Glittery, Shiny and Highly Distracting.

Last night me and skry went to a CHIFOO event. Neither of us had been in a long time. I definitely would not have made it to the event without a ride since it was out in Beaverton on the Tektronix campus. The event was freaking awesome and reallyreally worth the cold and rainy excursion.

The event was called “Sketching Smart Things: User Experience Design of Ubiquitous Computing Devices.” It was presented by Mike Kuniavsky from ThingM





Here is Mike’s bio from the THINGM site:

“At ThingM, Mike Kuniavsky researches, designs, and writes about people’s experiences at the intersection of technology and everyday life. Companies and universities around the world use his 2003 book Observing the User Experience to understand and teach techniques that bring the design of products closer to the people who use them. His next book, Smart Things, expected in 2007 from Elsevier, will discuss user experience design for mobile devices and ubiquitous computing. He has also contributed to a number of other books, including the encyclopedic HCI Handbook (also to appear in 2007) and his articles regularly appear in MAKE magazine. He is a regular presenter at academic conferences focusing on user experience design and ubiquitous computing. In 2001 Mike co-founded Adaptive Path, a leading San Francisco internet consultancy. Previously, he founded the Wired Digital User Experience Lab for Wired Magazine’s online division, where he served as the interaction designer of the award-winning search engine, HotBot.”

Mike talked for a while about how these are the early days of the adoption of Ubicomp and his excitement about how folks are now starting to move in that direction in a more focused way. This is something I have been eager to help push along for quite a while! I was thrilled to see that the room was packed and everyone was really engaged in the conversation as well. It really does seem like these changes are coming up fast. I am struggling to figure out how to acquire the right skill set for this kind of environmental interactive design. I wrote the company today asking them what kind of skill set they look for in a designer. Who knows maybe they will give me a solid list of things I can study! I can’t wait until I don’t have to sit in front of a machine to explore the digital world around me. It makes me nuts to sit still, at a desk and type on a keyboard. I feel crippled as an artist and designer from my lack of ability to just grab something, interact with it and really extend my experiences with tools and the environment.

Some snippets from Mike Kuniavsky I scribbled in my little book from the event: (most likely paraphrased…but you get the point.)

“Embedded information processing is a material…”

“Information as a material is at the heart of Ubicomp…”

“Devices are secondary, they are the avatars of service…”

“Using magic as a design metaphor…”

“User’s Animist explanations for unusual behavior in our consumer technology…”

I also gathered some great LTU’s (look this up’s, I use a twisted shorthand in my note-taking)

Walmart and RIFD tagging- It appears Walmart is doing some interesting things with RFID tags. If anyone actually reads this blog…wanna post a link on what you find. ( Note to self: create a false avatar to communicate with on this blog and pretend to be your own audience.)

Faceted Classification Systems which I have seen examples of in Jennifer Tidwell’s book “Designing Interfaces” Was looking around for a cool pic of a faceted classification system and found this awesome-looking blog www.eleganthack.com all about UX design and IA.

Hacking Roombas- A book by Todd E. Kurt

Information Appliances by Eric Bergman

I think I will look into the Hacking Roombas book first, since I believe I could tie that into my schooling. A robot that can draw!