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The Fable of the User-Centered Designer

It’s hard to explain what I do, and workers in my field have many different titles. I am a Human Factors Specialist, but I could just as easily be a User-Centered Designer, User Experience (UX) Designer, or Usability Specialist.

David Travis from Userfocus authored a simple and easy-to-follow short story called The Fable of the User-Centered Designer that follows one man as he attempts to learn what User-Centered Design is. It’s a free PDF that’s a quick read on the computer screen, but a printed copy is only $14.80 on Blurb, with all proceeds going to Room to Read.

[The Fable of the User-Centered Designer via Usability News]

Waving Goodbye to 2009

Year-end video recaps are special because they make you realize just how long the year was. Whirled Interactive took a stab at it with this great video made with the help of Google Wave:

What are my memories from 2009? Well, off the top of my head:

• Getting snowed in and working from home while watching the inauguration of our first black president.
• Flying home abruptly in January because my grandmother passed away.
• Experiencing my first economic downturn as a full-time employee. It wasn’t much fun.
• Glen Wesley Night at the RBC Center on Feburary 17. The Bruins won.
• Being a part of the Triangle Red Sox Nation green softball team (there are three teams, and green was new in ’09). We didn’t win much, but we had a lot of fun in the spring/summer and fall.
• Hanging out with Triangle Red Sox Nation while we watched the PawSox defeat the Durham Bulls from under the famous snorting bull in left field (as seen in Bull Durham).
• Playing golf for the first time at Knight’s Play Golf Center in Apex. Someday I’ll get better.
• CHI 2009 in Boston, April 5th-9th. I ran into a lot of old friends.
• Our gesture research at HumanCentric. Will data analysis ever end? I hope so.
• Discovering Bonobos. Well-designed pants with an unlimited return policy. I used to hate wearing anything but jeans.
• Visiting Charlotesville, VA for Rebecca’s cousin’s wedding. The downtown pedestrian mall and Monticello are must-sees.
• Visiting the Outer Banks and staying at a great bed-and-breakfast, the Cypress House Inn. Enjoyed going up Currituck Beach Lighthouse, watching an Outer Banks Daredevils game, grabbing a quick dinner (with a beer) at the Outer Banks Brewing Station, and a more low-key dinner at The Colington Cafe.
• Summer vacation on Cape Cod.  Enjoyed watching the rain-shortened 2009 CCBL All-Star game at Fenway from the covered grandstand behind home, and showing Rebecca around Cape.
• Running. I used to think only bionic humans ran more than 1/2 mile. Now I’m running 5K with ease, but there are no marathons in my future.
• Labor Day weekend in Equality, Alabama. I consider this my first introduction to the deep south and lakeside living. Trivia fact: Patriots LB Adalius Thomas was born in Equality.
• Islamorada and Key West, Florida in late October. It was my first time in the southernmost state. I think about the great Cuban food at El Meson de Pepe every now and then.
• I worked over 100 hours in a week with a trip to Chicago. It was tiring, but oddly fun at times.
• Rebecca and I took a quick weekend trip to Oak Island, NC before Thanksgiving. I’m looking forward to exploring the Wilmington area more.
• I spent another Thanksgiving in Georgia with Rebecca’s family, but this time we ate at a buffet restaurant near Helen, GA. The food wasn’t great, but the reunion part was interesting. Cirque de la Symphonie in Atlanta was amazing.
• Christmas festivities in Raleigh, including two parties in one night and watching The Nutracker by the Carolina Ballet.
• Another Christmas on Cape Cod, but this time there was snow on the ground! I used some fake gift boxes again, but only had a 25% success rate this year instead of last year’s miraculous 80% success rate. Oh well.
• And, finally, I’ll be headed back to Raleigh before the year-end to host a New Year’s Eve house party with Rebecca.

Magic Highway USA

What did we think the highways of the future would look like? Here’s a video from a 1958 episode of Disneyland TV. Surprisingly the first couple minutes are focused on human factors and safety concerns. For example, the video shows much larger, dynamic, and higher contrast highway signs. The rest of the video enters Jetsons territory, but it’s still an amusing vision with some good ideas.

[via Neatorama]

Video: The Decade in Seven Minutes

Transitioning online from printed journalism isn’t easy. Most companies saw this coming 30 years ago, so recent newspaper circulation trends weren’t exactly a surprise. Some companies have figured out how to survive in the age of digital journalism. One that I really enjoy is Time Video (see my previous post on Ze Frank’s video series featured on Time’s website).

This week, the Time video “The Decade in Seven Minutes” went viral. Check it out!

Making Recycling Fun

World Usability Day is this week and the theme is “Designing for a Sustainable World”. In North Carolina, I’ll be attending an evening event hosted by Tri-UPA and Carolina HFES. My company has been hard at work redesigning recycle bins for the annual design challenge. Last year, we took a stab at redesigning bus stops.

Technology used to be the driver of new products; it determined the industrial design and components. Now, the size of devices is no longer determined by the size of the computer chip. For example, the iPod Classic sports the same basic design from 2004. The iPod does its job well and the only thing that could (and probably should) be changed include improvements in software and components.

We are living in a period of re-emergence of design. We are realizing that we need to start developing products that are not going to end up in a landfill after 2 years. We also need to design products that will encourage sustainability. Here’s a great example from Volkswagen that makes a game out of recycling:

Volkswagen also created two other videos (Piano Staircase and The World’s Deepest Bin). They created them as demonstration videos for The Fun Theory contest. The contest encourages designs that change people’s behavior for the better. Pretty cool.