OK/Cancel

Writing About Comics Instead of Drawing Comics

Yes, we know you’ve been neglected. I maintain that OK/Cancel is not dead (and in fact, brand new ones are still appearing in ACM-CHI’s Interactions magazines) but both Tom and I have our respective ventures that have been keeping us busy. If only you could see the collection of ideas for new strips I’ve been collecting, though …

For me, the next few months will be spent writing and drawing about comics instead of drawing comics for OK/Cancel. Some of you may have attended my previous presentations and workshops about using comics in the design process. Certainly, you guys have been a great example of how a comic can draw in an audience around a topic.

After a couple of years of back and forth and discussions with Lou Rosenfeld, I’m happy to finally announce that I have started working on a book for Rosenfeld Media.

The book is entitled, See What I Mean: How to Use Comics to Communicate Ideas and as its title suggests, I’ll be talking about why comics are a powerful medium for getting ideas across to stakeholders.

I’m really looking forward to writing this book. As it is a work in progress, I hope interested readers will check the book’s blog regularly and help contribute and shape the future of the book. You might also consider adding yourself to be notified when the book publishes.

Of course, I will also continue to update my usual personal blog at kev/null and Twitter so feel free to keep tabs on myself and the book that way instead.

Design Advice

Workshops For Everyone!

Hark! We’re back (again). There’s really no excuse for our hiatus but it feels good to have another comic out. We’ve put together a few scripts that are pretty quality and should last us through at least through the rest of the year. One hopes.

Of course, there’s always a deep, dark, underlying ulterior motive when a comic comes back from the depths of the internet void – shameless self promotion!

As it turns out, both Tom and I are separately teaching some workshops in the near future and would love to see some of you there. I know, you’re thinking, “you draw comics, what do you know?” Well, there’s really only one way to find out!

Influencing Strategy by Design

Tom’s talk is with the inimitable Luke Wroblewski and is titled, “Influencing Strategy by Design“. I’ve personally worked with both of them at Yahoo! and I can say they are two of the most influential designers in the company.

They’ve shown that you can do so much more than fit into the pigeon hole typically given to the role of design by leading major product changes and development at a strategic level. As an example, some of the recent changes to Yahoo!’s core search and search assist was largely driven by Tom. Best of all, the workshop is being put on by our friends at Involution Studios.

Communicating Product Concepts with Comics

My workshop is one you may have attended at IASummit or CanUX. Many of you may have seen my shorter, 45-90min talk that describes the methodology I teach. The workshop is called, “Communicating Product Concepts with Comics” and is a refined version of previous workshops with some high quality notes to accompany them.

The workshop is happening at the User Interface 12 conference held by Jared Spool (and incidentally also features Luke and other great speakers). You can see my slides from my shorter talk or go to my resource page on my personal blog to get a better idea of the content. Oh, and registering with the code CHENG will get you a discount!

We’re both really excited about these speaking opportunities and hope to see some of you there. If you’ve attended any of our stuff before, we’d also love to hear what your thoughts and suggestions for improvements. If you haven’t attended and might, maybe you can drop a line about what you hope to learn so we can incorporate it.

As a final aside, we completely missed OK/Cancel’s 4th year anniversary. Of course, given the dismal output of this year, it feels almost like cheating to even celebrate it so I’m ok with us missing it. Be here for our paper anniversary though. Who knows, maybe there’ll be paper comics involved. How 1.0 of us.

Workshoppin’ It

Make the Logo Bigger

First our rap song, then there was the OG Designer and now the rock song for graphic designers.

Original Design Gangsta

Almost as good as the World’s First HCI Rap Song

Goooal!

iBall

Audience Controlled Game

Bricks played by an entire movie theater audience. The movie going experience can suck less. (via our sister site BugBash).