Today, after a long year of watching his health decline, we had to put Mr. Chompers down. My parents and I had a few dogs growing up. Mr. Chompers was *my* first dog. And how I loved him.

Mr. Chompers' First Day Home

I remember when he was six weeks old, and we visited the breeder in central Indiana where I held him upside down in the palm of my hand and he was completely at ease with me. I put him down and he crawled onto my foot and fell asleep there. When it was time to go, his tiny self yipped at me — yelling at me to not leave him.

We came back a few weeks later when he weened and I held him in the palm of my hand the way home.

He’s the reason I built a content management system to blog, before blogging was a thing I knew about, back in 2002. I wanted to share the adventures we had together. When I was up late nights, programming in ActionScript in our loft in downtown Chicago, he stayed up with me. Chompers and I went on late night walks together. When I was laid off in the summer of 2003, we hung out a lot at Grant Park, and up and the beaches off of Lake Michigan.

When I moved to Johnstown, he came with me while Suzy finished out her job in Chicago. Chompers was a loyal and steadfast friend and companion. There’s a hole in my heart that is going to take a long time to fill. He was our Boy.

He moved with us from Chicago to Johnstown, PA… back to Chicago in three more places we called home. He’s been through Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland. Our little white boxer with the brown ear and spot…

Logan And Mr. Chompers

He was well-loved. Well cared for. He survived two little girls and quietly and comfortably let them do whatever they wanted with him. So many things we did to keep him as part of our lives. We knew, going in, that Boxers lead too short, but very happy lives, and that when things would decline they would really decline. I didn’t know what that meant. We’ve seen it for the last year as the nerves in his lower back gave way and he lost control of his hind legs.

It broke my heart as his nerves gave out. Still cheerful. Still so loving and quiet and loyal… but in quiet pain.

Mr. Chompers In Repose

I will miss my very good boy.

Mr. Chompers (2002-2012)

 

I never thought of myself as a designer before, but it’s so clear to me now that designing (not “instructional design”) is what I do. Of late, what I’ve done more and more of is experience design.

I’ve facilitated a few innovation sessions, problem solving discussions, “brainstorming,” etc — all of which have grown more and more successful and impactful (and more daring, maybe) as I gain confidence and learn from each experience as both a designer and a facilitator. I admit, there is some pleasure found in getting my hands a little dirty coaching people along — very similar to the best parts of when I was a teacher, but without the constraints of being “classroom teaching.”

There’s an entrepreneurial spirit set aflame at that June unconference, too. It’s why next week I’m taking a week+ off from work and organizing a unconference of my own in Sedona, Arizona. Something I’ve been moonlighting on, something I bootstrapped on my own. Along the way, I learned some really hard lessons about what it takes for a venture to be successful, and I found partners and incredibly supportive friends and mentor figures to help me, and help this unconference, be successful.

Towards the end of next week and over next weekend, I suspect there will be tweets and pictures from Up to All of Us. It’s a unconfernece about the overlaps among learning, social business and technology — but it’s a unconference, so it’s going to go wherever and however the participants take it. If you’re interested in following from afar, the hashtag is #UTAOU.

I couldn’t be more elated about the event. I set a bold goal, and we hit it. By traditional measures, as a first venture, we’re already successful. Still, I need more satisfaction that what we’re doing is a success.

I hope the experience inspires and resonates with the participants in some profound way — even just a touch of what I got out of my experience with Overlap would do. I’m hoping the ideas my friends play with become something they’re motivated and readied to do. I’ve thought about this in terms of creating perpetual virtuous cycles — people pumping inspiration and drive into everything they create which in terms propels those who meet with what they create to do the same. I’m happy to have success in the short-term, but it’s in that long tail I really want to find the evidence that this experience was a good one.

I’m rambling already — giddy up! I’ll talk to you all from the other side.

 

Earlier on this Tuesday night, several friends in the Chicago area got together for pizza and wine and beer (maybe some whiskey, too) and sat around a table at the Coop and we bounced this question around the table. We each sketched a picture to describe our personal “a ha” moment and then we shared it with the group. There were twelve of us hanging out, each with interesting stories to tell.

Sketch by @saminerenberg

For some of us, being a designer is an easy way of describing the myriad of things we do or have done — how would you describe a jack-of-all-trades who solves increasingly complex problems with continuously adaptive approaches and a specific aesthetic sense (or intention)?

I think when you find yourself spending more and more time on asking better questions rather than acting on someone’s answers, you may be growing into the role of a designer.

A challenge one might present to the Instructional Design community of late is that, in practice, there’s little focus on design. There’s adherence to a model that has the word design in it… but I will argue that if you can only brandish one tool, leverage only one way of solving a problem, you’re not really designing: you’re filling in blanks.

A different "TK Chat" at ASTD TechKnowledge 2012 with myself, @opensesame, @JaneBozarth and @LnDDave

At ASTD TechKnowledge last week, there was a “TK Chat” (a panel discussion) about authoring tools and HTML 5. There are a variety of new authoring tools for digital publishing span from broad-based authoring environments (text editors like Dreamweaver; XCode; Flash) to template tools (Articulate; Captivate; arguably iBooks Author) to object tools (ZebraZapps, Storyline). Someone in the audience asked a question to the panel: “As someone new to eLearning, what tools do I need?”

This question burned at me long after the panel addressed the gentleman.

If you are new to instructional design, the tools you need are a pencil and a good notebook. Some sticky notes would be helpful, as well as a whiteboard for you to claim as your own. Also helpful are a smartphone that can record audio, video and take really nice pictures.

These are artifacts of an impromptu Critical Success Factor analysis performed in the middle of a presentation given by @reubentozman and myself at ASTD TechKnowledge 2012

Record pictures and discussions. Share them. Reflect on them as you design and develop. Let these artifacts be a compass. And when you are done using these artifacts, dispose of them. There is no need to make permanent the things that act as a medium for ideas to become a product. Save a little something if you find value in it — as a totem. One doesn’t need to hoard.

Sketching on sticky notes to design a learning experience provides a lot of flexibility .

A designer makes more artifacts and sketches in pursuit of the new. Do that.

Figure out what are the challenges you need to help find solutions for and design, without thinking about what to build, the ways in which you might resolve those challenges and consider the people you’re supposed to help in that process. Start with that.

Only when you can answer the questions of “what does *better* look like?” and “how will I know it’s better?” can you really start to consider the tools. By then, it becomes easier to get to *better* — because you’ll be able to map how you design for that idea of “better.”

By now, I’m hoping you get my subtle point: you’re identifying yourself with what’s posted above and, by virtue of that association, you think maybe you’re a designer and this starts you on a path. Alternatively, maybe you’re not identifying with my small and shortly worded synopsis of what designers do and you’re wondering if maybe you’re not designing… and that starts you on a path, too.

 

A year ago, I wrote about how I took command of my career. This year, above all else, I learned something and it is my wish that you take this with you:

I don’t need permission to make awesome things happen.

I started this year pushing out ideas about Future Learning Experiences. This eventually fed into work done by Rustici Software in conjunction with ADL, now known to the world as Project Tin Can (@projecttincan). This was the work of many smart people inside and outside of ADL, sharing their best ideas because we believe there’s a different (arguably better) way to approach learning, mediated by technology. By now, it should be clear that ADL intends to leverage the work that’s gone into Tin Can (maybe AICC CMI 5, too) and it will be the basis of a next-generation SCORM (don’t get too hung up on the name, but if you are in the learning space, you hopefully get the idea here). A year ago, we made the case to explore it. By this year’s end, the bigger “we” — all who participated in Tin Can’s interviews, forums, etc; people who attended the many presentations and discussions on Tin Can and CMI 5 and LETSI Run-Time Web Services — the bigger WE made the case to DO it.

This is what I came back to ADL to help do… and, because you all stepped up and demanded it, it’s happening.

The same can be said about the Federal Learning Registry. As I wrote about earlier, the community of developers and the end-users who stand to benefit most from the effort is stepping up to drive the direction of the work, which is exactly what should happen.

In both of these projects, the community isn’t waiting to be told it’s okay to want the future. There are larger forces presenting an indefinite future — one where no one technology solution or direction is necessarily prescribed, but a future where the problems can be articulated… and encouraging people theselves to step up and make the future into something definite.

This shifts the focus from the bigger WE as consumers… to WE as makers. This encourages us to become more engaged members of our various communities. As “makers” we design, tinker and play with ideas. We impact our homes, even our neighbors.

The projects above were set in motion at the beginning of 2011, with these intentions… but I’ll be honest with you: I didn’t have a feel for where it was going (or if this notion had the legs I, myself, was hoping it would) until a transformative experience I had in June, where an entire world beyond the learning and education community opened to me. It was at this unconference, surrounded by warm, open and entrepreneurial spirits that I began to understand that to be brave, I had to do things that are a little scary. To lead, I have to be brave. No one will give me the permission to lead, nor to be brave. That’s something one has to own. I figured out something else resulting from that experience: that if I really believe in what I’m doing, commit to it and open the ideas up to support others as they champion the ideas as their own… this is how amazing things move forward.

Last year I took command of my career. This year, I started to take command of my life’s work as it revealed itself to me. I’m here to help people develop themselves into better neighbors and better citizens. Take that however you want, it probably still holds true.

I love what I work on. I love my profession. I fully embrace the people I work with. I have the best job I could imagine… but I’m not waiting on anyone to tell me that it’s okay to help people develop themselves. That’s on me. Everyday.

Figure out what it is you’re here for. Follow your heart and mind where that leads you, with every breath. Make awesome things happen, and be brave in doing so.

Game on, 2012. Throw me your best and worst. I may not be ready for it, but I’ll take it as it comes.

 

Even if code is gibberish to you, there’s something important that I observed in Boulder that goes beyond programming. What I saw from our informal get-together on Monday night through the core-team wrap-up after the conference… what I saw was the beginnings of a community of technologists taking ownership of an open effort which will benefit teachers, their schools and the communities that support them.

It became clear that the immediate benefit of the Learning Registry is as a means to easily align all manner of digital resources to Common Core standards. Making such information easily accessible to new and existing tools that school districts use will save time in finding quality content to teach with… that saves teachers a valuable commodity (speaking as a former math teacher): time.

What energized me most about the experience was the talent that assembled together, self-organized, learned and “played” with ideas and code. We had about 36 participants from around the country. Most came with only a few weeks notice of the event and shared their technical talents and built some interesting relationships. State and Federal education technologists were working together to build PHP libraries for the Learning Registry. Members of four different vendor organizations worked together to connect their technologies *together* to pass data in and out of the Learning Registry. Open Education advocates and proprietary vendors sat at the same tables, seeking answers to shared questions.

The next wave of development is likely to focus on Data Services, making it easier to integrate Learning Registry data into new and existing applications, content management systems, search engines and other technologies. In the video below, Steve Midgley (US Department of Education), walks through the ideas behind (and the value proposition for) Learning Registry Data Services.

 

Last night I finished my last cigarette and took a cab home from the co-working space I’m renting to help me stay on top of things. It was late, I had just spent several hours in a row writing and sending emails and I was on the phone wrapping up some of the day’s details and catching up with a friend. As I got out of the cab, I went to put my cash away in my wallet and found it missing. My cab receipt was already in the wallet and I had no idea what cab company, let alone what car number I was in.  I quickly ran to chase down the cab as it turned the corner, but it was for nothing… that cab was long gone.

I walked a few blocks home and quickly turned to my computer to start cancelling cards and rapidly re-order them as I’m due to be in Boulder, Colorado next week to help run the Learning Registry Plugfest.  As soon as I got on my bank’s website, the phone rang… it was a stranger asking for me, saying that they found my wallet, and after asking some questions based on the contents of the wallet and where it was found, confirming they had my wallet, they invited me to walk over to their house and pick it up. They were super nice, refused to take any offer from me to thank them for being so kind as to find me and spare me a huge hassle of running around to the DMV and all my financial institutions… and they lived right up the street from Walgreens. After stressing out about losing my wallet, I really needed a cigarette.

My unsavory vices aside, as I was walking over to this house to pick up my wallet, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a recent conversation I had with Thor Muller (@tempo) about his ideas for structured serendipity and a concept he introduced me to, called obliquity. Thor described obliquity in this way,

Given a complex set of challenges, you have a higher likelihood of reaching your goals by aiming for something else.

That probably makes either absolute sense to you or no sense at all. No sooner did Thor share this with me than it registered that obliquity is a pattern that has been part of my life since I was a young adult.

In my last post, I wrote how “over the last couple of years I’ve encountered a lot of professional and personal challenges, met them head-on and even with my failures, I’ve gained so much from doing so.” What I’ve gained overall is in large part due to obliquity, but there’s something more.

I have lots of opportunities for this kind of growth that come my way. These opportunities don’t come because of some special privilege or power. They come because of luck: I’m a very lucky person.

I’m lucky that there are so many good people in the world who happen to make connections into my work and life just when I need them (sometimes when I don’t even know I need them).

I’m lucky that I’ve been able to recognize the opportunities when they come my way: to borrow from American Football, that I can “find the seam and go vertical.” I’m lucky that I have this drive within me to want to apply the ideas I have, so I practice finding opportunities to which I can say “yes, and…” rather than “no, but…”

And apparently, I’m lucky that I live in the Midwest, where strangers are friendly more often than not. I’m lucky that someone found my wallet probably five minutes after I lost it and they called me. I’m lucky that they lived right near a Walgreen’s.

Apparently, I needed a pack of cigarettes.

 

Since returning from DevLearn, I’ve begun focusing on building more relationships with outstanding people I’ve met over the last year. I’m taking on challenges professionally and personally that feel beyond me. I will have to grow as a person, as a professional and as a leader to take on the kinds of responsibilities I’ve both wanted and now have been granted. It’s entirely scary to me… and entirely exciting.

That’s what I want to write about: steering into the fear.

I began co-working this week for the first time, which means I’m now renting a chair and desk in an office with other self-starting, entrepreneurial spirits who dwell together to share an office space. In doing so, they create an interesting community of people who work in the same place by their own choice. In the two days I’ve done this, I’ve been more focused and more productive at a task-level than most of the days I’ve spent working at home, straddling between spurts of being “on” and allowing myself very pleasant distractions of family.

I worked extra late today because developer friends Ron De Las Alas (@delasare) and Dustin Updyke (@dustinupdyke) happened to be headed to Chicago for a small conference focusing attention on the craft of coding. As I waited (forever) for them to show up, I took up some time after leaving my new office at the nearby Starbucks, where I pulled out my Dot Grid notebook and continued to tweak my sketched agenda for one of my new big tasks: a Next Generation SCORM summit occurring in the beginning of February. As I was sitting there, pleasantly about my business at 7:30 on a Thursday evening, a young man walked into Starbucks and just plopped down his stuff at my table. He seemed very comfortable and chatty and I took a moment to engage with him. He had with him a few different law books, a CISCO certification manual and what seemed to be some kind of psychology book.

This guy described to me that he was taking two classes from University of Phoenix, another class from a community college and yet another class from some training provider for the CISCO certification. I asked him what he was planning to do with all of these and his answer was a bit disconcerting to me.

He said, “I want to make a trillion dollars.”

The designer (and the provocateur) in me asked him, “How?”

“By changing the world.”

“Why?”

“To make it better.”

“How?”

“I don’t know how to put it into words.”

And this is where I started to have some fun. I asked him to give me a sheet of his notebook paper so I could write down three books for him. He resisted a bit and then I told him that not only would I list some books for him to help him put those ideas into words, but I would tell him what he’d get out of the books. The first book I recommended was “Connecting Inner Power with Global Change: The Fractal Ladder” by Pravir Malik (@pravirmalik). I sensed that he was looking to make a number of connections he observed in the world, but lacked the dexterity to thread whatever his ideas are together. This is a book that opened gateways in my mind on how paradigms map in fractal ways — the kind of thing Kurt Hanks describes in terms of relational thinking. That’s when this young man stopped resisting and I could tell that not only did I melt his brain, but that I read him like an open book with large font.

The second book I recommended to him was Roger Martin’s “The Design of Business.” While many bemoan “design thinking” I continue to find an incredible amount of value in the process of taking complex wicked problems and discovery heuristics, supported by algorithms which can be supported by tiny bits of code. Break a problem into its components and the components into its parts. Focus on making each part awesome and as you put the pieces back together, making small bets, you can create incredible positive change. Now this young man was starting to freak out because this information was all new to him and it clearly was resonating in a primal way.

The third book I recommended to him was Dave Gray (@davegray) and Sunni Brown’s “GameStorming” because Dave (and his book) opened my eyes completely to a whole other vision made possible by embracing sketching. This guy I was talking to clearly wanted to “see” things differently. I found tears in his eyes as I handed this sheet of paper back to him and packed up my things to have dinner with my friends. He had many questions, most of them he could barely articulate and I simply reminded him that what he needed was to learn how to articulate what’s in his head… then the questions will be easier to ask and the answers more profound. He asked me what comes next. I gave him my twitter handle and told him that what comes next is he reads and applies what he’s learning to every situation he’s in until he builds some fluency, and when he can articulate his ideas to start tweeting me.

Then I went to dinner with Ron and Dustin. We talked about their CodeCraft conference, and they debated the offer made by people at the conference to “parrot code” which basically means that a developer teams up with another developer. One does all the actual typing. The other one drives, telling the dev who’s typing what they should do. This raised a number of concerns about, “but what if I find out that all the code I’ve done in the last 13 years is *wrong*?”

I replied, “isn’t that the whole point of doing this conference is to get better?”

This wasn’t the first time I’ve heard that statement. A vast majority of people are risk-averse. There are many reasons why people are so risk-averse. Most people have pretty good senses for risk, and thousands of years of cultural evolution have forged us as people to be mindful of risk and avoid it.

I’m going to tell you to stop avoiding what’s scary to you as a professional and encourage you to steer right into your fears and concerns. I don’t know how I got conditioned to steer into fear, but over the last couple of years I’ve encountered a lot of professional and personal challenges, met them head-on and even with my failures, I’ve gained so much from doing so.

I’ve never planned a conference-like event before. I’ve never designed a socially-driven *movement* before. I’m now about to lead four such efforts, two on behalf of the Learning Registry and ADL; another two for communities outside of my work whom I value so much that in doing them, I will become a better person. I’m scared. I’m overwhelmed. Yet I know I will be successful precisely because what I’m taking on is scaring the hell out of me… and I love it.

The thing about steering into fear one must understand is that the scary places are what will forge you into a hero. Many people don’t want to be heroes, and they avoid scary situations as much as they can. There are adrenaline junkies who like things that can actually make them jump. For me, I just know that avoiding what’s scary rarely makes it go away. Turning into that scary stuff, tackling it head on, I understand its strengths, weaknesses and it forges me to think and act differently than I do cowering in front of it.

If we’re going to make our neighborhoods and communities better, if we’re going to improve the places we dwell… we need to be the heroes we’re seeking. You only become a hero by doing something brave, which requires you to have fear.

My advice to everyone: steer into the fear… and grow.

 

It’s pretty much my favorite time of the year.

I am on a full tour of duty this year and I am excited to pull from all my interests for this conference. I’ll highlight below the events at which you’ll find me.

Tuesday, November 1

My very good friend, Dr. Alicia Sanchez (@gamesczar), asked me to help her with her workshop on Designing Serious Games for Maximum Impact. We’re going to play some games, talk about technologies, various game types, and learning outcomes at the outset of game development. Since I’m there, I will guess we’ll do some interesting activities to get your game design juices flowing, generate some pretty sweet big ideas and in addition to having a good time, frame what we learn together into a larger context, like what can you do with this back in the office. This workshop goes all-day as a pre-conference activity and while there is no shortage of awesome pre-conference offerings, this one will be “teh awesomeness.”

Wednesday, November 2

Reuben Tozman (@reubentozman) of edCetra Training asked me to help him with a presentation on How Experiential, Social and On-Demaind Learning Trends Impact Your Design. We’re taking a very active approach by shifting out of presentation mode and modeling a very intentionally designed learning experience.  Together, we’ll explore each of the three modalities in the session title with opportunities to Grok, Inquire and Design. Grok, if you don’t already know, means “to absorb completely” — in our case, as completely as one can in about five or six minutes. With an opportunity to inquire, we’ll work through some guiding questions collectively to expand on what we’ve grokked. Finally, we’ll have an opportunity to design individually or in small groups given what I’d consider to be a wicked problem about experiential, social and on-demand learning activities. It should prove to be a powerful sixty minutes, starting at 2:45pm, Wednesday.

Thursday, November 3

When The eLearning Guild invited me to be a featured speaker, they asked me to present on overarching technology trends that I see coming. I have an interesting position with an organization that’s had some considerable impact on how online learning simply works. Since I don’t necessarily sell anything but ideas for mass consumption (and I’m not supposed to market anything), this became a really interesting opportunity to give a talk about technology that isn’t necessarily for the techies. In the span of an hour, I will share with you some of the bigger Technology Trends on the Horizon: Where eLearning is Headed. This will be put in context of what it’s going to mean to YOU as a designer, a developer, a one-person army, a project manager — and I’ll put the different trends in context of what it will mean for your company (ie. talking points for you to take back to the office). This talk will surface things that are already happening that might be cloudy to you, and I’ll make it clear how this is going to impact you and your work in the very real future. 3pm, Thursday.

Friday, Noveber 4

Iron Mike Rustici (@mike_rustici) of Rustici Software (SCORM.com) and I are presenting together on a topic I’m very passionate about: Project Tin Can (@projecttincan) and, specifically, going Beyond SCORM: Supporting Future Learning Experiences. Many in the eLearning community already know about Project Tin Can. What they may not know is that Project Tin Can was enabled as an research & development effort supported by ADL. Earlier this year, ADL published a wealth of material on what were called Future Learning Experiences. Mike and I will go into details in our hour together, sharing how Project Tin Can works, how it supports learning experiences (like serious games, experiential learning… you see the common thread?), and… how it fits into plans for a future beyond what SCORM does today. This will be a great session. Grab a strong cup of coffee or Yerba Mate and see us at 8:30am, Friday.

 

This SketchCamp (@SketchcampChi) was set up in the BarCamp model, which means it was an unconference. Rather than having a fixed agenda peppered with names and faces that tend to draw a crowd, this event and its offerings were shaped by the participants; the sessions were largely drafted and organized by attendees. There was some infrastructure defined in advance (the location, mealtimes, etc) but the rest was ad hoc.

What I Learned

I arrived about fifteen minutes late, but a few designers from Pixar were captured on video to discuss a bit of the process for creating A Bug’s Life (I can’t find the link to the video, sorry). The idea that the interview really nailed home was about the marriage of sketching and improv: storyboard live — storyboard everything that comes to mind. As you walk through the story with others, that’s where improv comes in — to play with the ideas.

With different speakers throughout the day and different ways of saying it, this became an emergent theme: sketching is acting is prototyping.

As Craighton Berman (@fueledbycoffee) presented next, the process employed at GravityTank includes (basically):

1. Define characters
2. Define the setting
3. Write the script
4. Make it visual
5. Brainstorm
6. Select the best ideas
7. Shape the future experience
8. Pitch the story
9. Get feedback.

Craighton also dropped a great line by Matisse.

To draw is to sharpen an idea. Drawing is the precision of thought.

Nice, huh? Next up was Keith Tatum (@slingthought) who did a pretty good improv through his session on Storytelling. Huddling up the entire room of about 100 people, Keith talked a bit about his development as a designer (hint: hold onto those drawings from your youth, as they they tell you from whence you came). He focused on the use of stories to start and continue conversations with clients. Keith offered up a fantastic line that I think is going to resonate for a while:

UX professionals need to get in the business of story-selling.

We also began to walk down some tangents on tools, trends and technologies. Keith hinted that he’s going more and more digital, which prompted me to take out my iPad and stylus and start sketching a bit with OmniGraffle’s awesome app (specifically the freehand mode). I also started playing with a concept map I put together after Overlap this last summer, based on an idea a bunch of us had about a Coffee Shop Design Firm (more on concept maps below).

In discussing the trends introduced by Nintendo DS and AppleTV’s AirPlay working with iOS5, there is a clear trend towards needing to design for multiple screens, as user experience is carrying over across multiple modalities. Surfaces were also mentioned, in terms of simultaneous and multi-user shared interfaces.

After lunch Amanda Morrow (@amandamorrow) gave a great little talk about the similarities between wireframes and toilet paper. Per Amanda, we all use toilet paper, we know what it’s for and it serves multiple purposes (kleenex, cleans up spills, stuffs bras) — and it’s disposable.

The purpose of sketching is getting to a conversation as quickly as possible. It’s a translation tool that forces one to think in different ways than speech or texts alone allow. Amanda pointed out that a little bit of sketching is handy at clearing up a small mess, but big messes (like toilet paper needs) sometimes require the whole roll.

This led to some discussion in our smaller group about approaches to sketching. Many people (myself included) use sketches to annotate “concept maps,” which are usually drawings with words, stick people and boxes with arrows that describe how different concepts relate to each other.  Our group generally agreed that while we tend to share concept maps with clients, they generally get no value out of it. It’s usually too difficult for people out of context to follow them, and while it’s useful from a design and development standpoint, it’s materiel that is largely not-asked-for by clients. Meanwhile, we tend to sketch and storyboard actual scenes and pictures that depict actual user experience, and such materiel is often never shown to clients. This is a practice we should commit to changing, as such sketches would provide tremendous value in conveying design ideas as well as a social object to spur feedback and further conversations.

Next up for the larger group was Josh Damon (@joshdamon), who really got us zoned in on storyboarding. Now, Kevin Thorn (@learnnuggets) has an EXCELLENT session on storyboarding coming up at DevLearn 2011 and I encourage everyone to hit it.

Josh had us tackle storyboarding an app for an “art walk.” I focused mine more on Siri-guided architectural tour of  Chicago driven entirely by the user and then charted by the virtual assistant built into iOS5.

Next, Josh talked about the importance of conveying interactions in storyboards. It’s pretty easy to show “scenes” in storyboards, but to show the actual interaction is something that gets glossed over. I envisioned my app to be pretty minimalist and simple, in terms of user interface, but I did envision that you might not want to completely rely on voice command alone as an interface, so I attempted to demonstrate swiping to navigate choices, and I think I did a pretty good job considering sketching and drawing is fairly new to my 38 years.

There was another small group session on “words.” I thought I was in the metaphor session with Alexis Finch (@agentfin) but it turned out I was in a different group with Lauren Colton (@LaurenTGC) and already gelling with the folks there. One of the key ideas from this little talk was the idea to disconnect with our language and reconnect with people, with a lot of encouragement to use plain language.

• Find common words, removing oneself from the jargon.
• Lose the abbreviations. Even if you’re following the Chicago Manual, if you have to use a manual, it’s wrong.
• If you need a Thesaurus to find a word, it’s the wrong word.
• Focus on active voice over passive voice.
• Be specific.

We then practiced a bit of story-selling with an ear for using plain language. Based on the feedback and the amount of discussion generated, my idea for a Siri-powered Grocery app seemed to strike a few chords:

The last session of the day was led by Pradeep Nayar (@designonmymind). It was refreshing to hear someone who is relatively new to UX from a technical background talking about the use of sketching for collaboration. Pradeep reinforced a lot of earlier points but this piece of insight is perhaps the most valuable takeaway you can hope for, making the case for why YOU should be sketching (no matter how much you think you can’t draw).

 

• The science of electricity
• The insurance industry
• Modern democracy

In the early 20th century, one pub in England (The Eagle and Child) was host to a get-together of local writers and academics, some of whom produced a few works that you might be familiar with. “The Inklings” gathered there to meet, hang out, work, write and talk. Among the Inklings were C.S. Lewis (“The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe”) and J.R.R. Tolkein (“The Lord of the Rings”). Yes, these guys hung out together at the same pub with professors of middle english (go figure), extended royalty (again, go figure), and a cast of other characters. Their meetings were frequent, they were not at all serious nor particularly structured.

For centuries, people have worked in coffee shops, tea houses, pubs and libraries, productively. As people, we historically have worked in ways that are self-organized. The environments draw a diverse lot of us who flock to such spaces for comaraderie and for the support of a network, but what was interesting is that it’s in such spaces that so many diverse backgrounds seem to collide with each other, which is how innovative and creative sparks that set the fires to new industry.