DESIGNING *for humans

"U. I. Joe" and "The Journey (Map) is Not the Reward"

 

Long time no see here over at the blog. I've been remiss in sharing updates, one from last week, and two from last year:

• U. I. Joe - A Real Experience Hero covers President Biden's recent executive order to improve customer experience across federal agencies. I discuss the impact of the order, but also how the order itself can be a model for documenting experience design goals.
  
  
• The journey (map) is not the reward from last year discusses the challenges organizations face when creating journey maps, and recommendations for better researching and managing the process.
  
  
• Digital Multipliers - Bridging the Digitial Divide Locally covers our efforts here in Philadelphia to address the technology gap in the context of education.

Stanford Law School - Understanding U.S. Intellectual Property Law

The author in front of a patent he co-invented

This summer I participated in Stanford Law School's summer program on understanding U.S. intellectual property law. This certificate-granting course is primarily targeted at international (non-U.S.) intellectual property lawyers, as an overview of U.S. IP law. In fact, among the 40 or so students from around the world, I was the only non-attorney, and one of two Americans, to participate in the week-long program at Stanford's campus.

As a survey course, a broad range of information is covered including utility patents, copyrights, trademarks, design patents, and data-driven litigation. In addition, classes on trade secrets, and on the venture capital process, provided valuable and interesting information from the tech business perspective. The majority of instructors were very good, although I would highly recommend that participants first review a self-paced primer on U.S. IP law, such as the the Michelson Institute videos that I have previously reviewed. This pre-work will make concepts and term much clearer, especially for those who are not native English speakers - but really for everyone.

What I found more valuable than the class time were the field trips we took to meet with in-house IP teams at Google and Twitter. Twitter requested that we sign a non-disclosure agreement, while Google was more open (even letting us wander around a bit of the campus). The Google presentation included representative from key IP areas (copyright, patent, and trademark) and included a useful Q&A session.

One delight from the week occurred during Lixian Hantover's class on design patents. In going through examples of design patents, D753,683 came up on the screen. Coincidentally, I'm a co-inventor on that patent for a graphical user interface on an oven display - resulting in the photo above. Additionally, wandering around Stanford's beautiful campus was a nice experience, I particularly recommend the cactus garden.

Last, but not least,  I'd like to than my employer, EY, for generously funding my participation in the program.

Who's Auditing Your Company's User Experiences?

 

I've written a post for EY's (Ernst & Young) Better Working World around the need for organizations to assess the quality of their user experiences just as they do their financials and business practices - Who's auditing your company's user experiences?

 

Update on Granted Patents

It's been quite a while since my last post (now there's an understatement). And it's been even longer since I've updated any granted patents. Since my last post on the topic in October 2013 I've been co-inventor on four additional patents. While the majority of my previous patents were design patents, three of the most recent four are utility patents:

• 9,043,719 System and method for managing and displaying securities market information - This was actually the earliest patent I was involved with -  the application was filed back in 2006 and it took 9 years to be granted. It was for user interface work I did with the New York Stock Exchange.
• 9,058,024 User interface--oven timer - One of several patents related to oven user interfaces for BSH Home Appliances.
• D753,683 Oven display screen with graphical user interface - A design patent, also for BSH.
• 9,554,689 User interface--demo mode  - Another oven user interface utility patent.

Presenting at Human Factors Conference

I'll be participating in two sessions at the upcoming Human Factors & Ergonomics Society conference 

• Capturing Data During User Research  - I'm one of several panelist who'll be discussing methods and technologies for gathering and analyzing data in various user research contexts. Preview the focus of my presentation on Four Generations of Qualitative User Research Technology.
  
  
• Intuitive Voting: A Case Study in Rapid Research & Prototype Design - I'll  be presenting the research and design process for the HFES competition-winning concept, Intuitive Voting.

10 Years of Designing for Humans

This blog as it was in 2005, courtesy of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine

A Brief History of Designing for Humans

This month marks the 10th anniversary of Designing for Humans.   While I started the blog format in 2005, I had created an even earlier, more traditional website back in 2000.  Originally, the site served as the online presence for the Human Factors section of the Industrial Designers Society of America.

In my professional work I often found myself looking up human factors references again and again, so I started to document recommended resources on the blog.  Over time the site gained a life and following of its own, far beyond the IDSA membership.  

While I was no longer officially involved with the IDSA section, I continued to write and develop the blog as my own, and took it in a more broad direction to cover not just human factors, but product design and usability.

I recently browsed through all of the posts (over 300) that have seen almost 600,000 visits over the years. I've made an attempt to summarize some of the highlights and to give a sense of what I have written about over the past decade.  While I don't post on the blog as nearly as frequently as I used to, I still enjoy writing both online and offline, and will continue to maintain the blog for a few key posts throughout the year. Thanks for your support!

Without further ado, The Best of Designing for Humans:

• Research Tools - One of the areas that I emphasized in the "early years" was adapting technology to support user research.  I took early looks at the LiveScribe Pulse, various versions of Morae, and even FitBit.  I even conceptualized the ultimate research tool kit, FieldCREW as a stand-alone toolkit, and later as a concept app.   
  

• Original Essays - Essays are what make a blog a blog.  I've written a few, most notably the    Ergonomics for Interaction Designers series, a criticism on What the FDA can Learn from the NHS, and the esoteric User Interfaces as a Force of Entropy.

• Books - I've done a handful of book reviews.  I loved a few like Customer Visits,  101 Things I Learned in Architecture School, and one of my all time favorites, Universal Principles of Design.  All the more reason I was excited to contribute to the "sequel", Deconstructing Product Design.
  
  
• TV - I've mentioned a few noteworthy commercials showing the influence of touchscreen and gestural  interactions in advertisements.  And had my own 15 mins of fame on Bloomberg.
  
  
• Awards - I was fortunate to judge both the IDEA awards and the ID Magazine awards in the same year and even managed to win a few awards for medical and scientific devices in subsequent years.
  
  
• Print Publications - Blogging opened up opportunities to write offline, including the fun, but short-lived series, Bureau of Ergonomics for Design Bureau magazine, and a great piece on simplicity for Barlcays360.
  
  
• Presentations  - I like to present almost as much as I like to write, so what's better than writing about my presentations - how about watching a video of the presentation.  Here's a few examples: Measuring Your User Experience, Ergonomics for Interaction Designers, and Documenting Physical Behavior.

• Blogging - At the risk of being meta, I've blogged about blogging on other sites such as Fast Company, Medium and Intuitive Company's We See.
  
  
• Patents - More recently I've been blogging about patents, and their utility to designers. You can browse a variety of my patent-related posts.

 

Intuitive Company

  I have joined Intuitive Company as Director of Usability Research & Strategy.  Intuitive Company designs and builds web applications, mobile apps, responsive web sites, and desktop software that improve communication, reduce training, and increase productivity and user adoption. This is a bit of a re-union as I previously worked with the founders as well as many of the designers here at IC.  

Discussing Apple on Bloomberg

 I appeared on Bloomberg TV's Market Makers the day after Apple's WWDC keynote to dicuss the present and future of Apple design.

Here's the working link to the video.

Bureau of Ergonomics

Update Sept 27 - You can now directly access the article on Design Bureau's web site.

People often ask for my input on everyday design and ergonomics questions - I was once even contacted by an automobile dealer who was concerned about a customer's request to swap the brake and accelerator pedals (I wisely chose to stay out of that).  

Starting  this fall, I will have a recurring Q&A column called Bureau of Ergonomics.  This is premiering in the just released Sept/Oct issue (#13) of Design Bureau magazine   For those unfamiliar with Design Bureau, see my review from earlier this year.

Like the magazine itself, my column will cover questions from a variey of areas including packaging, travel, shopping and interfaces.  If you'd like to submit questions for future issues, please email me.

I encourage you to check out the Design Bureau web site and consider subscribing to the print or iPad version.  As of this writing you can get a free preview of the full Sept/Oct issue that includes my first column.

HFES Product Design Group Summer Newsletter

The summer newsletter of the Product Design Technical Group from the Human Factors & Ergonomics Society has just been released.  It includes an interesting article by Stan Caplan on "Total User Experience" - demonstrating that Human Factors professionals tend to have strong input for the usage aspect of products, but little in the front-end (acquisition, preparation) and back-ends (maintenance, support, termination) of the product ownership experience.

The newsletter also includes bios of the PDTG executive council and a program of PDTG-related activities and presentations for the upcoming HFES conference in Baltimore in October.

Download pdtg_summer_07_newsletter.pdf