I’ve always loved the Mark Twain quote:

“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

Short letters require editing. They require actively choosing what pieces of information to leave in, and what to leave out. There is something just a little bit contrived about them. These days, I find I don’t have time for short letters, or for short sound bites either. Both leave me questioning everything; especially the news sound bites. I want citations for every statistic, I wonder what has been omitted by the de riguer editing process that so many “news” stories undergo. I honestly mean it when I say that I would rather listen to Bernie Sanders’ eight-hour filibuster than listen to the talking heads on the news networks as they condense it down for me. I want to listen to more.

So today, I wanted to share a few podcasts that take the time to tell beautiful, long stories about people and their lives. I find that listening to these podcasts on a regular basis helps me to hone and stretch my listening skills, and challenge me to think deeply about someone else’s point of view, their challenges, and their values (all which may be different than my own). What I love about the people in these stories is that through their voices, you can hear their worries, their happiness, their frustrations…their truth. As a user researcher, this is gold to me. Cadence, inflection, tone, all of these things carry so much meaning. Identifying them is critical to what we do. Suspending judgement, setting aside our personal opinions, and developing empathy are also critical, and I believe require practice.

I am always surprised by something in the stories, which serves as an important remind me that I neither have all the answers, nor am I supposed to. Just like when I do user research: the more I do it, the more I realize there are no shortcuts to understanding what really motivates people. It all comes down to listening.

Podcasts

• Here on Earth
• This American Life
• The Critical Lede
• StoryCorps
• Local StoryCorps: Story Corps Comes to Hampton Roads and StoryCorps San Antonio

Book

• Sidewalk (hat tip: Todd Toler)

So during your commute, or while folding laundry, or while snowblowing, listen to these beautiful stories. I realize these too have been “produced,” but each does a really thoughtful job at communicating context, and each has a lot of heart. I’d love to hear your thoughts on these podcasts, and if I’ve missed any that you enjoy, feel free to post a comment.

Occasionally, something will happen that is just “off” enough that it will simultaneously catch me off-guard and force me out of my comfort zone. The feeling is sometimes very subtle, and usually a little comical, so much so that it may be hard to articulate exactly what about the situation is making me uneasy. When this happens, I have learned to identify that squirmy sentiment as one of “Cognitive Dissonance.”

Cognitive Dissonance is the “state of mental discomfort that occurs when a person’s attitudes, thoughts, or beliefs (or, cognitions) conflict.”¹ As humans, we have a tendency to constantly seek consistency among our many presumptions about how the world works. When the world around us doesn’t map to our understandings, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that we have mechanisms that quickly help us back to the state of mental comfort, or consonance. Consonance occurs when two cognitions are in agreement, and a state of comfort is achieved.

So yesterday morning, when Will Evans (@semanticwill) shared this picture of Cognitive Dissonance, I thought it was perfect example to write a post about.

An example of Cognitive Dissonance at the corner of Varick Street and Broom Street in SoHo, New York. Photo courtesy of Will Evans.

In this situation, clearly, there is something awry. Should we stop, or should we go? Well, luckily for us, any one of three mechanisms will immediately kick in to quickly get us back to a state of consonance to resolve (literally) this mixed signal.

1. The first option is to reduce the importance of the conflict. In this case, thinking “I don’t need the signal, there are no cars coming anyway” could be a way to minimize any reliance on the signal.
2. The second option is to add consonant cognitions. By adding another element, I can chose to delay the decision, and think “Oh, whatever, I’ll just turn the corner and cross at the next light,” or as Will did, think “Look at this example of Cognitive Dissonance; I am going to take a picture of it.” By virtue of adding another element of our own choosing, we regain control of the situation through other means.
3. Finally, the third option is to remove or change the dissonant cognition. An example of this third option would be, “I’ll use the traffic light to make a decision of whether to cross or not.”

Any of these three mechanisms will get us back (or at least closer) to our happy place.

Further Reading on Cognitive Dissonance

1. A Theory Cognitive Dissonance by Leon Festinger, Row, Peterson and Company, 1957.

2. Universal Principles of Design by William Lidwell, Kritina Holden, Jill Butler, Rockport Publishers, 2010, p. 46-47.

Over this past Thanksgiving weekend, this comic made the rounds among some of CMU’s current graduate students and alumni. For those of us who know these words to be true—that we are trained only to sleep on national holidays—I hope this brings a little comic relief!
(Also, I should probably mention the obvious…not sleeping for a few years forever changes what you think is funny.)

 


(hat tip: Miso Kim and Kelly Nash)

A few times over the past month, I’ve been lucky enough to find myself in the company of Atlanta’s incredibly intelligent and welcoming UX community. I can honestly say that after a few years of not having access to a community like this, I see no reason why not to get immediately involved…so I am jumping right in because the koolaid water is just right. Here’s a quick recap of some recent local events:

Atlanta IxDA :: local leaders meeting

I’ve been a mentor for the IxDA for awhile, but I’ve not had the luxury of living in a city with a local chapter until now. So when I was invited to attend the Atlanta IxDA Local Leaders 2011 planning meeting, I jumped at the opportunity to get involved.

The local leaders that I met (Danny Muller, Jamie McAtee, Alisan Atvur, Josh Cothran and David Demembrum) are fantastic. They gave me the rundown on the general pulse of the Atlanta UX community, recapped some of their best events from the past year, and discussed learnings from organizing and moderating those events. From there, we brainstormed on the 2011 calendar. Although it isn’t public yet, at some point it will be made available on the Atlanta IxDA site. The events I signed up to help organize are scheduled for the summer months (after I’ve delivered my book manuscript), and suffice it to say that I am incredibly excited about playing a small part in shaping what happens next year.

CHI*Atlanta :: Karen Holtzblatt and Eric Peterson

Last month, CHI*Atlanta hosted Karen Holtzblatt, the co-author of the incredible book Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems. In her talk “Practical Innovation,” she deconstructs the product development journeys of both the iPhone and of the technology behind Cameron’s Avatar, and spells out how both of these “game-changers” really are just a set of already well-understood and well-distributed technologies, recombined in a new way with a surprising and experiential “twist” that together catapulted both products into history. Karen is an absolute force of nature, and if you ever get a chance to see her speak, GO. In case you didn’t already know, Karen also happens to be the brains behind the Contextual Inquiry method…really, must I say more?

Tonight (11/18), CHI*Atlanta will host Eric Peterson at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. Eric is the author of Web Analytics Demystified and The Big Book of Key Performance Indicators. I look forward to hearing what he has to say regarding the merging and synthesis of the constant qualitative and quantitative data sets generated by Web Analytics, and also, hear a little about how he helps organizations see beyond data sources to actually helping them articulate the questions they really want to have answered. If he throws in some insight I haven’t heard yet regarding A/B tests, I’ll be a happy girl. (Props to Colleen Jones and Toni Pashley for organizing these great events.)

(I am also very appreciative of the fact that this month, I have met two experts (Hotzblatt, Peterson) for three of the methods that I will cover in my book (Contextual Inquiry, Web Analytics, and Key Performance Indicators). It is not lost on me that pieces of the puzzle for the book continue to show up at my doorstep at every turn.)

My daughter’s school recently sent home a “Curriculum for Kindergartners” pamphlet. In it, the usual curricular suspects were presented…Language Arts, Mathematics, Science. However, a few “Creative Thinking,” “Communication,” and “Research skills” learning objectives were also spelled out. Here are a few:

Creative Thinking

• Incorporate brainstorming and other idea-generating techniques to solve problems or create new products.
• Use analogies, illustrations and models to explain complex concepts.
• Tolerate ambiguity when solving problems.
• Recognize and assume risks as a necessary part of problem solving.

Communication skills

• Examine an issue from more than one point of view.
• Use a variety of visual techniques to create illustrations, models, charts, tables, and graphs as tools for communication.
• Respond to contributions of others, and argue persuasively to reinforce others’ good points.

Research Skills

• Formulate original and appropriate questions to test the limits of an existing body of knowledge.
• Gather, organize, analyze and synthesize data from multiple sources to support or disprove a hypothesis.
• Select appropriate research tools and methodologies (e.g. historical, descriptive, field, interview) to conduct scientific investigations

I thought the same exact thing.

Right….

Most adults I know can’t even do these things! Nonetheless, I find it hopeful that an environment for learning could exist that would provide my kindergartner a safe place to practice these skills. It paints a picture of a future I can feel good about. However, something tells me this was just some sort of misprint. But the kiddo surprises me all the time…if she starts asking neighbors to velcro-model ideas for a new TV remote, I’ll post pictures.

Today’s piece is a guest post by Todd Toler, Director of User Experience at John Wiley & Sons. The book has been making the rounds at Wiley… so here Todd reviews the book I wrote about in June, Don’t Be Such A Scientist by Randy Olson. You can read more of Todd’s insights on user research, interaction design, and the direction of the UX discipline on his blog, www.solidstateux.com. I promise that you will be more intelligent after each visit.

Lately I’ve been confronted with how inefficient the dissemination of science information is because, well, scientists are such scientists. This is not only a problem of educating the general populace to achieve a degree of science literacy on the important issues facing society, (which is the sole focus of this book, it is a problem with scientists communicating amongst themselves. As Olson points out in the anecdote about Alexander Fleming’s act of stumbling upon penicillin in 1929, ineffective communication of scientific discovery costs lives. It took 11 years after Fleming published his results for anyone to cotton on to it. Why? Because he exhibited every trait that Olson lays out in this book. Fleming was too literal (his working title for penicillin was ‘mould juice’), and he had the storytelling skills of a filibustering U.S. congressman. Note this sentence from the original 1929 article’s abstract, published in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology: “It was found that broth in which the mould had been grown at room temperature for one or two weeks had acquired marked inhibitory, bactericidal and bacteriolytic properties to many of the more common pathogenic bacteria.” That sentence is saying – I’ve just discovered a friggin’ universal antibiotic! This is potentially the answer to the current medical scourge of mankind! But yet, because scientists are such scientists, it doesn’t say that at all.

Scientists do not only frequently exhibit the traits Olson points out (too cerebral, too literal, poor storytelling, and unlikeable), they are also hierarchical (far too much deference paid to reputation and pecking order in the science publishing world) and tradition-bound (communicating only in academic journal articles.) Even chemists, who on the whole hate writing and think 100% in terms of symbolic pictures of chemical structures, communicate primarily in wordy scholarly articles whose format has changed little since the invention of the printing press. Communication has been so bottled up in science-land for so long that it is little wonder that the blogosphere erupted with emotion, profanity, and honesty once scientists had a way to easily self-publish their true feelings (part of Olson’s evidence that scientists are unlikeable is the negativity and poo-flinging that occurs on science blogs.)

That being said, Olson excels in exposing the fundamental dichotomy of science – the tension between a negativity and scrutiny based culture that is a natural outgrowth of the hypothetico-deductive method, and the value that critical thinking and peer review have on the advancement of a discipline. He also ruminates on the question of how far should something get dumbed down in order to have an impact and make a ripple with an audience of non-super-experts? (note: Olson would say quite a lot) The UX and design worlds are infants by comparison to most scientific disciplines and the free-wheeling communication culture of conferences and blogs and tweeting , while fantastic for idea dissemination, result in a lot of superficial ideas passed off as revelatory ones and a lot of rehashing of the same basic discoveries (like personas, or the power of sketching an idea) over and over again. It makes me wonder sometimes if collectively we are advancing the paradigm and moving humankind forward in the way that most science can lay claim to. In that sense, I don’t think most design professionals are such scientists at all.

In another sense, I’m with Bella on how I saw so many shades of myself in what Randy was advising against. This book is an excellent briefing on the power of effective communication as perfected by the people that make the most money off it – moviemakers. Most of us are too cerebral, too literal, too negative, and poor storytellers. Scientists are a vivid villain. Everyone already has nerdlike exaggerations of the anti-communicator in their heads when they picture a scientist, so Olson’s using of them (and himself) as the foil here works to good effect. But many other professions could easily stand in for their lack of mastery in all matters of communication style. Since Randy has gone full Hollywood, I’m eagerly awaiting the inevitable sequels (can I put a request in now for Don’t be Such a Project Manager? And Don’t be Such a Developer?)

-Todd Toler

Well, it is official…after years of refining an idea that I’ve had in my head and in my heart, and after months of investigating the publishing landscape, I finally have a signed book contract with Rockport Publishers! I am now officially a co-author of a book on user-centered design research methods, along with CMU School of Design professor Bruce Hanington.

In case you aren’t already familiar with Rockport Publishers (they are the publishers behind Will Lidwell’s Universal Principles of Design…one of my favorites), they publish incredibly beautiful design, art, and architecture books. It is my and Bruce’s hope that our book will provide a thorough and highly-visualized presentation of 100 essential research methods and practices for user-centered design, delivered in a concise and accessible format perfect for both novices and experts alike. We believe our book will help designers communicate the power and promise of user-centered research methods to non-designers, and along the way, help everyone learn a few more methods and best practices about how to better structure dialogue and create meaningful conversations with users and stakeholders.

As I mentioned, this project has been incubating in my head and in my heart for a long time. Eight years, to be exact. I spent my Thesis year at CMU researching and reshaping ideas (with Bruce as my Thesis Advisor) and delivered my thesis Visualizing Research Methods. After I graduated, I became a wife and a mom, and went back to work full-time. I nonetheless continued to spend hours making prototypes and sketching visualizations, refining concepts and page spreads, drafting potential book proposals and redrafting them, throwing them out and starting over. Truth be told, for a long time I didn’t know if the solution would end up being an interactive solution, a print piece, a song, poem, or a message in a bottle.

Then, out of the blue, in May of 2009 Bruce called me to ask how he could help me kickstart the project and get it off the ground. Turns out he was still thinking about it too! Soon thereafter, I left a job as a Design Manager to fully commit myself to this idea. It was scary at times, there were many starts and false starts, but the fire in my belly (not to mention Bruce’s vote of confidence) kept me going. I knew I was getting closer to the final form, but it took me chipping away quietly for a long time to get there. Talk about a labor of love…

When the idea finally hit me, I was actually reading Will Lidwell’s Universal Principles of Design, a book Bruce told me about because he teaches it in one of his undergraduate design studios. Within a few seconds of the “aha” moment, I thought of Bruce, and sent him an email to see if he would be interested in approaching Rockport and teaming up on the book. From there things moved very quickly, but in retrospect, I know for a fact that Bruce and I hit the ground running because we had already been mulling over the work for a few years. We both immediately knew that Rockport’s highly visual format was the right one to hold up under our ideas and research.

Bruce and I make a good team: I am a practitioner, he is an academic; his expertise is in Industrial Design and Human Factors, my background is in Interaction and Information Design. We have enough in common to speak the same language, but a wide enough range of experiences between us to see the challenges design students and practitioners are up against. We both love to write, research, and we are both committed to giving users a voice in the design process. I am really excited to be working with him again.

I imagine I will be writing about the process of writing and publishing, and writing about the research I will get to do on research methods here on uxgroundswell.com. Rest-assured I am thrilled to be embarking on this process, and although this is just the beginning, it feels really good to know that if you fight and take risks to give your creativity, experiences, and insight a voice, amazing things can happen and the risks do pay off.

Our book will be part of Rockport's Essentials series. Here are three other titles currently in print, each highly recommended!

I admit, things have been a little quiet for me on the blogging front. There have been a lot of changes happening in my world, and instead of boring you with the minutiae of the past few weeks I decided that I would write an update once the dust settled. So, with that, I hope this “update” fills in some of the blanks as to my comings and goings!

1. Officially an Atlanta resident: On Sunday August 15, my family pulled into the driveway of our new place in north Atlanta. We are loving the weather, the beautiful and diverse neighborhoods and of course the restaurants…the food—oh my gods the food! Our 5-year old daughter started kindergarten shortly after we arrived, and my husband is settling in with his new coworkers and new position at his company (it was his job that kickstarted the moving process for us). My home office is up and running, and I already have a few projects in the hopper. Anyone who doesn’t believe that success is geographic should talk to the Martins! It was a lot of work, but all in all, it’s been one positive advance after another since we arrived.

2. An active UX Design Community to join (finally): Atlanta has a lot to offer in terms of a strong design community. In the last city I lived, there simply weren’t enough of us designers (let alone UXers) to join forces. That is not the case here! CHI Atlanta, UX Book Club, IxDA, and Content Strategy meetup groups all have active members and events. And it turns out, I’ve met many of them virtually via Twitter or at conferences, which for an introvert like me helps to have the ice broken ahead of time! And speaking of conferences,in 2011 both the International UPA conference and An Event Apart will be here in Atlanta. Bonus, right?

3. Still riding the IDEA10 conference high: This year, I’ve been lucky enough to attend both the IA Summit and the IDEA 10 conferences. I love the IAI, and so besides mentoring for them I love to show my support by showing up at these events, networking, catching up with old friends and making new ones. The brains at these conferences make me so happy! Great people pulled off another great event, which consisted of a balance of 45 minute break-out sessions and speakers on the main stage. Unlike the IA summit, there are no session tracks, which means we attendees spend a lot of time together. There are upsides and downsides to both situations, but I must say I do love the balance that each brings to its “sister” conference.

4. Contract Negotiations: For the past few months, I have tried my hardest to not allude to the super-secret project I’ve had in the works. As I write this, it has been in contract negotiations for the past six weeks, and I hope and pray that perhaps, today ink will finally meet paper. Let’s just say that this project will be the culmination of eight years of thinking, studying, talking about, and of course practicing research methods. It will truly be a labor of love once we get it off the ground, and I can’t wait to share more info soon!

Watch this space for updates….until then, send some positive vibes my way as these heart palpitations are getting old.

When I was a kid, to say I moved around a lot is an understatement. Before the age of ten, I had lived on three continents, and had already attended five schools. With a constantly changing framework, I learned pretty quickly that customs, values, and even accents carried a lot of social capital within a group, and also, that they did not transfer easily across groups. As young as I was, I realized that a good way to connect with a new group of people was through respectful observation, withholding judgment when confronted something that was unknown—and literally foreign—to me, and the power of seeking to find meaning through conversation (what I would learn in ethnography class is called “dialogic listening”). As ad-hoc as they were, these became my tactics for not only finding a shared footing with my classmates, but for making my way through the world.

My older sister, Elise, and me in São Paulo, Brazil (1981)

I didn’t realize how profound this was, or how well these lessons would serve me, until 1994 when I found myself sitting in my first undergraduate ethnography class. During one class, the professor was discussing some of the vocational hazards ethnographers and their families usually have to deal with. Because of the transient nature of an ethnographer’s lifestyle, he explained that it is normal for the family of the ethnographer to actually have a tougher time acclimating in a new culture, even though the ethnographer may be the one more intensely immersed in it. The reason being that the ethnographer has his/her job, ethnographic skills and methods, project goals, to orient him or herself (essentially creating a set of “knowns” in a world of “unknowns”)…but the ethnographer’s family members rarely have a similar foundation through which to navigate the new world. This deeply resonated with me because I remembered being a kid, and seeking to make sense of a strange world around me with not much more than any empathic skills I could muster up.

Another move on the horizon

Fast forward to today. Or, actually, a week ago today…when, my husband accepted a promotion that will take us half-way across the country. Atlanta, Georgia…here we come! What’s interesting to me, though; and what further ties his acceptance of this job to my ethnography class, is that formally accepting the promotion kicked off an interesting chain-of-events and communications from his company to our family. As the relocation materials filter in, I cannot help but be reminded of the lessons from my first ethnography class.

For instance, this week we have already received:

• An informational packet in the mail about the Employee Assistance Program that is available. What was striking was that the message was not geared to my husband—their employee—but rather to me and my daughter, addressing us even by name. On the cover of the pamphlet, it showed a family looking a little stressed, surrounded by boxes.
• Then, a day or two later, we received more information focused specifically on the benefits of moving. By benefits, I don’t mean emotional benefits…literally, I mean the employee benefits in terms of dollars and cents. Its main message is that this move will not create a financial burden on the family; rather that there is potential financial gain for us.
• Then of course, came the informational packets about the company-sponsored social events for families new to the Atlanta area. From a Communication Design perspective, its message reassures that there is a community ready and waiting for us to arrive; and directs us to information about groups whose members, like us, are also adjusting to the area.

Once the new kid, always the new kid

As a designer, I’ve learned to be very comfortable—almost happy— in the discovery phase of a project, where ambiguity and many open-loops reign. Luckily, I can translate that perspective into my personal life fairly easily. Many of the stresses usually associated with moving are suddenly eradicated because of my openness to new things.

Nonetheless, I very much appreciate that my husband’s company is aware of how hard a relocation may be on everyone in a family; not just their employee. Truth be told, my husband is equally enamored with the discovery process required when moving to a new place, and the world of opportunity change seems to bring about. After all, Georgia will be the fifth state we’ve lived in over the course of the past seven years! We sometimes joke that we are the demographic that is the topic of the book Next Stop, Reloville: Life Inside America’s New Rootless Professional Class.

The coming days and weeks will be interesting…but we are excited about the move. This time however, I am going to remind myself to just try to soak all that Atlanta has to offer not as an ethnographer, but as a person. I love ethnography, but I’d rather get paid for it! This time, it’s all about taking the time to make some roots. I think it’s time we stay in a place for a while.

As a divergent thinker, I often rely on unfamiliar models to help me identify parallels and patterns that I may not see in models with which I am deeply familiar. One of the ways I do this is by reading anything I can get my hands on, and usually I learn something new and find new connections as long as the publication shows rigor in its subject matter and demonstrates a healthy intellectual curiosity.

So, as I was recently flipping through a copy of Science News, a book called Don’t Be Such A Scientist by Randy Olson caught my eye. The premise of Randy’s book argues that until scientists can temper their need for accuracy with the need for audience engagement, they will miss the opportunity to connect with the broader audiences that they need in order to affect positive, widespread change based on their research. Because I have recently been doing a lot of thinking about ways in which designers can better talk to business people without having to sell out water down our processes, methods, and skills (so as to be a better fit with all of the control systems inherent in business processes), I was curious to see if there were strategies I could glean from Randy’s book that would help us cross the chasm we deal with all the time between what business does and what design does.

I took this book with me on a ten day trip to Key West.
The irony of this decision did not hit me until the end of chapter one...

As Randy walks his readers through the pitfalls of being a science communicator, his messages include “Don’t be so cerebral,” “Don’t be so literal-minded,” and “Don’t be such a poor storyteller.” To counteract these tendencies, here is a short summary of his recommendations:

1. Appeal to the four organs of mass communication. Randy writes: “When it comes to connecting with the entire audience, you have four bodily organs that are important: your head, your heart, your gut, and your sex organs. The object is to move the process down out of your head, into your heart with sincerity, into your gut with humor, and, ideally, if you’re sexy enough, into your lower organs with sex appeal.” To reach the broadest audience possible with your message, take advantage of each of these organ centers in every way you can. A message that contains these elements will appeal to everyone, from the brainiacs to those with little more than good ol’ fashioned sexual urges.
2. Familiarize yourself with the tradition of Improv. Spontaneity is preferable to highly scripted interactions, if for no other reason than it brings excitement to the situation and reaches down into the lower organs (which means you and your message will connect with more people). Two goals of Improv are 1) to always make the other person look good (don’t negate, embarass, put down) and 2) to always build off of what the other characters are saying by starting off your comments with “Yes, and….” This creates a positive momentum to your message, and instead of alienating people, you are further engaging them.
3. Use the Arouse and Fulfill strategy. When trying to communicate effectively, you must first hook your audience and get them interested in what you have to say (arouse) and then deliver on the promise of your message (fulfill). Randy’s recommendation for applying the “Arouse and Fulfill” strategy? Storytelling! Luckily, this is a topic we UXers are in no short-supply of these days.

I have to admit, when I started reading this book, I hoped that I could learn a thing or two about not being such a designer. But what I actually learned was…

…I am such a scientist. Maybe not a scientist in the purest sense (as in, I don’t have a Ph.D. in marine biology like Randy), but according to Randy’s description let’s just go with saying I definitely meet his criteria for being “science-minded.” I guess a decade of advocating the importance of user-centered research and synthesizing, coding, and presenting research findings will do that to you! His message hit so close to home that I literally found myself slapping my forehead more than once. As tough as it was to read, and see myself reflected in his words, it was exactly the message that I needed.

I walked away from the book with a new-found commitment to being more bilingual: to continue to talk both the art of user-advocacy as well as the science of business, but now start to do it being mindful of all four organs of mass communication. I also clearly need a crash-course in Improv. This book reminded me of the importance of making other people look good; not just the design and development team. Bringing the people who are holding the purse-strings for my projects along for the ride, and getting them positive attention based on the success of the UX of our projects, is clearly one of the best strategies we can employ to get UX into the bones of organizations.

As irony would have it, I read this book while on vacation in Key West with 20 of my friends. Yes, I caught some flack for it; but deservedly so! To me, the book was nerdy fun; to everyone else, it was just nerdy. I’ll find the right balance of substance and style one of these days!

Speaking of which, right now I am reading The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information. Sounds like more nerdy fun to me!

The Ramblers in Key West, 2010. Can you pick out the designer/scientist in the group?