 2008 and anyone in Texas in need of assistance. Unfortunately, the pages to offer or request help are currently non-functional and contact information is invisible.

That said...one wonders if the current economy will bring about similar sites where we can offer housing to a designer who needs to work out of town temporarily just to be able to work at all, offer meals to one another and general support or advice.

AIGA did it, but can the design community as a whole pull together for a comprehensive support network? It would be wonderful to try.

Nike Considered

2008-12-11T19:34:00.000-08:00

On Monday, Dec. 8, Portland Spaces Magazine and Editor Randy Gragg hosted a lecture with guest Lorrie Vogel of Nike in their Bright Lights series. Vogel works on sustainability and an initiative called Considered.

Some of the good stuff: Nike shoe materials are re-used and made into sport courts. Their sites run on renewable energy and their Laakdal site actually puts energy back on the grid (windmills, I believe). They are strong drivers of sustainability and low impact manufacturing processes and products. It does give one pause, wondering what they may not be saying, but the work they are sharing is impressive.

Vogel talked about design for disassembly, a laudable goal, but also noted that huge systems need to be in order to make that type of cycle valuable. Creating a shoe that can be disassembled is great, creating a process to reuse the material would be awesome.

The conversation also hit hard on how important financial impact is to obtain buy in for sustainability ; something we know from being in business, but something they don't necessarily teach you in school. If you say, "we should use this new system so we produce less waste," a CEO may understand it, but not drive it to reality. If you say "this new system that reduces the amount of waste our company creates and will save us $1 million dollars," you get a conversation and a plan of action.

Most interesting was the software Nike developed to assist the Considered effort. When creating a Bill of Materials, designers see the direct impact and environmental effect of the materials they are choosing. Designers see which material or process is more or sustainable and can choose to use a low impact process or material to counterbalance a higher impact one. This transparency and visibility into the process sounds like the Holy Grail of design tools. Imagine how quickly we could lessen the impact of all products if every designer had insight into the impact of the materials and processes.

Tools similar to this are popping up in many places lately. The Kill A Watt device lets you see your home energy consumption real time, and menus now give full calorie information. It begs the question, what else would you do differently if you could see the impact and make an informed choice?

Vogel's talk and conversation with Bragg was enlightening and engaging. Thanks Portland Spaces!

In a hurry...

2008-12-04T17:20:00.000-08:00

At a nearby Taco Bell, a colleague and I experienced this bad design of locks and door handles. One bathroom said vacant but was clearly locked. Once inside the bathroom, it was easy to see why. The lock and the "Vacant" sign are not connected. An example of underdesigned utility devices.

HiTech Dressing Rooms

2008-11-30T22:14:00.000-08:00

Before I post this, I have to mention that it has taken me a ridiculous amount of time to figure out how to get months of photos off of my phone to my computer. Now that I have, I can catch up on posts.

This is a great idea, a button in a fitting room at The Gap in downtown Portland. No more standing half dressed wondering if they have a different size or color. No more getting completely undressed and dressed again to find the right color/size. The push of a button gets the help you need. Ahhhh...

More information and vision pieces on cool new dressing room technology:

USA Today

Self Service Dressing Room

You Tube Future Vision

Adapting

2008-11-30T21:00:00.000-08:00

As humans, we learn to adapt to our surroundings. This poster was created to adapt to it's surroundings. Was there really no other surface in the airport on which to stick this poster?

URF08

2008-11-11T16:08:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Steve Portigal for Aviva's Pic

On Friday, November 7, I travelled to San Francisco, CA to check out a 1/2 day conference put on by Nate Bolt and Bolt | Peters. This event, dubbed User Research Friday, brought together design research and user experience professionals for education and conversation. The big conferences can be great - CHI, IDSA, IXDA - but there was something great and very tangible about this short and fairly small gathering. 150 people gathered for 5 hours to learn and network - then it was gone. But it was good! The limited amount of speakers meant you only saw great speakers, not 5 so-so and 1 great one in a day. The topics were right on target for things that UX and design research professionals deal with every day.

A brief overview:

Steve Portigal of Portigal Design

Focused on the symbiotic relationship between research and design. We are indeed co-dependents. He shared a reminder that prototypes are just that, they are development tools and don't always have to be usable. He put into words something most of us do naturally, but reminded us that should not talk to people in our language, but in theirs - that is the language of the user, not the language of your client.

Indi Young now independent, but a founder of Adaptive Path

Indi's claim to fame is the development and refinement of mental models. Though her talk jumped in head first with nary an explanation of what exactly a mental model is and isn't, she brought up interesting ideas for segmentation and analysis. She suggests segmenting by behaviors, beliefs and actions rather than the traditional market research strategy of age and gender. A chat with Indi afterwards clarified mental models for me. If you want even more information and her new book, check this link: Mental Models

Aviva Rosenfeld of Ask.com

Nate Bolt, event host, asked Aviva to particularly address the ethnography debate between designers and anthropologists. She queried why it was difficult to see ourselves as ethnographers. After a life altering experience at EPIC a few years back, I've been afraid to use the word myself! The conclusion was that it's important to do good research. Whether or not it's "ethnography" is fairly irrelevant. My two cents: It is almost impossible to do "true ethnography" on the product development timeline.

Kris Mihalic of Yahoo! Mobile research

This was a very brief presentation - I can't say I have any relevant commentary.

Dan Saffer of Kicker Studio

A great way to end the afternoon! Dan took all of the practical advice of the day and spun it on it's head. He talked through every way possible of tweaking your research to make it show exactly what you want to show. Though we've all been tempted, I do hope it was all tongue in cheek!

Core 77 Post with video links to full presentations

The tragedies of war

2008-11-06T17:05:00.000-08:00

When you hear about them, older men, a few women, those who served their country in past battles, it all seems far away. Romantic to some, scary to others. The ravages of war touch some, but not many these days.

I had the occassion to go to the Veteran's Hospital in Portland this week and have to say I think I may have audibly gasped upon walking into the waiting room. This VA center has a very active waiting area. As soon as the doors opened I was faced with a sea of walkers, oxygen tanks and men who had clearly seen better days. What was difficult for me in the moment, was difficult for them for the rest of their lives.

Why don't they show these men when they show ads for "be all you can be." If all you want to be is aging with war wounds and potentially unknown substances poisoning you from years on foreign soil, then yes, by all means, "be all you can be."

After processing this sea of infirmity, I pressed on to talk to the good folks who are using research and technology to help their fellow citizens deal with their ailments, medications, and ongoing healthcare issues. There is great research going on in these institutions, and my hope is that these war veterans can gain some value from it.

I'm also going to advocate for putting VA hospitals next to recruitment centers, just to make it fair and be sure you know what you are getting into.

To friend or not to friend? That is the question.

2008-11-01T08:45:00.000-07:00

As social networking creeps up from the teens and twenty somethings to my generation of forty-somethings and above, more and more people join who I didn't expect to see in this space. Not surprisingly, many hi-tech colleagues are also in this space.

There is often a line each of us draws at work. I just work and go home, preferring to keep work and socializing separate; I work and sometimes hang out with colleagues; or my workplace is all of the socialization and hang out time I get because I work too much!

This morning, I went online and decided to see who of my tech-laggard friends had joined Facebook based on a search of my email account. Wow! 84 contacts now had a Facebook account.

As I scrolled, I had a decision to make. Many of these people are past colleagues and future clients. How much do we want to and should we know about each others daily lives? Is it good to "friend" your recruiter so she sees all of the posts that say "working"...or dangerous because she sees you put up a post at 1am that says "just got home from the bars?" (sadly, rarely the case for me) Should I be privy to photos of their kids in the pumpkin patch or their wild weekend in Bermuda?

The workplace has definitely gotten more casual in recent years. It's interesting and curious to see if social networking will cause a backlash and have people opting out for privacy or if we will all be virtually connected and know far too much about each other's lives. Seems as if we are leaning towards the latter.

I'm really curious to hear what others do or think. Please leave a comment about how YOU manage your online social networking for business and pleasure.

Sick Around the World

2008-10-14T14:35:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a chance to view Sick Around the World, a Frontline production (public broadcasting), at a local Unitarian Church. Prior to the movie, there was a short talk about what Oregon is doing to attempt to get health insurance for all of its residents. As a self-employed individual whose COBRA will run out next year who has pre-existing conditions, I have a keen interest in both local and national attempts to right an increasingly broken healthcare system in America.

The astonishing number to me was that 75% of the money spent on health care goes for chronic care. More and more I believe that not only should our health insurance be focused on wellness and prevention, but our health technology needs to help intervene before we are so ill that we have a condition for the rest of our lives. The work I was doing previously and the work Intel continues to do in telemedicine may also reduce this burden, allowing technology to more closely monitor chronic conditions and keep people healthier, longer.

Sick Around the World features a journalist, T.R. Reid who visits the UK, Taiwan, Japan, Germany and Switzerland to see what the U.S. can learn about health care.

This review will surely be an oversimplification of an oversimplification, but worth looking at nevertheless.

In the U.K., the government is too involved in health care. A general practitioner is the gatekeeper and you cannot see a specialist until you see the GP. Waiting time is long for surgery and specialists. When doing my own research on the ground there, I also heard that the doctors felt very stretched - seeing patients only for a few minutes to meet the NHS goals of patients per hour. Their pharmacists were starting to do interesting work, scheduling long visits with patients in order to help manage all of their medications. This is also starting to happen in the U.S. and is reimbursed by insurance.

In Japan, the country regulates what doctors can charge for various services. There is a fee book that all doctors use(MRIs are $98 and an overnight stay in the hospital is....$10!). The hospitals are going broke (though it's nice not to see patient's going broke as in the U.S.) There is no wait time to see a doctor and you can go as often as you would like.

In Germany, doctors are not allowed to make a profit. They have a "sickness fund". Some doctors feel undervalued and underpaid. However, malpractice insurance is very low and they don't have loans when leaving med school. Again, the government sets the prices.

Taiwan has mandatory insurance, there is no opt out position. There is also no gatekeeper and you can see any specialist you like. They have a wonderful smart card with all of your health information - imagine no more papers in triplicate every time you visit a new provider! Taiwan also has the lowest administration costs in the world. Again, they aren't bringing in enough money to cover services provided.

Finally, Switzerland, who switched in 1994 from a system similar to what we currently have to mandatory/national coverage. Employed persons are covered by their employer. The poor and individuals are covered by the government (so specifics on self-employment). Some still buy supplemental insurance, but everyone is covered in some form or fashion. The pharmaceutical industry was hit by having to decrease their costs, saying they wouldn't have money for research. Fortunately, Americans still pay painfully high prices for drugs and they are able to continue researching thanks to sick, bankrupt Americans who need medication.

So what's the answer? Likely some combination of the above. The real answer is that what we have is NOT working and something needs to be done. The economic downturn hits the sick even harder. People cannot afford their chemotherapy, insurance only covers the employed and the healthy. The system is very broken. Let's hope a new administration can fix it.

Video of Workshop Game

2008-09-08T16:49:00.000-07:00

As the title says...this is a video of the game we created in the workshop.

Making Things

2008-09-05T12:59:00.000-07:00

On Thursday, September 4, the Portland local CHIfoo (Computer Human Interaction Forum of Oregon) and IDSA (Indsutrial Designers Society of America) collaborated to bring Matt Cottam of Tellart to Portland for an evening lecture and a full day workshop.

Tellart was brought in to share the art of "sketching" for digital interfaces. As any designer knows, be it interface or furniture , it is important to start early and often with a physical prototype to get an idea to a space where you can discuss it, change it, and build on it and see if it "stands up" both literally and figuratively.

The projects they shared were great. They are the kinds of projects many of us dream about doing for either love or money, bridging the physical and digital worlds. The workshop was just like being back in graduate school and being given the chance to dream of anything, not worry about whether will it make the company the necessary million dollars, or if can you replicate it and make 10 million of them. It was an exercise in thought without boundaries.

They shared a wonderful array of digital sketch components, some of which I am familiar with or have used and others which are new. Arduino, Scratch, Phidgets, Basic Stamp and Easy I/O were suggested for quick mock ups along with interface software such as Flash. Other sites of interest included Making Things, Trossen Robotics, Buglabs, Ultimarc for pre-hacked keyboards and Sparkfun.

Our team used a grid of passive RFID tags placed behind a tablecloth and hung over a freestanding screen. Using an RFID reader, the game player was tasked with touching the "prey" so the Blob knew where to move. The Blob then ate the prey and was able to live to eat the next. The game was a combination of thoughts from game theory and a desire to have a game based on gesture and physicalization, moving away from the static computer screen. In just an afternoon we were able to brainstorm and build this game as a "sketch" to what could be.

The photo in the upper left shows another team's work where they pasted RFID tags to the inside of a Kleenex box and used it as a controller for a memory system. When you flipped to Tuesday, a short video diary came up with what you or a friend recorded on any given day. A Sprite bottle controlled the on/off and speed of the video.

Attendees had fun to be sure. The only disappointing part is that still can't go back to my project teams with an easy to use solution, or at least one that I've tried before, to make similar sketches. The hardware is easily attainable, the code we used was something special they use in-house and, sadly, I don't code Flash. It reminded me that it's still best to work with engineers, and software gurus but maybe I'll start spending my wee hours learning basic code to make digital sketches.

Crowdsourcing Sneaks

2008-08-26T19:34:00.001-07:00

From the "I heard it on NPR files..."

They were talking about a small firm here in my town of Portland that I had yet to hear about. (This town seems small, but I'm constantly amazed at all of the small and medium sized businesses ticking away out here.)

NPR was talking about RYZ shoes, a company with a new way of designing shoes. The time honored technique of crowdsourcing - that is asking the public to the work once given to highly trained professionals - is at the heart of this business.

Threadless is another example of crowdsourcing. However, if you go to their site, most of the T-shirts, again, given their look by the public, have been significantly reduced from $20-$15 all down to $12. Is this a successful example of crowdsourcing?

There is a time and a place for crowdsourcing. Netflix used a contest to have their site redesigned in a genius use of crowdsourcing. However, the RYZ shoe takes me back to the conversation of "what is design". You are putting an image, colors and images on the shoe. But the shoe itself was "designed" by, hopefully, a shoe designer. When I buy a shoe, maybe this is the sign of my age, I want it to look cool, but I also want it to be comfortable! RYZ sells essentially one shoe in many different colors and "designs". If the shoe fits, you can wear it.

So, is this the future of fashion? Is this the future of technology and new products? Mass personalization seems to ebb and flow, never completely getting off the ground, but showing small successes like the boutique companies above. It's likely to work well with sneakers and clothing and even to design the skins on your technology, but I don't think researchers and designers should be terrifically worried about being outsourced by the crowd.

All the Amercan Girls

2008-08-06T11:50:00.000-07:00

For this post, I believe the pictures are worth the 1000 words. I had the opportunity to go with my 5 year old cousin to the American Girl store on a trip to Chicago last weekend. The trip was for her, but also a social science moment too good to pass up.

What was inside was incredible. Three floors of dolls, accessories, a hair salon, a hospital and a "museum". It's honestly difficult to discern if this is a horrendous marketing scheme or just a good idea gone bad. Teaching young girls about history through dolls is theoretically a good idea. Paying for your doll to go to a hair salon, enjoy a fancy tea and being swept up in the "stuff" of it all is a different experience entirely. The good news, is that there is hope for the economy based on the masses of people there with disposable income spending money on something other than food, gas and housing.

I'll let the pictures speak:
One American Girl doll has an unassuming demeanor. This case full of genetic options (hair, skin and eye color to match that of your 7 year old) is downright creepy.

One might question the choice of this diorama, showing the option to buy accessories and night clothes. Should the American Girl really be sitting spread eagle on a bed with shiny pajamas on? I suppose the American Girl does need to represent all career options for your 7 year old's future.

Yes, they really have a hair salon. You can pay $10-$20 to get your doll's hair done. For an extra $5 you can get the pampering package - a facial scrub and decals on the nails to mimic a manicure. Really.

And finally, representing the incredible attention to detail paid in this space, the bathrooms sport these American Girl doll holders. While you relieve yourself, Kit, Josefina or Nellie can rest easy supported by this ingenious doll holder. Hopefully, nobody will try to use it for their 1 year old.

Aging Conferece Day 2

2008-07-28T17:19:00.000-07:00

Long overdue overview of Day 2 of the conference

The talks for day two began with Tracy Zitzelberger from OHSU giving an overview of her team’s work. She discussed the idea of continuous assessment and using and elder’s progress as a point of comparison, and not comparing her progress to that of anyone else. The distinction is important since the research focus is on predicting impairment and decline which can be noted by changes in behavior caught by sensors in the environment (i.e, doors, keyboards, etc.)

Work on cognitive impairment and medication tracking by Tamara Hayes and her team was discussed. A portion of this work was done in conjunction with the Digital Health team at Intel during my tenure there. Papers on the subject can be found here, here and here. (Sorry, I realize you need to purchase these. If you are interested in papers on medication reminding, drop me a line and I can share our publications directly.)

For those interested in these subjects, a plethora of information can be found at ORCATECH and the Layton Center on Aging.

Jonathan Cluts from Microsoft presented his team’s research on smart homes, looking 5-10 years into the future. He likened the work to concept cars. No, you can’t go out and purchase the technology today, but having a working demonstration helps both developers and potential end users engage with the technology, promoting conversations about the experience.

There is an assumption stated in their design that things you purchase in the future for your home will come equipped with RFID tags. These tags will help to track and organize the items in your home, including telling your child that Dumbo is missing from the bin in which he is normally kept. I don’t have children, but the anal retentiveness that ritual may create in children may not be worth the pay off, i.e, Dumbo must go into the red bin or the toy chest will see it as empty or not put away.

What caught my eye the most, having spent about 2.5 years looking at medication reminders, was their idea for medication tracking and reminding. The idea consisted of a ceiling mounted projector which projects onto a counter. The projector will prompt you to put a pill bottle under a camera at the right time to confirm which pills you are taking and then it prompts you to take out meds to confirm actual pills.

In the spirit of conversation, there seem to be a number of issues not considered in this scenario. The foremost issue in my mind is I don’t know anyone with 2 feet of unobstructed counter space in their kitchen on which to cleanly project something, especially elders living in small spaces. The device can assumedly project onto any flat surface, but again, a large unobstructed surface in a home is an anomaly rather than usual fare. It also assumes flat colored countertops. Simple black and white would be best for projection. The profusion of granite countertops (other than black) would likely render the projection useless with their bits of many colors not offering enough contrast for readability. The other conversation they need to revisit is that people, yes, even seniors, are very active. They are often not home at medication time. It would be important to add an override for medication taken outside the home.

What the device does offer that seems valuable based on my research, is that it allows a patient to keep their pills in the bottles from the pharmacy. This avoids the confusion of taking pills out of their pharmacy bottles and remembering how many and when to take them when filling a weekly reminder box. It also allows for easy medication change, again, it avoids undoing and re-doing the weekly or monthly meds box. Of course, the question there remains, who programs the device? Is there a remote programming option for a paid or unpaid caregiver? Do I need to go to the house to set up the system?

All in all, it’s a really nice next step into the complicated world of medication prompting, and quite different than many of the relatively “dumb” boxes being sold today. Definitely worth a continued pursuit.

Unfortunately, I’m not able to comment on the other speakers that afternoon since I was unable to attend the final afternoon sessions.

It’s a conference I would definitely attend again. The price was right and the information was valuable and varied. Thanks UW for continuing the conversation around the growing topic of elders and technology.

Comparison Shopping

2008-07-19T10:02:00.001-07:00

I still owe a day 2 download on the aging conference, but I've been distracted by consumerism lately. Gone, apparently, are the days when you walked into a store, there were 1 or 2 versions of a product and you decided then and there what to buy. I am now paralyzed by my fear of purchasing an inferior product.
First, it's time for a new computer. Honestly, I just want a red one. But, it also needs to run Photoshop, Illustrator, support multi-tasking, have bluetooth, ideally a webcam, be light enough for easy travel, and work fast enough to keep up with my oh so fast typing speeds (my current computer can't always do that...) And it needs to store a LOT of data and run large programs. So, off I go comparison shopping, Dell, Sony, Toshiba. Circuit City, Best Buy, Staples (never shop for a computer at Staples).
Back home to the Dell Outlet, Sony online, Toshiba. (Toshiba has a really great interface called the Laptop Finder to help you choose the best model for you, but each time I engage with it it selects something different. Hm.)
The purchase has been on my mind for months as my computer slows to a halt, but the options are brain numbing and my fear of making the wrong purchase has me making none at all. Then, it's time to get a TV converter box. The TV in my kitchen (keeps me company when preparing a meal or during a late night snack) does not have cable. My coupon arrived and a LIST of 49!! converter boxes that are eligible for use with the coupon. 49?! How complicated is this? Now the government in their infinite wisdom has created yet another mind boggling piece of technology that I must have in order to enjoy the company of David Letterman as I eat a late night bowl of cereal.
The issue is, what can we as information and product designers do to make things easier for consumers? How can we create simple, elegant devices? Or, how can we create simple, elegant decision trees for the overwhelmed consumer? Find out what they want/need in the device then show them the top three choices. Don't make them spend time searching forums, consumer reports, asking the neighbor and the barista what they did. Make the information gathering for the ever more complex devices as simple as possible, even if the device is not.
Once again, I thank Apple. There was 1 iPhone. Now there are 2. One is old, one is new. That's it. Let's make the best product and put it out there in an understandable way so consumers can simply purchase and use it, not get a stomach ulcer over a ridiculous box that will take my already lousy reception on a TV with a 10" screen and make it visible for years to come.

Supportive Technology and Design for Healthy Aging

2008-06-27T18:50:00.000-07:00

This week, the University of Washington's Institute on Aging hosted the third conference focused on technology for our aging population. The numbers you know: 10% of the world's population was over age 60 in 2002. By 2050, 21% will be over the age of 60. (I'll hopefully be there, too)
By 2025, 1.2 BILLION people will be over age 60. Sixty seems to be a very random magic number. I will pause here to say that from my life and my research, 80 is the new 60. Frailness and serious decline are more prevalent.

Nevertheless, we are a more crowded planet and people all over the world are living longer, hopefully healthier lives. Technology can help people stay in their own homes longer by offering physiological feedback, memory assistance, aids for socialization and sharing this data with family and health care professionals as needed.

One interesting theme was living spaces. There is a push to move towards new models. Lydia Lundberg of Elite Care here in Portland shared its unique set up. While residents have private rooms, they are in townhouses, not high rises or buildings with hundreds of people. They are in shared homes. They take meals together in small groups in a local kitchen. Small residences also avoid walks down long halls for already frail individuals. Residents are asked to wear an RFID tag that captures their location. There are no gates, but wanderers with Alzheimer's are usually stopped by a sprinkler system that turns on if they veer off campus. Family members can check in through a portal on their loved one(s) to see their level of activity, time spent in bed, weight, and other vital stats. It's a great view to the nursing home of the future.

Victor Regnier March discussed his research on housing for the elderly in Europe. After his presentation, we had a conversation about intergenerational housing, a concept that seems remarkably undeveloped in this country. Co-housing allows like minded people to live cooperatively and make group choices on their communal living spaces. When elderly residents live in these arrangements, the upside is that their neighbors are not all over 70. The downside is that because they are often retired or working fewer hours, they are expected to do the less desirable work. Resentment builds and the community is at odds. Generally, intergenerational housing seems like a fantastic idea, done well at the Natalie Salmon House in Chicago where students and seniors live side by side. Students get reduced rent and a grandparent figure, since many don't have grandparents or are living far away. Seniors get some liveliness and able bodied neighbors as well as meal and healthcare assistance. The idea of college, pre-school and mixed age housing should be a natural, but in the U.S. especially, we seem to feel the need to push all of the elderly into a corner and ask them to live together.

Two final talks focused on robots as assistive technology for the elderly. Maja Mataric and Jim Osborn discussed how robots and robotics can assist the elderly with everything from socialization to facial recognition. Maja talked at length about how robots were used to motivate individuals to participate in therapy and promote generative play. She also talked about the research pairing people with "like minded" robots, that is a more "extroverted" robot with a more extroverted person. This match made for a stronger attachment and led to a longer engagement in key activities. Though the robots are not due on the market any time soon, the research should be used as a resource for those making brain games and interactive web sites for seniors.
More on Day 2 tomorrow...

Buxton and Design

2008-06-12T13:27:00.000-07:00

Bill Buxton, one of the early user experience researchers, came to Portland last night as he was invited by our local CHIfoo.

There is definitely more than a blog post of information to report from this entertaining and enlightening lecture. (the man kept my attention for 2 solid hours, not an easy task)
The Big Idea of the lecture was twofold, in my opinion. He spent time talking about how designers are underrepresented in management and how poorly that effects a company. The larger message was that design doesn't happen in a void. Everything happening socially, economically, physically around that product, service or interface helps to create what the final piece will eventually become.
Some of my favorite quotes and ideas:

We need to continue to make the computer go towards the user, not force the user to the computer. In other words, make it intuitive, make it make sense, don't make me have to learn it.
"It is not failure, but expansive/expensive? education"
Users subjectively overrate what they see
Being able to "read" a sketch is as important as being able to make one
Figure out what makes you distinct, that's your value. (As a consultant, I think about this one a lot.)

He spent quite a bit of time on sketching and prototyping. The piece that is stuck in my mind refers to a comment about having 999,000 ideas, 998,999 of which don't make it to the product. I would challenge that phrasing. The 998,999 sketches not "used" all are somehow in that final product, and if not, the fact that they are not present was a choice. The choice not to choose, is still a choice. The ideas may not be visibly present, but conceptually, all roads, and all sketches, lead to the product solution.

What struck me most was his ability to seamlessly be an interface designer, design researcher, user experience lead, software architect, design manager -- and probably others. Though we do need to know what makes us distinct, how we add value to a team, that value changes for any given team and the overlap between product/interface and product/service design is becoming muddier and muddier. I believe this is a good thing. If we overcompartmentalize ourselves, we end up with an interface that doesn't fit the product or a service idea from marketing that can't be carried out by the interface designer. The ability to seamlessly flow and wear different hats depending on the group, the project or the topic can help build interesting, well rounded and effective teams.

Everyone Old is Young Again

2008-06-05T18:02:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of: SparkleGlowplug

Wednesday was my first day back at the gym after breaking my leg. I hobbled in and hoped for the best. After doing 20 steady minutes on the stationary bike as instructed by my physical therapist, I headed to the downstairs to do use the weight machines.

As I walked down, I realized there was a "Silver Sneakers" class, an exercise class focused on seniors. Here's where it got interesting. These seniors all seemed to have working limbs. My 41 year old self was only able to walk with the assistance of a cane.

I moved into the room with the weight machines and at a break in the class, the seniors did too. I was doing minimum weight on many machines, they were doing a few more. As I did my sit ups and listened to their conversation, I heard talk of friends and foes, email and technology (some love it, some hate it). The best bit I overheard was the woman who said,"I don't have a computer or a cell phone, I don't like technology, heck I don't even have a dishwasher!"

But the interesting thing was how vital, interesting and interested this group was, and how frail I felt in their presence. It's a great testament to the aging population that they are like a group of teenagers, having conversations about email and sharing ideas about technology, their friends and how much weight they can lift. May we all live to enjoy a healthy retirement.
By then we may all be marveling at/complaining about too much brainmail and what a pain it is when all of this communication traffic comes in through our implanted receivers that allow calls and letters to automatically pop up right in our eyes and ears.

Of course, in Japan, they have it all figured out and will be using new technology to help the elderly gain needed strength. Who needs the gym when you have a RoboSuits. 'Nuf said.

Twittering

2008-06-02T07:44:00.001-07:00

The word has been in the wind, now the newspapers are writing about it so it must be a trend. It's twittering. I will say, upfront, I have yet to try twittering. With curiosity, I read the news article and then went to the Twitter site, but I have to admit I'm still unclear on the draw. (They do, however, have an incredibly clever video introducing twitter with simple paper cut outs that make me feel much better about my drawing skills...)
They say it's a way to stay in touch with friends, longer than a text, shorter than a blog entry or an IM. Between Facebook, a Blog, potentially a website and texting, does anyone have time to twitter? What can they twitter about other than the fact that they are keeping up with their blog/text/IM/website? Do I really need to know that my friend went to Starbucks at 2 pm today or sat down and read a book at 7?
The change in what being "social is" is interesting. People say we are more disconnected, technology is a way to connect. In general, I agree. There are people I am in touch with from college and even highschool that I may never have reconnected with had we not had email, or even facebook. Twitter may be much the same, but frankly, I'm technologied out. Must we really share every detail of our lives with potentially 500 or 1000 contacts? (numbers mentioned in the newspaper article)
I will also admit that these sites raise the bar on cleverness. Anyone on Facebook knows that "drinking a cup of coffee" is not really the answer to "what are you doing?" Catchy phrases are definitely preferred "jonesing for a java in janestown" (ok, it's still not that catchy, that's why I have social networking anxiety) So now, if I want to tell my friends about the play I saw the book I read or the fact that I walked in the woods, I need to: get to the appropriate technology, be witty, post it, then go on with the next witty and wonderful thing on my calendar.
For now, my answer to "what are you doing?" is "contemplating a twitterless life." Sad, but true.

A new way to drive

2008-05-18T17:20:00.000-07:00

In my continued search to make the world accessible to myself, with a still healing broken ankle, I contacted a local mobility company to find out about making my car accessible. There seem to be no great temporary fixes, but Enterprise Rent a Car actually rents out cars with hand controls. (Mobility devices such as left hand controls with spinner knobs, left foot accelerators and pedal extenders are available at no additional charge. In fact, I got a great deal)
They leave the foot pedals on and leave the hand controls. My thoughts after a few days of using this. My key to some freedom!

Making all cars with hand controls would significantly cut down on the amount of distracted driving. You must have one hand on the wheel and one on the controls at almost all times. No cell phones, no makeup application, no eating or drinking. A pro and a con. Would it make for safer driving?
The brain is imminently adaptable. About 14 years ago, (about 12 years after I learned to drive) I fell in love with a manual car. I bought it and learned to drive it. Lo these many years later, I spent 2 days driving with no radio and no passenger, paying total attention to the motions forward > brake, down > gas. Not to mention trying to be sure my reflexes didn't move to the floor pedals altogether. It seems to have taken...mostly.
Human factors and user experience people abound in automotive design, trying to make intuitive controls on the dash and an easy to use "cockpit" but is anyone really deconstructing driving itself? Is sitting in a seat, sipping a cup of hot coffee, steering a wheel and pushing pedals still the best solution? What about moving your body to control the direction of the car, or again, hands, shoulders, arms, head -- can they engage? I'm no auto designer but it seems like this area is ripe for a full redesign. Maybe we can get Apple to take a stab at it! Some interesting ideas from the big guys, a Segway type car and of course, Fusion Man(though that landing might have a serious impact on the health of anyone's ankles!)

Video for the greater good

2008-05-06T15:42:00.000-07:00

Video is a medium used for fun, persuasion, entertainment and documentation. As designers and researchers, we often use video to tell our story. It's a persuasive marketing tool, within a group or to a client, to share edited video that allows the end user to really tell his/her story directly.
Today I ran across a group using video in another unique way.
The American Refugee Committee (ARC) International is arming women and girls (and men) with video cameras to directly address the issues of "gender based violence". With these cameras, the community is making their own videos based on their own experiences and knowledge. This is apparently having a profound effect on the communities understanding of and talking about the numerous events of rape, forced marriage and wife beating.
This Through Their Eyes program gives a voice to many who may have otherwise lived with these secrets their whole lives. It is now documented, on video and made real to the community empowering others to step forward and tell their story. Hopefully, reducing the amount of stories in the future.
Another great example of technology empowering people all over the world and a nod to the power of video, made by real people for real outcomes.

Human Kindness

2008-05-05T13:02:00.000-07:00

And yet, another post on the adventures of having a broken ankle. What I've noticed in being able to get out and about more, is the basic human desire to do good and be kind. Yes, I really believe that underneath all of our daily griping, screaming at the TV or radio when various members of the government speak, and even among soldiers killing in Iraq, Iran and points far and wide, when given the chance, people want to be nice to each other.

This has been very apparent as strangers go out of their way to hold heavy bathroom doors, otherwise barely maneuverable on crutches, offer a seat in an otherwise crowded lecture, special dispensation at the local public pool to a private lane...the list goes on and on. Along with the wonderful friends who have stepped up to help in amazing ways, I have truly learned that to depend on "the kindness of strangers" as Blanche DuBois suggested (via Tennessee Williams) so many years ago.

As you go about your day, assume that people really do want to help, that they do want to be nice to you, they really aren't out to make your day more miserable. Perhaps, if we each can assume that, we will create a conscious circle of kindness to one another, not just acting on instinct, but working at purposefully sharing this innate kindness.

IDSA Western-District Wrap Up

2008-04-27T20:35:00.000-07:00

This weekend marked the culmination of months of work for many of us working on the Western District IDSA conference. There was, as is often the case, a strong showing of students about to graduate and looking for work. From my experience of the job market, they may have a tough road. I met a particularly enthusiastic group of students who were attending all 4 conferences in search of work. One said he had 15 interviews at the NE conference, but was not so lucky here.

There were a wide range of speakers, many with traditional ID backgrounds: Max Burton touting the new Nike Sports Band - though I have to say I think the original Nike Plus with audio prompts exceeds the user friendliness of an interface you have to stop to look at while jogging. I do LOVE the simple interface they shared which downloads your run in a slow, sweeping curve instead of just a pop up of the data. It almost feels like you are doing your run again.

Howard Meehan and Carson Lev took the spots for old guard designers who had made and remade themselves into many fascinating iterations.

Wendy March of Intel did a wonderful job of turning design on its head, as always, posing new ways of looking at things and encouraging us to turn into, instead of away from "boring design" and pay attention to the little things, "like lunch" that will be with us for years to come.

My unexpected favorite was Winston Wang of TMobile's Creation Center. He talked about "orchestrating socialization using wireless technology." I love it. I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise by now, but I'm happy to see so many hi-tech companies saving creative space for researchers including design research and ethnography. He shared some of the fascinating work they are doing with gesture and call management.

Finally, Greg Raisman hit the proverbial ball out of the park with his great presentation sharing the issues behind bike parking and traffic calming. These seemingly static problems were made concise and interesting by Greg's enthusiastic presentation. PDOT is working hard to make sure bikes, cars, pedestrians, etc. can all safely share the road. The thoughtful attendees of this workshop came up with great solutions keeping material costs down, but cleverly working within the set parameters. I will take a moment to humbly comment that this design charette was put together by myself, Zara Logue and Steve Chaney. Portland's bike community also came out to share their input including bike aficionados Bill Stites, Jonathan Maus, Mark Lear and Sarah Figliozzi of PDOT and Teri Peterson and Ronnie of SCRAP.

Healthcare is Broken

2008-04-14T11:50:00.001-07:00

As behavioral researchers, we are trained to talk and listen. To ask questions and really understand the end users. My current situation, thankfully temporary, has once again magnified for me how broken our healthcare system is. I have talked with and listened to elders, people with a disability, and people who are chronically ill. We listen, we sympathize, we might even empathize, but at the end of the interview or project we walk away, thankful for our health, our mobility, our cognitive ability and use these abilities to work to help others. The key is, normally, we can walk away, go back to our lives.

At the moment, my life is healthcare. Healing a broken ankle. Tragic? No. Inconvenient? Hell yes. In the dark? Hell yes.

I think first about the work being done in Ireland with the Digital Health group. They have done some investigation about ride sharing. Getting seniors to the doctor, on an errand, food shopping. There is a small system there to help with this. There are also some systems here. None too great. As a middle-class, non-elderly American, the services are almost non-existent. There is one rideshare in my town for people not on public assistance. You need to call 4 days ahead of your appointment and then you find out only 1-2 days ahead of time if you can have a ride. I have friends who can help, but am working at not wearing out my welcome. It's my right ankle and I can't drive. Public transit is a bit of a walk from here on my crutches. I'm unstable and can't stand for long periods waiting for a bus. The options are somewhat dismal. I can pay for a cab, but it's expensive and I'm now self-employed, waiting for 30-90 day payables from February and March. I also live in a purportedly green city. We should have a daily ride share board. "hey, I'm going this way, anyone need a lift?" Or leap even further ahead and have a device where you can log where you want to go and have it alert you when someone in your neighborhood is headed that way.

If I had interviewed someone about this I'd think, wow, we need to do something about this transportation issue. Let's spend 6 months researching, getting info and a few years implementing. That's realistically how these things happen. It is amazing what is still broken. I believe being in the circumstance is why people like Lance Armstrong start their own foundations. Only when you have the experience or sit next to it, do you really realize the work that needs to be done and the money that needs to be put behind it.

The other astounding finding is the lack of information, good information, shared by the doctors. I have a broken ankle. I never had a broken ankle (though I have spent time on crutches from sprained ankles). They hand you crutches and a brace and send you on your way. No conversations on how to make yourself comfortable, how to sit/sleep/work. How to get food for yourself when you can stand only on 1 leg and both hands are grasping your crutches. How do you carry things? What's the best way to bathe or shower? What should I expect over the coming weeks?

The hospital handed me paperwork encouraging me to "ask questions" and ask "have you washed your hands?" Really, that's my slightest concern. What I really want to know how my life is changing for the next 4-6 weeks and how I can manage. My doctor sees broken bones, every day, but this is my first experience. I don't think he realizes that. I've read research papers on what happens when you leave the doctor's office. How confusing and scary it can be. How many questions you forget to ask or don't even know to ask. Mine wasn't a heart attack or diabetes, a chronic or life changing event, yet the confusion and scariness is likely to be more profound with chronic illness. Health education is extremely behind the times and as designers and researchers it's our job to get this information to the patients, into the hands of the sick, the worried, the scared and empower them/us, make us feel safe and that somebody in healthcare actually might care.

The View from Down Here

2008-04-06T22:06:00.000-07:00

Being that I am experiencing the world from the viewpoint of a temporarily disabled person, this gives me new insights to an old area of interest in design for disability.

Suggestions for the rented wheels, that is wheelchairs or electric scooters in malls and stores:

Add a location to clip on or rest crutches or a cane. There are no good ways to carry them while you are maneuvering about.
In addition to the mobile cart, rent out a grab stick. Though I know this from being a relatively short person, it's even more apparent when you are seated ALL the time, the world is designed for standing tall people! A grab stick at the grocery store while using the wheeled cart would be an excellent addition to the experience.
I'm putting this one in the public domain and hoping someone acts on it: collapsible crutches. They are tall when you need them, but telescope in for when you are riding in a car, wheelchair or just sitting at home and don't want the entire world tripping on them.

a quick web search shows that I am not the first to think of this - no surprise - but most models are hard to come by. One seemingly useful, albeit spendy option: http://www.gearability.com/2007/07/31/collapsible-travel-crutches/

Make wheelchairs fun! The kids all get to ride in these cute, colorful molded plastic cars, they are having fun and people look at them and smile. Wheelchairs are incredibly utilitarian, and people mostly avoid looking at you if you are in one, or look with pity. Make wheeled devices for adults more desirable.

The Magic is Back

2008-04-03T09:51:00.000-07:00

Just 12 hours later...
I plugged in my Magic Jack to the computer this morning. I plugged in an old GE trimline type phone and Voila! A dial tone, and the ability to dial anywhere in the country, basically for free (ok, a one time, nominal fee). Loving it!
The interface on the software is relatively intuitive, allows you to save contacts, though not multiple numbers for one name without creative naming (apparently the designers didn't look to cell phones for inspiration on their phone book).
Now I can lie, foot in the air, and talk away the day...spreading the gospel of usability near and far.

The Not So Magic Jack

2008-04-02T20:37:00.000-07:00

There is nothing like a frustrating user experience for good blog fodder.

Several years ago, I gave up having a land line, opting for a cell phone which took care of most of my needs. Now, running a business, I need much more phone time than any decent cell phone plan allows. I've successfully used Skype for the last few months, but always wanting to save money I decided to look into the next big thing. The Magic Jack. www.magicjack.com
It came highly rated by many hi-tech magazines and the infomercial looked good. Free local and long distance and voicemail. Too good to be true?
The claim is that in 5 minutes, with a special USB that is sent to you, you can plug in your phone and make all of your calls through your computer for $10/year. Great! My phone bill problem is solved. But my technical problems have just begun.
I asked for expedited delivery since the need is sooner than later. The device arrived in a few days. It's not too overpackaged and comes with a single color card wrap. It looks easy. But it's not.
Rather than walk through what has become a painful scenario (45 minutes and it still doesn't work) I'll share the highlights:

Asking for passwords that were never sent or given and then acquiring a password via email that doesn't work.
Continued difficulty bringing up Live Chat for tech assistance and no possibility of a phone conversation.
Confusing queries on set up and a box that you don't know to click that is supposed to offer "quick help"
Requiring upgrades to a brand new device. Most users won't know how to save and run an .exe file. (this assumes a fairly advanced user)
No good answers on how to fix the "connect to the internet" error message when I am clearly connected. Apparently they are upgrading and I have to wait 24 hours to try my new device again.

What did work was an extension USB dongle in the package since the USB is large and would cover needed plugs in my laptop, fairly simple packaging, though they could use less stryofoam.

So far, I am less than impressed and hope they are continuing to try and fix this user experience.

Remote Coworking and Gratitude for Technology

2008-03-31T15:41:00.000-07:00

The view from here.

It is often the unexpected that makes us take stock of things. Last week, I broke my ankle. Right, not exactly in the plan. Since then, I have noticed and been thankful for a number of things.
Although it means that driving and walking are out of the question for the moment, two working arms and access to technology has allowed me to keep working, from my couch, foot hoisted in the air to reduce swelling.
What I'm finding most comforting is the friends that actually feel nearby. A simple change to my "status" in my Gmail and my facebook accounts and many of my friends now know what's up with my life and what's important. It's a feature I sometimes find mundane, but have recently found more interesting as both I and my friends use the feature more regularly. The couch just doesn't feel as isolated with those little green dots next to my friends on gmail. Friends in Atlanta, Portland, Chicago and San Francisco are just a button click away. Even if we never "talk" via email or IM, I think of them and somehow feel closer by the mere presence of their name and their little green dot. In the morning I see a colleague in the UK, and friends on the east coast log in. As the day goes by, those on the west coast become more active. Later at night, we get to see who the real geeks are (present company included) by who's online late at night.
Facebook, though the applications are way too vast for my taste, also brings a closeness to my own circle of friends at this time of some isolation.
I know these social networking opportunities have been around for awhile. Normally I prefer to meet my friends ITRW (in the real world), but for now, on my couch, alone, pumping ibuprofen every few hours, those little green dots sure do make me feel supported and surrounded by the important people in my life. :-)

Icons

2008-03-30T09:50:00.000-07:00

Last week, I called AT&T/Cingular with a problem on my cellphone. The voicemail icon on the phone wouldn't go away even though I had no voicemail. It was a problem that was fairly easily remedied.

However, in the process of my call, I had a fascinating interaction. When the customer service agent said, "how can I help you today?" I responded by saying that the voicemail icon on my phone wouldn't turn off. "Icon" she said. What is that? She may have asked if it was the picture on the phone. I don't remember. What I remember is the curiousity surrounding the interaction with the customer service agent at a cell phone company who didn't know, at least not for sure, what an icon was. "Icon", I supposed, is a bit of a specialty word. Maybe more recognized by interaction designers and designers in general.

A quick google search shows 531,000,000 hits for the word "icon". Wikipedia has entries for both the religious and the computer pictogram types of icons. So how did AT&T manage to miss this in their customer service training? It's really not her fault, but one does wonder if/how these folks are trained and compensated to do what is rapidly becoming anything but a minimum wage job, working customer service for our increasingly complicated mobile technology.

And, as an afterthought, I have to ask. What IS that icon anyway? It looks a bit like an old cassette tape winding. Given that most of us have probably not used a cassette tape answering machine in at least 10 years, it is the designers job to work on a new image. Think digital, think people, think asynchronous communication, think voice. I'm no graphic designer, but perhaps this will spur someone to replace the archaic cassette with an icon, yes a picture, of voicemail for the digital age.

Bathroom Bablyon

2008-03-24T18:04:00.001-07:00

Continuing on the theme of bathrooms....I have a number of photos I've taken in bathrooms over the years. There are always interesting design and user experience moments hiding behind bathroom doors.
This one in particular was posted in a toilet in Greece. The fascinating user experience in this country is that they ask you to throw used toilet paper into a basket next to the toilet and flush only bio materials. I imagine this is best for the sewage systems. It's really important, yet unfamilar to westerners from both the US and Europe (and I imagine others, though I'm not as fluent in their bathroom habits).
Realizing the importance, but also wanting to put their country on the proverbial map, visitors from all over the world have attempted a service for their fellow travelers by translating this request into any number of languages. My favorite being "don't chuck the bog roll down the loo."

Connection and Relief

2008-03-23T11:19:00.000-07:00

If you look closely at the blurry, but interesting, photo above, you can see it says "Free WI-FI", "Not so Free Public Restroom!" An interesting testament to our time. An interesting testament to the privilged white collar worker. And is WI-FI really "free"?

Free Wi-Fi. The siren's call to a weary traveller tracking their vacation on their trusty laptop, a worker in a strange city who needs to check in, or a consultant who simply needs a place with people around to work and "feel connected." Any coffee shop worth it's mocha offers this service nowadays.

Is the Wi-Fi really free? If I walked in with my laptop and sat down and started to work. Would anyone come over after a period of time and tell me that I must order a tea/non-fat, soy latte/muffin to continue to use their airwaves? Unfortunately, I didn't get to test this. If I have a laptop, does that I assume I am clean, have money and can then use the restroom? Does my laptop mean that I will treat everyone and everything I encounter with love and respect?

And, what exactly is it that makes establishments so very protective of their porcelain thrones? What great treasures lie in the bathrooms of so many establishments that I must pay for the privilege of using their restroom? Why must a weary traveler or shopping wanderer be restricted from releasing the much more urgent biological needs, but be allowed at any given moment to simply open up and log on?

A Declaration of Independence

2008-03-20T10:04:00.000-07:00

In our lives, there is constant change. Buddhism reminds us that nothing is permanent. Too true. I had a job I can honestly say I loved. How lucky to ever be able to say that in one's life. I've had a few of them, actually. My department was downsized and I and others were sent off on new adventures. Working in Digital Health was exactly what I had hoped to do after returning to graduate school. The work encompassed healthcare and technology. At the end of the day, our work might actually make a difference and the work and environment was continually challenging and interesting. Now it's time for me to take that knowledge and work with other companies who have similar visions.

After leaving Intel, I have decided to delve back into the world of consulting. As you may know, my previous company, Accessible Threads, focused on creating sewn prototypes for consultancies such as IDEO and Herbst LaZar Bell, and manufacturers such as SunTech Medical and Trek Bikes.

In this new iteration, the focus will be on healthcare and technology, also encompassing projects that fall under “design for social change”. I will bring my expertise in user research, ethnography, concept generation and general design thinking to consultancies, manufacturers, and non-profits. When working with participants, I offer expertise with special communities such as elders, people with a disability and children.

Work with Ziba and Oregon Health and Science University and Techtronix, has already gotten underway. I'm excited to see where this adventure goes. If you want to collaborate on a project as a client or as a partner in design crime, I'm at dezinr at gmail.com

Praying to Mecca?

2008-03-12T21:53:00.000-07:00

I was with a colleague today returning from lunch when we passed a construction site on the road. We passed the usual gang of workers and the expected construction equipment. Just past this, we saw a man in an orange vest looking like he was "praying" or sitting in "child's pose" from yoga. (Really wish I had a camera...) We both stared and wondered what was going on. Upon closer inspection, we realized he was crouched on the ground writing some site notes in what looked like a most awkward position. Being people well versed in user experience, we marvelled at the fact that this man had not found the simplest of tools, a clipboard, to use in the field and help him do his job.
In retrospect, I wonder what would have helped. Can his tools be made digital? Is there a way he can carry a fold up writing surface on the job site? Should every construction horse have a fold out desk? We think often of mobile workers as those with cushy desk jobs who are out on the road, when in fact, many of our mobile workers are literally in the field every day, or on the streets or climbing lightpoles. What can we do to simplify the work of these ever mobile crews?

It isn't easy being green

2008-02-24T13:25:00.001-08:00

I have noticed an interesting trend, of late. Let me preface this by saying I am a huge proponent of living life so that we have the smallest impact on the planet. We should live as if the planet is our house, our home (novel, I know). Replace things that we use up, not leave our dirty footprints everywhere, and live quietly and respectfully as if we have neighbors next door. The green movement is helping, talking about a carbon footprint is helping. My concern is that industry is not. Some industries do share products that are genuinely trying to help. Phosphate free soaps, clothes made out of sustainable materials like hemp and bamboo, furniture out of bamboo and reused items.

My concern is this. It seems the advertising, and possibly the subsequent habits, actually encourage people to get rid of their perfectly good: furniture, applicances, cell phones, dishes in favor of the green dishes. Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but that doesn't help! Now, instead of a slightly less energy efficient fridge in your home, there is a large box of metal and chemicals lying in a landfill. Want to ditch your Corelle wear in favor of bamboo plates? Great, but what happens to the Corelle lying in a pile waiting for the next thousand years to breakdown to it's basic chemicals.

Many of the folks I know - esp. those greenies here in Portland, are great about sending items to Goodwill or putting them up on Freecycle or Craig's List. But I know so many people who also just dump them in a bin assuming they'll go to that great trash compactor in the sky. If you really do favor earth friendly items in your home, please try to get rid of the old ones responsibly.

The flow of a new office

2008-02-21T16:27:00.001-08:00

It is interesting to be anywhere new. You pay particular attention to things you won't notice 6 months down the road. It's particularly interesting to change offices and compare say a hi-tech firm to a design office.

What I've noticed in the first few weeks:

It's weird not to be in a cube. Wow. As a creative person, you would think I would abhor the cube. I got used to my own little space, a few walls, a mini cubby to call my own. Though, the grey walls got old (ok, the first day I bought a Kandinsky poster to add as much color as humanly possible to the dismal gray). It's actually quieter because people don't holler randomly over the walls, they can actually converse face to face.
People listen and support each others ideas! It's not a battle of wills, its a group working together for the right solution. What a novel concept.
When you see people working, you are actually more productive. I know there is a good bit of theory behind this including the Portholes project (Dourish and Bly 1992 http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jpd/publications/1992/chi92-portholes.pdf), but I'm here to tell you its true. It is motivating to see others working.
I have been around for a week and haven't been in one meeting where we all sat and stared at the output of a projector. How refreshing! We talked to each other in a well lit room and used a white board to generate interesting ideas and conversation.
You are never too old to feel like "the new kid". Wherever there are lunch tables, there will be a person who feels awkward sitting down for the first time. Remember that feeling from grade school? It never quite goes away...
There is nothing cooler than a whole set of bookshelves full of design magazines just waiting for you to browse them. At your leisure, refer to them in your work and just enjoy them for the inspiring content. (ok, maybe a few cooler things, but it's quite wonderful)

Design for Social Change

2008-02-18T17:52:00.000-08:00

In the last week or so, I've been talking with potential employers. Learning about new companies, discussing ways we can work together. I've also been talking to colleagues and friends about my "dream job". I'm fascinated by the response. My dream job these days involves something similar to strategy, systems and user research combined. It would involve a project like getting health information to rural Appalachia or Africa. Reworking a broken or not yet evolved system to help people in all parts of the world have access to the information they need, be it healthcare, technology, growing crops, etc.
The words being used lately are "design for social change". When I mention this to some folks they say, "yeah, nice pipe dream, good luck." But many, many others, espescially those kindred spirits here in Portland say, "Yes! I want to do that too!" So, why can't we? Why aren't we doing this work? Many of us (present company included) point to the almighty dollar. I need to pay my mortgage. Fair enough. But why can't I make a living and do something good for the planet and/or the people on it? Why do these things become mutually exclusive? Must you pull vast amounts of oil from the earth to make a living? I realize there are many options in between minimum wage and oil baron, but when looking to do the work or make the change, the options feel limited.
And yet, I am heartened, elated, thrilled to find so many like minded people, designers and otherwise. Surely, if there are enough of us out there, it is bound to happen. Hopefully, soon.

Where DOES that come from?

2008-01-27T22:44:00.000-08:00

Noticed: So, I went to a basketball game tonight where they served a bottled water I had never seen. I inspected the Oregon Rain bottle and found a disturbing line of text. (see below)
Never touched by the earth? Water that was never touched by the earth? I don't understand, how does this happen? Where exactly is this water from? Was it made in a test tube?
After looking at the site, www.oregon-rain.com, it's apparently captured as it falls, from the sky. Thus Oregon Rain. But really, NEVER touched the earth? There is a water cycle last time I checked and most of those particles probably hit the earth at some point in the last 1000 years. Either way, it's just plain bizarre that their slogan for water is that it never touched the earth. Isn't touching the earth a good thing?

Meeting Colors deux

2008-01-14T23:55:00.000-08:00

I have had the previous post in my head for weeks. Then just last week, I attended a meeting of medical professionals. I'll preface this with the fact that I am a designer. I woke up Monday in a good mood and thought I'd wear a nice bright orange jacket, one of my favorites.

The meeting was for medical professionals and was a group I had never attended before. I walked into a veritable sea of grey, blue, black and dark muted tones. I also walked in late. The orange was quite the bright beacon in the muted sea of professionals. I would say I will know better next time, but I would probably do the same again!

Meeting Colors

2008-01-14T23:52:00.000-08:00

You walk into a meeting. You sit down, do you notice anything? Have you ever noticed that, quite often, there is actually a color theme to the room? Do you and your co-workers tend to wear the same colors on the same day? It's an odd phenomenon, pay attention, you'll be amazed!