AnthrodesigNYC January meetup

January AnthrodesigNYC meetup

For more information (and to RSVP if you can), visit the LinkedIn event here. Hope to see you!

Resolutions.

Happy New Year! Hope you’re reading this well and rested, fat and happy, from the holiday season. Now it’s time for resolutions…

Resolutions are new for me because: a) I never really make them (I prefer to just say I’ll “work on” certain areas of my life) And b), I feel like they’re set up to fail. So much so, that I refuse to start anything even remotely perceived to be a resolution on January 1st. It’s like how people get their significant other’s name tattooed on their arm and almost always break up two weeks later. For whatever reason once you commit to it, you just know it won’t work.

Anyhow, I thought it’d be good to share with you guys (and simultaneously hold myself accountable) my professional goals for this year. They are, in no particular order:

#1. Become a better presenter.

I’m a very outgoing person. One-on-one interaction? Fine. Small groups? Great. But, get me in front of people? Where everyone’s looking at me? And purposely listening to the words coming out of my mouth?! My brain turns to mush.

If I have a few days to practice, I feel a bit better, but now that I’ve been working in the “real world,” I know that’s just not realistic more than half the time. So, I will make it a mission to do more off-the-cuff presenting in low-pressure situations, so I can perform better in formal presentations and other high-pressure situations.

#2. Fully transition to SvcD/XD.

In October 2008, I moved to New York and set out, bright eyed and bushy-tailed—and in the middle of a recession—to get a full-time job as a designer. I was interested in many areas of primarily print design, so I thought I’d start in publications which I had loved for years.

In January 2009, I was upset I hadn’t found a design job yet.

It’s now January 2010, and I’m so glad I didn’t find it.

While the past year has been stressful and full of ups and downs (I still wonder how I made it), it allowed me to really pinpoint my “what” in the timeless phrase: do what you love and the money will follow. Well I found what I love. So, job (ie money), wherever you are, I’m ready now. 🙂

#3. Fail more.

This is the biggest one.

I was reading the new issue of Wired on the plane back to New York and came across this article about the neuroscience of screwing up. The dek read: if we can train our brains to embrace failure, we open ourselves to new discoveries.

Though I read something (similar to this) a while ago that got me thinking I’m really more afraid of success than failure, reading the Wired article was a great way to remind myself to stay cognizant of why I’m hesitant to approach—or don’t approach at all—certain situations in which it’s not certain I’ll succeed. And I don’t think it would hurt to work on this in both professional and personal contexts. Besides, how does the saying go? The best way to succeed is to double your failure rate, right?

That’s all. I have a couple other nit-picky resolutions, but those above are the major ones. I really hope I will diligently work on these over the next 12 months. Feel free to share yours too, if you’d like. 🙂

Kudos.

So I’ve been thinking about the lovely organizational infographic, created by the office of House Republic leader John Boehner (via Design Observer).

GOP graphic of House Democrats' health plan

First thought: ?!?!?!

Second thought: Okay, let’s not dwell on the obvious. Obvious being: anyone with even a lick of sense knows this barrage of arbitrarily-sized shapes and random colors doesn’t do anything to create understanding.

Next, we know this camp is paying attention to design now. See below for a couple of GOP sites that have been stolen inspired by a certain someone’s successful online presence:

les otten (R) maine

No doubt they’re still putting that good ol’ freedom-fightin’ twist on it:

Can we say fearmongers??

That can only lead me to believe the chart’s less-than-desirable execution was on purpose. Create a horrible graphic to instill in the viewer a sense of confusion and overall disdain for the Dem plan. I get it. Hell, I even appreciate it. Besides, it’s about time they had some online messaging that went according to plan—unlike these unfortunate hickups earlier in the year.

So if this is the new plan, GOP—this whole “make them look bad through really horrible design?” Kudos. This gem is so on plan…it’s scary. Literally.

Anthro what?

Life has been pretty hectic since getting back to New York; I apologize for the radio silence. Main reason for this little writing “break” was because I, fortunately, had full-time freelance work (and then some) lined up when I got back. Definitely great news after the way this year has ebbed and flowed.

So things are back to normal for the time being: work is the majority of my time, and a good chunk of the rest is spent networking because, as I think I’ve mentioned before, I feel so far behind in my new career journey.

One such networking occurrence yielded an unexpected discovery. At a VizThink NYC event a few weeks back, I happened upon a couple of design anthropologists—design anthropology being a title and job that I never knew existed.

Well, I knew about anthropology, of course. My first introduction was through work study in undergrad, where I transcribed interviews for a PhD candidate in the Africana Studies department where I worked (her focus was in healthcare disparities). The interviews were definitely interesting, but I never thought to link it to design back then. Mostly because even with that exposure (and even now, I won’t front), I still have this stereotypical vision of an anthropologist in my mind:

photo by macanckor, flickr.

Anyhow, back to these guys, they gave a quick summation of what they did, and I was immediately intrigued by it.  They also gave me some helpful links, one of which being the Anthrodesign listserv over on yahoo. I signed up, lurked for a bit, and finally decided to send a message.

Long story short, I ended up volunteering to organize a meetup for NYC members of the listserv—along with one of the aforementioned, my new anthro buddy, Russ. 🙂

So if you’re in New York City, and feel like coming out for a little networking, design research talk, and a drink (or drinks, I don’t judge. Ha.), feel free. Details are here on LinkedIn.

I have a feeling I’ll be working for you someday.

Not a direct quote, but that was the basic gist.

Anyhow, I heard this today from someone whose work I revere. How’s that for a midweek pick-me-up?

#ServiceInADay complete. For now. :)

As promised, here is the process document to accompany my #ServiceInADay project I did this past Sunday. Don’t forget, it’s my first foray into service design so it’s a very basic exploration, but I think I collected some good data and brainstormed applicable solutions. At least one of which I think would be great to extend beyond the purposes of this project, design it out, and test. Who knows…we’ll see.

Your critique and criticism is welcome below. Thanks!

DOING is the remedy for doubting. (c) Mitchell A. Martian

Feeling a bit under pressure, (or crazy, we’ll never know), I decided to design a service in a day yesterday; just get all the jitters out of the way, and jump right in.

I know it might seem a little 0 to 60 in no time at all, and to justify this semi-masochistic experiment, I’ll have to let you guys in on a little secret: I tend to hype myself up sometimes—and not in a good way.

I’ve been spending most of my free time these days reading the plethora of informative service design articles my IxDA mentor, KC, sends me. Then I alternate between watching presentations, and going back to reading more research or articles I find in my unquenchable, google-driven quests for knowledge. After that, I’ll start looking at the work of other service and interaction designers—and more often than not, that’s more awesomeness to the tenth degree.

And the grand finale to this cyclical routine is usually, can I really do this?

Now don’t get me wrong here. I know I can, but this feeling of doubt never ceases to creep up every now and again. Somehow, I snap out of it and get back to reading, or doing whatever it was I was doing. But Saturday, the doubt was accompanied by a gentle nagging in the back of my mind that I need to quit talking about it and be about it. This feeling no doubt driven by my decision to return to New York early and attend my alma mater’s New Graduate Portfolio Review…as the awkward non-new graduate, of course. (eh, I am looking for a permanent home; gotta take these opportunities as they come, right?).

Anyhow, ServiceInADay actually turned out to be a lot of fun. A bit difficult at times, but I had plenty of great presentations to refer to, and tons of bookmarked sites to look up. I even got my friend to help with grouping the jotting I did from the interviews, as well as brainstorm. She really got into it (by the way, I can see why brainstorming in a group is so necessary for this), and said she had fun as well. Which is huge considering the fact that I pulled her away from her Young and the Restless marathon on DVR.

I’m not completely done with the project, but I did get at least one solution that fit into the existing experience flow. (Hey, it was called service in a day, not services in a day!) In that respect, I accomplished my goal.

My main objective in this experiment was to remove the personal fear I had around jumping into unchartered territory, but I will add that I hope my passion for learning service + interaction, as well as my self-starter nature shone through as well. Even looking back this morning, I can see I got a lot accomplished for a first run at this with a limited amount of time. Pretty cool.

More updates are coming this week, and I’ll be sure to post the formal process document as soon as it’s done.

Thanks for following along! I appreciate any input, advice, and constructive criticism you’d like to give.

Stay tuned… 🙂

A UX Team of one.

My interaction design mentor (through IxDA) sent me this presentation. It’s all in preparation for steering one of my existing personal projects down a service design path. It’s a SXSW presentation by Leah Buley of adaptive path.

I’m 10 minutes in and it’s AWESOME.

It’s all about being a UX team of one. Check it out.

The Official Anthem of theory143.

Hands down, this song has always had the power to make and keep me motivated. And I mean, come on…it’s Stevie. 🙂

So, my question to you is: what are you doing to reach higher ground?

“Powers keep on lyin’
While your people keep on dyin’
World keep on turnin’
Cause it won’t be too long

I’m so darn glad He let me try it again
Cause my last time on earth I lived a whole world of sin
I’m so glad that I know more than I knew then
Gonna keep on tryin’
Till I reach my highest ground…”

To Redjotter, with thanks. :)

My new friend, Lauren Currie—a passionate service designer based in Scotland—was nice enough to do a writeup about me on her blog, Redjotter, in an effort to get me connected to service designers stateside. Read it here.

And don’t forget to follow her on twitter.

Thanks, Lauren!