But then I also co-wrote a book that addresses the value of design approaches (and I’ve been known, in person, to say that it’s a book about “design thinking” that never uses the phrase “design thinking”).

I most recently blogged on Harvard Business about “Why Design Thinking Won’t Save You”, because I find myself, again, fed up with how people use this phrase in such a way that it’s essentially meaningless, and it seems to serve little more than helping sell design firms trying to be more strategic, or sell business magazines in desperate need of appearing hip.

The problem I faced in that post is that there’s no good alternative term for the kind of thinking I promote, which is a wildly multi-disciplinary approach. Dev tried with “hybrid thinking”, but I found that phrase too limiting. I considered “integrated thinking,” but it’s too vague, and too similar to Roger Martin’s integrative thinking. Perhaps the best term I found was “post-disciplinary,” ironically enough from IDEO’s Jane Fulton Suri (ironic because the rise of the phrase “design thinking” is pretty much all due to IDEO).

Something I don’t address in my post, but where I think there’s a real opportunity for exploration, is to identify how this wildly multi-disciplinary thinking actually does contribute to organizational success in the 21st century.

At UX Week a couple weeks ago, we had a day devoted to perception, keynoted by Dr. Temple Grandin. Before she spoke, I showed a very strange short film I had found online, also called “Synesthesia.” It’s not really worth describing in detail — it’s a four minute art piece that tries to capture the synesthetic reality in a highly impressionistic fashion, photographed beautifully.

I’m surprised that the film hasn’t gotten more traction online — it strikes me as the kind of thing that folks would love. And good for Sunday web viewing!

This morning, as I read the SF Gate, I found out that Maneesh just won a MacArthur fellowship! I hadn’t kept up with him, but he’s now teaching at UC Berkeley, and continues to endeavor to understand how people process visual information, including maps. Lots and lots of maps. I’m probably fooling myself if I think I’ll find the time to look over what he’s done the past few years, but it sure seems worthwhile!

A word unmentioned in the article, but which I’m growing to love, is “unsee“. It’s a strange word, because, as the phrase goes, once you’ve seen something, you can’t unsee it (I think I was introduced to this unfortunate reality when someone showed me tubgirl. Which I will not link to. As I don’t want you to see it, much less vainly try to unsee it.)

A different use of “unsee” comes in China Mieville’s latest novel The City and The City, set in a geography where two cities literally overlap and integrate in space, and residents of one are raised from birth to “unsee” what goes on in the other. It’s a concept that appears bizarre at first, until you realize, as a city-dweller, just how much you unsee of what’s around you (homelessness, squalor, nefarious activity).

Which strikes me as absurd. Facebook and Twitter serve some pretty distinct needs. Any move toward “Twitter-like” will detract from Facebook’s core offerings, and is thus likely to piss off the literally hundreds of millions of people who already use it. And I’m sure there’s heaps more to do with that core offering–focusing on really blowing out that “social graph” experience must have tons of opportunity. Why distract itself with a wholly orthogonal communication model?

Enjoy 4 days of UX goodness, combining thought-provoking presentations with hands-on activities-based workshops. It’s a mix of inspiration and information unlike you’ll find at any other event!

Use discount code FOPM and get 15% off the registration price

• awesome hole-in-the-wall ethnic cuisine
• great breakfasts
• great relaxing afternoon pub
• coffee coffee coffee (drip, not espresso, and comfortable places to drink it)
• museums with an historical bent
• museums with local quirk
• relaxed, fun neighborhoods
• pinball

Suggestions? Add ‘em in the comments. Thanks!

This surprised me, since the UX community is a remarkably active participant in social media. Since the field began to take off in 1998 or so, blogs and mailing lists have been the single best means of learning about the field and leveling up.

I fear that the user experience field has defined itself by a series of artifacts (flow diagrams, architectures, wireframes) and this has placed a conceptual boundary on the kinds of problems we successfully engage. The user experience of social media is not addressed through wireframes — unless you work for one of these social media providers, your company’s or client’s user experience of social media will be outside of your design control. It’s meaningless to draw a wireframe of a Twitter conversation.

I suspect that in order to embrace this opportunity, user experience types will have to put down Visio and Omnigraffle and find other ways to “deliver”. The most obvious next step is that we’ll need to be more comfortable writing principles and guidelines, akin to Christian Crumlish’s recent piece for the ASIST Bulletin.

But, as designers, the distinct value we can bring is in experiential tangibility, and it leads me to wonder, how, as a field, can user experience folks best engage in the social media dialogue? Because right now, it’s sadly dominated by douchebags who seem to think that social media = a sexy new form of marketing communications.

But that’s not what I want to discuss. I want to talk about another thing where I’ve also been devoting my time, UX Week 2009.

We just announced single day registration, so if you can’t commit to the entire event, you can still come and enjoy part of it. Each day is a self-sufficient gem (just look at the schedule), so you’re doubtless to find some day worth attending.

We’re also trying something quite different this year. Day 4, which has no workshops, is priced at $300 less than the other days. And with speakers like Matt Webb, David Merrill, Liz Ogbu, and Robin Hunicke, we’re pushing the boundaries of design, and engaging a range of contexts from games to physical computing to social activism. We think there’s a larger conversation to be held, and so we’ve dropped the price on that day to encourage more people to come.

If you use my special discount code FOPM, you’ll receive a 15% discount on whatever you register for.

In his earlier years, Indy was a willful and ornery pup, to the extent his prime nickname was Little Bastard. He loved garbage. And he kept breaking into the cabinet where we stored garbage. Repeated attempts at upping the security failed, so Stacy, at the end of her wits, caught his escapades on a web cam.

For some reason, I can’t embed the video, but follow this link, and you’ll see an active and engaged dog with his wits about him. For all the frustration this caused (cleaning up garbage is not fun), this is the dog I remember.